Tangotiger Blog

Thursday, June 18, 2020

Floating Replacement Level

This discussion is easier to think of it for hockey: When Sidney Crosby goes down, his 22 minutes gets picked up by the other 11 forwards (1 minute each) and the 13th forward (11 minutes). So basically, Crosby gets replaced by 50% an average Penguins forward and 50% the bubble player.

On the other hand, when the 12th forward goes down, his 11 minutes gets picked up totally by the 13th forward. Same thing with the six defenders, or with the goalie.

When it comes with baseball, the concept of chaining would also apply, BUT NOT AS MUCH, as Patriot describes very well here (look for the section titled Chaining).  In hockey, players are much more fluid in terms of giving out playing time.  There's 120 minutes to give out to the defenders.  When one guy goes down, everyone below him steps up a bit, getting a couple more minutes, and the 7th player slides into the 6th slot.  With baseball, it's somewhere between goalie and defender: not as rigid as a goalie, but not as fluid as a defender.  You could slide someone up the batting lineup, but you wouldn't necessarily slide the regular 2B to SS.  It would be too unfamiliar.

And so, in the Crosby example, where you could argue it's basically half way between average and bubble, in baseball, it's going to be much closer to the bubble line, even for the top-end player.  And so we kinda take the lazy way out and apply 100% the bubble player.  But don't think that's RIGHT.  It's just EASY and close enough.  Be careful in applying the concept to other sports like hockey or basketball.

If you want a thought exercise: if your active roster was 40 players or 100 players in MLB, NHL, or NBA, would you take the LAST player as the bubble player?  No.  Then we can see how the easy way we applied on a 25-player roster is the WRONG way. It won't be close enough to right.  It'll be close enough to wrong.

So, you just have to be careful to understand WHY we made the choices we made, and see how it can apply to your circumstances.

Thursday, April 02, 2020

Do fans prefer small or large post-seasons?

​I asked that question of NHL, NBA, NFL, CFL, and Euro soccer fans. And to guage their interest in a tiny to wide open post-season, I offered stark choices: either 2 teams, or 75-80% of all the teams. No middle-ground. When the chips are down, are you a small-playoff or big-playoff fan?

I’ll start with NFL. I first asked to consider an 18-game season (which is more than the current 16, but it’s been talked about forever and it’s in-line with the CFL). By a 70/30 margin, those fans preferred a 2-team playoff (in other words, play right away for the Super Bowl) than a 24-team playoff. In other words, by going to 18 games, the fans did not have an appetite for an extended playoff season.

However, when I suggested an 8-game season, the tables were reversed: By a 60/40 margin, those fans preferred a 24-team playoff to a 2-team playoff. That is, when the regular season is too short, the fans would like an extended playoff season.

Logically though, 100% of fans should have preferred the 24-team playoff. After all, that would suggest another 4 or 5 rounds of playoffs, meaning that the bottom teams would play 8 games, while the rest of the teams would play 9 to 13 games, depending how far they go into the post-season. If you have an appetite for an 18-game regular season, why would you not want an 8-to-13 game regular+post season?

Anyway, so the midpoint is 12 games: if you have a 12-game regular season, fans are just as likely to prefer a 2-team post-season as a 24-team post season.

***

The NBA fans showed a similar split: 65% of fans prefer a 2-team post-season, after an 82-game regular season, while 57% of fans prefer a 24-team post-season after a 36-game regular season. The midpoint where fans are split down the middle we would infer as a 52-game regular season.

***

The NHL fans are much hungrier for the post-season, maybe lending to its history. At one point, they had 16 of 21 teams make the playoffs. As more teams have been added, the 16 became a mainstay.

So, 55% prefer a 2-team to a 24-team playoff with an 82-game schedule, while 63% prefer 24 to 2 with a 36 game schedule. Fans are split down the middle with an inferred 68-game regular season.

***

For Euro soccer fans, things are QUITE different. With a 38-game season (34 to 38 is the standard there), 73% prefer 2 teams. With an 18-game season, still 58% prefer 2 teams. Which logically makes no sense at all.

For example, suppose we construct a 38-game season such that the first 19 games is one game played against each of the other 19 teams in the league. Then, after that happens, the top 10 teams play one game against each other, while the bottom 10 teams play one game against each other. We’ve now constructed a 28-game regular season schedule.

And we add a provision that a win in the second half counts twice as much as a win in the first half. In other words, we get that playoff feel, but every team gets to play the same number of games. Wouldn’t THIS be preferred to stopping after 19 games, and simply awarding the championship to one of the top 2 teams?

***

The 9-team CFL fans were offered no playoffs at all, just award the Grey Cup to the top team after 18 games, or 8 of the 9 teams making the post-season. 59% preferred an auto Grey Cup. For a 12-game regular season, 54% preferred an 8 team post-season. The midpoint is a 14-game season.

Monday, January 28, 2019

How do we know how many WAR to give out to nonpitchers and pitchers?  Or goalies?  Or QB?  Or?

?If you notice on Fangraphs, they hand out 57% of the WAR to nonpitchers and 43% to pitchers. This is actually the split that I determined some 15 years ago. Baseball Reference hands out at around 59/41, presumably based on a similar technique that Straight Arrow reader Rally Monkey came up with. I don't know how much Win Shares gives out, but I think it's around 64/36?

How did I come up with 57/43? We have to know the spread in TRUE TALENT. The problem is we don't actually know the spread, so we need to infer it. And we infer it based on observing what has actually happened, and removing the Random Variation that pollutes all observations. And when you go down that road, we end up with a standard deviation of a talent distribution that is roughly a ratio of 4:3 for nonpitchers and pitchers.

If you tried to do this for the NHL, the spread is going to be roughly 60/30/10 for forwards, defensemen, goalies.

I've never done it for the other sports. However, what you will typically find (not always, and not so strict) is that player salary is a decent approximation for the split. Again: not always; not so strict. But it's a decent guidepost. And where it deviates, then you will find a market inefficiency.

Friday, December 28, 2018

How to create WAR for any sport

?While WAR is wins above REPLACEMENT, the most important part of WAR is the comparison to AVERAGE. Indeed, the replacement step is both an after thought, and in some respects, unnecessary.

I'll use baseball and hockey as examples, but any sport will work the same way, whether basketball, volleyball, or cricket.

What you want to do is measure all the aspects of a player's performance relative to the league average. Not for the position, but the player, unless that position is very (VERY) distinct, like pitcher in baseball or goalie in hockey. Infield/outfield, and defenseman/forward are not distinct enough. Catcher might be, but we'll let that go for this thread.

So, figure out all the components. Hitting, running, fielding, pitching, scoring, passing, checking. As long as you got all the components, you are good. Measure the player however you want to, and compare to the league average. 

You want to measure in the currency that you can measure in, meaning bases, outs, runs, goals. And eventually, you want to convert into wins. For baseball you can use a standard 10:1 runs to win converter and in hockey 6:1 goals to wins. But, we can get into another thread how to get it more dynamic.

Once you have all that, you will have an Individualized Won-Loss Record for a player, or what I call The Indis. You simply add it up. For hockey, it might look like this:

• 2.0 wins, 0.5 losses, scoring
• 1.5 wins, 1.0 losses, passing
• 0.5 wins, 1.0 losses, checking
• 0.5 wins, 0.5 losses, positioning

You'd probably want to break it up into EV, PP, PK, and if you have more components, then by all means, include those.

Anyway, so now you have The Indis of:

• 4.5 wins, 3.0 losses, total

And you can stop right here. Notice I haven't even talked about replacement level. Like I said: after thought. But people love lists and single dimensions, and so, we need a way to convert thatto a single dimension.

Replacement level in MLB is around .300 and probably .250 or .200 in NHL. That too is yet another thread. For the sake of illustration, I'll use .333.

• 4.5 wins, 3.0 losses, total
• 2.5 wins, 5.0 losses, replacement level for 7.5 individualized "games"

=========

• +2 wins above replacement

That's how it works. This is the framework. Don't try to get cute and try to create a "offense above replacement". You will be wrong. Not as a matter of opinion, but a matter of fact. You CAN say "offense above the offense generated by a replacement level PLAYER". That's as far as you can take it.

But like I said, anything after The Indis is an after thought.

If there is one thing I did wrong when I rolled out WAR on my blog some 12 years ago was that I did not pause at The Indis level, and went straight to WAR. That's because that's what I needed at the time. Had I known WAR would take off the way it did, then I would have ensured that intermediate step would be more forceful. And it would reflect the replacement step is just a secondary optional step.

The replacement step IS required if comparing a position player to a pitcher, or a skater to a goalie, or two players of uneven playing time, like a starting pitcher and relief pitcher, or simply an injured player to a full time player. THEN we need it. Because we eventually want to translate that into some sort of dollar value, or any kind of value.

Have fun!

***

UPDATE in response to a comment below:

I literally spent 5 minutes writing that, so it was just a stream of consciousness how-to. So, yes, there’s about two hours worth of things I didn’t write!

But to your point: what you want to do is create “game spaces”.  Let me explain it in hockey and in baseball.

In hockey, about 10% of the game space goes to goalies, 30% to defensemen and 60% to forwards.  With 82 games, you assign 8.2 games to G, 24.6 to D, and 49.2 to F.  For each player at each position, you give him his share of those game spaces based on how much ice time he had.  It gets a bit more complicated because of EV, PP, PK.

In baseball, about 4/7ths of the game space goes to nonpitchers and 3/7ths to pitchers.  For nonpitchers you give them their share based on PA, though things get a bit complicated with subs (and DH).  For pitchers you base it on innings, or more accurately, leveraged-innings.

Basketball is the easiest, because it’s just a pure share by court time, no positional restrictions.  Or at least I don’t think so.  I don’t follow basketball.

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Is replacement level important for the WAR framework to work?

?No!

Some twelve years ago on the old Book Blog, we would talk about off-season contract signings. And to do that, we needed to (a) forecast multi year and (b) have a single-dimensional metric to match... the single-valued contract number. You know all that stuff about "you can't put everything in one number"? Eventually, you HAVE to, either as a decision (yes or no) or as an agreement (a number, whether you are buying a pair of shoes or signing a mortgage). So, we had to come up with a number. And thus, the WAR framework that I championed took flight on that blog.

And it caught on, a bit too quickly. Because the single-number thing was too easy to miss what it was doing under the hood. The ENTIRE FRAMEWORK is built on "wins above average". The PROPER representation for that is The Individualized Won-Loss Record, or The Indis.

If for example I asked you to come up with your own represention of the W-L record for the 1983 Expos, you'd come up with something pretty close to what I have here. I don't know how far off you'd be from say Dawson's 10-1 record that I have, but I'm pretty sure that if a dozen of you provided your estimate, it would average to within 1 win of that (somewhere between 9-2 and 11-0). Probably.

The conversion from that TWO DIMENSIONAL record into the ONE DIMENSIONAL record (his WAR) is a step that is not necessary for the WAR Framework. Which is weird for me to say that the last step of WAR is not neeeded for WAR. What that last step does is simply establish the "zero point", the point at which "nothing changes no matter how much more, or less, I have". 

If there was one failing with the WAR that I championed a dozen years ago is that I didn't have the two-dimensional construction in place. At the time, I just needed WAR to evaluate contracts, and so, I needed the one-dimensional value. In effect, I didn't show what was under the hood, and just showed the car. And my attempts to try to bring into place the two-dimensional version has not been met with much enthusiasm. But the reality is that as WAR takes hold of other sports like NHL, NBA, and soccer, that it becomes imperative that the two-dimensional construction takes hold. Otherwise, the shortcut I took to get to the one-dimensional construction may get lost as to how and why I did that. 

Tuesday, June 02, 2015

Winter has finally come upon FIFA

?A resignation though that will take some 6-9 months?  I'm sure coming indictments will speed that along.

Saturday, May 23, 2015

How do you explain randomness to a coach?

?Interesting thought:

“One lesson I’ve learned is if you go to a manager and say you’ve been unlucky and you actually deserve to be higher, that’s actually quite an easy message to give to a manager, naturally enough,” Benham says. “But if you say to a manager, ‘You’ve been lucky, you deserve to be lower,’ that’s actually an incredibly difficult message for the manager to swallow.”

And more:

Benham’s teams are different. As Rasmus Ankersen, his right-hand man and the chairman at Midtjylland, puts it: “The great thing about this project is that the innovation and use of data doesn’t come from an analyst who’s hidden away in the analyst’s room in the basement. It comes from the owner. So everything we do has the flavor of analytics.

And still more:

“We look into all possibilities in football, because there are a lot of inefficiencies,” says Ankersen. “One of the inefficiencies is the transfer market, which we’re trying to exploit by using data in a more intelligent way.”

... Another area of inefficiency in soccer is set pieces, says Ankersen, who has made sure the club has regular set-piece meetings between himself, players, coaches and outside consultants. Midtjylland has scored nearly a goal a game from set-pieces this season, an insanely high strike rate.

Ankersen says what Midtjylland is doing with set pieces isn’t rocket science, citing players who are fearless in the box and can deliver accurate balls, as well as a coaching staff that has shown a willingness to improve that part of the game.

Glove-slap: Hawerchuk.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Ideal capacity levels for stadiums and arenas

NFL teams average 96% attendance at capacity.  NHL is at 95% and NBA is at 93%.  Presumably, if there were more games, attendance rate would be lower.  For example, if there were 51 home games instead of 41 home games, perhaps NBA games would be filled at 85% capacity instead of 93%.  But they don't seem to want to do that because... well, maybe because of the toll it takes on the body.  But the top players do play every game.  In the NHL for example, you get 2-3 players per team who play every game.  If the NHL season was 100 games instead of 82, perhaps top players would get rested occasionally, so they'd play 90-95 games instead of 100.

The idea of resting top players seems... wrong.  You don't get that in the NHL, except for say some old timers in preparation for the playoffs.  But, this seems to be accepted in MLB.  You can count on one hand, literally, the number of players who play every game in an MLB season.  What if an MLB season lasted 144 games instead of 162?  Well, then you might get 2-3 players per team who play every game.

MLB attendance is at 70% capacity.  If the season was 144 games, then attendance may be at 80% capacity?  I don't know.  But, clearly the leagues are balancing capacity level and human endurance.

If the idea is more-is-better, than why aren't the NHL and NBA seasons 100 games each.  Attendance rates go down, stars-intentionally-sitting goes up, more games on TV... basically, the MLB model.  Why don't they do this?  Conversely, why doesn't MLB follow the NBA and NHL model?

Finally, would NFL fans tolerate the intentional sitting of Marshawn Lynch and Tom Brady for 1-2 games, if it means that the NFL season would last 20-22 games instead of 16?

Monday, March 16, 2015

Fans don’t care about length of baseball games because… they just want to hang out?

?That's what I got from reading this:

Few are in a rush to get to their seats by first pitch. Concourses during games are clogged with fans milling around, completely oblivious to what’s happening on the field. And check out the exodus by the sixth and seventh innings, when the young kids in attendance — and their parents — are out of gas and making for their minivans.

Incredibly, this is NOT a problem according to all concerned!  This is written as if it's not a problem.

I remember being at one hockey game, real close game, and I just had "to go".  I really didn't want to leave my seat, but, well, nature and all.  So, I ran as fast as I could, and the hall was empty, the washrooms were empty.  I've never seen the halls of an arena, any arena, empty like that.  And this was Le Forum.  Basically, no one really leaves their seat whether it's a hockey game, or a soccer game, and I presume it's the same with a football game.

But for baseball, because of the between-inning breaks, it's extremely common to do so.  So common, that leaving early on school nights then just becomes another natural thing to do. 

Based on the description in the quote above, the game of baseball seems to be a bonus for simply people getting together. 

Thursday, March 05, 2015

Qualifying for free agency

?NBA seems to offer the least restriction, as players can qualify after four years.  I don't follow NBA, so I'd like to know in practice, what is the average age for a TOP player who elects free agency.  Say, take the top 30 players in the last three years who elected free agency, what was their average age?

NHL offers seven years of service (where a year of service just needs more than 10 games played in a season), with a safety net of age 27.  This is especially applicable to their non-North American players.  Same question as above: what is the average age?

MLB goes with years of service of at least six years, with no safety net for the age, and service years goes by service days (max 172 days per year x 6 years).

MLS however looks like they go with the AND approach: years of service AND age.  I don't know if MLS and their players use the same language that NHL uses (talking about both sides being "partners", which sounds great if you don't delve too deeply into it).

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.

Sunday, January 04, 2015

Will Montreal only support major league competition?

?Montreal Canadiens season tickets are on wait list.  The World Junior Championship (some 40% of the games are played in Montreal, the rest in Toronto) are not a sellout in Montreal, even games involving Canada.  They also have variable pricing, with the highest price tickets against USA, then the others involving Canada, and then those that don't involve Canada.  I don't remember the prices, but I think it was 180$ against USA, 150$ for the other Canada games, and 50$ for the non-Canada games.  Something like that.

But when you have 15K to 18K for Canada games and under 5K for non-Canada games, this means that the pricing plans were still not wide enough.  Furthermore, while tickets in Toronto had to be sold for ALL games, in Montreal they allowed mini-packages.  Montreal has a very different mindset.

Based on these numbers, ticket prices might have been best set 10% lower for USA, 20% for the other Canada games and 50% for non-Canada games. Montreal is both a major leauge city and a party city.  That means they don't have a long-range support system, other than the one team (Montreal Canadiens).  Everything else is at risk, and you really have to understand the Montreal market.

That they even managed to get the mini-package in place was a big deal.  Still not big enough.

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?

Saturday, December 06, 2014

Corsi v Tango: Soccer Version

?A Straight Arrow reader pointed me to this post from Mark Taylor who has a soccer blog.  While he did not (initially) run it like I did, I asked him:

Because you are correlating to the seasonal differential, you are, as you stated, not doing exactly the same thing. As a result, as you approach the end of season, you are in effect correlating x to itself.

Could you repeat the same exercise I did, but correlating current data to future data? So, first two games, to next 36 games. First three games to next 35 games, and so on? Presumably, you'll reach a peak when you correlate 18 to 18 games. And it would be interesting to see the pattern for the various shot results.

And he came through, at least with the split-half correlation:

Splitting the season in half, the goal difference in the first half of the season has a r of 0.72 to goal difference in second half.

If you include shot differential for shots that were saved and shots that missed the target, r between these inputs and future goal differential increases to 0.78.

Goal Difference in 2nd half of season=0.46*GD first half+0.021*wide shots differential first half +0.137*saved shots differential first half.

Just to be clear, in my terms which I put relative to goals, that would be:

• 1.00 Goal Differential
• 0.30 Save Differential
• 0.05 Wide Differential

Which... well... is in the ballpark of what we see in NHL.  And in his case, it was only 18-game to 18-game correlations, and ALREADY the goal differential was able to shine through.

Monday, December 01, 2014

Lessons from Bill James and MGL

I have a pretty crazy memory system.  I might forget something very recent, which explains why I haven't bought new light bulbs for two weeks already.  But I also remember stuff I read from 30 years ago, which is why I can remember almost everything Bill wrote.  It's embarrassing, but I remember his research more than my own, even my most recent stuff.

Anyway, one thing that Bill said was something like "don't multiply or divide A by B unless there's a gosh-darn good reason to do so".  Not only multiplication, but also addition and subtraction.

Just last night, during the Grey Cup, I was handed a wonderfully compiled dataset from WAR-on-Ice.  One of the stats that has taken hold among the hockey followers is "Corsi" and "Fenwick", which are silly names that simply means "Shot Differential" or "Shot Ratio".  The distinction between the two is the kinds of shots that are included.  But, all shots are treated the same.  That is, all shots are added together, in an UNWEIGHTED fashion.  This would be like coming up with a stat called "Batting Average", and making no distinction between a single and HR.  Or coming up with a stat called "On Base Percentage", and making no distinction between a walk and HR.  This is why Slugging Average is superior to Batting Average.  And this is why Weighted On Base Average (wOBA) exists to be superior to all of them.

So, don't add numbers just because you can.  Figure out WHY and HOW they need to be added.  And since goals contain (much much) more information than non-goal shots, then clearly, we can't just go ahead an add goals to non-goals in an unweighted manner.  Well, you CAN if all you care about is "possession time".  That's (probably) a good way to do it.  But, more important than possession time is QUALITY of possession time.

That's a basic lesson from Bill.  MGL said something important as well, again paraphrasing: since no two things can possibly be exactly equal, then you have to figure out in which direction you have to move something to make them come close to being equal.  It should be obvious that a goal and non-goal shot aren't EXACTLY equal.  So, if you had to guess which of the two you would weight more than the other, which would it be?  Would you weight the goal more or the non-goal shot more?  Right, it's obvious, the goal has to get more weight.  Once you accept that, the search is on. 

The question that I always have, the question that guides me, and really the basis of all my research is: to what DEGREE is something true.  I accept as a matter of fact that a clutch skill exists.  Why?  Because nothing is exactly truly random, when it comes to dealing with humans.?  Heck, even with machines.  But that is irrelevant.  What we care about is the degree to which something exists and the degree to which is can be measured as having an impact.  The clutch skill exists to the point where it can be an actionable item as a tie-breaker.  That's pretty much all it is.  If you have two hitters who are overall equal, but one is a LHH and the other is a RHH, the LHH can have the worst clutch skill and the RHH can be the king of clutch, but if a RHP is on the mound, it's the LHH that you send out.  (Presuming normal hand-split skills for all concerned.)

So, the search is on for goals and non-goal-shots.  And then within the subset of non-goal-shots, can we weight them differently?  As a case for further advancement, we'd want to know how far from the net the non-goal shots were.  Heck, even for the goals, we'd want to know that.

And the same applies for basketball.  You have the same kind of events with basketball that you have with hockey.  What correlates to future point differential, and to what degree do they correlate.  What you do NOT want to do is correlate the stats to CURRENT point differential.  That's because there's an inherent "x = x" kind of correlation to deal with.   This is (probably) why something like Wins Produced gets slammed.  In order to test a metric, you need to test it out of sample.  But, I don't know enough about this particular metric to say anything more.

So, for you soccer and football (and basketball and hockey) researchers out there: I'd like to see your research along the lines I just did for hockey.  What does predict future scoring differentials, and how much do you have to weight the various events?  (And focus on teams, rather than players.  Players will come next.)

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, August 07, 2014

Eliminating the possibility of ties at ANY point in the game

?I remember someone, maybe Phil Birnbaum, proposing the idea of having shootouts in soccer at the START of the game.  This way, if the game ends in a tie, we can declare the winner based on who had won the shootout before the game.  In effect, we start the game with someone having a 0.5 goal lead.  And as this author points out, the impact is that you will ALWAYS have one team ahead, and you will always get the other team chasing a bit harder to take the lead.

This should get implemented in the NHL tomorrow, if not sooner (at least for the regular season).  Football already has "staggered" kind of scoring (TD, FG) that we don't need to worry about ties.

How about baseball though?  It has "kind of" the scoring of football, and I don't think this "half run" lead works as well.  I think it works for soccer and hockey because of the back-and-forth after each score.  Anyway, I love the idea for soccer and hockey.

Saturday, August 02, 2014

Would a USA/Canada Sports Association empowered to suspend players help or hurt?

?Let's say the NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB, and MLS join a Sports Association where issues of suspensions are delegated to it, and they are empowered to hand out whatever suspensions they deem fit.  They control drug testing, they decide on suspensions for recreational drug use, acts of violence, DUI, etc.  Basically, remove from the ownership (via the commissioner or president) this power, and hand it to an "independent" association.

There are obviously good things that can come of it, but also bad things.  Overall, does this move us forward or backward?

Friday, July 18, 2014

Silliness of reconstructing innings

?Elmer Dressens earned a loss, without being charged an earned run.  Even though he gave up TWO HR.  That's being inconsistent.

How did he manage that?  Well, he got an out, then an E6, and then an out.  According to the rules, the inning "should" have stopped there.  Everything after that is a freebie.  But, why is that second out taken as a given that it would have happened regardless of the E6?  After all, if the runner had made the second out, who knows what that third batter would have done.  Anyway, take it for granted that he would have made the third out.

How about the next 4 batters?  HR, single, HR, out.  What do we do with them?  Well, according to the rules, they don't exist.  Not in this inning, not in a fictitious next inning.  We simply erase them from existence.  Why do we accept that the out after the E6 would have happened anyway, but then we don't accept that HR-1B-HR would have happened anyway?

The "earned" designation and the recreation of innings is perhaps the silliest official scoring rule in all of sports.

Think of "own goals", goals that are scored against your own team.  They count against your goalie. They don't erase it as "unearned".

Just record what actually happened, and not just start pretending that some things get to be recreated in some fictitious world and some don't and then treat all that as some official record.