THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Euro 2012 Preview

Big Lead Sports gives us a preview, starting with host Poland.

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Beyond wins and losses: incorporating score differential

This is just a crazy thought I had.  I haven’t tested it.  Maybe someone out there can run the numbers.  You get 9 points for a win, and then one bonus point for every run differential up to a maximum of 6 bonus points.  So, win by 1, and you get 10 points.  Win by 6 (or more), and you get 15 points.  So, if you win three games by 1 run, or you win two by 6, and lose the third game, you get 30 points either way.

There are three points to consider when constructing this:
1. How many points for a win, your base level (*)

2. What score differential to cap?

3. Do you give points for losing close games, or do you get zero points whether you lose by 1 or 6?

(*) In my case is 9, which is a pleasant number as far as baseball is concerned.  I kind of did a trial and error to see what numbers would seem reasonable, and once I saw that I was coalescing toward 9, I decided that’s a good enough number.  My guess is that you can do this for any sport, and set the number as the average number of points per game.  In baseball, it’s about 9 runs per game (4.5 for each team).  I’d bet you can do the same thing in NHL and use 6 as the base level, and then cap it off at half of that, so that the range in NHL would be 7 to 10 or 11.  NFL is probably 42 points as the base, so the range would be say 43 to 63 (maximum differential of 21 points).  NBA?  I dunno, say have a base of 200 points, with a range of 201 to 220 or something.

So, I’d like to see a bit of work from the Straigh Arrow readers, if you like to play around with stuff like this.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

SoccerXY

Gabe’s site devoted to soccer:

http://epltables.com/
http://epltables.com/possession_tables.php?sort=18&season=all&league=all&state=Total

Friday, March 16, 2012

Impact of the length of a match on the home-site advantage

I’ll use a hockey example first, and then I’ll switch to baseball.

In hockey, goal scoring follows a Poisson distribution.  If we have two distributions, one with a mean of 3.0, and another with a mean of 2.7, we can figure out how often the one with a mean of 3.0 will have a random value higher than the one with the mean of 2.7.  Ties are broken down in sudden-death OT fashion.  In this case, in a 60-minute game of a 3 goals per game team facing a 2.7 goals per game team, the better team will win 55.3% of the time.

Now, what if a game of hockey was only one period?  Setting aside any “change of pace” argument, we can model this as simply a 1.0 goals per game (that is, a game is 20 minutes, or one-third as long as the standard game) team facing a 0.9 goals per game team.  In that case, Poisson says that the better team will win 53.5% of the time.

As you can see, changing nothing about the sport other than the number of periods, we can drastically alter the home-site advantage.  It’s all based on the number of confrontations.  The longer the game, the more the confrontations, then, the more the gap in talent will override the effect of random variation.

If we look at how often teams are tied heading into the third period, which is the same thing as I’m talking about here with the one-period game, I’m sure we’d see this kind of result, that home-site advantage will drop proportionately as I’m showing here.

We can see that with baseball as well.  Now, baseball doesn’t follow a Poisson distribution, but we can model it as well.  A 9-inning game gives us a .540 win%, while a 1-inning game would give us a .520 win% (which is close to the empirical result).

We can go through this with any sport, and the same thing will happen.

This is most clear in tennis, where the chance of Federer, Nadal, or Djokovic losing a 5-set match to someone other than the other two guys is much smaller than losing a 3-set match.  For example, say that the big 3 is up 2 sets to 1 against the #20 seeded player.  What is the chance that they would end up winning one of their next two sets?  It’s going to be pretty high.  Now, suppose the #20 seeded player is up 2 sets to 1 against one of the big 3.  What is the chance that this #20 seeded player is going to win one of his next two sets?  I don’t know what it is, but it’s DEFINITELY less than when the roles are reversed.

If Tiger in his prime had a 33% chance of winning a four-round tournament, then what’s the odds of him winning a single-round tournament?  It’s definitely less than 33%.  Probably something like 10%.  That is, if you looked at each day’s results, I’d bet that Tiger in his prime won something like 10% of his rounds (if he won 33% of his tournaments).  Something like that.

So, when people compare the home-site advantage of various sports, and trying to explain why one sport has a “higher” advantage than another, it’s meaningless.  It’s entirely dependent on the number of confrontations.

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, December 20, 2011

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.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Menage a Trois Soccer

Sounds fantastic.  My only suggestion is to ditch the name “Three-sided” and call it “Menage a Trois”.

When we were kids, and we only had 12 players for a baseball game, we’d create three teams: 4 infielders, 3 outfielders + pitcher, 4 batters.  After three outs, we simply rotated (infielders go to outfield, and batters to infield).  Worked out wonderfully.  It was fairly easy to lose track of score, but, we didn’t really care.

I don’t think the Menage a Trois soccer can apply to hockey.  First, you are really limited to the ice.  But, even if you do this for street hockey, I think you will lose the fluidity in the game because players will be too clustered.  That’s my guess anyway. 

Basketball wouldn’t work either, because in that game, it’s practically always a 5-on-5 game.  Players are not spread out like soccer.  So, a Menage a Trois basketball would have say 3-on-3-on-3, which is really 6-on-3.  But then again, with two ends left unguarded, you might have two guys back at all times, so it would be 4-on-3, with the two other guys guarding the net for a fast break.  So, I take that back.  I think it might work pretty well for basketball.

Friday, November 04, 2011

Soccer per-game attendance now above NBA/NHL

This is a mild surprise.

There are a few points that need to be noted:
1. Soccer stadiums hold more people than hockey and basketball arenas.  If the Flyers sell out every game, well, that’s that.

2. I presume an average hockey and basketball ticket costs alot more than a soccer ticket.  Again, if the Devils aren’t selling out with the 70$ per game ticket, they likely would sell out if the tickets averaged 25$ each.  (I have no idea how much a soccer game ticket is.)

3. NHL and NBA seasons are 82 games each.  Presumably, soccer is much shorter (I haven’t checked, but 30 games or so sounds about a typical season).

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Mariano: 599?  No, 641

Mariano Rivera has 641 career saves, not 599.  Where did this 599 come from?  Well, by ignoring his 42 career saves in the post-season.  Saves, a stat created specifically to capture the “clutch” aspect of relieving, ignores the most crucial of all saves, those in the post-season, when trumpeting the career leaderboards. 

***

Does this make any sense?  Well, yes, if you want to create a one-sided political argument. You know the argument: “oh, it’s not fair to include the post-season, because not everyone gets to the post-season”.  Of course, somehow it’s fair that Mariano Rivera gets to pitch for the NY Yankees in the regular season.  “oh, we can keep two separate leaderboards”.  Of course, we can create leaderboards by regular season and by playoffs, but why not both?

North American sports really drop the ball here.  For hockey, I’d include NHL, WHA, Canada Cups, World Championships.  I’m not sure about the competition level of the other leagues, but if they are anything close to WHA, I’d include those as well.

Follow the lead of soccer.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Distributions in sports

Good job by Kincaid.

Also note the Tango Distribution (last two links on home page).

Friday, July 15, 2011

Twitter to follow

SI’s guys says it’s these:

Read More

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Moneyball buy… in soccer

It’s taking over the world.

Glove-slap: anon.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Do soccer women have more integrity?

Chastain thinks so.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Moneyball in soccer

Fun stories:

Given that you can hire perhaps 30 statisticians for the £1.5m that the average footballer in the Premier League earns each year, you’d think it might be worth paying some nerds to study these questions. Nonetheless, to some degree football’s suspicion of numbers persists. “Letting even a top-level statistician loose with a more traditional football manager is not really the right combination,” Forde once told me. He himself looks like a football man: trim, greying, regional accent, nice suit. That helps him sell numbers to old-style football men. But, in many clubs, the nerds are only slowly gaining power. Probably every club in the Premier League now employs analysts, but some of these people get locked in computer-filled back-rooms and never meet the manager.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

This week in soccer insanity: shoves lead to red card

Go to the 32-second mark to see Thierry Henry’s unsportsmanlike shove on the head.  Definite yellow card.  You can go back to the 17-second mark to see the resolution between the two players.  But the ref decided to red card.  The announcers said the players resolved it between themselves, so the refs should butt out, especially since the refs were nowhere close to the play to begin with.

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Why Some Make It and Others Do Not: Psychological Factors That Predict Career Success in Soccer

From The Sports Psychologist (pdf).

Glove-slap: unknown saber-follower.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Institutionalizing Irrationality

Hawerchuk:

Could you imagine modern football players wearing only punter facemasks - or no facemasks at all - and then pulling their helmets off and fighting on the field?  The same thing is defended as part of the game of hockey.

Could you imagine hockey players constantly diving whenever an opposing player even touches them in the offensive zone and having sportscasters describe “selling” a dive as an important skill?  But this “is” soccer.

How about getting in your opponent’s face, yelling and screaming and beating your chest after you score?  You’d get a penalty in football, and start a fight in hockey or baseball.  In basketball, we see it all the time.

I’d quote his whole article…

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

BE Press’s latest

There are several articles of interest this month, including one from Andrew Thomas.  I haven’t read any of these yet, but will do so momentarily.  Please feel free to highlight any of these you find interesting or want to discuss.

Friday, January 28, 2011

How much home field advantage do we want?

If you go to a baseball game, I’m thinking that you want a 70-75% chance of winning (you want to feel like Halladay is always pitching).  You don’t want to always win, but you also don’t always want to be a in 50/50 situation.  Dave asks the question.  I don’t have a good answer.

In soccer (3 points for a win, 1 point for a tie), the home team gets about 0.60 more points at home than on the road.  That translates to about 48% home wins, 24% ties, and 28% losses.  Counting a tie as half a win for our purposes, that’s 60% home wins and 40% home losses.  NBA is 62%.

If let’s say we want much higher than the 54% historical in MLB, how do you go about doing that without being overt about it?  Home manager rule for using a DH or not might be one thing.  But, that’s going to be a tiny advantage, say .01 or .02 wins.  We need to find .16 wins somewhere.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Home-site advantage in all sports

Phil has an extensive post that looks at the claims of other authors.

Can someone please post the Won-Loss record for home teams in the playoffs for the last 10 seasons of each league?  Thanks…