THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

What wasn’t?

Do you mean the two-stroke penalty in the rules is too harsh?  Do you mean that the rules of golf should allow the tournament officials to change the rule for special circumstances? 

What’s not proportionate?

I am an avid golfer and have discussed the situation with many other golfers since Sunday.  They all pretty much say the same thing, and I agree:  It was unfortunate for Johnson, but the rules are the rules.  There was nothing untoward about the decision.  It was 100% correct.

The premise of the article is correct. Golf is and has always been pretty much a gentlemen’s sport.  When you teach young people to golf, among other things, you teach them etiquette, integrity and decorum on and off the golf course.  Obviously, not all golfers follow that credo, but by and large it is different from many other sports in that regard.  Tennis is similar I suppose.  And of course, the pedigree of professional golfers is fairly unique to professional sports in that many pros come from affluent or at least middle-class families.

Does he mean the rule is stupid?  If so I agree.  If he means you shouldn’t enforce the rules, I have to disagree.  Just because you don’t know the law doesn’t mean you don’t have to follow it.

I think Tango’s post is a callback to the earlier thread we had about the soccer player who prevented a sure goal by using his hands.  In one case, a player flagrantly ignores a core rule to prevent the opposing team from winning a game, and basically gets away with it.  In another case, a player accidentally violates a gentleman’s rule and has his trophy taken from him because of it.

If that’s not what you’re referring to, Tango, I apologize, but that’s what it made me think of.

"Does he mean the rule is stupid?  If so I agree.”

If you are not a golfer (and probably an avid one), you should not be commenting about the rules.

Almost all of the golf rules are sensible, even if they are somewhat nit-picky.  You are not allowed to ground your club in the sand (in a bunker) for two reasons:  One, you often have a bad lie and grounding your club could easily improve your lie.  Two, you are not allowed to “test the sand” to see if it is grainy, soft, wet, hard, etc., and grounding your club can easily allow you to do this.

Many rules in golf are nit-picky because that is the kind of sport it is.  But virtually none of them, as far as I can recall, are “stupid.”

Here is an example of a rule which was close to being over the top and they actually changed it a few years ago:

If you were in a bunker, say a fairway bunker, and you hit your shot into another bunker (say, a green side bunker), you were not allowed to rake the sand after your first bunker shot, because that was considered testing the sand for your next shot, which as I said, above, is not allowed.

There might be a few other silly and archaic rules in golf, but most, if not all, of them, are quite sensible, even if they may not seem that way to a non-golfer. 

Most penalties in golf are 2 shots.  While that may seem harsh, the reason is that it might, on occasion, be worth breaking a rule if the penalty were only one shot, and the rules makers wanted to be sure that it wasn’t correct for anyone to intentionally break a rule.

In any case, I don’t think anyone is quite sure what Tango means.  I hope that he is not commenting on whether the rule or the enforcement of it in that situation, was fair or not.

I don’t think he is a golfer, and as I said, I don’t think that a non-golfer could possibly have a credible opinion on any golf rule.

Right, I think the rule itself is stupid.  Why not make the rule a 10-stroke penalty?  Or 100?

If a pitcher goes to touch his mouth illegally, why not make it a 3-base walk? 

Why not make holding a 50 yard penalty?  How about a 5 shot basket for traveling?  A penalty kick for attacking a player 200 feet from the goal?

Yes, rules are rules, so enforce them.  But the rule itself should be changed.

It’s a disproportionate penalty.

There was another golf one a few years ago where a guy put a towel down, and he crouched on it to see the ball.  Something like that.

Or a fan calling in a play that was not seen by anyone.

I am not an avid golfer, but I’ve golfed dozens, more than a hundred probably, of times in my day.  There’s a bunch of rules I’ve argued with my very avid golfer friends that they have no defense to me.

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I also think the “testing” thing is bunk.  They play the darn thing for 4 days in a row.  In any case, who cares about testing it?  Why not test it without affecting the lie of the ball?

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I’ve also, as an aside, convinced them to stop taking a penalty if they can’t find a ball in the rough.  I told them that the pros have 1000 ball watchers, and it’s practically impossible for them to lose a ball, so why in the world would we, as golfers with no fans tailing us, take any kind of penalty like that?

http://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheBigSalad.html

Elaine: Oh, how did you end up playing golf with him?

Kramer: Well, I met him on the course a couple of years ago. Yeah. Played with him a lot. But today was it! We’re on the fifteenth hole, ya, he’s beating me by a couple of strokes. Then, he’s about to hit his second shot, when, he picks up the ball and CLEANS it.

Elaine: So what?

Kramer: Umph, sorry! But the rules clearly state that you cannot clean the ball unless it’s on the green. The rules are very clear about that.

Jerry: Certainly are.

Kramer: Ya, so I penalized him a stroke.

Jx; Ah, so what happened?

Kramer: He LOST IT! We almost came to blows. We were face to face like a manager and an umpire like this . . kara a pukka ba ya ka ba . . .

Jerry: All right. You’re in MY face.

Elaine: I still don’t see what the big deal is.

Kramer: A rule is a rule. And let’s face it. Without rules there’s chaos.

I agree in a tournament, but not at your local course.

I think the rule is overly harsh, but as a golfer I do understand the logic behind it.  What irks me about the article is the insinuation that everyone should be more like the rich white guys.  If there’s any place on the Web that can appreciate the influence of luck and randomness on outcomes, this is it.

Tango, I explained why almost all penalties are 2 strokes in golf.

As far as playing by the USGA rules in a casual game or match among friends, that is up to the individuals. How is that relevant to anything? 

When you play in a pick-up game in any sport, you decide which rules you want to play by.  Most of the time you don’t enforce all of the “professional” rules, right?

Usually when we play a casual round of golf or even a match for (small) money, if a player loses a ball, he gets to drop near where it was lost, with a 1 stroke penalty rather than have to re-tee the ball (which is the technical penalty), essentially a 2 stroke penalty.  We don’t have NO penalty because it is the player’s responsibility to hit the ball where it can be found.

I don’t like the reasoning for the 2-stroke penalty on the offchance that 1-stroke penalties are worth taking in some occasions.

Grounding your club would be worth it to take a 1-stroke penalty but not a 2-stroke?  I don’t see it. 

It’s the same kind of zero-tolerance sentences in courts that all crimes are sentenced to 10 years, regardless of infraction, because sometimes, it is worth it to take the 10 years, so they make them all 20 years.

No, I don’t buy it.  You have proportionate penalties.  In hockey you can have faceoffs in the opposing end, or 2 minute, or 5 minute penalties.  In football you have 5, 10 and at location penalties.  In baseball, you can give a strike or ball penalty, or one base or two bases, as the situation permits.

It’s not proportionate in golf.

Basketball has a similar thing about the fouling team being at an advantage late in a close game.  What would be proportionate?  Like in soccer and football: you have the option to accept the penalty or not.

Imagine in football where a holding penalty on the defense negates, AUTOMATICALLY, a 20 yard gain.  That’s what the basketball rule is like.

No, the offended team should have the option to accept the penalty, or inbound the ball.

The discussion here really shouldn’t be about the penalty associated with grounding your club in a bunker.  It should be about why the type of “bunker” Johnson was in was still considered a hazard for this tournament.  It didn’t play like a hazard, it didn’t look like a hazard, and fans were allowed to walk through it and sit in it.  Pro sports should test a player’s skills.  To me, testing a player’s skill to identify what is or is not a bunker seems like a dumb skill to test.

But wasn’t the issue in Johnson’s case more ambiguous, and so complicated, too?

“Johnson’s ball rested in an area off the fairway that had been beaten down by spectators. The golfer said ‘it never once crossed my mind that I was in sand trap.’”

So part of the issue is that his balled landed on a patch of dirt in the spectator’s area and was not obviously a bunker. (Although this was apparently addressed in his copy of the rules, along with the location of the other 1200 ‘bunkers’ on the course.)

And I agree with whoever made the point about Johnson having played the course for 4 days, already, and so the ‘advantage’ of grounding to test the ground being minimal. And I would further point out that PGA standards are so stringent that virtually all of the bunkers play the same way, anyway. The rule makes much more sense for those of us who don’t play as often, or who play on courses that aren’t meticulously maintained.

And I also wanted to take the Forbes writer to task for this comment: “Golfers compete in one of the only major sports that does not employ a socialistic design to ensure outcomes for athletes.”

First of all, this is just plain wrong - pretty well every individually-played sport uses the same system of money awarded based on place of finish. Second of all, this stretches the meaning of ‘socialistic’ to the point of meaninglessness. Salaries are socialistic? Team sports are socialistic? Owners wanting to protect their investment by hiring trainers and paying to fly their players is socialistic? What an idiotic comment.

I don’t think the late game fouling example is accurate: if the offense declined the foul and inbounded again, the defense would go for the steal and then foul again. I doubt the offense would trade the 0.5 seconds between inbound pass and foul for the risk of a steal of the inbound pass.

Well, first off, I think the article you linked to was dumb - essentially, they’ve noticed that golf is an individual sport as opposed to a team sport, and they take that to mean a whole lot of stuff it doesn’t…

Second, I’d like to ask, why is a 2 stroke penalty so not proportionate to the offense that it’s worth discussing?  I can think of instances when players didn’t manage to hit their ball out of a bunker at all, so if your ball is in a really, really bad lie in the bunker to where it would be difficult to get it out, grounding your club (to get a better lie) might save you up to two strokes.  The rule covers all situations where grounding your club might give you an advantage, so I guess I just don’t see why it’s so disproportionate?

Sal: good point, but you can make the rule so that there’s no steal chance.  You can make it so that he doesn’t need to inbound, but just walk it in.  Or give the player a perimeter to hand off for an inbound.  I mean, whatever.

When the DEFENSE complains that a foul was not called on THEM, then you know you have a stupid rule.  “Hey!  I’m fouling him!  Call it already!  I’m fouling him!....  Awww, man, not fair.  We lost the game because they wouldn’t call the foul on me.”

This is like the NHL allowing, for a time, a goalie switch, and letting the new goalie warmup.  They stopped the warmups when it was abused as a timeout.

Why must all groundings be considered the same?  Why would ground for a better lie be considered the same as a grounding for the sake of grounding?  That’s why it’s disproportionate, because the result of the grounding is different.  But, golf doesn’t want to deal with a ground that results in a different lie as opposed to a ground that doesn’t, so they do zero-tolerance on it.

On top of which, when the player, and the spectators, don’t consider said bunker to even be a bunker, but the course decided that it was a bunker because they like to have things as simple as possible, you have a recipe for a disaster.

I believe the rule is that the pitcher must keep one foot on the rubber at all times when delivering the ball to the batter.  That if his foot is off the rubber, and the ball is in his hand, that it’s not a legal pitch.

I never noticed this until they did slow-motion on Strasburg.  Most pitches I saw of him has his foot off the rubber in the nanosecond before release.  I’m sure if you look for it for all the other pitchers, they likely similarly make the same infraction.

The rules are not very explicit about it though, but you can infer it based on reading Rule 8:
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/downloads/y2010/official_rules/2010_OfficialBaseballRules.pdf

Tango wrote: “I believe the rule is that the pitcher must keep one foot on the rubber at all times when delivering the ball to the batter.  That if his foot is off the rubber, and the ball is in his hand, that it’s not a legal pitch.”

I remember hearing people make a big deal about this when Lincecum first came up, because people were noticing - without recourse to slow-motion replay - that he wasn’t in contact with the mound when he released the ball. I think we can just file it under the proximity rule, along with the shortstop who ‘drags’ his foot across the base when he’s turning two.

Lincecum may be the most obvious violator of the keep-foot-on-the-rubber-when-pitching rule.
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#14: if that particular bunker was different than most others on the course (or at least most of the ones in play), then grounding a club there gives a greater advantage than normal.
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I might concede that a 1-stroke penalty is more appropriate than a 2-stroke penalty for grounding the vast majority of the time.  But #18--you absolutely have to treat all groundings the same, because any other rule would be impossible to administer if it didn’t.  Surely we don’t want a rules official performing some kind of balancing test weighing considerations of fairness, perceived advantages gained by the golfer, and the subjective intent of the golfer. 

Of course, I tend to be a law-and-order guy and almost always prefer the clarity and certainty of bright-line rules to standards (I think, for example, that since I am a better driver than my little sister, I should be allowed to drive faster than her--but just a standard like “drive safely” would be difficult to administer).

Hiz:

#14: if that particular bunker was different than most others on the course (or at least most of the ones in play), then grounding a club there gives a greater advantage than normal.

Your comment makes no sense in the particular situation at hand.  It was a “bunker” in name only.  It was a waste area.  What else would you call it if people are walking all over that area?  No spectator walks through a sand trap.  None.  And some pro golfers themselves are quoted as saying it shouldn’t be called a sand trap.

http://www.examiner.com/golf-in-national/dustin-johnson-screwed-by-bunker-rule-at-2010-pga-championship

Next thing you know, hitting a flyball 200 feet in the air straight up over the infield and hits something will be called a home run.

Some rules are just plain silly.

Yes, enforce the rules.  But, create reasonable, proportionate rules.

I’m really confused as to what you guys are talking about with basketball rules.  What’s wrong with them...?

“Why must all groundings be considered the same?”

Not sure - I’m not an avid golfer or anything, but I do play from time to time.  Seems to me there’s a balance where you want the rule to apply as specifically to a situation as possible, but also don’t want too many rules and want as little of the rule to be up for interpretation as possible.  You also want to balance deterrence (to a reasonable degree) in.  I don’t have any issue with the grounding rule - it’s a rule everyone knows, so just don’t do it.  If you do, it’s not like it’s an unreasonably disproportionate penalty like 10 shots or anything.  At most it’s 1 shot too many, and in some situations, it is appropriate.

“It was a “bunker” in name only.  It was a waste area.  What else would you call it if people are walking all over that area?  No spectator walks through a sand trap.  None.  And some pro golfers themselves are quoted as saying it shouldn’t be called a sand trap.”

Looks like that’s the real issue to me, that they labeled something a bunker that probably shouldn’t have been called a bunker…

I think the reason they decided to play them all as bunkers was to avoid confusion - not create it. There are hundreds of bunkers outside the ropes - some would be walked through by the fans - some wouldn’t be. They could have played all of them as waste areas, or all as regular hazards - but something in between would have meant needing a rules official to officiate on probably hundreds of shots through the day.

Two strokes or one stroke is almost completely irrelevant to the issue - since he loses either way. That said, as someone who plays a lot of golf - the rule is fine. Johnson, and his caddy, made a mistake, and that cost him. It has happened before, it will happen again.

"That said, as someone who plays a lot of golf “

“If you are not a golfer (and probably an avid one), you should not be commenting about the rules. “

I don’t agree that these statements are relevant.

Tango #22 - I was responding to this argument in #14:

And I agree with whoever made the point about Johnson having played the course for 4 days, already, and so the ‘advantage’ of grounding to test the ground being minimal. And I would further point out that PGA standards are so stringent that virtually all of the bunkers play the same way, anyway. The rule makes much more sense for those of us who don’t play as often, or who play on courses that aren’t meticulously maintained.
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That’s the argument that doesn’t make sense in DJ’s.  The whole point of the outcry is that DJ’s bunker was different than other bunkers.  So DJ’s 4+ days of experience with the other bunkers on the course maintained in accordance with PGA standards would not help him with that shot.  Grounding the club there would give DJ information about how much different that bunker was than the others.  So I don’t buy the argument that he didn’t get an advantage by grounding the club.
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Tango--what is your proposed reasonable and proportionate rule for this situation?  I understand you may have enforced the rule in DJ’s situation (because the rules were clear and set in advance), but what’s your rule going forward?

The determination of the area as a sand trap as opposed to a waste area seems at odds with what players and fans are expecting.  We agree that no fan ever stands in a sand trap, correct?  I mean, never, ever, never.  So, if you have fans doing that, then you’ve got lazy officials marking areas as being sand traps for expedient’s sake.  And then they absolve themselves because they wrote it up.  It’s the same kind of lazy bullsh!t thing that happened recently with the Rays(?).

So, you have to reasonably create areas that are sand traps as sand traps.  That’s the first issue where greater care should exist.

Now, as for proportionality of remedy: the rules for penalty should be altered, though the traditionalists seem to like the 2-stroke penalty.  I don’t buy the “testing” thing because of how often they play there (on top of practice rounds as well before the tournament actually starts).  Not to mention that sand traps probably need to have some sort of consistency by PGA rules I would guess. 

The real issue with grounding is affecting the lie of the ball.  This is true however if you put your foot right next to the ball and it moves in the sand.  So, I don’t see the big deal about grounding, any more than you would in terms of putting your feet down.

The grounding thing is an arbitrary, as much as 4 balls 3 strikes is arbitrary and 9 innings is arbitrary.  But, change it to 3 balls 3 strikes or to 6 innings, and the flavor of baseball changes.  Changing the grounding rule does nothing to golf.  So, it is extremely arbitrary, almost irrelevant.

Why then have such a strong penalty for it?

No penalty is unfair if the player knows about it beforehand and has the opportunity to avoid it. Hazards are intended to force players to make strategic decisions regarding club selection and line, or to ignore them at their peril. Dustin Johnson made a mistake. In fact he made several. The PGA anticipated that there might be a problem with so many bunkers around the course and ruled that they would ALL play as hazards rather than “waste areas” (which have no meaning under the rules of golf). A player may not ground his club in a hazard, and the penalty for doing so is clear. DJ failed to read the notice that the PGA provided on this issue. Nor did his caddy. This is probably why he failed to recognize the situation on the 18th hole. The bunkers at Whitling Straits are unlike the typical bunkers found on the PGA tour. The typical PGA bunker is anything but scruffy, has a neatly defined edge, and is filled to a PGA approved depth with PGA approved sand (I am not making this up, courses spend a lot of money fixing up bunkers so they meet PGA approval). DJ’s ignorance led to his penalty.

"No penalty is unfair if the player knows about it beforehand and has the opportunity to avoid it.”

Way to make up a strawman.  I said three things:

1. The layout was unreasonable.
2. The remedy was disproportionate
3. Enforce all rules to the letter.

So, who said anything about the penalty being unfair if the players were made aware? 

I think hit batters to the head should be an immediate expulsion, regardless of intent.  It is reckless, plain and simple.  The hit to the head treated the same as hit to the butt is unreasonable.  Giving each the same one base, with no expulsion, is disproportionate.  Given that, the rule is the rule, then enforce it.

Same bullsh!t with the overhead obstacles in some parks.

So, these are the questions you have to answer, rather than me having to repeat the same thing all over again:

1. Do you agree that areas of the field where fans are standing and walking around should have been deemed a hazard?  Would you, if you were in charge, have done so?  And if you did, would you have done that because of expediency and laziness?

2. Are some hazard infractions so benign that they deserve a different penalty level, similar to what you have in all other sports?

3. Once you have all these rules on the table and specs laid out, would you be comfortable enforcing said rules with a straight face, and accept that the spirit of the sport was maintained?

Answer the questions in regards to DJ and with the overhead obstacle at a baseball park.

This is all a matter of opinion, but:

1. I don’t have any issue with the decision of the tournament committee. They wanted all those bunkers to play as hazards. They knew that spectators would be walking all over and through many of them. The players were informed, even if not all of them read the message. I’m pretty sure the PGA players have some sway with their own tournament committee. Although there are always going to be some disagreements, this wasn’t the USGA or R&A forcing the PGA to accept an unpopular decision. The coverage of the incident focuses on those who had issues with the setup or the venue or and are using DJ’s misfortune to have their say. If it were MY decision I’d poll a bunch of players and those who would be involved with enforcing the decision before even trying to decide. BTW, this wasn’t the first tournament held at Whistling Straits, and they played with all bunkers as hazards back in 2004. If there were huge disagreements over the bunkers then I think they would have changed it this time around.

2. The rule against grounding a club in hazard has been around at least since the 1850s. I cannot confirm that it has always been a 2-stroke penalty. But if it seems arbitrary and penal, so what? This is a game, not life and death. Rules in sports are often arbitrary. Why 4 balls for a walk and not 9? Why three strikes and yer out instead of 4? More to the point, I don’t generally hear any complaining about the severity of the rule, so I believe it is an accepted part of the game.

3. The spirit of the game of golf, I believe, is “play it as it lies”. This means don’t move it, don’t improve your lie, don’t knock off a tree limb so you can take a swing, etc. Deal with the circumstances as you find them. In competition players will sometimes go to great lengths to gain an advantage. Sometimes the rules seem ridiculously picky. Many rules are in place to limit how much a player is allowed to do to improve his circumstances. An impossible lie? Take a drop with a 1-stroke penalty. A pebble next to your ball? You can move it if you are not in a hazard. Is a boulder a loose impediment? Tiger once got a ruling in his favor and the gallery moved a huge rock out of his way. That was not in the spirit of the game, but it wasn’t against the rules (at the time). If the rules leave a loophole you can bet someone will use it to their advantage. DJ may not have gained any advantage from grounding his club, but because it is possible that some golfers in some circumstances might be able to gain an advantage from doing so it is prohibited. It is far more practical to flatly prohibit grounding a club than to try to judge each incident separately, as the arguments would never stop.

DJs problem, as I see it, was that he got accustomed to the highly manicured condition of most PGA tournament stops and forgot that bunkers don’t always look perfect. He simply made a mistake. And because he seems to be such a nice guy a bunch of people are screaming that he got robbed, that the rules or the tournament officials or the course architect or somebody other than Dustin Johnson is to blame for this.

Tango, re: 29, and this is going to pretty much align with 30’s thinking. 

For 1., WS is an outlier for how much sand is on the course.  And then when you add in the fact that you have to get spectators around the course without asking them to please avoid all sandy areas, you are then left with the question of what to do about these areas “outside the ropes.” So, I guess one thing to have done was to say that anything outside the ropes (in the gallery) is not a bunker.  But then that’s a big advantage to someone who hits a more offline shot.  So I think, rather than just laziness or whatever, they declared it all a hazard and told the players so.  So in that regard, #28 has merit.

For 2., no.  There are reasons these penalties are two strokes and not just one, since one stroke is not always a deterrence.  And when a rule doesn’t deter someone from breaking it, then it needs to be changed.  So in thinking of why grounding your club in a hazard should be two strokes, let’s say that I’ve got a 240 carry over water to a green.  Or I could just play around it.  But I go for it (a par 5, say, in two) and it clears the water but still comes up short and is on a shallow bank.  So I’m still in the hazard but some mud is directly behind my ball and makes the shot very difficult.  But the shot to the hole is only a short chip.  So I can play out of the hazard, or go back and rehit (it’s not a lateral hazard), meaning I have to hit a better 240 shot or play around the water.  But so let’s say that grounding my club in a hazard is only one stroke.  So what I do is go up and play the ball off the bank.  But first I ground my club, which presses down the mud and clears the back of my ball.  I declare a penalty on myself, chip on, and one-putt for my par, a score I would most likely have not gotten if I’d “played by the rules.” A two-shot penalty would deter me from doing this.  Therefore, for me, the penalty is not arbitrary nor harsh. 

In DJ’s incident, I agree that it’s a head-shaker, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  But a game’s rules would just be one big clusterf--- if each and every scenario had to be appraised and judged by degrees.  They were told it was a hazard, so the rules were applied. 

For 3., yes. 

(FWIW, I think it was Stadler who knelt on a towel and got called for “building his stance.” I agree.  Stupid.  And there are other stupid rulings that’ve happened through history.  But I don’t think the rules are stupid.)