The Unwritten Book is Finally Written!
An in-depth analysis of: The sacrifice bunt, batter/pitcher matchups, the intentional base on balls, optimizing a batting lineup, hot and cold streaks, clutch performance, platooning strategies, and much more. Read Excerpts & Customer Reviews
Some familiar names, notably Sagarin and Wayne Winston. Football, more than baseball, is a great sport for using win expectancy charts. Whereas in baseball the pitcher has a large set of pitches and locations to choose from (and won’t even necessarily hit the target), and the batter has to choose to swing or not, and game theory and randomization will play a huge role here, in football you have a much more finite set of choices, and the play is over after the play (as opposed to baseball because of the count). The clock, penalties, the turnovers, etc, all add great variables that make the win expectancy really valuable for football.
According to the incomparable Brian Burke, the Pats should have given up the go-ahead TD at the two-minute warning.
The smartest play of all would’ve been for Belichick to have allowed the touchdown even earlier. The Patriots certainly could have done so on the play prior to Bradshaw’s touchdown run, when he was stopped for a one-yard gain, forcing New England to burn its second timeout. In fact, they probably should have allowed a touchdown as early as the two-minute warning. That’s the point at which the Win Probability of receiving a kickoff down by four or six points (0.23) exceeds the Win Probability of trying to stop the Giants from bleeding the clock dry (0.2). The Patriots would have had almost two minutes, two timeouts, and all four downs available to get a touchdown and steal the win.
Basically, every time out has a certain win value, every second lost has a certain win value, every yard lost has a certain win value. And Brian is saying that the Pats would have maximized their chances of winning by allowing the TD to happen at the two minute warning.
This is exactly what win expectancy charts (and to a lesser extent, run or point expectancy charts) should be used for.
I think the ref did a good job of explaining the OT rules. I’m not sure if there’s a great way of explaining it. He was pretty clear, and didn’t give too much information in each sentence. He wasn’t terse, and he wasn’t verbose. I liked it.
What wasn’t clear is what happens on a safety on the initial drive (reverse?). Presumably, it should end the game, but maybe there is an exception there as well?
Impressed at the variety of readers at Poz’s site.
1.1 baseball players
0.9 football players
1.1 basketball players
0.9 hockey players
0.6 soccer players
Great stuff on the promotion/relegation system versus USA/Canada system.
If we look to Europe, though, we might see a better approach. To understand it, let’s consider the arguments of Frederich Hayek, who argued that a centrally planned economy can’t work as well as a free market one because the central planner could never have enough information to make adequate decisions. OK, but what does this have to do with sports?
Essentially, North American sports leagues use central planners to determine the location of sports teams. In contrast, European sports leagues rely on the market.
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If these owners were ever successful, then essentially American owners would be exporting central planning to a market-oriented industry in Europe.
Apparently so. Packers were selling shares at 200$ a pop.
So what does $275 ($250 cost plus $25 handling fee) get a shareholder? Packers stock pays no dividends, can only be sold back to the team (for 2.5 cents), never appreciates in value and affords very limited voting rights.
This is like the Picasso theory, but worse. People buy Picasso not only for the intrinsic value of the art, but also for the potential to appreciate in value.
With the Packers, that stock certificate has no art value, and is precluded from appreciating in value. (Unless of course people sell it on the secondary market.)
Basically, it comes down to ownership: having something the other guy wants.
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By the way, where do the profits go if there’s no dividends? Is Andrew wrong about that?
High school football player celebrates early, gets flagged for taunting, nullifying the touchdown. But, everyone agrees: the rule is the rule is the rule. George Orwell couldn’t have predicted this state of affairs actually becoming reality.
How about we apply this to baseball. That Kirk Gibson fist pump? HR rendered obsolete. Carlton Fisk jumping up and down, waving his hands, only to finally hold them up in triumph? That’s an out. Dave Henderson doing his piroutte? Back to the dugout. Prince Fielder calling his teammates over so he can use them as bowling pins? Another out.
And why not. If the rule is the rule is the rule, then these players are going to learn… the hard way… that you don’t celebrate until after you score, and you do so in a respectful manner.
Basically he’s saying two things:
1. It’s not the 8-3 Patriots against the 0-11 Colts, but individual matchups on a play-by-play basis. In terms of something actionable, that’s all that matters. You can have a great receiver on the Colts and on the Packers, and it won’t influence the defense as to whether that guy happens to be on an 0-11 or an 11-0 team (other than the fact that he’s probably surrounded by better players).
2. If you bring a certain amount less than your best, any team can lose. The Colts have scored as many as 24 points, and given up as few as 17 points. The Patriots have given up as many as 34 points and scored as few as 17. Even if both teams play to the maximum of their potential, it’s still possible that the Colts can beat the Patriots if they get more lucky breaks than them.
So, yeah, focusing on the record is something that the media does, and then the media reports on the story they happened to create, and then they want the players and coach to respond to this made-up story.
Matt makes the point that even with the draft pick cap limits, baseball prospects in high school will still choose baseball, because it’s the best game in town. But, at what point would they actually start to leave? How low a signing bonus would you have until baseball is shunned as an option?
The idea of “signing bonuses” is interesting, because that doesn’t exist in the NHL. The reason you don’t need a signing bonus with NBA or NFL is that you are signing a major league contract right away and playing in the majors right away. The NHL is setup like MLB, with minor leagues. So, you are actually signing a two-way deal, like MLB would.
The NHL has a rookie cap at just under a million$, and is stuck there at 3 years (so the most you can sign is a 3 year 3MM$ deal from your draft, as long as you make it to the pros, with some bonuses, that used to be easy to attain, but they clamped down on that). NHL 18-yr old prospects also have nowhere else to go. There’s no such thing as a big-business college hockey, and the cost of education in Canada is far lower than it is in USA, so scholarships don’t have as much value.
So, signing bonuses exist in MLB as some sort of incentive to push you toward MLB, and away from college. But the reality is that MLB can have no signing bonuses whatsoever, effectively making all the high school players choose college instead, and wait to draft players after college… and then have no signing bonuses at all… just like the NHL.
What would happen here? Would Bryce Harper and the Upton boys choose football instead? And when they graduate college, prefer NFL to MLB?
And even if all that did happen, how many players are we talking about? 1% of the star players? 5% even? No one is going to notice that MLB doesn’t have all the best players in North America if 5% of them intentionally “pre-retire”.
So, why not simply do away with signing bonuses completely?
Let’s go even further. We’ve established that a 1MM$ or 2MM$ signing bonus, or no signing bonus at all, will barely affect the talent pool eventually entering MLB. What if the prospects themselves have to PAY TO GET INTO MLB?
If MLB provides access to so much future money to these players, and if these players really have nowhere else to go, how much would they be willing to pay to register to get drafted? It’s no different from college, right? I had to pay to go to school, as it was a gateway to getting a job in the real world.
What if MLB had baseball academies that you had to pay to get into? (That is basically what each team’s minor league is.)
And you can go even further: what if a player, rather than paying, agrees to give up 50% of his first year salary (if he makes it that far), or 5% of his lifetime earnings?
Here’s my challenge to you: start with a clean slate. Blow up everything you even thought of regarding MLB and its draft. Explain to me the impact of having no signing bonuses at all (like NHL). And explain to me the impact of making players pay (like NBA and NFL effectively are making them do by making them go to college).
Yup, it’s the old “you didn’t sign your scorecard, so you forfeit” golf rule, applied to high school football. Apparently, you have to exchange game film or something? Since the non-participants didn’t do it, then the participants don’t get to play.
It makes perfect, logical sense, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
That was me being sarcastic. In other news, Tony Larussa forgot to tell the umpire how many runs his team scored, so the Cardinals forfeited the World Series. It’s a real rule, one that has been respected by everyone, and so, a coach flubs it, and the rest of the team pays for it.
It makes perfect, logical sense, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
The clock doesn’t start after a penalty until the snap. But, the clock started, and therefore, the game ended before the snap. Instead of winning the game as they did 24-15, the parents are suing for the chance to have won the game 27-15 (FG attempt). Why the big deal? Because that point differential was the tie-breaker. No word on the other 100 calls in the year that went their way.
1. Playing 162 games in MLB is equivalent to playing 82 games in NHL, in terms of establishing which team is better than another. Basically, the ordinal rankings are as meaningful. It takes 2 MLB games to tell you what it would take 1 NHL game, basically.
2. Soooo… in the NHL, you allow 16 teams in the playoffs, but they have to go through 4 playoff series of 7 games. The equivalent in baseball would be to allow 16 teams in the playoffs, and they’d have to play 4 playoff series of 13 or 15 games.
3. Given that you don’t want to have 13 and 15 game playoff series, nor 4 rounds, in MLB, you cut that number of games and series down. This is the tricky part:
4. How many rounds and games would you need so that the resultant World Series winner is actually the best team in MLB, as much as the resultant Stanley Cup winner is actually the best team in the NHL?
It basically becomes a probability question, one that I’ve not yet done but have always wanted to do.
Given the limited empirical results, it could very well be that having only 4 teams in the playoffs in a 7-game series is what gives the MLB regular season legitimacy, as the NHL gives it legitimacy with 16 teams.
It seems weird, but 16 teams in the NHL might be equivalent to 4 teams in MLB.
See if you can spot the infraction between the 10 and 5 yard lines.
If you can’t see it, fast-forward to the 50-second mark. Then, listen to the whole thing by the broadcasters, who do a fantastic job of putting context to this play, about how the coaches themselves in the offseason had wanted this rule in place. Well, maybe not THIS rule, but presumably something more egregious. But, you introduce a new rule, you put the officials on the spot, and when you have too many government agencies, uh, too many rules for the officials to apply judgement on, well, you overburden them.
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