So, Kungarna recently put out that they were looking for a new stats intern, and I figured I might apply, so I decided to mess around in Google Sheets a bit to see if I could come up with something interesting to say about Babybay and his role for the SF Shock (Babybay seemed like a good choice for a case study since he plays roughly the same role in every match and the SF Shock have enough map wins and losses to give sufficient data). Either way, I know a lot of people think of Babybay as the carry for SF Shock, as they did back when he was playing for Kungarna in Contenders, and I was wondering if that showed up in the stats at all.
I tallied up Babybay's Winston's Lab stats for each map win or loss during stage one and looked at his kill participation as well as K/D and First Kills-First Deaths. Overall, he had a much lower K/D in losses, but that's a reverse of the cause-effect relationship we're looking for. The team doesn't lose because he has a lower K/D, he has a lower K/D because the team loses. The most important stat to me is Babybay's kill participation, or the percentage of final blows he accounts for. At 28.9%, I imagine he certainly has one of the higher kill participation stats in the league, but the number isn't really affected all that much by whether or not the Shock win (29.2% in wins vs 28.6% in losses). The one stat that does point to Babybay perhaps needing to carry SF is the First Kills-First Deaths stat. When the Shock win, Babybay secures 1.25 more first kills per map than first deaths. When the Shock lose, he only secures .33 more first kills per map than first deaths. There may be other factors that explain this discrepancy, but I believe the stats support the idea that SF need Babybay to initiate fights and that they struggle when he doesn't. Coupled with the fact that his most played hero in stage 1 was Widowmaker, I do think there's solid evidence to say that while Babybay may not strictly be the carry for SF, his picks are a huge part of the team's game plan and they do a lot better when he's popping off.
Link to spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JEHlwSP2Z0mY7IvUtA7DkrrBIGsFuwiE7peTqCxI04A/edit?usp=sharing