THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

In 2004, I voted for myself instead of John Murtha for Congress (Republicans didn’t bother to run a candidate)...oops, guess I shouldn’t have told you that

Unrelated, but Tom, do you watch any of the limited college hockey that airs on TV?

No, I haven’t gotten into college hockey. 

Do they have highlights on their website?  I will tell you (as a father who has limited free time at night), that the 5-minute recap for each game at NHL.com is fantastic.  I also love the “Rangers in 60” minutes.

I remember people complaining when MLB had their condensed 20-minute games, and to them I give a huge middle finger.  It’s not like your only choice was: 20-minute game or nothing.  It was: watch the full game on TV, watch the 20-minute highlights (actually last pitch per PA), or nothing.

As of right now, NHL.com’s 5-minute games are the best thing in terms of being able to catch up to everything.  You get all the goals, all the great saves, plus 10-15 seconds leading up to the goal or save, and other notable good plays.

I don’t think they have any sort of highlights for a majority of the games as most are not televised, at least in the north east they’re not. NESN shows some games from Hockey East and the Beanpot and ESPN2 and ESPNU show the regionals of the NCAA tournament and ESPN shows the Frozen Four. And I know CN8, before it was cancelled as a channel, carried some games and I think some of the regional Fox Sports channels will broadcast a game. But the NCAA website itself doesn’t have highlights, and the website for the conference BU is in, Hockey East, doesn’t. I think the teams just rely on the sports networks’ sites to post highlights.

The reason I asked was that in the NCAA championship game, Boston U gave up a goal to Miami of Ohio with 4 minutes left to put them down 3-1, but then came back to score a goal with 59.5 seconds left and another with 17 seconds left to tie it. So I was wondering what you would’ve estimated BU’s chances of winning were after they gave up the goal at the 4 minute mark and at the one minute mark, before their second goal. Essentially a WPA for college hockey.

Something else this got me thinking on was that it seems like so few NHL and MLB coaches come from the college ranks, while in the NFL and NBA, they love to try out college coaches at the pro level. Of course, the NHL and MLB have actual minor leagues while the NFL and NBA don’t which might be why.

I have a Win Expectancy (and Leverage Index!) for hockey.  Alan Ryder has a WE on his site I believe.

Interesingly, the LI in hockey are mostly in the 0.7 to 1.5 level.  I forget the total, but it was fairly substantial, more than MLB.

MLB has also far more low-leverage plays than NHL.  Again, pretty substantial, something like 40% for MLB and 20% for NHL.

The difference is that there is NOTHING compared to MLB in terms of high-leverage.  The reason is that in MLB, you get to keep scoring until you have 3 outs.  In hockey, you get back to centre ice after each goal.  NBA is worse in that the opponent gets the ball back, thereby making high LI plays that much tougher.  NFL does have some of the excitement of MLB (but not all of it).

So, the enormous amount of low-leverage plays in MLB is what you have to put up with in order to get the benefit of the high-leverage plays. 

I suppose the real-life equivalent is that MLB is like dating a new girl, NFL is like having a steady girlfriend, NHL is like being engaged, and NBA is like being married.

***

As for coaches, a substantial number in NHL come from players (and a decent amount in GMs as well).  A large portion of NHL coaches comes from juniors (equivalent of high school in USA) and minor leagues.

Adam/4:  In the first round of the tournament, Minnesota Duluth was down 4-2 and managed to score two goals in the final 40 seconds to tie it and then won in OT. 

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=4022851

The odds of having two 2 goal deficits erased in the final minute of the same 15 game tournament have to be pretty extraordinary.