THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Monday, February 06, 2012

Interview with Howard Baldwin

Great stuff from Timo.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Relocated Team Doctrine v Stationary Team Doctrine

Great post:

Dale Hawerchuk was born in Toronto and played major junior in Montreal. He was drafted by Winnipeg, where he set records for nine years, and then traded to Buffalo. He skated briefly in St. Louis, ended his playing career in Philadelphia, and now coaches in Barrie. And yet it is only in an arena in Arizona that his number 10 hangs, retired, over the ice.
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The solution to this is (like the Japanese answer to the paradox of Theseus’ ship) to assert that the essence of the team is in its form and its function rather than its substance. A team is not what it is but what it does, defined not by the specific people or buildings or shirts that it uses but by its position in a system of social relations. And in the case of a team, that position is inextricably and fundamentally linked to a place.

Now, I wouldn’t necessarily tie it to a place.  After all, if the Jets move from Long Island to NJ (or wherever they came from), that’s not a new thread.  What matters is the fan base.  Did the fan base follow the team, or not?  If so, link them.  If not, sever them.

So, you do this on a case-by-case basis, and thinking like an historian, and not trying to fit things into simple slots with simple rules.  Rules of thumb by definition don’t work all the time.

Did Jets fans follow the Coyotes?  Did they abandon the Coyotes when the new Jets arrived?

There’s no doubt that this applies to the Expos/Nationals:

Surely, a team that has to move is a black eye for the League, but a team that simply ceased to exist would be two black eyes, a broken nose, and a kick in the nuts. Because of this Doctrine, the NHL can say that it has not ‘lost’ a franchise since WWII killed off the New York Americans. Every other failed team has been bought or merged elsewhere, and every time that happens, the NHL manages to avoid taking direct responsibility for an unjustified or unstable overexpansion.

I don’t know how the Dodgers and Giants moving cross-country should be handled.  What we need is an understanding of their fan bases, and what happened after the Mets showed up.

Monday, January 23, 2012

When athletes make political statements

Tim Thomas declines offer from Obama.

Back in the 1970s, when Quebec was riding its separation wave, there was huge pressure on the french players on the Montreal Canadiens to support the separatist party that eventually came into power.  From my memories of that time (I wouldn’t even turn 10, so take that for what it’s worth), all the players remained neutral.  They reasoned it wasn’t their place to exude their influence on a topic they didn’t earn a right to influence on.  It’s one thing if it’s Angelina Jolie, who uses her celebrity to further her non-entertainment passions.  It’s another for a player to be conscripted.

Where does Tim Thomas fall?  I have no idea.  I would only hope that he speaks from the heart.  But I agree with the author that it seems rather impolite, and intolerant, to refuse dinner with your country’s democratically-elected president.  What others consider an honor, he considers it rather lacking.  It’s acts like his that are divisive.

I haven’t given this any thought, so feel free to educate me.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Greatest players: Jordan, Gretzky, Ruth, Pele, and

Willie Mays, Jerry Rice, or Jim Brown.  Poz Poll.

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

Really, a pretty good spread right there.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Momentum: tomorrow’s starting pitcher, or a flip of the coin?

Yowza. 

Tyler at mchockey notes with derision some claims of momentum following fighting, by citing this claim:

They have determined that a fight has a positive effect on at least one team’s momentum in 76% of fights and increases the momentum for both teams about 1 out of every 4 fights (23%).

A reader at Tyler’s site helpfully notes:

1. 25% of the time, a fight makes no difference to the play of the game, or both teams experience a detrimental effect from fighting.
2. 25% of the time, both teams experience a positive effect from fighting.
3. 25% of the time, your team gets a net positive effect from fighting.
4. 25% of the time, your team get a net negative effect from fighting.

So, the claims being reported can be explained by simple random chance.  i.e., flip of the coin.

The other claim, that there’s more “activity” following a fight can also be explained as:

If we know that most fights involve guys who get less ice time and we know that guys who play less tend to see fewer shots for and against when they are on the ice, we’d expect that shots would increase after a fight because the fight probably involved guys who are less likely to see shots taken by either team when they were on the ice, meaning that it’s more likely that guys who see more shots when they are on the ice will be coming over the boards in the next three minutes.

That is, whoever is NEXT on the ice determines the course of action.  That is, it’s not that the players on the ice were somehow incentivized to take (and allow) more shots, but that the guys on the ice following a fight are going to be better than the guys on the ice who did the fighting.  i.e., tomorrow’s starting pitcher

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I’ve lived through the bold claims with baseball from 10-15 years ago, and it looks like history is repeating itself.

Fighting leads to goals?

Phil tried and tried and tried, and was able to finally stumble on one set of parameters that MAY indicate something.

It’s not monkeys at a typewriter creating Shakespeare, but it’s close.

Monday, January 02, 2012

NHL ticket revenue

Tyler:

(All in millions of dollars.)

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Compassionate Referee

We know the theory in baseball that if the umpire calls a close pitch for one team, he may try to even it up for the opposing team on the next close pitch.  Hence, the theory of the compassionate umpire.

In hockey, there’s a similar theory, which is commonly accepted, that a referee will try to even-up the penalties.  Indeed, teams get mighty upset if they would end up with say 4 fewer power play opportunities than its opponent, because they can’t believe their team would play that much stupider than their opponent.

Phil shows that when a team gets a penalty called, the previous penalty was called 60% of the time for the opposing team.  Furthermore, the longer the time since the last penalty, the less this bias exists.

Fascinating stuff. 

I’d like to see one more breakdown: did the team score on the power play (or the penalty kill)?  Because you would think that if you had a compassionate referee, he would be even more compassionate if the penalty he called led to a goal (and maybe less compassionate if it was a short-handed goal, because, after all, it didn’t “hurt” the penalized team).

So, Phil, can you give us breakdown on whether a PP, PK, or no goal?

Thursday, December 29, 2011

ESPN: Whither hockey?

In a form of “Un-Occupy” ESPN, this blogger basically took matters into his own hands, and gave his tribute to those fallen hockey players that ESPN ignored, and the commenters picked up on it, and added more.  And others have taken up his story.

Friday, December 23, 2011

Bane of Canada: language

While America’s historical embarrassment is how they dealt with racism, Canada’s embarrassment is how they deal with languages.  (It seems to me that every country has some us-v-them.) Just when you think USA and Canada have made huge advances, sometimes we get a wake-up call from the sports world.

The Montreal Canadiens are taking some heat for hiring a unilingual coach to replace Jacques Martin.  Obviously, if you limit your pool of coaches to those that must be able to speak French, you are going to ignore really good coaches, and instead hire Mario Tremblay and a GM like Rejean Houle.  No team outside of Quebec would ever hire these two guys (and they haven’t).

Lowetide notes that has the Canadiens gone on a winning streak with their new coach, this would not even be an issue (today anyway… check out the history of 1971).  Language, chemistry, intangibles… all that is a non-issue if you are winning.  Applies to the real-world too.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Worst hockey game of all-time?

It sure sounds like it.  Now, I want to see it the way I want to see how much fun the worst movie ever is.

Glove-slap: Brian.

Market forces v Central Planning

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.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Ken Dryden, head injuries, and Grantland, part 2

Dryden takes to task Gary Bettman role.  As usual, Dryden is brilliant.

Gary Bettman has arrived at Stage 2 in the NHL’s response to fighting and violence.

Stage 1, as embodied by Colin Campbell and former Boston Bruins coach and immensely popular TV commentator Don Cherry, was aggressive, belligerent, and dismissive. Look, this is hockey. This is how the game’s played. Always has been. If you don’t like it, don’t play it.

Stage 2, as embodied in Bettman’s interview, is more modulated, more thoughtful-sounding, and more reasonable-sounding (aided by the interview’s setting, a room lighted dark and warm, almost cozy; there’s a reason 60 Minutes’ interviews and congressional committee hearings are done in the glare of bright lights).

Occasionally he strays into a lawyer’s gentle, prickly combativeness, but mostly he stays on his message: It is Boston University’s scientific work on the brain samples of former players that helped bring head injuries to a focus, he is saying. It’s science that I’m going to argue back. Science isn’t impressed with anecdote and story. Science demands proof. Four brain samples are merely four anecdotes, and that’s out of the thousands who have played this game. Mine is the reasonable, responsible position. Mine is based on science. Science demands proof, and I demand proof, too. And when science gives me what science insists upon for itself, I will go where science takes me. In the meantime, even with science on my side, I will continue cooperating with doctors and researchers and generate rule changes where appropriate. That’s how reasonable I am.

By waiting for science, thousands of asbestos workers and millions of smokers died. The fact is, as a society we rarely have the luxury of waiting for science on big, difficult, potentially dangerous questions to meet its standard of proof. We need to take the best science we have, generate more and better information, then apply to it our best intuition and common sense — and decide.

Scientists are always disparaging of politicians and other decision-makers for being so influenced by anecdote. But an anecdote, well observed, thorough, rigorous, and truth-seeking (not ax-grinding), can tell a lot. At any moment, it may also be the best information we have. It is only by tragic fluke — his early death — that we have the Derek Boogaard “anecdote.”

Normally, we’d have to wait many more years to know what had happened many years before. But now we have this gift from Derek Boogaard.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Video Rulebook

Great stuff from the NHL.  The have their rule book online, in an interactive fashion, and with a video example for each rule.

Really, just a fantastic idea and execution on the NHL’s part.

(Note: video works for IE for me, but not Firefox.)

Monday, December 12, 2011

Minimum number of years for immortality

After how many years would you put someone in the Hall of Fame?  Ken Dryden for example played seven full seasons (plus an 8th year in the playoffs).  He retired at his peak.  He’s in the Hall of Fame.  He was 1st or 2nd team all-star six times.

Bobby Orr won the best defenseman award in 8 of his 9 full seasons.  He’s not only in the Hall of Fame, but considered one of the 4 best players of all time.  His last full-season was at the age of 27.

Guy Lafleur had a fairly long career, but only six of those seasons were of high-caliber (all as 1st-team all-star), with the rest of his career being a very good, but not great, kind of player.  I think if he retired after his last great season, he’s still have made the Hall of Fame.

After how many years would Gretzky have been enshrined?  Five?

And so we have Sidney Crosby, who has a chance to have concussion knock him out permanently from the NHL.  Including the playoffs, he’s played almost five full seasons.  How much more does he need to do?  Six?  Seven?  (Ovechkin, his peer, has played nearly 7 full seasons including playoffs.  Is he in right now?)

How many Pedro, RJ, Clemens, or Maddux years would you need?  Do you need the filler seasons?  What about Doc and Pujols?  Allegations aside, are the 4 Bonds years enough (ala Gretzky)?

What is Ozanian of Forbes saying here?

I’m confused:

The average NHL team is worth 47 per cent more than it was before the lockout that cancelled the 2004-05 season. Let’s hope a the NHL can get a more economically sound CBA without having another work stoppage. Business has improved too much the past seven years.

How does the bold part make any sense?  Team values jumped.  Business has been great.  And they still need a “more economically sound” CBA?  Elsewhere in the article he talks about needing to get into NBA-style splits:

The NHL must move much closer to the 48 per cent model the NFL agreed to before this season or the 50-50 revenue split National Basketball Association owners and players recently agreed to.

Must?

He talks about some teams not being profitable, while completely ignoring that teams can share revenue among themselves to make up for the haves doing so well.  That the players should have the onus.

It’s quite the striking read, that it lays out the facts as he did, and then ignores those facts in favor of a political argument.

You’ve heard of teams merging?  How about teams splitting?

About 30 years ago, the Minnesota North Stars and the Cleveland Barons merged into one team (as North Stars).  Now, how about if you have a team, oh, the Toronto Maple Leafs, that is so hugely valued, and playing in the largest hockey market in the world, and so very under-served that it could easily support two NHL teams, that the co-owners decide to split the team into two?

As it so happens, the Ontario Toronto Pension Fund has sold the MLSE (owners of the Leafs, as well as the arena they play in) to Bell and Rogers (the equivalent of Verizon and Comcast).  Having Bell and Rogers being co-partners in anything is quite shocking, but this fellow lays out the case for why it makes sense.  And that is, have TWO teams in Toronto, with Bell owning one, and Rogers owning the other (Rogers also owns the Jays).

Bell is also a minority owner in the Montreal Canadiens.  How Bell can exist as a minority owner to TWO teams is also quite a shock.  So, who knows what kind of machinations are in place.  Maybe Bell sells its new Toronto team to someone, and then splits Montreal into two as well (with co-owner Molson).

Anyway, fun stuff to follow for any sports fan.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Fight site

Quite a compilation of fight stats.

Origins of violence in hockey

Interesting account.

Friday, December 09, 2011

Beer prices, for each NHL arena

26 cents an ounce in Colorado, and 62 cents an ounce in Montreal.  And everything else in between: