THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thursday, March 08, 2012

“If you can play, you can play”

I love how the pro leagues are taking the strong initiative here.  I’d like to see some friendly competition here between the leagues, trying to outdo each other.

Background:

“I think from everyone we’ve talked to, it’s pretty clear that when the first NHL player is ready to come out, he’s going to be getting a lot of love,” Patrick said.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

The end of fighting in hockey?

Almost always, the lower leagues look to the NHL for guidance of rule changes.  But, they’re not waiting on Bettman for this one.

Viewing fighting as a safety issue in light of increasing concussion research, and unwilling to wait for the National Hockey League to propose changes, USA Hockey and Hockey Canada are seriously considering rules that would effectively end fighting in nonprofessional leagues as soon as next season.

It would be very very hard for the NHL to be the last league left standing that did not eject fighters.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Mario Malkin Perreault

I love end-to-end goals.

And the closest I can find for Perreault were two at the 2:09 mark:

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Is Tiger Woods like Team Canada (in hockey)?

Poz made the point that Tiger only cares about being the best.  That simply being #11 is the same thing as being #10: nothing.

I was reminded of when Team Canada lost the semi finals, and so, were relegated to the Bronze medal game.  And they lost that game.  To Team Canada, if you don’t win Gold, then it doesn’t matter if you get Silver, Bronze, or nothing.  That was the narrative that was built-up anyway.

When Canada’s Donovan Bailey and company won the 1996 track-relay ahead of the heavy favorite Americans, it wasn’t that Canada won Gold and USA won Silver, but that USA LOST the Gold.  It’s as if being second-best for heavy favorites is tantamount to being a loser.

I’ve never liked that point of view.  It’s insulting to your competition, and it ignores the reality that you can’t control your environment, and all the random variation that comes with it.  Gisele says hi.

Dustin Brown draws penalties

Quite the resume.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

NHL Injury Dataset

Great stuff, courtesy of Gabe.

http://behindthenet.ca/scratches.txt

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.
...
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

***

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.
...
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.)