Tangotiger Blog

Wednesday, January 06, 2016

Is there anything better than good sportsmanship?

?One of the beautiful things about golf is that the lack of an official almost obligates that players make calls on themselves, to their detriment.  (Except Tiger, who will never call himself on anything, especially his bullsh!t.)

In head-to-head sports and team sports, you do have an official, and so, players aren't going to call themselves to their detriment.  Here's Derek Jeter when he did not get hit by a ball, but he takes 1B anyway.  This is a rule, not an exception, and so, Jeter is just like everyone else.

Everyone that is, except.... here we have it in tennis, which DOES have an official, yet a player is telling his opponent to use his challenge so that his opponent benefits.  And it's not like his opponent is one of those nice guys like Federer.  No, his opponent was Lleyton Hewitt. This is a beautiful thing.

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

WOWY Tiger Woods

?I'd like to see it in comparison to tennis and basketball and football.  I have no doubt that Tiger had a huge huge impact.  I would think Michael Jordan did as well, and Magic/Bird, and Wayne Gretzky.  But how much was instigated, and how much that there was going to be an uptick, and they make the uptick steeper?

Sunday, February 08, 2015

Change in playing time, as a proxy for aging in talent

?Good stuff from the soccer world.  I'd like to see this for the other sports.

You can even start with just total playing time by age.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Length of Games

Here's a nice little chart:

And the key point:

Longer games would be forgivable, even laudable, if there were 50 percent more of a game to watch. There isn’t.

So, there has to be some sort of tradeoff here.  Is it actually enjoyable to be at the ballpark an hour more than in the olden days?  Maybe.

When I used to play golf on Sundays, the regulars would hate on us, because we'd be 4 Sunday golfers, who all shot in the 80s-100s.  And we'd be laughing, and yapping.  To us, being at the golf course for five hours was great.  The game itself was kind of incidental.  If you are out all night, that's a good sign.  The longer you are away, chances are, the more fun you had.

When I used to go to football games, we'd get to the parking lot 10-11AM for a 1PM game.  Why?  Tailgating.  So, I'm out of the house before 10AM and I'm back home by 6PM.  That's an 8 hour committment. The only unpleasantness is the traffic leaving the place.  The pace before the game is great, and the pace of the game is good.

Is baseball like that?  Is it more fun to simply spend four hours at the ballpark, hanging out with your buds?  I dunno, maybe it is.  If the game is close, sure.  Though, those last three innings are really (really) tough if it's a 5+run game.  At least in football, you'll see different strategies, the passing/running/kicking game is different.

On TV?  No, I can't commit that time.  Two hours is an easy commit.  Two and a half, and I'm surfing during commercials, and I might miss a half inning here or there.  In blow-outs, I leave.  Three hours?  And more?  That's the kind of thing I reserve for The Godfather.  And I've seen that movie dozens of times already.

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The solution is fairly simple: no timeouts.  Or at least, give each team a set number of timeouts.  Can you imagine football, basketball or hockey with unlimited timeouts?  That's ridiculous.  So, why is it not ridiculous in baseball?  If the batter wants to step out, for any reason (including injury) other than he just swung at a pitch, that's a timeout.  Pitch clock on a pitcher, sure, why not.  (And pickoffs do NOT reset the pitch clock.  It only freezes it.)

That's all we're asking: penalize the PLAYERS for the dead time, rather than the fans.  Unless Vin Scully is calling the game, then we'll accept all the dead time, and more.

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Ok, reading the article:

Rather than wait for the established leagues to act so it could follow their lead, the Atlantic League blazed its own trail. It formed a Pace of Play Committee, chaired by ex-Houston Astros president Tal Smith, which solicited suggestions from fans and media as well as its own members. The league came up with a list of six measures, later trimmed to five, that it began implementing in games on Aug. 1, 2014. The measures were:

1. Limiting teams to three “time-outs” a game for mound visits by managers, coaches or players, those time-outs limited to 45 seconds each. Pitching changes are not included, and an extra time-out is granted for the 10th inning and every third extra inning thereafter.
2. Automatically awarding an intentional walk upon the signal of the manager or catcher, without the need to throw four wide.
3. Limiting warm-up pitches at the start of an inning, or when a reliever enters, from eight to six.
4. Directing umpires to apply and enforce Rule 6.02 (restricting batters “stepping out”) and Rule 8.04 (requiring the pitcher to throw within 12 seconds when bases are empty).
5. Encouraging umpires to exercise their power to control the pace of play (and to call the book strike zone).

...

With many curious eyes observing, games in the Atlantic League promptly became brisker. In the first month under the new rules, average game time fell to 2:53, nine minutes quicker than in 2013. The proportion of regulation games lasting three hours or longer fell from 42 percent to 26, and regulation games lasting no more than 2:30 rose from eight to 22 percent. Major league baseball hasn’t seen that last level for a couple of decades.

Friday, January 02, 2015

How should tennis players be rewarded?

Tennis, golf, and other similar sports have an ideal compensation system: you get paid for your output.  If a #16 seed beats a #1 seed, the #16 seed will earn more prize money in that tournament.  This is unlike all the other team sports where players are paid on their potential.

So, we know that the more you win, the more you will get paid.  There are therefore two issues to decide:

1. What is the minimum level of compensation for a tournament player?

2. Does each win give you the same multiplier, or should each round increase the multiplier effect?  That is, if a player wins two rounds before eliminated, but a second player wins four rounds before eliminated, should the second player earn 2x (after the minimum) of the first player?  Or maybe it should be 3x or 4x or 10x?

The answer I think should be easy enough: look at ticket sales.  How much does each round generate in sales?  Let's say there are 7 rounds in a tournament, and the per-match revenue, relative to the first round match is the following:

Round Revenue

1 1x

2 1.25x

3 1.5x

4 2x

5 3x

6 4x

7 5x

So, winning all 7 rounds means you will earn 18x what the guy who won only the first round would earn (after the minimum).  Therefore, I think it would be pretty straightforward to come up with a purse distribution based on this idea.  Does someone want to take it from here, with different models for point #1 above??

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Related article.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

How much parity should there be?

?According to one sports book, the (unvigged) lines of the top 8 MLB teams to win the World Series stands at 50%.  This means that choosing the Dodgers, Redsox, Nats, Cubs, Tigers, Angels, and (two of) Giants/Mariners/Cards as a group is a flip-the-coin bet as choosing that the winner will come from the other group of 22.

How much parity do we want?  In tennis for example, at the height of Federer/Nadal/Djokovic, the 50/50 odds would be to choose the top two of those guys as one group, and then choose the third seed that day and EVERY SINGLE OTHER PLAYER in the tournament for the other group.  (Something like that.)  Which I think is GREAT for tennis.  Imagine tennis with no clear favorites?  Ugh for a fan like me, but maybe it's great for a huge tennis fan?

I don't follow NCAA, but I presume the top 4 seeds end up winning something like 75% of the tournaments?  Somebody can chime in here on that.

Anyway, so that's the question: how much parity do we want?  In other words, how many top teams in group 1 would you want to match up against every other team in group 2, in order for it to be an even bet?

Friday, September 26, 2014

Get paid 20MM$ to NOT play?

This is apparently what's on the table for Anthony Kim.

The answer very well may lie in an insurance policy Kim has against a career-ending injury. An IMG source pegged its value at $10 million, tax-free. Kim's friend, who has had financial discussions with him, says, "It's significantly north of that. Not quite 20, but close. That is weighing on him, very much so. He's trying to weigh the risk of coming back. The way he's phrased it to me is, 'If I take one swing on Tour, the policy is voided.'" Assuming the friend's figure is accurate, Kim would have to earn some $35 million on and off the course to match the amount he would collect by never playing golf again.

?

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Is the penalty box the greatest rule in sports?

Joe loves the penalty box in hockey, which I kind of take for granted as a normal part of the rules.  He thinks we should apply it to more sports, where he supports the idea of removing players in soccer in OT, and he wouldn't be against it in baseball extra innings.  He's even thinking it should apply to doubles-tennis!

I love the card system in soccer, where it's essentially an official warning.  Not the timeout that is a hockey penalty, but not just a useless verbal warning.  When a MLB umpire warns a pitcher about hitting a batter, I'd love for him to actually go to the pitcher and flash a yellow card.  And when he throws out a manager, flash a red card.

And the one thing that MLB should not tolerate is a player or manager who has been thrown out to continue to argue with the umpire.  No sport tolerates that.  That's a delay of game penalty (a bench minor), and someone from the field should sit out an inning is a player or manager refused to leave after being ejected.

?

Monday, September 15, 2014

Earliest-born player who’d be at least a league-average player

There's an interesting discussion at Bill James' site about who is the earliest-born player, who for his 5-year peak, would be at least a league-average player.  Answer for MLB, including the player's year of birth.

Now do the same for the other sports you follow.

?

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Women in baseball

It will be a wonderful day if and when a woman makes it to the pinnacle, be it MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL.  (Or MLS.)  As the article notes, it's likely that it would have to be in a specialized role.  That would likely mean a knuckleball pitcher, a goalie, or kicker.  Not sure about basketball.  That's at least for the first woman. 

Golf would seem to be the easiest one to at least analyze? to determine the odds.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Should Tiger Woods get paid more for the same win as another golfer?

The money has to come from somewhere, sponsorships, ad revenue, whatever.  When Tiger isn't there, the money isn't there.  Presumably, all that money comes up front, on the idea of an "average" Tiger presence.

There are precedents in other sports in terms of participants being paid differently for the same outcome.  Boxing for example, where even the loser can make more than the winner.  And Tiger probably is similar to that.  You have college football teams paid differently when going head-to-head.  The Yankees will get the same share of the road money as any other team, but if the paid attendance is larger when they are in town, then they end up with more money than other road teams in the same park.  Regardless of their performance that day.

It's also true in movies, where simply the presence of Marlon Brando would guarantee a higher salary than Christopher Reeve, even though the movie lives or dies on Reeve's performance (Brandon Routh anyone?).  Legendary Nicholson being paid far more than the young Ledger for the same role.  And it's true in life, as an young worker out there will attest, even if he does the exact same job as the more seasoned person.?

Now, I know it hurts our sensibilities that it's not "fair".  But, you are looking at it from one angle.  The other angle is that Tiger's presence is causing that money to simply appear, if not for that tournament, at least for a series of tournaments.

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Golf version of The Book?

?Luckily, one of the authors of The Book is also a huge golf fan.  Maybe MGL can chime in with his thoughts here.

Friday, April 18, 2014

Spread in talent in India Cricket league

At least, that's what I think it is.  The league is called IPL, and someone took the methodology I introduced several years back, and applied it to this relatively young league. I love seeing these kinds of results.?

The other thing that we need to include is the post-season.  It's an extra step, but at least we'd be able to answer a question like: "What are the chances that the most talented team will win the league's final game?"

And then we can decide what kind of chances DO we want.  I *think* what we want is what we see in tennis, that the three best players win 75% of the tournaments (or something like that).  Do we want this in NCAA?  I dunno, you tell me.

What about MLB, NHL, NFL, NBA?  I *think* we might want the three best teams to win the Cup/Trophy at least two-thirds of the time, and maybe three-fourths of the time.  That would set the pre-season odds for the top 3 teams at 3:1 each or 7:2.  Is that what we are after?  Or do we want the odds at 5:1 each, and so, the top 3 teams win the final game 50% of the time?

It's always a question of how much random variation you allow to influence the result.  You need some, just for the drama of it.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

What should the minimum salary be?

?This is a pretty fascinating article. 

Focus on the part for golf and tennis.  Golf spreads out the money more than tennis does.  So, the first question is how much should the early round losers get.  You want to make it good enough to attract future quality, but not high enough that it'll attract everybody.

You can see in golf, since Tiger has come on the tour, the money has been spread out across more players.  I can guess that with total purse up, and more focus on golf in general, you have more talent coming in, more competition, so the money gets spread out more.  (I'm assuming that the % share for finishing 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc, hasn't changed.  Otherwise, what I said might not hold.)

If in tennis the money stay with the top dogs, it might not attract new players as a viable source of employment. 

We also see the difference between NHL and MLB, and that's likely tied to the league minimum salary, where the NHL is higher than MLB, even though it has less than half the revenue.  But, maybe the NHL needs to do that to ensure that they get as many people playing hockey in the lower levels, to see the NHL as a viable opportunity.  (Not that they'd shift to other sports, but simply shift to the real world jobs.  NHL and Olympian Joe Juneau for example, or exception, had a degree in aeronautical engineering.)

Anyway, so it's a fascinating topic to try to figure out how to balance out the salary structure to ensure the talent flows continues or increases, without affecting the top guy's "free market" value.  Hold back too much, and the top guys can simply start their own league.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Writers largely stripped of the HOF vote

In golf anyway.  And if this writer is any indication, I'd expect alot of complaining from the writers if it happened for baseball.  In my karmatic (*) world, the writers are stripped of the HOF vote, and the next year, Bonds and Clemens are inducted into the HOF.?

(*) Is that even a word?(**) I love English that you can create words on the fly.

(**) Apparently, it's been created.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Golf Trackman

?An extensive article that has the golf pros talk about their use of Trackman.

Glove-slap: Banny.

Monday, February 17, 2014

How much randomness do we want in our sports?

?I am fascinated by this question.  In the 64-team basketball tournament, how often do we want the top 4 teams to actually be in the Final 4?  If Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic are the top 3 players in a given year, how often do we want them to be 3 of the final 4 players?  If the Yanks and Redsox are considered the top 2 teams, how often do we want one of them to be in the World Series?

Then, at the game level, if a team is leading by 1 goal going into the third period, how often do we want that team to win?  If a team is going into the final quarter up by a TD, how often do we want that team to win?

And if after three of the four runs, a team is leading, how often do we want them to win the gold?

Glove-slap: Tyler.

Friday, December 20, 2013

Jim Kaat, switch-hitter, as golfer

Terrific little piece on Kaat.?

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Quiet on the set!  “The proper way to play is…

... whatever universe I happen to be a center of."

That's really what it is, isn't it?  You play a certain way, and now, you have expectations that others play the same way.  It's Orwellian logic. 

Are you really supposed to be quiet when hitting a tee shot?  Well, not necessarily.  Is the way one baseball player plays somehow supposed to apply to how Carlos Perez should play?  How much should we celebrate after we score a goal, a run, or a touchdown?  As long as  you do it in your own personal space, and you don't delay the game, do whatever the heck you want.

And if it's that important to have "manners", then start a school, and get all the players to join the program, and make them pass a test in order to graduate from Mr. Manners school.  Ridicilous?  Yes, naturally.  But it's at least less ridiculous that the current state of affairs.

So, if  you are not willing to go all the way on this, just shut up about it already.?

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Most Oustanding QB, ever

?Seven of the top 10 most outstanding QB ever were born within 22 years of each other.

And that seems.... right.  Who were the top 10 pitchers of all time?  Were seven of them born within 22 years of each other?  No?  Then you probably selected wrong.  Who were the top 10 hitters of all time?  Same question.  No?  Eh... probably wrong.

Top 10 goalies, top 10 skaters, top 10 soccer players, top 10 basketball players, top 10 tennis players, golfers, swimmers, runners.  I mean go through the whole thing.

And see if you can just get past the man-v-man nature of the statistics and zero in on the sheer talent of the players.  If you can do that, great, you can probably meet the same results that Poz got.  If you can't, then you will justify your selections in a political way.