THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Another way to think about it is that when the match ends, there should be a decent chance, say 10%, that the opponent was scoreless (shutout).

So, NHL and MLB offer that chance.  And soccer of course offers it, but probably too high.

NBA is impossible, and NFL is extremely difficult.

Tennis’s set system… probably too high?  Winning 3-0 in a best 3-of-5 probably happens more than 10% right?

Anyway, I think that’s the kind of scoring system that works best.

The funny thing about your last paragraph is that that’s the exact reason why the NBA playoffs are my favorite professional postseason.  I do enjoy upsets (and I would argue that upsets in the NBA are more meaningful and memorable because of their rarity), but more than anything I want to see the best teams competing for the title.

It seems kind of a slog to go through seven months and finally see the best two teams, no?  Seems unfair to most of the other fans for the other teams.

In other words, can someone tell me how many teams in each league have a worse than 29:1 (or 31:1 in NFL) odds of winning their league’s championship?  Check whatever oddsmakers you normally go to.

24 or so in the NFL.  IND/CIN/WAS/MIN aren’t even 31:1 now and they’re in the playoffs.

NBA had 4-6 teams with a better than “average” chance this year.

I don’t watch the NBA because of the slog.  It’s tough for me to care about the regular season when any team with half a shot to be a contender will make the playoffs (unless some major injury happened).  After not watching any of the regular season it’s tough for me to care about the playoffs.

I enjoy NCAA basketball much more.  Once a player graduates/leaves they basically retire in my basketball world.

Tom, wonderful, thanks!  So, NFL has 8 of 32 teams with better than average chance at winning championship.  NBA has around 5 of 30 with better than average.

(I’m presuming you are basing it on pre-season, right?)

Yeah, that was from preseason odds (well, technically, the odds and my assignment of the market overround).  It’s possible that NBA is +1 and NFL is +2 with the additional being barely above “average”.  Even now, almost half of the SB wins belong to NE and DEN.

And as an aside, Brian Burke has been on complete crack about NE for awhile- if he’s actually finding market inefficiencies in something as big as NFL where he can bet 5:1 (breakeven 16.7%) on teams that are 36% to win (the actual line and his published game win% for week 17), he should be buying a fleet of yachts in no time.  And he has an article on how the Colts are overrated, but he himself gives them a 40% chance to win this weekend while the market is offering a 26.7% breakeven line, which is kind of the opposite of being overrated.

#9/Tom

Burke has agreed his model is likely too low on NE. As for IND being overrated, they are, but so too is BAL.

“Another way to think about it is that when the match ends, there should be a decent chance, say 10%, that the opponent was scoreless (shutout).

So, NHL and MLB offer that chance.  And soccer of course offers it, but probably too high.”

Nah, that kind of thinking puts too much emphasis on the scoreboard instead of the game.  It’s like the people who complain that soccer doesn’t have enough scoring.  There’s tons of excitement in a soccer game, but most of the exciting plays don’t actually result in goals.  The scoreboard is secondary, arbitrary even (why should a touchdown be worth 6 points and a field goal worth 3?), compared to the action on the field or court.

Conversely I don’t see how the lack of shutouts in basketball means anything ... where does this 10% shutout rule come from?  A dominant defensive basketball team is perhaps the most exciting type of defense in team sports, with double-team traps, steals, blocked shots, and general dynamic mayhem.  The victim still ends up scoring say 80 points but they’ve been bushwhacked, and everyone in the arena sees it.  No shutout?  Who cares?  It was still a dominant defensive performance, just as Lionel Messi can have a magnificent game and in the end all that happened scoring-wise is he scored the lone goal in a 1-0 game.

As for tennis-scoring-in-basketball, a variation which took that idea but in the opposite direction was what the old Continental Basketball Association did for several seasons:  award 1 point to whichever team scored the most points in a quarter.  So 4 points possible right there, a team could get all 4 or none or anything in between.  And needless to say the overall sum score winner got a bonus of 3 points.  So the outcome of a game could be anything from 4-3 to 7-0, for the winning team.

Have you ever played pick-up basketball, in which possession is determined on a “make it, take it” basis? It hold some similarities to your 5-straight-points proposal, in that the points scored are weighted more heavily than just points scored. When possession doesn’t change with a made basket, it raises the stakes both for made baskets and for defensive stops.

Sam: are you saying that if you get 2 points, and then opponent doesn’t score, then your next basket counts as 3 points, and the one after that as 4 points, etc?

Well, I like that kind of concept.  It’s baseball-like, in terms of being able to get multi-run innings, or otherwise blow it with a bases-loaded inning-ending out.

You could have 9 “innings” of 5.5 minutes each.  Most “innings” won in 48 minutes, wins.

The problem with that is if one team wins five in a row, it’s over early and the fans don’t get their money’s worth.

So, try this: An inning is 5 minutes, or a 6-point lead, whichever comes first.  So, in theory, you could have unlimited innings by quickly building 6-point leads, and, in theory, you can always come back if you can score fast enough.

How much would this decrease the favorite’s odds of winning?  I’d have to think about that.

For post 14, the game goes 48 minutes, regardless of number of innings.  But you complete the last inning if it matters.

I don’t watch NBA because the style of play is boring—a player gets the ball, runs down the court, and shoots. There is virtually no teamwork, little defense, and the officials overlook traveling by star players. College basketball is hands down the most exciting sport to watch IMO, but I ignore the men’s game anymore due to the sham amateurism, magabucks for schools, AD’s and coaches, and one season wonder players. It isn’t the lack of randomness that makes the NBA boring for me—most of the games the Kentucky women play in the pre-season are blowouts. But the style of play is agressive and fun to watch. The NBA needs fewer games, fewer teams in the playoffs, and a longer shot clock, but I’m not convinced those changes would affect the product that much. Magic and Bird were fun to watch, Jordan was not, but who sold the most tickets? Same thing with the NFL—the lack of surprise when a team comes from behind bores me, but obviously that works for most fans. So, I don’t think the NBA needs a new scoring paradigm. The players just need to act like they care.

Tango / 13

Make it; take it allows for repeated possessions in a row by one side.  If they score they get the ball back and can keep going indefinitely. That is the added value of each basket, it prevents the other side from even possessing the ball.

NBA Basketball with only 5 players on the court, and the dominance of superstars, has built itself on the superstar model.

The league offers up Kobe/LeBron/Bird/Magic/Michael/Wilt etc.

By having a system where the best teams win, the playoffs focus on the stars.

The number of teams that make the playoff is all money driven. If you reduced the number of teams that made the playoffs to 8 you would have very little impact on determining the winner, but you would reduce greatly the revenue flow - not only for the playoff series, but also from the games for teams that are in playoff contention as well as the perceived quality of a playoff team.

A 45 win team will draw much better if they are a playoff team with 16 teams in the playoffs then they would if they were a nonplayoff team with only 8 teams in the playoffs.

The playoff system in American sports is about money, not determining the best team.
The NBA system gets both more than the other major sports.

I find basketball suffers from a “will watch entire game” standpoint, but is much, much better to watch than, say, soccer or hockey, for 3 minutes (you often need a feel for the flow of a game to appreciate them) during a commercial break. Something obvious happens every 10-20 seconds.

Totally disagree with ideal scoring systems including shutouts, but to each their own. Hockey and baseball have the most important players (goalie or pitcher) dedicated to preventing scoring, whereas basketball players must do both, with very restrictive rules against defense (goaltending, most foul calls default to the defense).

Basketball suffers from the inability of players to maintain top production/effort for entire games or seasons. Of the major North American sports, basketball requires the most conspicuous and continuous athletic feats and effort to maintain top play. Football and baseball stop moving entirely for most of the time. Basketball truly suffers when it devolves into repeated stoppages (end of games…), it’s best when played more like hockey (more or less continuous). Lack of effort is sometimes a problem, but going all out all the time is also impossible. We don’t criticize Usain Bolt for not winning the marathon (which would be awesome, BTW)…

On playoff randomness - I want the best teams to usually win. The NHL is the opposite end of the spectrum, with virtually no sensible definition of an upset anymore. It’s a weird contrast – for me, watching the games is better in the NHL because anyone can win, but following the playoffs without watching games is worse, for the same reason. In the NBA you get to look forward to matchups a lot more. I want the best possible matchup, and I want within game upsets. These two conflict, since upsets by definition remove better teams. I think football probably balances the two best (very few shocking SB winners). It’s definitely a money thing of course. And if you are going to only watch the final round of playoffs (causal fan), wouldn’t you prefer the NBA (with two of the best 5-6 teams for sure) to the NHL (2 teams for sure, maybe 2 of the best one)?

Back to the “make it take it”: this is standard in many sports, like volleyball and badminton (at least when I was in school).  You keep serving until you lose.  Only serving team scores points.  (Though I know volleyball in Olympics is now different.)

Billiards as well.  I’m sure plenty of other sports.

But, to prevent the score from running up and being impossible to catch, they have the game/set/match structure.  Basically, a reset.

Baseball is similar here, in that you can run up the score, and any runners left on base is “reset” at the end of the half inning.  They could have made each inning its own “set”, but, works fine as-is. 

Tennis could just as well go the basketball route for scoring, and simply go with points.  I don’t know that you could make the case that the game/set/match works best for tennis and running scores works best for basketball.  Why not flip them?  Or make them the same?

I think you’d have to argue using inertial reasoning.

I’d love to see tennis with a running score (first to 75?) with service held until a point is lost. Time limits would have to be enforced with a “service clock” if you don’t do a strict point total limit but put in a game clock instead (TV would prefer this too, tennis matches of more predictable lengths). Most matches resolve with the player winning the most points winning the match, but it would interesting to see if anything shifted. If you only gave points on a serve, shutouts could come into it too (good for Tango), since a great server could conceivably rack up 20-25 points in a row, immediately break, and then do it again.

Playground basketball has always worked this way, with single games to 11 or 21, played over and over. So it wouldn’t be a stretch to play “official” games that way. I’m in for reversing the sports for a while…maybe we should start a petition (that’s all the rage I hear)?

@#20

It’s hard to imagine that other alternatives (such as most points in 90 minutes of play, or first player to 75 points) would improve the enjoyment that tennis provides with its current scoring system.  Tennis scoring takes advantage of the idea of leverage by making individual points in the middle of a match into high-leverage situations (such as break points and tiebreakers). 

I would think that basketball might be improved by making it more like volleyball—best of 5 sets, first 4 sets to 21 (must win by 2) and 5th set to 11. 

That setup would make the first four sets about the same length as quarters, probably 10-12 minutes of playing time, so a 4-set match would last the same amount of time as a regulation game lasts now.  A 3-set match would obviously be a little too short for the tastes of tv broadcasters, but people don’t watch the end of a blowout anyway.  A 5-set match would last about the same amount of time as a game with 1 overtime, and have as exciting a conclusion.

You would lose buzzer-beater shots, a favorite part of basketball, so there would certainly be a tradeoff, but you would gain some interesting strategy at the end of a set with the “must win by 2” rule, and you would completely lose the strategy of commiting intentional fouls to stop the clock.  I think you get a faster-paced, more exciting sport if you play basketball in sets.  I would certainly like to see a minor professional league or the WNBA experiment with this format.

The following teams have odds of 30-1 or greater to win the W.S. in Vegas.

Brewers 30-1
Red Sox 30-1
Athletics 30-1
Royals 40-1
White Sox 40-1
Diamdonbacks 50-1
Orioles 50-1
Pirates 50-1
Cubs 50-1
Mariners 80-1
Indians 80-1
Mets 100-1
Padres 100-1
Marlins 100-1
Twins 100-1
Astros 100-1
Rockies 100-1

Xei: excellent, thanks.  I presume you didn’t remove the juice on there, so the 30:1 is really 33:1 or 35:1 or whatever?  If you de-juice the odds, how many more get past the 29:1 level?

Tango: No, I didn’t touch the juice.  Next closes is Rays and Braves at 16-1 odds, so I don’t think any more teams cross the threshold you stated.
vr, Xei

Wonderful!  So, we have 13 teams with a better than average shot at winning the World Series.

I’m not sure what fans like, but it goes to the main point of how much randomness there is in the competition/confrontation structure.

Tango/20: I don’t think tennis and basketball are good candidates for the scoring swap you propose. Basketball has the potential for continuous action, as well as the capacity to incorporate pace into offensive and defensive strategy. There is no way for a tennis player to implement the equivalent of the D’Antoni offense under a continuous scoring system.

I think a better scoring comp for basketball might be boxing (or MMA). Other than in very lopsided encounters, the match is still up for grabs towards the end, late-match strategies are dictated by everything that happened up to that point (the score, the amount of energy expended by each side, etc.), pace is under the control of the players, and so on.

Basketball with 11 4-minute rounds using a 10-point must scoring system? I’d watch. 😊

I think “make it, take it” wouldn’t necessarily much affect the odds of who wins.  An oversimplified version here:

http://sabermetricresearch.blogspot.ca/2012/05/another-puzzle.html

In real life, I’d have to think about what changes, but, I bet, not much.

I think it would have to change the odds. 

In a back-and-forth standard game, each side gets say the same number of possessions. 

But in a “make it, take it”, the better team is going to have more possessions.

Thinking some more ... I think with “make it, take it,” the underdog team will have a better chance of winning than normal basketball. 

I’ll try a simulation later, but I think this rule would increase competitive balance. 

Is that what you meant, or did you mean the opposite, that the better team would be more heavily favoured?