THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Dodgers’ win reversed because Mattingly did not attest to proper score!

Incredible, but because Mattingly did not attest to the correct final score, MLB reversed the game and awarded the win to the Diamondbacks.  This happened even though everyone in the stadium was able to see the score.

Oh, sorry, I meant that this happened in a state tournament in golf.  Because everyone’s been conditioned to know this rule, been taught this rule, having absorbed this rule, everyone accepts this rule.  In fact, I believe this rule was the impetus for George Orwell writing 1984.  It’s true.  Look it up.

Anyway, the MLB rules committee has proposed this rule, and it’s starting at Little League, so that everyone can be taught the rule, absorb the rule, and accept the rule. Once the conditioning is set, then that’s it, there’s no controversy.  All of the hockey fans that will mock the baseball fan for having this rule will face the scorn of the baseball fan because the hockey fan doesn’t understand baseball.

Sunday, April 01, 2012

UZR for putting

Good stuff:

Let’s use the example the PGA Tour has provided in its explanation. The average number of putts used to hole out from 7 feet, 10 inches is 1.50. If a player 1-putts from that distance, he gains 0.5 strokes (so, 1.5—1). If he 2-putts, he loses 0.5 strokes (1.5—2). If he 3-putts, he loses 1.5 strokes (1.5—3).

Then, for the final statistic, a player’s strokes gained or lost putting is compared to the field. If a player gained a total of 3.5 strokes over the course of a round, while the field gained just a half-stroke, the player’s strokes gained against the field would be 3.0.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

This week in sexism: Augusta

Well, here’s a new wrinkle.  IBM is a sponsor.  There’s a list of past IBM CEO’s that were invited to be members.  And the current IBM CEO is a woman.  And by woman, I mean that her genitalia is different from everyone else’s at Augusta, even if said genitalia is covered.  Otherwise, there is no difference.

Now, a private club can do whatever it wants.  That’s why it’s a club, and that’s why it’s private.  I can start a “Tangotiger Club”, and I’ll get to decide who’s in it.  I can discriminate on whatever basis I choose.  Now, ideally, I would exclude based on NON-SHARED interest or incompatibility of character.  I wouldn’t be as “traditional” as excluding based on non-matching chromosomes or skin color.

If it’s a religious club, then discriminating on religious beliefs makes sense.  If it’s a place where “men can be men”, or “women can be women”, then fine, if that’s what the club is about, then go ahead.  Seeing that it took forever to let a black man enter the club, then I’m going to guess that it’s not a “men can be men” club.

But, whatever.  Augusta’s golf course is revered, and if there’s one thing that we know people will do is to make excuses for something that is revered. 

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Hank Haney’s new book about Tiger

I have not read the book yet, because it has not been released publicly, but there have been some excerpts printed in Golf Digest and the NYT. It seems like your typical “expose” of a famous person by someone who was close to them at some point in time.

I’ve always thought that Haney seemed like a really nice guy. Of course that was only based on his TV show on the Golf Channel, the Haney Project. I went to his golf school in Texas once, but I did not meet him.

People think that the golf coaches for PGA tour players make tons of money, but they don’t, typically. I think I read that Haney was making $50,000 per year from Tiger. I have no idea how much money Haney makes from his schools, books, videos, training aids, and the TV show. You would think that the TV show itself pays him at least 6 figures a year.

Tiger called Haney’s book “self-serving and unprofessional.” I think that is a fair characterization although Tiger has not read the book either, perhaps only the excepts, like anyone else.

I have mixed feelings leaning towards this: Writing a book like that, although it is not apparently very negative, with respect to TIger, necessarily, seems to be a pretty squirrelly thing to do. From the little I have read, there definitely are some embarrasing things about Tiger that he relates. At best, there are many personal and confidential things that a person really has no right to tell about someone else. Unless someone has some “cathartic” reason to write a book about someone else (not commissioned or authorized by that person), or it is just a dry biography of their life or career, the only reason I can think of to do such a thing is for the money. There is little doubt that Haney is getting a lot of money for this book.

Again, strictly from an ethical standpoint, the more I think about it the more I think it is quite unethical. Imagine if I wrote a book about Tango, or vice versa, without his blessing, revealing all kinds of personal information about him. What purpose would that serve other than presumably making me money, and of course that would be at the expense of Tango.

Note: I DON’T know much more about Tango than anyone else, I would have nothing negative to write anyway (he has always been the utmost of gentlemanly with me), and a book like that would probably sell about 13 copies.

Anyway, curious about what you guys think and I would like to hear some arguments for writing this kind of book being the proper thing to do…

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.

Friday, March 02, 2012

Golf shot-by-shot data

Sounds like some great stuff.  However, it looks like I don’t qualify for access, but I’ll shoot them an email, and see.

Glove-slap: Albert.

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.

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Golfers “playing through”

When do you let golfers play through?  How much do you let it escalate?  And check out the ESPN comments (sort by MOST LIKED), as there are tremendously funny comments in there.  ESPN readers really outdid themselves on that one (too early though?).

Friday, October 28, 2011

Last week in crazy golf rules

If I, as a marginal fan of golf, and pre-daddy weekend golfer, were to say that it’s a ridiculous rule that if you address a ball, and after that (but before I hit it) the ball moves for whatever reason (say the wind moves it), that you get a penalty for that, I’d be blasted by the Golfinistas.  The Rules Of Golf is like scripture handed down to Moses or Charlton Heston.  Don’t question the Rules of Golf any more than you’d question Oprah.

But… wait for it… The Rules of Golf have changed!

But change is not unheard of. And it came this week with a whiff of the revolutionary. The R&A, along with the United States Golf Association, which administers the game in this country, amended nine principal regulations from the Rules of Golf, the bible of the game. No longer will a player be penalized a stroke if the wind moves his ball while his club is near it. And if he or she smoothes the sand before playing a shot from a bunker, and in doing so does not gain an advantage, well, that’s O.K., too.

Now, if I were to say that it’s a silly rule that the wind does NOT count, that is, if I take the OPPOSITE view that I had last week, I would AGAIN be blasted by the Golfinistas.  The Rules of Golf can do no wrong.  It’s like 1984.

***

Imagine if you will that the Rules of Baseball had ALWAYS required that at the end of the game, the two managers sign a scorecard attesting to how many runs each team scored.  And if either manager did not sign such a scorecard by the time he enters the clubhouse, the game would be forfeited by that manager. 

And imagine the Cubs manager, being so excited by finally winning the World Series on a Game 7, is carried by his team into the clubhouse.  He’s screaming and pleading with them to stop so he can sign the scorecard.  But no, like Moonlight Graham taking that one fateful step, as soon as the Cubs manager enters that clubhouse, he forfeits that Game 7, the win is reversed to his opponent, and so ends the World Series. 

And, every baseball fan would accept that as simply bad luck for the Cubs, because The Rules Of Baseball were so ingrained in the fans and players, that the rules could do no wrong.  They would accept the result, just as surely as a golfer will accept his fate and lose a tournament in overtime because the wind moved (shifted?) the ball. 

Welcome to the golfer’s pysche, where adherence to the Rules of Golf is predicated on the belief that those Rules are grounded in perfect logic… even when the rules change. 

Note: No actual golfers were hurt in the writing of this blog post.  Any actual golfers believing they were hurt, should golf on a windy day, address a ball, and thank the Lords of Golf that sanity has been restored.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

This week in insane golf rules: the hole in one that wasn’t

Just as a pitcher can get an automatic called ball by the umpire, so too can a golfer get an automatic one stroke penalty for slow play.  And so, if the marshall gives you that penalty, you have to add it into one of those 18 holes you are playing.  No problem there.  Repeat: no problem with the transgression, nor the cost.

However, instead of giving you the option to which of the 18 holes you add that penalty to, it seems to automatically must be added to the hole you are about to play.  And so, the kid loses his “official” hole in one.  As if which hole you add the stroke to matters at all.

I wonder if whoever wrote the Rules of Golf also wrote the Rules of Earned Runs…

Friday, July 15, 2011

Twitter to follow

SI’s guys says it’s these:

Read More

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

There are fat ladies in golf too

Knuckle-head of the week.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Straight-flying golf balls

I think it’s as good an idea as aluminum bats in rec leagues in baseball and softball, as it is with plastic blades that you screw onto a hockey stick, and plastic balls instead of pucks.  Basically: who cares?  Apparently, the USGA technical director wants everything to conform to his standards, or he’s going to mock the idea:

You know the easiest way to get the ball in the middle of the fairway? Walk down there and place it with your hand. Who are you kidding?

Everybody is the gate keeper of all that is holy of whatever little world they are involved in.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Greatness by perspiration

I love that someone is doing it:

What he really wanted to do was test the 10,000-hour theory he read about in the Malcolm Gladwell bestseller Outliers. That, Gladwell wrote, is the amount of time it takes to get really good at anything — “the magic number of greatness.”
...
Dan spent last month in St. Petersburg because winters are winters in the Pacific Northwest. “If I could become a professional golfer,” he said one afternoon, “the world is literally open to any options for anybody.”
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The 10,000-hour concept, though, is based on academic research into the idea that success is a choice — made, not born. At first glance, it feels like a very American idea — you can be anything you want to be — but it is an unsentimental view of the world. It helps to be tall in basketball, and it helps to start violin lessons at a young age, but what separates the few truly great from the many merely good is not talent or magic or luck. It’s dedication and discipline. The secret to success isn’t a secret. It’s work.
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Here’s how they have Dan trying to learn golf: He couldn’t putt from 3 feet until he was good enough at putting from 1 foot. He couldn’t putt from 5 feet until he was good enough putting from 3 feet. He’s working away from the hole. He didn’t get off the green for five months. A putter was the only club in his bag. Everybody asks him what he shoots for a round. He has no idea. His next drive will be his first. In his month in Florida, he worked as far as 50 yards away from the hole. He might — might — have a full set of clubs a year from now.
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“Basically,” he told the people at the conference, “what I’m trying to do with this project is demonstrate how far you’re able to go if you’re willing to put in the time. “I’m testing human potential.” Everybody in the classroom clapped for Dan and his plan. 
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But never, not in anything, according to Ericsson, has anyone done it like this: to start at this age, with no experience, and to keep statistics from the beginning, and to be so self-reflective about it, and to last even this long.

***

Unrelated story:

I picked up my first golf club when I was in my 20s, the kind of thing you pick up for company shindigs.  I have a good baseball swing (can go opposite field well), but that is terrible for golf (huge slices).  I think my first golf score was 132.  I remember when I broke 100 the first time, I was in Calgary (and my first game there.. shot a 96, which was about 10 strokes better than I shot in Montreal as of that time).  I have to believe a good golf course must help substantially, because I only broke 100 once in Montreal. 

I also insisted to use a crappy driver.  I saw my buddies who play scratch golf use these fantastic 400$ drivers, light, with enormous heads.  It was impossible to make a bad shot with those.  But me, I reasoned that it was more important to handicap myself with a crappy driver that was unforgiving if you miss your shot.  My whole golf set cost under 100$, and for a weekend golfer like me (10-15 times a year for 5-6 years), I figured that was just fine.

Anyway, my buddy picked up the sport at the exact same time as I did.  But what he did was ONLY use the 5-iron and the putter.  That’s it.  Off the tee, out of the sand.  In any situation, it was the 5-iron.  He reasoned that it was too hard for us too learn to use each of the clubs in the bag, and so, why not get really good using just two clubs. 

It was an interesting and unintended experiment.  And we pretty much shot the same.  But he had more fun that I did.  To him, he was learning, and to me, I was surviving.  It would be the equivalent of him always driving in the middle lane come hell or high water, while I switch lanes continuously.  But when all is said and done, both of us arrive at the destination at the same time.

***

His website is at The Dan Plan.

Glove-slap: NaOH

Monday, January 31, 2011

Someone who forecasts BEFORE something happens? It’s true!

Poz has something interesting to say about Tiger:

I never think people realize just how unlikely it is for Tiger Woods to win five more major championships. Think about Phil Mickelson for a moment. He has been on tour for 16 years, since he was 25. He has won 38 times on the PGA Tour. That’s a Hall of Fame career—Phil Mickelson is almost certainly one of the 25 greatest golfers who ever lived. He has won FOUR majors in 63 starts. Does Tiger Woods have an entire Phil Mickelson career (plus one major) left in him over the rest of his career?

Saturday, January 08, 2011

Golf and its one million referees

It really is ridiculous that the observers become part of the game.  Is the PGA hurting for money that they can’t have an official for each group of three golfers?

A friend of mine used to work at a PGA tournament in Montreal.  He told me EVERYONE was a volunteer, and there was a waiting list for all kinds of jobs.

So, that’s why the PGA is not going to start paying for officials.  They have waiting lists for volunteer work, and they have crowdsourcing of referees.  It works wonderfully for them.

I’m not talking about the divet rule.  I’m only talking about the observers-becoming-referees scenario.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Last week in excessive golf penalties

Rule:

Poulter, in keeping with golf tradition, informed rules officials immediately of the infraction, and boom, that was that. He had violated Rule 20-1/15, which chief referee Andy McFee indicated read as follows: “Any accidental movement of the ball marker which occurs before or after the specific act of marking, including as a result of dropping the ball, regardless of the height from which it was dropped … results in the player incurring a one stroke penalty.”

Certainly, Poulter did the right thing in reporting the violation. The fact that the players police themselves is what makes golf a unique sport. But the rule isn’t the problem; the severity of the punishment is. As with so many other infractions in golf, the penalty is totally out of proportion to the degree of the “crime.”

It looks like the marker was at 40 feet.  I understand the rule for disturbing the marker, because it might move the ball from 3 feet to 2 feet 11.5 inches, and so, get an unfair half-inch advantage on a putt.  This would be like blowing the whistle for an offside if the ref sees the skate of a player cross the blue line before the puck by a split second, however inconsequential. 

I’m usually pretty anti silly-golf rule, but I think I have to live with this one.  Basically, when you mark and unmark your ball, you are very careful in how you mark it, practically being a surgeon.  To be in a position to accidentally unmark it is sloppy.

I dunno… I’d love to find a reason to justify that it’s a silly rule.  I’m all ears…

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Computers taking over… hide your children

Really, in this day and age, someone at Forbes was paid to write this:

Are we really going to succumb to our Orwellian compulsions and let computers decide who the best players and teams are? I should hope not.

That was in response to the seemingly ridiculous result of some non-winner being ranked the #1 golfer in the world.  This is not a computer problem.  This is a user requirements problem.  It’s not the dumb computer that decided anything.  It’s a committee of human beings that decided on the point system.  The only thing the computer did is process the data, just as sure as the computer processed the writer’s words so he could type the text I quoted above.  Are we going to blame computers for everything?  If the writer can take responsibility for writing the quoted part above, then the PGA committee will take responsibility for devising the scoring system it has in place.

This is 2010 already.  Really?  I have to be reading this stuff and countering it?  Really? 

Friday, September 03, 2010

This week in golf insanity

Even the young are not spared:

Zach Nash is a 14-year-old Wisconsin kid who happens to be a fine golfer. So good, in fact, that he won a junior Wisconsin PGA tournament. Problem was, he won it by violating—albeit unintentionally—one of golf’s most straightforward rules. He had too many clubs in his bag. And the worst part? It was a total accident, discovered long after the fact.

The penalty is two strokes… PER HOLE!  I can just see all those hockey players coming forward that they used a stick with too much curve to it, all those pitchers who doctored balls, all those linemen coming forward that they were holding their opponents.

Imagine a rule in baseball, and you were brought up on this rule since you were a kid, that the manager must sign a scorecard to show how many runs were scored before he leaves the stadium.  And one day, Lou Piniella forgot to do that because the Cubs just won the World Series.  But, baseball being golf, and everyone knew the rules and everyone was brought up on the rules, the Cubs fans accept it as nothing more than a fact of life, and concede the World Series to their opponents.

Yup, that’s golf’s zero-tolerance policy, one that all those who’ve been nurtured by its rules are content to live by it. 

I’ll accept that I’m the fool here.  Sometimes, even fools are right.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

This week in disproportionate penalty in golf

Not signing a 61 card.  A one-stroke penalty?  Yellow-carded like in soccer?  One-tournament suspension?  Three lashes at dawn?  No, all those would be more proportionate than what happened: disqualification.

Article that parrots my view:

Make no mistake: Inkster’s disqualification was ridiculous; Rodriguez’s, even more so. The absurdly harsh punishment in no way fits the relatively minor crime. Even so, though, if you’re going to play on someone’s course, you play by their rules—nitpicky, counterintuitive and asinine though they may be.
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Or they can take a page from every other sport in existence and bend just the tiniest bit. Let a little bit of light in. Understand that swinging a club weight or forgetting a half-second scribble is not, in tournament terms, a capital offense.
...
(Side note: a close parallel to the absurd scorecard rule would be a baseball manager filling out an incorrect lineup card. And guess what happened earlier this year when that took place? Did the offending manager have to forfeit the game? Of course not. The game was played “under protest,” and since the other team won anyway it was a moot point. But even baseball—the standard-bearer for head-in-the-sand officialdom—is able to distinguish between an “honest mistake” and game-altering cheating.)

Excellent analogy. Presenting a line-up card that has, say, the same name twice, doesn’t give the opposing team a win.  They work they way through it with a proportionate penalty.

In the end: enforce the rules as written, while protesting (not defending) any penalty that is disproportionate.