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Strike Fetish — Stanford Pickup Soccer Strike Analysis

Generated from 470 reconstructed games (2024-08-26 → 2026-06-17).

Method. Each game is anchored on its final roster post (captain = author, players = the numbered list). The chat window after inferred kickoff is read by an LLM (gpt-4.1-mini) to extract strikes, scores and notes. All rates below are computed over the analysis universe: games that were actually played and produced a detectable recap.

1. Strike propensity by captain

Games where the captain handed out strikes, among games they captained that had a recap.

Captain recap games % with ≥1 strike strikes/game vs baseline Fisher p
Conor Scanlon 136 68% 1.47 +6% 0.226
Anthony 109 67% 1.19 +5% 0.413
Noah Meyer 84 65% 1.50 +3% 0.703
William Xu 22 64% 1.18 +0% 1.000
AbuBakr Sangare 19 21% 0.32 -45% 0.000
Jordan 5 20% 0.80 -44% 0.062
Raul 3 33% 0.67 -30% 0.302
Samuel 3 100% 2.00 +37% 0.557

2. Presence on the field vs strikes

Does a player merely being rostered move the strike rate? (All recapped games; in-group vs everyone else.)

Condition N % with strike strikes/game odds ratio Fisher p
Conor present 218 69% 1.53 1.76 0.0082
Conor absent 171 56% 1.02
Noah present 130 65% 1.52 1.13 0.655
Noah absent 259 63% 1.20

3. Bystander effect — present but not the captain

Strict test of your hypothesis: does Conor/Noah's mere presence raise strikes even when someone else is captaining? Excludes games they captained, and compares games where they were rostered-but-not-captain against games where they were absent and not captain.

Condition N % with strike strikes/game odds ratio Fisher p
Conor present, not captain 91 70% 1.59 1.85 0.031
Conor absent & not captain 162 56% 1.01
Noah present, not captain 57 63% 1.46 1.01 1.000
Noah absent & not captain 248 63% 1.21

4. Conor & Noah — together and apart

Baseline P(strike) across all recapped games = 63%.

Condition N % with strike strikes/game vs baseline odds ratio Fisher p
Either present (Conor ∨ Noah) 260 67% 1.49 +4% 1.63 0.0334
Both present (Conor ∧ Noah) 88 69% 1.65 +6% 1.40 0.210
Only Conor (¬Noah) 130 69% 1.45 +6% 1.46 0.118
Only Noah (¬Conor) 42 57% 1.26 -6% 0.74 0.398
Neither present 129 56% 0.95 -8% 0.61 0.0334

5. AM vs evening games

This group is overwhelmingly a 7am operation; evening games are rare, so the PM row is too small (n≈10) to support a real conclusion — shown for completeness.

Slot N % with strike strikes/game
AM 379 64% 1.32
PM 10 50% 0.90

AM vs PM difference: odds ratio 1.77, Fisher p = 0.507.

Captain propensity, AM vs evening

Captain AM games AM % strike PM games PM % strike
Conor Scanlon 131 68% 5 60%
Anthony 108 68% 1 0%
Noah Meyer 84 65% 0
William Xu 19 63% 3 67%
AbuBakr Sangare 18 22% 1 0%
Jordan 5 20% 0

6. Day-of-week patterns

When Conor plays, and whether some days are safer than others. Baseline strike rate = 63%.

Day games Conor plays strike rate strikes/game Conor present Conor absent
Monday 61 66% 62% 1.30 65% (n=40) 57% (n=21)
Tuesday 73 56% 63% 1.10 66% (n=41) 59% (n=32)
Wednesday 73 60% 63% 1.38 70% (n=44) 52% (n=29)
Thursday 70 29% 67% 1.20 75% (n=20) 64% (n=50)
Friday 64 75% 66% 1.42 73% (n=48) 44% (n=16)
Saturday 47 53% 57% 1.53 68% (n=25) 45% (n=22)

Reading it: Conor is a Friday regular (plays ~75% of Fridays) and skips Thursdays (only ~29%). The calmest day overall is Saturday (~57% strike rate), and Conor's absence does the most work on Fri/Sat (strike rate drops to ~44–45%). Thursdays are the strike-heaviest day despite Conor usually being absent — so dodging him by playing Thursday backfires. There is no day that is both Conor-light and low-strike; the real sweet spot is a Friday or Saturday he happens to skip.

7. Most-struck players

Strikes received Player
12 peter de la cruz
12 mwad s. algadafi
11 peter danenberg
11 luka
10 john rodriguez
9 simon
8 brandon yah
8 alex cho
7 thai tong
7 hamido
7 saeed
6 andrew mcentaggart
6 sam
6 anthony
6 abhinav lalwani

Caveats