THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Tiger Woods?  Tiger Wuss!

Great job by Canada’s (Toronto’s) Globe and Mail in praising NBC over Canada’s CBC.  The ice-level reporting was pretty good.  The NFL usually saves this for some hot chick to talk to players about how they feel.  MLB sometimes gets a headset talk with the manager every now and then.  The story of the playoffs was really Zetterberg and Fleury, and NBC was all over it.  Great job on them (and Versus) in terms of the focus on selling the game.

As for Tiger Woods:

I don’t really care. Let’s talk about the Dodgers. … I don’t think anybody really watches hockey any more.

Does he not realize that the NHL ($3billion) draws 50% the revenue of MLB ($6billion)?  Two years ago, the PGA drew $1billion.  In 2007, prize money, in total was 257 million$, which is less than one-fifth of the prize money (salaries) of NHL players.  Tiger does the classic arrogant thing that if he’s not interested, then how can most other people be interested?  Not only arrogant, but an ignoramous to boot.  And mostly, I hate Tiger for making me side with Mike Milbury:

Milbury: “You know what? I’m gonna change the name now. It’s gonna be Tiger Wuss. Here’s a guy that took about three months to get over a simple arthroscopic surgery. You look at [Pens forward] Ryan Malone. His face exploded with a slap shot last night — he’s back out in 10 minutes!

“Keep your yap shut, Tiger, or I’ll send a couple of wingers down there — [Pens forward] Gary Roberts — to tidy you up a little bit, meat head.”

Pierre McGuire: “I’ll just say this: Tiger Woods doesn’t usually have a bogey, but this was a triple bogey.”

McKenzie: “Unfortunately, [Woods] epitomizes what a lot of Americans feel about hockey: They don’t give it a chance, they don’t get it, they’re not wired correctly — and to those Americans that do get it, Mike Milbury, thank you very much.”

James Duthie: “I’ll say this to Tiger: Nobody watches golf any more either! Except when you’re playing, then everybody watches it.”

Monday, March 17, 2008

Soccer shenanigans

The old goal-differential trick in figuring out how to get a team into the playoffs.

And I like the headline with regards to the soccer equivalent of Morganna, along with her rap sheet.

(Hat tip: Voros)

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Pre-contract agreements

Google that.  It’s a contract to sign a contract.  They seem to be quite common in soccer.  Here’s one story where a 17-yr old was successfully sued for millions for reneging on a contract to sign a contract.  As best as I can figure, clubs sponsor soccer acadamies for kids (and I’m talking kids kids), and at some age, it seems something like at the age of 14 or so, they sign a contract that obliges them to sign another contract at age 16 (which seems to be the age of consent I guess).  I’m presuming that if the club satisfies all the conditions, and they are not trying to unduly profit from the kid, the kid then has to sign a contract on his 16th birthday.  Merida, who managed to “go into hiding” until after his 16th birthday, emerged on some other club (in another country), thereby reneging on a contract to sign a contract.

Anyway, this is very confusing, since it’s hard to find any source on the matter.  Everywhere I look, these pre-contract agreements seem standard, and so, there’s nothing devoted to explaining them.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Field Of Dreams

Tim talks about the double-standard that MLB faces with regards to drugs.

Ken Fidlin ponders a what-if, which I’ll paraphrase for baseball purposes:

Suspend reality for a moment while we paint a grim, fictional picture. It is the day after the final game of the World Series and the Yankees, America’s most decorated franchise, have won their 25th title, double the total of any other team in MLB.  There is, however, little joy in New York, or any other city in America for that matter.

The team general manager has resigned, embroiled in a game-fixing scandal that appears to involve league referees and administration officials. The scandal already has claimed the MLB commissioner, who was forced to resign in disgrace the week previous. Former President George W Bush has been appointed “extraordinary commissioner” to sift through the allegations and clean up the mess. The entire Yankees board of directors has resigned and shares of the publicly-traded company are sinking faster than the Titanic. 

Meanwhile, the Yankees’ highest paid player is under investigation as part of a massive gambling and game-fixing scandal from two years previous. The star is accused of betting on games in which he was playing. In all, dozens are under investigation for various roles in the scandal, and that may just be the tip of the iceberg. If the allegations are proven against the Yankees GM, it is very likely that the World Series victory will be nullified and the team banished from the league.

With that horrifying, fictitious scenario fixed firmly in your brain, we welcome you to the wonderful world of Italian soccer. And this is no fantasy. It’s real and it’s happening, almost on the eve of the 2006 World Cup.

European soccer can weather its gambling scandal.  The NBA, NHL, and NFL would be able to weather any drug scandal that will come its way. If I were to tell you that rock stars dabble in drugs, you’d hardly be surprised.  The surprise would be that they didn’t.  And the truth is that teenagers are far more influenced by musicians than athletes.  Parents know this because they’ve lived it.

We’ve all come to accept that everything in our world is tainted, and we’ve gotta live with it.  But, not baseball.  Baseball is above it all, a pure and beautiful game that MLB has the privilege to control.  A right that it must abdicate if they don’t keep it pure and beautiful.  That’s the bullshit that Field of Dreamers believe.

Baseball is baseball, and MLB is MLB, and MLB is Eurpoean Soccer, NHL, NFL, and Rock Stars.  When you are watching MLB, you are not watching baseball, that pure and beautiful game.  You are watching an event, like any other event performed by the best money (and other things) can buy.  And all the sellers (the performers) and all the middle-men (management) and all the buyers (you) are complicit. 

Live with reality.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

The Hot Hand

We all know about The Hot Hand.  But, would you bet on it?

http://people.ucsc.edu/~rgil/world_cup.pdf

Because these games are televised, all traders have virtually simultaneous access to new information in the form of goals, and it is also observable to the econometrician.

See commentary by Phil Birnbaum

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Zidane Speaks

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/12/opinion/zidane.php

If this was the NHL, Zidane would be ...

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