Perfectly Competitive

Quick Rant on Assessing Pitchers

2012-01-20T13:07:00.004-06:00

I like the website MLB Trade Rumors. However, I have been annoyed lately by every post on MLB Trade Rumors that has anything to do with a pitcher immediately breaking down to ridiculous arguments over whether said pitcher is "a #2" or a "an ace" or a "#4" etc. These arguments are worthless. No one has a real good idea what a "#2 starter" is. Is it the 31th-60th best starters in all of baseball? Is it what the 2nd best starter would look like on a good team? How about the second best on the Phillies? That one seems like it might be a pretty high standard. Can't the commentators just talk about how good he is relative to some fixed point like average or replacement level?

Myths about the Cubs

2012-01-13T16:36:00.002-06:00

During much of this off-season, there has been talk about the problems with the Chicago Cubs and solutions to those problems. One of the most recurring indictments is too many long-term contracts, and that they have to get rid of all the bad contracts before they can start to fix the team. I want to look at the idea that the Cubs have too many long-term contracts. Here is the list of players signed beyond the 2012 season at the beginning of the off-season:

Alfonso Soriano $18 million in 2013 and 2014

Carlos Marmol $9.8 million in 2013

That's it. Now, the Soriano contract is a definite liability, but this is very low level of future commitment for a large-market team. I would even go as far to say that the bigger problem for the Cubs is not the number of long-term contracts being too numerous but that it is too few. If the Cubs had a few more quality players locked up long-term they would look a lot better, even with the deadweight of Soriano's contract. The true indictment of the Hendry years was the failure to produce talent that was worth extending long term, not the signing of expensive over-the-hill veterans.

In truth, the Cubs only had two contracts that were clear liabilities coming into the off-season, Soriano's and Zambrano's one-year $18 million contract*. I have heard numerous times that the Cubs should use the money that they would have spent on Prince Fielder** to pay off Zambrano's and Soriano's contracts. This idea makes no sense, as they have to pay those contracts regardless. The money that would have been used to sign Fielder would have been on top of that, essentially the salaries of Aramis Ramirez and Carlos Pena. This idea especially does not make sense for Zambrano, as I suppose you could use the "Fielder money" this year to buy out Soriano's last two years.

*They also owed some deferred salary that was not helping things.

**I do not want to suggest that signing Fielder necessarily would have been a good idea. I am just arguing against the supposed alternative use of the money.

Secondary BCS Bowls

2012-01-03T15:55:00.002-06:00

There are some complaints about tonight's Michigan and Virginia Tech playing in a BCS bowl. While in the past, I have defended the BCS championship game, I have not defended the BCS secondary bowl selection process. The BCS seems to have two functions:

Pit the two best teams in a National Championship game.
Make sure that the majority of the revenue is distributed fairly evenly among the big conferences.

Evenly means that Arkansas is not playing in a BCS game, and big conferences is why Boise State is not playing in a BCS game. Of course the "small" schools got passed over in the old bowl system and to some degree in the basketball tournament as well. Virginia Tech and Michigan were selected because they travel well. The focus on BCS bowls is also overblown. Because Arkansas was ineligible and Kansas State was passed up, we ended up getting a pretty good game between those two in the Cotton Bowl.

2011 NL MVP Picks

2011-11-23T15:57:00.002-06:00

I realize the voting results were released yesterday, but I did not get a chance to post my ballot, so I will do it today:

Kemp

Braun

Halladay

Votto

Kershaw

Tulowitzki

Upton

Lee

Fielder

Reyes

I realize that Braun won the vote, but the offensive numbers between Braun and Kemp are really close and Kemp has more defensive value, thought there seems to be some variance of opinion on his offensive value.

There are NOT too Many Hockey Teams in New York

2011-11-15T15:38:00.002-06:00

Peter King in his Monday Morning Quarterback column mad the following column about the NHL and New York:

"b. I worry about the NHL. Last week, on the same night, all starting at 7 p.m., three teams within 35 miles -- the Islanders, Rangers and Devils -- all dropped the puck. And 97 miles south of the Devils' rink in Newark, the Flyers played. Also at 7.

c. And Quebec City can't get a team?"

I'm not sure what his complaint here is, but if it is the idea that there are too many hockey teams in New York or New York and Philadelphia then he is completely off base. There are 22.2 million people in the New York metropolitan area (CSA) and 6.5 million in Philadelphia. There are 715,000 in Quebec City and only 8 million in all of Quebec. There are more people in the combination of the metropolitan areas of New York, Philadelphia, Hartford, Albany, Allentown, Harrisburg, Scranton, York (PA), Lancaster, Atlantic City and Norwich, than there are in all of Canada.

This is not a region that has no interest in hockey. The Rangers and Flyers are two of the league's flagship franchises. Also, last I checked New York is the media capital of the continent, so having an excessive presence there would probably not have much of a downside.

There are not too many professional sports teams in New York!

NHL Realignment

2011-11-04T14:15:00.002-05:00

The NHL is considering changing its playoff structure (see here and here). The second article lays out two big advantages for TV. First a little background. Here is a listing of teams by time zone:

Eastern: 16

Central: 6

Mountain: 4*

Pacific: 4

* I'm assuming that Phoenix is in Mountain, even though it actually would be the equivalent of Pacific Time for the beginning and end of the season. Arizona doesn't go on Daylight savings.

So an Eastern Time team has to play in the Western Conference because more than half the teams are in the Eastern Time zone. That team is not decided in the current plan; it will either be Columbus or Detroit.

The new plan has goes from 6 divisions of 5 to 4 divisions of 7 or 8. Also the schedule would change from 24 intra-division games, 40 inter-division, intra-conference games and 18 inter-conference games to 36 intra-division games and then two games against each other team regardless of conference. Whichever Eastern-Time team gets stuck in the Western Conference would definitely have an improved schedule.

Old schedule:

Eastern: 9

Central: 16

Mountain: 8

Pacific: 8

New schedule:

Eastern: 15

Central: 18

Mountain: 4

Pacific: 4

The Red Wings would trade 8 Mountain or Pacific games for 6 additional Eastern games and 2 additional Central games.

However, the second supposed advantage is to help the Pacific teams have fewer Eastern trips. I don't see that helping under the proposed schedule:

Old schedule:

Eastern: 11

Central: 12

Mountain: 9

Pacific: 9

New schedule:

Eastern: 16

Central: 6

Mountain: ~11 (would range from 10-12)

Pacific: ~8 (would range from 7-9, the total across Mountain and Pacific would by 19)

So the Pacific teams end up having one fewer trip to the Eastern and Central, but five more of them will be further east.

{Offline H/T to my brother}.

2011 Nobel Prize in Econ Preditions

2011-10-06T15:43:00.003-05:00

Since I did not correctly predict last year's Nobel Prize winners, my predictions for this year will look fairly similar to last year's.

1. Lars P. Hansen and/or Hal White. I had them first last year and it has been one additional year since the last econometrics selection.

2. Richard Thaler and/or Robert Schiller.

4. Gordon Tullock. Trendier choice than last year.

4. Paul Romer. I dropped him behind Tullock since Macro won last year.

2011 MVPs at All-Star Break

2011-07-14T08:08:00.003-05:00

Here are my picks for the NL and AL MVP at the All-Star Break. I'm a little behind in posting one of these for this season, but I was having a hard time distinguishing the players when I tried coming up with a list in May and mid-June.

NL
Matt Kemp
Jose Reyes
Andrew McCutchen
Roy Halladay
Ryan Braun
Prince Fielder
Shane Victorino
Joey Votto
Cole Hamels
Troy Tulowitzki

AL
Jose Bautista
Adrian Gonzalez
Jacoby Ellsbury
Curtis Granderson
Ben Zobrist
Jered Weaver
Dustin Pedroia
Justin Verlander
C. C. Sabathia
Ian Kinsler

The Cubs at .500

2011-04-23T20:54:00.001-05:00

The Cub Reporter used much of the off-season to describe the Cubs' off-season plan as "Project .500". The Cubs have decided to take that to extremes. After each of their ten even-numbered games they have had an even record. This is their sequence of games so far this season:

LWLWWLWLLWLWLWLWWLLW

This looks like the type of sequence someone would make up trying to make the sequence look random.

I noticed this pattern when the Cubs were 7-7, but I wasn't sure if it was that unusual. The fact that they are the first team to go 1-1, 2-2 on up to 10-10, makes this a little more interesting.

Actually maybe we should not view it as that surprising. Assuming that each game has a 50% chance of the Cubs winning and each game is independent, the likelihood of them doing this is 1 in 1024. There have been somewhere over 2300 individual-team baseball seasons, so we might have expected someone to do this. Of course most teams in history had either a greater than or less than 50% probability of winning each game, so that probably explains it.

What if a College Football Playoff looked like this Year’s College Basketball Playoff?

2011-04-05T15:56:00.001-05:00

From the Wall Street Journal (H/T).

Projected 2011 NCAA Basketball Field

2011-04-04T14:51:00.002-05:00

As I did last year, I tried to come up with what my projection would be for the NCAA field if it was 96 teams instead of 68. One assumption I make is that they will take no losing teams. Last year this was a strong assumption, but this year it probably would not have made a difference. I will assume that all of the at-large NIT teams would have made it, plus Missouri St. Since there were 13 automatic bids for the NIT that still leaves eight additional spots to come up with. Wisconsin-Milwaukee was an automatic bid and a five-seed, while Harvard was an at-large and a six-seed. However, making Milwaukee a five-seed meant that they were playing Northwestern which means a lot less travel. I will thus not assume that they would have been selected (see below).

My final eight in order of selection:

Marshall: should be in

Maryland: should be in

Southern Miss: should be in

Minnesota: overall ok record but finished the year 1-9

College of Charleston: good RPI, good record and won regular season conference title

Hofstra: worse RPI than CAA-mate Drexel, but finished higher in conference

Wisconsin-Milwaukee: a UAB-type pick, regular season champion from a highly-rated conference (at least at the 96-team level). The high NIT seed is indicative of strong assessments of this team.

Baylor: Not a good record but from a big-time conference

Last 4 out: Central Florida, Drexel, Iona and Mississippi St.

Next 4 out: Valparaiso, JMU, Kent St. and Tulsa

Why was UAB Selected?

2011-03-21T16:42:00.002-05:00

I was preparing my annual 96-team tournament field. In trying to determine the last couple of teams, I kept coming back to the question of why the selection committee picked UAB. I think UAB had three things going for it:

High RPI
Regular-season conference champion
Played in a highly rated conference

In particular, the fact that it won the conference championship of Conference USA, which overall had a very good RPI, was very important to the team's selection. Also, the conference did not have any obvious other at-large teams to select. I think everyone has only focused on the high RPI, but I think the latter two elements actually mattered more and will be important to my analysis of an extended 96-team tournament.

Clemson and UAB are the same

2011-03-15T16:04:00.002-05:00

Clemson and UAB play tonight in one of the First Four games of the tournament. As I said in my previous post, there has been a lot of whining about UAB's selection. However, there has been almost nothing said about Clemson's inclusion, even though when you look at their profiles they look very similar. UAB has the better RPI and the better record. They both beat one marginal tournament team (VCU for UAB, Florida St. for Clemson). Clemson beat 6 NIT or NIT-bubble teams, UAB beat 7. Clemson had more losses to good teams, but neither of them had any real bad losses. If you remove Clemson's three losses to UNC, they lost the same number of games and the profile of teams they lost to look amazingly similar. Heck, they both lost to Duke on the road.

It seems like the only reason to include Clemson is that they beat Virginia Tech and Virginia Tech beat Duke. Virginia Tech's win over Duke might be reason to include them in the tournament, but it seems like a bad reason to include Clemson.

Must be that Clemson plays in the ACC and UAB is in Conference USA.

2011 Bracket Announcement and ESPN

2011-03-14T16:10:00.003-05:00

The wailing and gnashing of teeth from ESPN over the inclusion of UAB and VCU over Colorado and Virginia Tech is quite annoying.

Hubert Davis talked incessantly about the Eye Test, which near as I could figure meant: (i) Teams he saw play, (ii) Teams from big conferences and (iii) Teams with big-name recruits. Pretty much teams from the BCS conferences.

Digger Phelps talked about getting things done in the conference season. Of course the big-conference teams will be the only ones who can beat top teams in the conference portion of the season. Also it seems a little strange to talk about teams that were denied after getting the job done in the conference season when they were 8-8 in conference (Colorado).

I am half-convinced that Jay Bilas would be perfectly happy if they just took the 68 best teams from the BCS conferences. It is particularly annoying when he complains about how worthless RPI is and then talks about how poor a team's record is against the RPI Top 50.

Dick Vitale must have three or four rants prepared and then picks the one that makes the most sense given the bracket that is announced. In the past he has railed against the exclusion of the small schools. This year he complained about the exclusion of Colorado and VPI.

The whole program had a tendency to make "My father can beat up your little brother" arguments, i.e. focusing on the positives of Colorado and the negatives of VCU and UAB. They posted a graphic on VCU that only had the negatives, such as their worst loss against Georgia St. Meanwhile there was no mention of the fact that in addition to playing a weak non-conference schedule, Colorado played most of those games at home.

This all should not necessarily mean that the committee got it right. I personally would have taken St. Mary's, VPI and Colorado over UAB, Clemson and Georgia, but this number of changes is not much different than my usual preferences.

Sports Labor Unrest Links

2011-03-09T16:09:00.002-06:00

Baseball’s Blackout Policy

2011-03-04T15:23:00.002-06:00

Yet another sign of spring, discussing MLB's idiotic Blackout policies for MLB.tv (H/T). Let me suggest one reason why the NFL gets their package right, and MLB gets theirs wrong. The NFL splits up the revenue amongst their teams evenly, so when they sell an additional package the money is split the same way as their national deal. However, MLB teams sell their games individually, so they do not want people to move from the local broadcasts to the national one.

Of course the biggest complaints are in the cases where fans are in a team's market and yet have almost no local coverage of the team. I have lived in the split market of the Royals and Cardinals for 10 years, and I have seen a grand total of one Royals game on here. You cannot even pick-up the radio broadcast until you get 20 miles north of where I am. Six teams split Iowa. There is no way that a fan in Des Moines will be able to watch every game of the Cubs, Cardinals, Royals, Twins, Brewers and White Sox on local TV. A more rational policy on blackouts would definitely be beneficial to MLB's worth.

Voting Method and ROY

2011-02-28T16:19:00.002-06:00

I realize I'm a little late on this issue, but there was a minor storm about one writer's ballot for NL Rookie of the Year. One voter from Pittsburgh voted for Buster Posey first and then for two Pittsburgh Pirates second and third. There have been suggestions that this was defensible (see here and here). He has been criticized for homerism.
The voter himself defended himself by saying that he picked Posey (the eventual winner) first. (Since he defended himself on Twitter, it is hard to find the appropriate tweets). He just used his second and third place votes to recognize flying under the radar Pirates, but picked the best player first. However, I think the fact that he picked Posey first makes his other picks even more irresponsible.

The key decision for the award was Posey vs. Heyward. Since 1^st place votes are worth 5 points and 2^nd place votes are worth 3 points, a voter who had Posey first and Heyward second would increase his top choice by 2 points. However, Kovacevic increased Posey by 5 points over Heyward. If his motivation was for Posey to win, this was pretty close to the perfect ballot. I actually would have preferred if he had just chosen three Pirates or three random players. In that case his ballot would have had no influence on the final outcome. Or he could have just picked the two Pirates first and second and then picked Posey third.

Part of the problem is that, according to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, there is not a perfect way to design a ranking method among more than two alternatives. The choice of a Borda count method pretty much opens up the possibility of strategic voting. I do not think his intent was strategic, but his ballot looks exactly like that of a strategic voter trying to help Posey.

The Financial Impact of the Wainwright Injury

2011-02-24T16:23:00.002-06:00

Fangraphs has a discussion of the financial impact of Adam Wainwright being out for the entire season. The article estimates the impact as approximately $16 million based on lower attendance and a lower probability of making the postseason. The calculation suggests that Wainwright is worth about 4 wins and that would translate to the average team lower attendance worth about $10 million.

One problem with this analysis as I see it is that the Cardinals are not an average team. I have a paper that looks at the relationship between attendance and winning percentages but does not assume that all teams' fans are the same. In looking at the 12 National League teams that have been in existence since 1969, I found that the Cardinals' attendance was the least responsive to in-season changes in team performance.* In case you are curious, the Expos' and Dodgers' fan bases were the most responsive. My findings would suggest that the financial impact on the Cardinals will be less than it would be on the average team from which the numbers are derived.

Of course that does not mean that there is no impact, especially given that the Cardinals win expectation before the injury was right on the cusp of being a playoff team.

*The results for the Cubs, Astros and Giants are less reliable because of the number of sellouts those teams experienced. There are methods to deal with the sellout issue, but I was using an econometric technique to deal with a different concern and not compatible with the solutions to sellouts. It is possible that all three of those teams, especially the Cubs, would have smaller responses to winning than the Cardinals, but the Cardinals would still be near the top regardless.

The Escondido Beavers

2011-02-23T16:43:00.002-06:00

In a previous post, I discussed the Portland Beavers moving to Tucson. Eventually the plan is for the team to move to Escondido, near the major league affiliate in San Diego. When I wrote my paper on the determinants of the locations of minor league baseball teams, I specifically ignored cases where a minor league team is located in the same metropolitan area as a major league team. Partly this choice was because my econometric method did not allow for this possibility, but mostly because this phenomenon did not happen very often. In fact, the league rules pretty much give the major league teams territorial rights to keep minor league teams out of their metropolitan area. The exceptions to these outcomes are either because the minor league team predates the major league team (i.e., the Tacoma Rainiers) or because of the minor league team using creative geography to be just outside the territorial zone (i.e., the Kane County Cougars).

However, in the years since I wrote my paper, the major league teams have decided that either minor league baseball is a complementary good, as opposed to a substitute good, or that having their AAA affiliate nearby is enough of a positive to make up for the substitution effect. The Gwinnett County Braves, the Escondido Beavers and the Lehigh Valley IronPigs all represent examples of teams bringing their AAA affiliate into their metropolitan area, or just outside of it in the case of the IronPigs. Having the AAA affiliate close makes it easier to call up players in case of injury. My guess is that over time the increasing value of proximity of the AAA players and that the changing nature of baseball markets, making minor league and major league baseball more complementary, have both increased the teams' willingness to bring their affiliates into their home markets.

Miracle on Ice

2011-02-22T16:53:00.002-06:00

Today is the 31^st Anniversary of the United States win in hockey in the Olympics over the Soviet Union. This morning I heard on television this mentioned as not being the gold-medal game, which is correct. That statement was followed up with the next game against Finland being the gold-medal game, which is how it is often described. However, this was not the case either. The final round was a round robin. If the US had lost, Finland would not have won the gold, the USSR would have. As it turned out, Finland did not receive any medal. Lastly, it is even possible that the game could have ended in a tie, which actually makes the US-USSR game more exciting, because a tie would have meant the USSR would have won the gold. Since the US-Finland game was not a game between two teams vying for a gold medal, the term "gold-medal game" seems incorrect for me.

My Suggestion on How to Fix Overtime

2011-02-16T15:30:00.001-06:00

Over at Advanced NFL Stats, they have some suggested rule changes for the NFL. One of them is for changing the overtime rules (#11). Their suggestion is for the home-team to automatically get the ball in overtime. This approach has one big advantage to it, that the teams know who will get the ball in overtime, so that they can play the game in regulation with that knowledge. The team that knows they will not get the ball will be more willing to play to win the game in regulation. The problem with their approach is that giving the advantage to the home team seems arbitrary.

My suggestion is to treat overtime as a third half, continuing the coin toss from the beginning of the game. Also if you defer until the second half, you lose out on choosing for the overtime. And if you really want the option in overtime, then you can choose to defer from the second-half choice. It balances out the original winner’s value in they would lose the ability to defer unless they are willing to sacrifice the overtime choice. Everything going into overtime is known ahead of time. It is not gimmicky like a lot of other approaches, i.e. the college football overtime system. It does not change things very much, so it is should not be too controversial.

I honestly do not know if anyone else has suggested this before. If I come across someone else who suggested this earlier, I will give him or her credit.

Sears and Customer Service

2011-02-04T15:40:00.004-06:00

Free Money Finance recently had a disastrous experience with Sears customer service. I can relate as I had a run-in with Sears last fall. The two-year old lawnmower that I had bought from Sears had broken down. I took it to them to look at. After a week, I got a call saying it was ready to be picked up. When I got there the clerks at the store looked at me like I was stupid, since there was no way that it would be ready that quick. I went home and waited an additional two weeks for my lawn mower. In the meantime I got a robo-call survey from Sears about the service I had received. The computer system had become convinced that they had returned my lawnmower to me. Since I had not gotten my lawnmower yet, I ignored the survey, but they kept calling back until I took it. Then when I finally did get my lawnmower back, the robo-calls started again.

2010 AL MVP Picks

2011-01-28T16:32:00.002-06:00

Hamilton

Cano

Longoria

Bautista

Beltre

Cabrera

Crawford

Felix Hernandez

Cliff Lee

Mauer

For top of the AL there is a distinction between the bats (Hamilton, Bautista and Cabrera) vs. the gloves (Cano, Longoria and Beltre). Now the "gloves" all had good years hitting but they were about 30 points behind the "bats" in OPS+. I think Hamilton is clearly first, but second through sixth could be re-arranged in any order.

Since Hernandez and Lee are both pitchers and next to each other in the rankings that would suggest that I think they were almost equal. However, I think Hernandez was clearly superior to Lee, but there is quite a bit of drop-off after the top 7 hitters.

2010 NL MVP Picks

2011-01-27T12:52:00.002-06:00

Since football season ended last Sunday, my thoughts have begun to shift to baseball. Since I got pretty busy last November, I did not get a chance to post my ballots for the internet baseball awards. So I will start with my NL MVP picks:

Votto

Pujols

Zimmerman

Holliday

Tulowitzki

Halladay

Carlos Gonzalez

Huff

Wainwright

Adrian Gonzalez

I could see putting Votto and Pujols either way. What is funny is that the last time that Pujols had a close race for top player in the league was 2005, when the other contender was a fellow NL Central First Baseman (Derrek Lee in 2005). The two players had very similar seasons that year, just as Pujols and Votto had very similar seasons this year.

Compared to some voters, I have Adrian Gonzalez lower relative to the other hitters. He had a good year, but he was not the equal at the plate of Votto and Pujols. The other hitters made up ground based on defensive value and position.

Interestingly I had more pitchers in the top 10 most of the year. However, Josh Johnson was hurt the last month and Ubaldo Jiminez had a poor middle of the season and both are just outside the top 10 for my final picks.

Can New York Support a Third NBA Team?

2011-01-26T16:05:00.002-06:00

David Stern expresses his doubt (H/T). Of course he has an incentive to downplay the likelihood, in order to protect the market of the Knicks and Nets. However, I think that New York with 22 million people in its metropolitan area should be able to support three teams. Also with one team moving from one side of the city to the other, there is more opportunity to pick up fans right away than there would be for a sport such as baseball.

Federal Money for Hockey Arenas in Canada

2011-01-19T15:18:00.002-06:00

Why would the Federal government in Canada be giving money to one city (Quebec) so that it can lure away a team from another city in Canada (Edmonton)? That does not sound like smart politics to me. I guess there is still a chance that the target team is the Phoenix Coyotes. However, the Coyotes have a relatively new arena, and the Oilers are trying to get the city to pay for one, so my guess is that the league would rather the Oilers move than the Coyotes.

The Tucson Beavers?

2011-01-18T15:02:00.003-06:00

The Portland Beavers, AAA affiliate of the San Diego Padres, announced that they would be playing next season in Tucson. I would like to consider this move from the point of optimal team location in minor league baseball (see this post from last year for details on my model). The move is complicated by the fact that the eventual plan is to have the team play in Escondido near the major league affiliate in San Diego, and is probably only using Tucson as a temporary home for a year or two. For now I will just talk about the Portland to Tucson move and then look at the Escondido angle in a future post.

On the face of it this move does not make a whole lot of sense. According to my model, Portland would be the second most likely city, amongst those without major league baseball, to have a AAA team. Tucson is 46^th. I estimate that Portland has a 79% chance of having a AAA team, Tucson has a 15% chance. These rankings should not be too much of a surprise, as Portland has a metropolitan area population of approximately 2.2 million and Tucson's is just over a million.

However, there is the complicating factor of the stadium issue. The Beavers stadium in Portland is being renovated for use for the soccer team in the city. When I developed my model it was based on the idea that the city's willingness to build stadiums for team was endogenous to all of the other factors (population, income etc.). But there may also be other idiosyncratic factors related to willingness to construct a stadium that I could not account for. In this case the stadium situation pretty much precipitated a move. It also explains why a team might move for what might be a one-year stay.

Given that a move was required, Tucson makes a lot of sense. Even though it is ranked 46^th, the two cities (Des Moines and Syracuse) right in front of it in the rankings also have AAA teams, so it is not completely out of line with other AAA cities. If the PCL wanted to keep the team out west, Tucson was the best choice, as the westernmost city ranked higher than Tucson is San Antonio. Lastly, since this might be a temporary move, Tucson does not have a AA or A team being disrupted by the move like San Antonio or Boise would have. Also, Tucson had a AAA team as recently as 2008, so it has a suitable stadium.

2010 Election Prediction Analysis Part I

2010-11-24T14:29:00.002-06:00

Well given my prediction for the 2010 Elections, I'm claiming victory/validation. The Republicans have picked up a net of 63 seats in the House, exactly the same as my prediction. Of course I'm claiming victory now before the final two seats are called and make my prediction not exactly correct. Also, I only got the correct number by missing about ten seats in each direction. Lastly, my Senate prediction was not really all that great, over-predicting the Republican gain by two seats. However, those last three points are just details.

Domed Stadium in Los Angeles?

2010-11-23T14:29:00.002-06:00

In last week's Monday Morning Quarterback, it was mentioned that there is talk of building a retractable-dome stadium in Los Angeles (about halfway down the page). Why would LA need a domed stadium? To deal with the three days of rain that the area gets a year? Because of the brutal 60-degree cold days? Of course the story mentions that it would be so they could host the Final Four. However, retractable domes add a lot to the cost of a stadium and adding one to host two or three Final Fours over the life of the stadium seems pretty excessive. If this was a privately-financed facility no one would undertake the cost associated with adding a roof, but since the taxpayer is on the hook why not add a 200-million dollar roof?

2010 Election Predictions

2010-11-01T16:41:00.002-05:00

Since my 2010 Econ Nobel Prize prediction was so on the mark, I have decided to predict the 2010 US elections. Gains for the GOP:

House: +63 (net)

Without listing every seat, here is the list of some marginal seats I predict victory in:

AZ 8, ID 1, IL 14, KY 6, MO 4, NC 2, 7 and 8, NH 2, NY 23, OH 6, OR 5, and WV 1.

Seats lost by the GOP:

DE AL, IL 10, and LA 2. (Barely holding HI 1 and FL 25)

Marginal seats GOP misses barely:

AR 4, AZ 7, CA 20, CT 4 and 5, MI 9, MN 8, NY 1 and 24, OH 18, VA 9 and 11. (They also lose races that they should have done better in IA 3, IN 2, and PA 12).

Senate: +8

Gains: AR, CO, IL, IN, ND, NV, PA, and WI (GOP loses close race in WA)

The GOP holds all currently held Senate seats.

For additional perspectives and invaluable resources in making my predictions:

538

Jay Cost

Nobel Prize in Econ Prediction

2010-10-10T21:06:00.003-05:00

My last minute predictions for the Nobel Prize in Economics. For more enlightened and informed commentary, see Greg
Mankiw and Tyler
Cowen.

1. Lars P. Hanse and/or Hal White. Econometrics has not been awarded in a while and the current economic conditions would suggest rewarding more theoretical economists.

2. Richard Thaler and/or Robert Schiller. These seem to be the favorites.

3. Paul Romer. Macroeconomics has not been awarded recently but given the short-run macroeconomy, they probably won't give it to most of the macroeconomist. Romer is of course known for growth theory, so I think they might go in this direction.

4. Gordon Tullock. Most people think he missed his chance, so I'm just being contrarian with this choice.

The Best Sports Weekend

2010-10-01T15:31:00.002-05:00

Though there would be some worthy contenders for the title, this coming weekend seems like the top choice for best-sports-weekend. College football has advanced (for the most part) past the cupcake portion of the schedules, but is still early enough that there are plenty of teams with meaningful games. The NFL is going strong. Baseball comes down to its final weekend with the prospect of do-or-die games after a grueling summer. Throw the Ryder Cup on top and you have a pretty great weekend of sports.

Of course it is not looking as compelling as it was a few days ago. Monsoon-season hitting Wales has messed up the Ryder Cup, and the Cubs taking 3 of 4 from the Padres has left us with the possibility of everything in baseball being decided by tonight.

The New Big 10 Divisional Alignment Part III: Too Much Tradition?

2010-09-14T15:47:00.002-05:00

Dennis Dodd at CBS Sports argues that the Big 10 paid too much respect to tradition in terms of it scheduling with the new division alignment.

His particular complaint was that the Ohio St.-Michigan game would remain on the last weekend of the season:

The problem is that tradition won out over that bold, bright world. "The Game" will remain on the last Saturday in November, diminishing the chances for a rematch in the championship game.

And

"There was discussion, Delany said, of moving Ohio State-Michigan to earlier in November. That would have at least created a better possibility for a rematch. The loser would have at least had a chance to "rehab" itself by winning out over the next month. Do-or-die on the last Saturday in November makes it mostly die for the loser."

I do not understand this. If the two teams play earlier in the season, that would have just as big of an impact on the divisional race as a game on the last weekend of the season. Actually it would seem that it would more likely lead to a re-match in the Title game. If one of the team's is in a do-or-die situation and the other has already clinched its division, the team in the do-or-die situation will probably have a greater chance of winning than an earlier point in the season. The non-do-or-die team would presumably be the better team, as they already won their division. So under normal circumstances, like an early November game, they would be more likely to win, decreasing the probability of a re-match relative to the last week of the season.

Actually the problem with this setup is that the re-match is too likely. The same two teams playing on back-to-back weeks is less intriguing than other possibilities. The obvious solution to this problem would have been to put Michigan and Ohio St. in the same division.

The New Big 10 Divisional Alignment Part II: Geography

2010-09-13T13:00:00.001-05:00

I had planned to have a couple of posts last week that I just did not have time for and am going to try and catch up this week.

Division 1: Michigan, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan State, Northwestern, Minnesota

Division 2: Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin, Purdue, Indiana, Illinois

In some respects this is a curious course. The conference could have split down geographically pretty easy into:
East: Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio St., Penn St., Indiana and Purdue

West: Illinois, Northwestern, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska

Typically I think that many people worry too much about geography when determining divisions. How can the Dallas Cowboys be in the East? How can the Indianapolis Colts be in the South? However, I think these concerns are overblown. The two reasons for having geographically compact divisions are that they lead to greater rivalries and that the timing of games work out better if the teams are in the same time zone. However, in the Cowboys case, would the rivalries actually be more intense if the Cowboys played in the same division as the Saints and Texans than they are with the Eagles, Redskins and Giants? The time-zone issue is less important for the Cowboys because the game times are either completely pre-set for national games or during the day. Also one time zone difference is not that important like the three-zone difference between Eastern and Pacific.
Returning to the Big 10 expansion, time zones probably don’t matter too much in this case. However, the biggest rivals tend to be between the teams that are next to each other, so why not just break down the divisions geographically. The East with Penn St., Ohio St. and Michigan might be a little stronger than the West. But the West would still have Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin, so it would not be any bigger of a mismatch than the current Big 12 North-South breakdown.

The New Big 10 Divisional Alignment Part I: The Importance of Tradition

2010-09-03T16:08:00.002-05:00

With the expansion of Nebraska to the Big 10, in order to allow a championship game, the conference had to split into two divisions:

Division 1: Michigan, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan State, Northwestern, Minnesota

Division 2: Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin, Purdue, Indiana, Illinois

(For some background and additional analysis of this issue see:

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100903/SPORTS0201/9030348/1131/sports0201/U-M--OSU-on-top--MSU-not-so-much

http://www.annarbor.com/sports/big-ten-splits-without-creating-division-separation-of-wolverines-buckeyes-would-make-bo-and-woody-p/)

Adam Rittenberg at ESPN says that the divisional alignment was based on economics, in particular having a marketable championship game and ignored tradition. I agree with that.

I think one of the big appeals of sports is rivalries. Since sports are a zero-sum game, you cannot increase interest by increasing the average number of wins. Rivalries can make certain games matter more and thus increase the entire "interest" pie. To develop rivalries you can depend on:

1. Tradition. The easiest way is to have traditional rivals already in place.

2. Geographical proximity. Having two teams near each other increases interest in a particular game since the opposing fans might travel to the games or interact with opposing fans on a regular basis.

3. Big or competitive games. Think Cowboys-49ers or more recently Colts-Patriots. In the Big 10 a good example might be Penn St.-Iowa in recent years.

I think the Big 10 really dropped the ball in not keeping some of their rivalries intact. Wisconsin is not in the same division as what I would assume to be their three biggest rivals: Minnesota, Iowa and Michigan and will only keep their rivalry game with Minnesota (each team has one rival in the other division). Penn St. and Michigan St. are not in the same division. Even the recently developed Penn St.-Iowa game is no more.

In Part II, I will discuss the issue of geography.

College Football Season is Here

2010-09-02T15:37:00.002-05:00

Given the state of the Cubs and the outlook for the Bears, I am ready for college football. This sentiment should be obviously necessary from the fact that I just admitted to following minor-league baseball pennant races. One big plus of I-A college football is that I am not as connected to any specific team, though I do root for Virginia Tech and Penn St, so I do not lose interest as quickly.

I hope to have a couple of posts on various college football topics over the next week or so. Meanwhile, here is a link to my past posts on a college-football playoff.

A Cubs-Redbirds Pennant Race

2010-09-02T12:26:00.002-05:00

The Chicago Cubs have had a bad season and the Cardinals have had a bad couple of weeks. However, one area where both teams are doing well is their AAA affiliates. The Iowa Cubs and Memphis Redbirds have the two best records in the Pacific Coast League. Unfortunately for the two teams they play in the same division, so only one of them will make the postseason, and the two teams square off with a four-game series to end the season. Iowa currently sports a one-game lead, thanks to a nine-run ninth inning comeback last night.

The incompetence of the major league Cubs has gotten so pathetic that I am now more closely following their top three affiliates, all of whom are in pennant races. The AA Tennessee Smokies are running away in the Southern League and the Advanced-A Daytona Cubs are trying to stay in the race in the Florida State League.

What is a Bunker?

2010-08-16T11:52:00.002-05:00

Dustin Johnson missed out on a playoff in yesterday's PGA Championship after breaking a rule about not grounding his club in a bunker (see here). While Johnson was clearly not as well-versed on the local rules of the course as he should have been, my bigger question is about the particular ground rules that were used to deal with the large number of bunkers on the course.

"The dilemma," Wilson explained, "is that it's even harder to say some of these are not bunkers and some of them are, because then how do you define those? And then a player would essentially be treading on thin ice almost every time he entered a sandy area wondering where he was. And with 1,200 of them, there's no way to confirm with each player exactly where he lays." (Link)

My problem with this explanation is that the rules that were in place do not seem as definitive to me as this suggests:

1. Bunkers: All areas of the course that were designed and built as sand bunkers will be played as bunkers (hazards), whether or not they have been raked. This will mean that many bunkers positioned outside of the ropes, as well as some areas of bunkers inside the ropes, close to the rope line, will likely include numerous footprints, heel prints and tire tracks during the play of the Championship. Such irregularities of surface are a part of the game and no free relief will be available from these conditions. (Link)

"All areas of the course that were designed and built as sand bunker will be played as bunkers …" means that someone (the golfer) has to make a determination as to whether a spot of dirt or sand was designed to be a bunker at a particular spot. If the purpose is to make the distinction obvious, wouldn't a more reasonable rule be:

"Any obvious bunker inside the lines of the course is a bunker. Any sand outside those lines should not be treated as a bunker."

"Any sand on the course should be considered to be a bunker"

Given that there were people walking through a lot of the outer bunkers so they would not play similarly to an actual sand trap anyway, I like the first version better. Also, a rope is a pretty clear delineator. However, either of these rules should be clearer than the actual rule.

The Dark Side of Moneyball

2010-08-12T13:56:00.002-05:00

Bill Simmons and Brian Goff discuss the issue of excessively long baseball games. I concur that this is a problem. I also am in favor of the suggested solutions of eliminating the DH and reducing the time between innings (commercials). Also, steps to reduce the amount of time between pitches (particularly for Kyle Farnsworth) would help.

However, I want to focus on one additional element of the problem that Simmons mentions, the number of pitches per at bat. One element of the Moneyball strategy is that it encourages looking for a walk and taking pitches by the batter. However, this will lead to longer at-bats and thus longer games. Combined with recent concerns that high pitch counts will lead to more injuries, longer at-bats will also lead to more pitching changes, compounding the problem of longer games.

So here we have a strategy that increases the chance of winning for teams that employ it, but when used by everyone creates a negative impact on the sport as a whole. It reminds me of the neutral-zone trap that came into being in the NHL in the mid-90s. It helped teams win but certainly made for a less enjoyable sport to watch. The NHL eventually changed its rules to make it a less appealing strategy to use (eliminating the two-line pass and calling more obstruction penalties). However, there is not an obvious solution to solving the taking pitches problem. Even increasing the number of balls needed for a walk from 4 to 5 might have the perverse incentive of batters taking more pitches as pitchers have less incentive to throw strikes.

My MVP Picks at the All-Star Break

2010-07-13T21:51:00.002-05:00

Here are my picks for MVP at the All-Star Break of the baseball season. For the one-third list see here.

NL	AL
Halladay	Morneau
Johnson	Cano
Votto	Crawford
Wright	Longoria
Zimmerman	Hamilton
Holliday	Lee
Jiminez	Liriano
Prado	Beltre
Wainwright	Lester
Utley	Cabrera

Obviously, Utley will not be on this list much longer given his current injury, but at this point he is still done enough to hang onto the last spot. Actually, the 9^th and 10^th spot are so close to those who would be 11^th or 12^th such that that spot might change by this weekend.

Comparing to the list from a month and a half ago, each league has five of the same players and 5 different players.

LeBronathon II

2010-07-09T10:55:00.002-05:00

I'm really glad the NBA has a salary cap to ensure competitive balance.

LeBronathon

2010-07-08T12:55:00.002-05:00

The excessive ESPN coverage of LeBron James's decision on which team to play for next year has got to stop. Sportscenter the last two days has been at least 50% LeBron James. Given that 25% of the show every night will be taken up covering the Yankees, Red Sox and Mets, there is not mean much time for anything else. There was a token mention of the World Cup both nights, but the only way you could see highlights of your favorite baseball team was if they managed to blow a 6-run lead in the 9^th inning or a 3-run lead the next night. Tonight ESPN has an hour devoted to his announcement. How are they going to extend his decision into an hour-long show? The announcement should take 10 seconds. How fast can you say Miami Heat?

There is only one word to describe this phenomenon: Favresque.

Low-Scoring Soccer

2010-07-06T17:17:00.002-05:00

Americans are often derided for not liking soccer because it is low-scoring. They are accused of not being able to understand that a sport that does not have much scoring can be exciting. They are also accused of not being able to accept ties. While there are some people who think soccer is boring because it is low-scoring, there are others who think it is boring simply because of its nature. I personally am a fan of the sport and am especially a fan of the World Cup. (Aside: I appreciate FIFA scheduling the World Cup to coincide with the worst three years for the Cubs in the last decade: 2002, 2006 & 2010).

However, the supporters of soccer should realize that there is a fundamental problem with soccer that is related to its low-scoring: the importance of questionable refereeing decisions. If a goal is rare a flawed referee call wiping out or failing to wipe out a goal is going to be much more important than in a referee call incorrectly waving-off a basket in basketball. This World Cup there have been four key goal/no goal calls that I remember:

England vs. Germany

Argentina vs. Mexico

US vs. Slovenia

US vs. Algeria

Three of these were early in the game (all but the US vs. Slovenia) and all but one was considered to make the difference in the outcome (the US scored late against to Algeria to make the earlier missed goal meaningless). *

In other sports what are the key referee decisions which are remembered, whether they were correct or not, were all late in the game:

Denkinger call in 1985 World Series (9^th inning)

Jeffrey Maier no-interference in 1996 ALCS (8^th inning)

1972 Gold-medal basketball game (3 seconds left)

Tuck-rule game (2 minutes to go)

5^th Down game (Last play of the game)

1999 Stanley Cup Game 6 (Triple overtime)

These were all 50-50 games that ended up being influenced by a referee decision but got to that point in the game by being evenly matched. Some soccer calls are so influential that they end up completely dictating the outcome.

* There have been some questionable Red Cards as well and the controversy over the Suarez hand ball. However, the Suarez hand ball was almost universally seen as the correct call with the rule coming under fire, and Red Cards are more subjective than other decisions.

Florida Marlins and Pure Evil

2010-06-21T15:01:00.002-05:00

As a Cubs fan I've always known that the Florida Marlins sold their soul to take away the 2003 NL Pennant from the Cubs. Now the devil has come to collect.

Does the US Need to Beat Slovenia?

2010-06-17T16:02:00.002-05:00

Everyone is talking about the US game as a must-win game for the Americans. While a loss would just about finish the US, and a win would put the US in very good position, a tie would certainly keep the US in good position to still advance.

Here are the possible scenarios:

Versus Slovenia Versus Algeria Points Advancement?

Decisive outcomes:

L, L: 1 No advancement

T, L: 2 No advancement

W, W: 7 Advancement

W, T: 5 Advancement

Likely not advancing:

L, T: 2 Only way to advance would be for England to tie Algeria and lose to Slovenia. Then Algeria, US and England all tie at 2 points and the US could advance on the tie-breaker.

T, T: 3 Would need England to tie Algeria and either i) England to lose to Slovenia or ii) England to tie Slovenia and the US to win tie-breaker on goals.

L, W: 4 Would need England to either to fail to win both games or England to win one and lose the other and advance on tie-breaker.

All of the above seem highly unlikely and would see the US advance along with Slovenia instead of England. Nobody in the world, except the most neurotic, pessimistic Englishman, would expect England to finish up their final two games with a tie and a loss.

Probably advancing:

T, W: 5 The only way the US would not advance would be if England beats Algeria and ties Slovenia and the US loses the tie-breaker to both England and Slovenia.

W, L: 4 If England wins its final two games, this would be exactly the same outcome as the US had in the 2002 World Cup, backing into advancing. Actually the scenarios where the US fails to advance are pretty numerous, i) Algeria and Slovenia beat England, ii) Algeria beats England, England beats Slovenia and beats US on tie-breaker, iii) Algeria-England tie, England and Slovenia don't tie, Algeria beats US on tie-breaker, iv) Algeria-England tie, Slovenia-England tie, US loses tie-breaker to Algeria and Slovenia, v) England beats Algeria, loses to Slovenia, US loses tie-breaker to England, vi) England beats Algeria, ties Slovenia, US loses tie-breaker to Slovenia. However, the US can still advance in most of these scenarios if they can keep their tie-breaker numbers high (lots of goals, win by a lot).

Therefore the US will be in good position to advance if it:

1) Does not lose to Slovenia

2) Wins one game

So therefore a tie against Slovenia is not the end of the world, though it does put a little more pressure on the last game which the US will have to win.

Territorial Rights and New Arenas: The Case of the Phoenix Coyotes

2010-06-04T12:12:00.002-05:00

Brad Humphreys at the IJSF blog has written extensively on the reluctance of the NHL to allow the Phoenix Coyotes to move to Southern Ontario. See here, here and here, though there are obviously many more as the last one listed is Part X. The resistance to the move is motivated by protecting the territorial rights of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Buffalo Sabres.

However, I believe there is a pretty strong secondary motive to the reluctance to a move: the relatively new arena that the Coyotes play in Glendale. Glendale built an arena for the Coyotes in 2003. The arena is only for hockey, as the Phoenix Suns play in US Airways arena (formerly American West Arena; that name change cost me a point in a recent trivia contest). While some teams certainly care about some future team invading their territorial rights, they are all interested in eventually having an arena built for the team by the local municipalities. I do not think Nashville has to worry about another hockey team moving to their city, but they will probably want the city to build them a new arena at some point.

If the Coyotes move out of Arizona, the next time a team threatens to move unless they get a new arena, opponents will have a pretty convincing retort:

Team: "Build us a new arena or we will move to Albuquerque."

Opponents of new arena: "Well, if we build the arena, we will spend $300 million, then the team will play there for five years and then move to Canada. Look at what happened to Glendale."

Team: ?

One way to test this theory is to see if the league would restrict the team from moving to a location without a problem with territorial rights such as Houston, Kansas City or Winnipeg. Of course none of those markets would be nearly as valuable to an owner as Southern Ontario.

Instant Replay

2010-06-03T11:20:00.002-05:00

I was not watching the "Perfect Game" last night by Armando Galarraga, because I was too busy watching the Flyers' 4-3 overtime win over the Blackhawks. What I am struck by is the discrepancy in instant replay rules between hockey and baseball. Baseball supposedly cannot have instant replay because it will break up the flow of the game. However, hockey which has a lot more natural flow to the game has instant replay. In last night's game there were two key calls that went to instant replay, one giving the Flyers a goal and one not giving them a goal in overtime. The first one went to replay after the game continued for a minute and a half. If hockey can have instant replay despite problems with the flow of the game, then I cannot see how baseball cannot. Admittedly hockey needs instant replay more in that both of the calls would have been impossible to necessarily get right without replay, whereas the ump in the baseball game should have gotten the play at first base right anyway.

P.S. After writing this but before posting, I found another argument along the same lines.

My MVP Picks at the 1/3 Mark

2010-06-02T09:33:00.005-05:00

Here are my picks for MVP at the 1/3 Mark of the baseball season. (Actually as of games on Saturday).
NL
Halladay
Utley
Jiminez
Votto
Heyward
Byrd
Johnson
Wainwright
Willingham
Lincecum

AL
Morneau
Cano
Longoria
Rios
Wells
Jackson
Youkilis
Crawford
Hudson
Beltre

The most interesting thing is that “the year of the pitcher” seems to be primarily an NL phenomenon, as the NL ballot has five pitchers to the AL’s zero pitchers. I think this is also a result of there being more really good position players in the AL so far. Also realize that each start could make a big difference for a starter, so the NL ballot actually would have changed some since Saturday as both Wainwright and Jiminez had good starts since then.

Tennessee Smokies

2010-05-31T10:03:00.003-05:00

My family and I went on a vacation to the Smoky Mountains last week. As part of the trip I dragged everyone to see the Tennessee Smokies play. The Smokies are the AA affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, my favorite team. Amazingly the Smokies managed to leave nine men on base despite hitting into two double plays. They also had a base runner hit by a batted ball and let the go-ahead-run score thanks to an error by their third baseman. Sounds like they are ready to be called up to the big leagues.

End Snark. Actually two of the nine men left on base were at the end of the game after the winning run had been scored. The error was made by a 20-year old, and the base runner hit by the batted ball was a pitcher who probably hasn't had too many chances to practice base running. And of course they won the game, are 29-20 and in first place despite their starting shortstop getting called up to the Cubs three weeks ago.

Number of Playoff Teams: NBA vs. NHL Comparison

2010-05-14T15:28:00.002-05:00

The NBA and NHL have fairly similar structures to them. Each league plays the same number of games, 82, plays the same length playoff series, 7 games, and lets the same number of teams in to the playoffs, two 8 team conference playoffs. Both have a problem with their playoff structure from my point of view. However, it is not the same problem for each. In the NBA you have a number of teams that have little or no chance of winning even after making the playoffs. The talk-show hosts in Chicago discussed whether it would be better for the Bulls to make the playoffs or miss and improve their draft position. Getting the 8^th seed has very little value in actually winning a championship. In the NHL since every team can win the regular season matters very little if you are in playoff qualifying position.

This year the semi-final matchups in the NBA will feature the 1 and 3 seeds facing off in one conference and the 2 and 4 seeds in the other conference. The NHL will also not have any duplicate seeds between the conferences as the 1 and 2 and either the 6 and 8 seeds or the 7 and 8 seeds.

This outcome in the NHL vs. the NBA is not new. Since going to approximately the current playoff system the NBA has seen three 8-seeds beat 1-seeds in the first round in 54 matchups. These results may overstate the likelihood of an upset as two of the 8-seeds won 5-game playoff series, rather than the current 7-game series, which should give the weaker team a better chance. Also one of those two seasons was strike-shortened, so the regular-season performance should be less tied to post-season performance than in a normal-length season. In the NHL, 8-seeds have beaten 1-seeds nine times in 32 matchups. Only one of those came in a strike-shortened season and all of them were in 7-game series.

Here's the thing. Neither situation is optimal. The NBA situation simply adds in teams with no chance of actually winning, while the NHL situation leads to a de-valuing of the regular season as any team that makes the playoffs has about as good a chance of winning. The difference in outcome is probably attributable to differences in the nature of the sports (less competitive balance in general in the NBA, hot goalies in the NHL). Regardless of the cause the problem is too many teams in the playoffs and it does not depend on the underlying nature of the sport.

What a Hypothetical 96-Team Field for the NCAA Tournament Would Look Like

2010-03-25T16:25:00.002-05:00

The NCAA seems pretty insistent on expanding the NCAA Tournament to 96-Teams. Just like with last year's tournament, I wanted to see what a 96-team field this year would look like. I assume that the teams who made the actual tournament (65), plus all of the at-large teams for the NIT (24), plus any automatic bids for the NIT who had a higher seed than the lowest at-large team (1-Kent St.) would all make it. That leaves six slots. I will primarily use RPI as a measure of the best teams, though I will actually examine the records of the teams and generally teams from big conferences get in with lower RPI's. A dubious assumption I will also make is to also assume that any team with a losing record will not get in. Using those criteria I would say that the additional six teams would be Arizona, VCU, Marshall, Miami, SLU and Alabama. Based on my selections every BCS conference team with a strictly winning record, except an ineligible USC, would have made the tournament.

Here is a full bracket for a 96-team tournament from the Washington Post. The only differences between mine and his, other than 1-bid conferences, are that he includes Georgia, South Carolina, Charlotte and La Tech, and I include Ohio, Houston, Alabama and Nevada. I had excluded Georgia and South Carolina because they had losing records. Ohio and Houston won automatic bids; Charlotte continued its tail-spin and Nevada beat LaTech after the other story was written. So the differences can be explained by either one assumption (including losing teams) or when the selections were made.

Baseball Leaving Oneonta

2010-03-01T15:00:00.002-06:00

At the Hardball Times there is an article bemoaning the departure of minor-league baseball in Oneonta. As I have discussed previously, Oneonta is a pretty small city to support a minor-league baseball team. In my study I had it as the third least likely city to host a baseball team that was hosting a baseball team. I would like to admit to one limitation of my study. I was not able to incorporate any measure of tradition and longevity of a team in a location. Tradition and history are an important part of the appeal of baseball, so this is a legitimate concern. For instance, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh with long histories would seem to be better markets for baseball than similarly-sized markets without much baseball history such as Portland and Sacramento. Even with this consideration, the small size of the Oneonta market does not seem to be able to support a Short-Season A team.

I realize there will always be fans who are upset about the loss of a team, but Norwich just seems to me to be a much better market than Oneonta.

Playoff Creep II

2010-02-23T15:31:00.002-06:00

Mid-Majority had a post a week ago discussing expansion of the NCAA Tournament to 96 Teams (H/T CAAHoops). The post talks about how it will not cheapen the regular season. As I explained before, the problem is that the majority of the additional bids will still go to the BCS Conference teams. I do not see how expanding the tournament will make the regular season be more important when all it will take is a winning record for the big conference teams. Also it says that the seeds will matter. The seed difference for 7 and 8 versus 9 and 10 will matter a lot more. However, the upper seeds will matter a lot less. The difference between a 1-seed and a 5-seed is pretty important right now, as a 5-seed faces a formidable opponent in the first game, while the 1-seed does not. But with an extra round the 1-seeds will be facing much better competition. The 5-seeds could face a 12-seed or a 21-seed, while the 1-seed will face either a 16-seed or a 17-seed. Not much of a difference there.

I think the better first step is to start awarding the at-large spots to teams from more conferences. Whether there are 65 or 96 teams, the key to making the regular season matter is to have a closer to uniform distribution of at-large bids.

Impact of Team Success on Communities, a Response

2010-02-09T10:29:00.002-06:00

I posted the following in the comments at the post on my paper at The Sports Economist. The names refer the authors of the original post and the comments to that post.

I would like to defend the results of our paper to a couple of comments that have been made.

Brian: "The D&E results, themselves, point to problems for this front -- showing an NFL presence lowers wages/incomes while an MLB presence raises them. Given the relative popularity of the two sports in recent decades, that result makes little sense."

Donald: "The first is that the (partial) effect of having an NFL team is estimated as negative (but positive for MLB)."

I'll admit we did not really look at the baseball franchise variable since we were not really that interested in that variable. I would interpret the football franchise variable as being important when combined with the winning percentage variable. If there is no impact on income from having an NFL team, but there is a positive impact from winning relative to losing, the NFL franchise variable would have to be negative while the NFL winning percentage is positive. As Brian suggested, given all of the other NFL variables in the regression, it is difficult to interpret the simple dummy variable for the presence of an NFL team.

Donald: "The second is that the marginal effect of having a good team becomes negative at just slightly better than a winning record."

We do discuss why the impact peaks at just over .500. There are a couple of reasons to think this could happen:

1) The impact peaks as the team reaches an almost certain playoff team. That could be consistent with what fans care about.

2) Fans could care more about loss avoidance, which would imply that they just want to get to a decent team. An argument against this possibility is that the psychological literature actually suggests that fans do care more about winning than loss avoidance.

3) There are a lot less teams when you get to the extreme values for win percentages.

4) A square term is going to find a peak somewhere unless it goes off exponentially at the end.

My personal view is that it is a combination of points 1 and 4. Fans' moods are pretty equally good from about 11 to 16 wins. A plateau at 11 wins is not possible just using a quadratic term, so the functional form forces us into a peaking at 11 wins.

Donald: "Of somewhat more importance is the lack of any sort of theoretical foundation for the possibility of the success of a professional sports team having a positive impact on per capita income."

While we did not include a formal theoretical model, I think we gave a couple of reasonable scenarios for why the income would increase. The psychological research shows that there are compelling reasons that sport team success (or failure) could affect mood. Other studies suggest that there are reasons to think that mood would affect both spending and productivity. Depending on your view of macroeconomics, a substantial increase in consumption (Keynesian) or productivity (RBC) should lead to an increase in income. Admittedly the intermediate portion of the model would be interesting as well. Two ways to proceed with that would be a formal model of the relationship between mood and income (regardless of sports) or to estimate the mood of the population (which would be nearly impossible).

Donald: "… I'm inclined to think their result is mostly chance."

It is always possible that any result is due to chance. However, we did follow accepted statistical techniques to get our results. Further studies may eventually confirm or disprove our findings.

Greg: "Trying to winnow out a positive effect on community income or hard economic values of any kind from an NFL or MLB franchise is an exercise largely in justifying huge public expenditures and rationalizing political benefits."

Brian: "Again, let me reemphasize, even the existence of large effects does not provide an open-and-shut case for supporting publicly-financed stadiums."

We really did not intend our study to be specifically related to the issue of stadium financing. I think our only policy recommendation was that if cities do build stadiums that the funding be conditional on team success to some degree. This policy would also be consistent with some of the contingent valuation studies. I think that the owners' reactions would be fascinating. They definitely would not want it in there, but they also would not want to argue against it.

Impact of Team Success on the Local Economy

2010-02-05T16:17:00.002-06:00

My paper with Christian End analyzing the impact of the local team's success on the economy is in the current issue of Economic Inquiry. A couple of links related to that paper were published today. At the Sports Economist, Brian Goff discusses his view on the paper. Also at CNNMoney, in a story about the impact of the Saints' Super Bowl run on small business, I am quoted discussing the impact of team success to personal income.

Minor League Baseball Returns to Norwich (Without a Missed Season)

2010-02-03T16:38:00.002-06:00

Late last year the Connecticut Defenders, a AA minor-league baseball team, moved from Norwich, CT to Richmond, VA. In a previous post I described a paper I had done to examine these types of moves. That move seemed like a pretty obvious choice. Well, it looks like Norwich will still have a minor league baseball team next year (H/T).

According to my model, Norwich was the fifth most over-represented AA level city (see Table 7). However, at the Short-Season A level* that the New York-Penn League plays, Norwich would be on the upper end of the middle of the pack. The team is moving from Oneonta, which I had as the third least likely city to have a minor-league baseball team at any level. Oneonta was a very small city to have a minor-league baseball team, and Norwich seems like a much more promising location.

*Actually in my study I combined the Short-Season A and Rookie levels since they are pretty similar and there was not very many cities in each category.

Keynes and Hayek Rap

2010-01-30T09:37:00.002-06:00

My department chair showed me this the other day:

College Football Playoff Part V: 2009 Review

2010-01-25T22:23:00.002-06:00

Many people feel that 2009 is the year that clearly shows that a playoff is necessary for college football. Maybe an eight-team playoff would have worked pretty well this year; however, it seems likely to me that the strongest team won. While there was some controversy regarding the fact that three undefeated teams did not get a chance to play for a national championship, that seems to suggest to me that a four-team playoff this year would have been a disaster. At least one of the undefeated teams would have to be excluded and Florida with only one loss to Alabama would also have had a pretty compelling case. In fact the winners besides Alabama were the fifth and sixth teams in the BCS and very well might have been the teams excluded from a four-team playoff. It is interesting that after the season all of the playoff talk now discusses an eight-team playoff as opposed to a four-team playoff. If a four-team playoff had existed, I'm sure playoff creep would have already crept in to an eight-team or sixteen-team playoff.

Sports Economics Links

2010-01-20T14:00:00.002-06:00

1. The Wall Street Journal has a story on the value of being a fan of the Vikings. (H/T Marginal Revolution) See King Banaian and Phil Miller for more perspective. King in particular has a positive view of the study.

2. Yet another story on how hosting a Super Bowl is not a windfall to the local economy. The story quotes a few sports economists in arguing against large increases in economic activity due to hosting. At Division of Labor one of the economists, Craig Depken, further defends the "skeptics'" view.

New Oakland (Fremont?) A’s Stadium

2010-01-19T11:42:00.004-06:00

The prospect of a new stadium for the A's in Fremont is back on the table. Given the economic and budget situation in California currently I do not see this as particularly likely. However, from a geographical point of view, Fremont is the optimal location given the rules in place. Unlike Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, the Giants and A's do not share the territorial rights for the Bay Area. The A's have Alameda County plus other areas. The Giants have San Francisco, Santa Clara County plus other areas. At some point in the past San Francisco and Oakland were probably the obvious likely locations for the two teams, but now San Jose is the largest metropolitan area in the Bay Area. It is also quite wealthy. Fremont represents the closest city to San Jose that is currently in the A's territorial rights, or more importantly outside the Giants' territorial rights. The stadium may not be built for a number of years, but if a stadium is eventually built I would not be surprised to see it in Fremont.

William and Mary Basketball

2010-01-17T20:34:00.002-06:00

With the disappointing seasons by the Cubs and Bears, I have been forced to follow my alma mater's football and basketball teams. Fortunately, William and Mary football had a pretty successful season in reaching the semifinals of the I-FCS playoffs. This result is not that surprising given that the team just missed the playoffs last year, it was the third playoff trip this decade and they reached the semifinals back in '04. What is more surprising is the performance of the basketball team, which has started off the season 14-3. William and Mary does not have a particularly renowned history in basketball, being one of the five teams that have been in the NCAA since the inception of the tournament never to have been to the tournament. When I went to school, "the game" was when the team came back from 23 down to Virginia to force overtime, which they proceeded to lose in overtime. How many teams have their most memorable games in losses?

This year, the team is winning by taking a lot of three-pointers and making a lot of them. The style of the team allows them to come back from way behind at times, as can be seen in this video of their comeback against Delaware last week, where the team came from seven-down with 32 seconds to win (H/T CAAHoops). Hopefully the success will continue all the way to the tournament.

The Bradley-Silva Trade

2010-01-13T22:01:00.002-06:00

There has been much consternation in Cubland over the trade of Milton Bradley for Carlos Silva. As a Cub fan, I cannot say I was happy about the trade when it happened. J.C. actually thinks it did not hurt the Cubs too much, though that is mostly based on the combination of Silva not being completely worthless and the six million dollars. But most importantly, J.C. does not value Bradley particularly highly. Interestingly, I do not think his methodology accounts for much negative value for Bradley's attitude. Baseball Analysts estimates that that could cost his team as much as 1.5 wins above replacement, though this might be hard to look at on straight value as there is certainly an asymmetric effect. Bradley's attitude costs the Cubs more than it will cost the Mariners. The analysis from the Baseball Analysts, however, generally feels the Mariners won the trade. Presumably the difference here is from a higher estimated on-the-field value for Bradley.

An example of a bad analysis of the trade comes from Fangraphs. There are two main problems with their analysis. The first problem is the assumption that Silva will replace Gorzelanny in the rotation. First, if Gorzelanny is the much better pitcher, even the Cubs would presumably start him regardless of how much they are making. Second, Lilly is hurt, so the Cubs will have to need an additional starter. Given that Lilly was the only lefty in the rotation and that Gorzelanny is a lefty and Silva is not, that one of the spots in the rotation would be Gorzelanny's to lose. Lastly, even if the Cubs have no plans for Gorzelanny, he still has trade value and the Cubs could recoup some of his value.

The second problem is completely not accounting for the difference in defensive value because Byrd will be playing CF and Bradley would be playing RF. Their assumptions of the trade being essentially Silva and Byrd for Bradley, turned out to be correct as the Cubs used most of the money from the Mariners to sign Marlon Byrd. Pretty much any analysis of their offensive contributions will conclude that the Cubs are taking a hit to their offense. Some of the commenters at the original post suggest that a defensive position update needs to be made. However, I think that is slightly incorrect. They are essentially replacing one for the other in the lineup, so the offensive contribution is correct. However, at the same time, the Cubs have dramatically improved their defense with the move. This table summarizes the defensive issue:

Fielding Bible Zone Rating

Player value in RF value in CF value in RF value in CF

Byrd -5 0 to -9.5

Fukudome 3 -5 13.1 -18.1

Bradley -7 -6.9

Even if Byrd is not much of an upgrade over Fukudome in CF, Fukudome is a big upgrade over Bradley in RF. Regardless of whether the improvement in defense outweighs the downgrade in offense, any analysis of the trade ignoring defense is going to be insufficient.

The most distressing thing about the analysis is that it comes from a sabermetric site (and a generally good one at that).

Highest Scoring NFL Playoff Game

2010-01-11T13:39:00.002-06:00

When I woke up on Sunday morning, I had attended the highest scoring NFL playoff game in history. This morning that is no longer true. For a long time that Eagles-Lions game was a trifecta for me: the only NFL game I ever attended was the highest scoring playoff game in NFL history, while being the coldest I have ever been. I have attended two Rams games in the last few years, so now only that last part is still true. I would really prefer to avoid breaking that (admittedly subjective) record.

Wild Cards and Meaningless Games in the NFL

2010-01-01T21:55:00.003-06:00

It seems every season there is a discussion about teams resting their starters for meaningless/nearly meaningless games at the end of the NFL season. These discussions get a little confusing because there are three different questions associated with the problem. This season the questions have come up with the Colts-Jets game last week and the Bengals-Jets game this week. Since most writers at least relate to the first two issues, I will just link to a number of examples to begin with (see here,
here,
here,
here, here and here)

Is it optimal for the team to rest starters? The optimal choice in this question differs between the Bengals and the Colts. When the Colts played the Jets, they still had one regular season game and were locked into a bye. A case could be made that they took their foot off the gas too soon. In the Bengals case, however, it is their last game and they will not be getting a bye, so they will have to play next week as well. Not only that, but their last playoff trip was ended when their quarterback got injured on the first series of their first playoff game. For that reason, I think they will be a little worried about injuries. I think I would be inclined to not go all out in the last game.
Is it moral for the teams to not try/go half speed in games that don't matter? Is it ok to do so unless the other team is going to be in the playoffs? I will not discuss the first question, but I will point out a problem with answering in the affirmative to the second. Let us say that the 4 and 5 seeds are locked in place, but that the 4 seed is playing a contender for the last playoff spot and the 5 seed is playing non-contender. If there is an advantage to resting players (see question 1) then the 5-seed would have an advantage over the 4-seed. That result does not seem fair to me.
Is there a way to design a playoff system that does not lead to teams resting players for key games for other teams? Jerome Bettis suggests that the NFL fix this problem but does not suggest any solutions. One reason he does not suggest a solution (and for that matter why the NFL has fixed the problem yet) is that there are no easy solutions to this problem. Pro-football Reference suggests three proposals that would help in some circumstances. Proposal 1 would eliminate the automatic home game for division winners, meaning that relatively poor teams that have clinched the division would still have an incentive to win to get a better seed. Proposal 2 at the same link would have a flexible number of playoff teams, meaning a 2-seed would lose its bye unless it was at least three games ahead of the 7-seed. The third proposal would be to have flex games for the last two games of an 18-game schedule. These flex games would be chosen so that playoff contenders played other playoff contenders. There are a couple of problems with these solutions. Proposals 2 and 3 are pretty revolutionary. Proposals 1 and 2 would not have fixed the Colts' and Bengals' problems this year, not that fixing this particular problem was the only idea behind the proposals. The only way to completely fix this problem would be to have no wild card teams and guarantee that teams only play intra-divisional games the last two weeks of the season. So unless you are willing to suggest that or something truly unusual like the above, it is simply a problem you will have to live with.

December Links

2009-12-30T15:01:00.002-06:00

1. Jim Hamilton discusses the merits of a college football playoff. I particularly like his point 2 on the likelihood of (or dislikelihood of) a college football playoff ending up with the best team winning.

2. A discussion of the costs to stockholders of the Tiger Woods scandal, estimated by two UC-Davis professors. (H/T The Sports Economist) (For full paper. Warning: the paper has not yet been peer-review, and I have not fully examined it yet myself, either.)

Shameless Self Promotion II

2009-12-21T22:32:00.003-06:00

I was quoted in the Sunday edition of the New Orleans Times-Picayune on the impact of the Saints' success this season on the local economy. I am a little worried about not doing too many more of these interviews as it seems to be bad luck. Iowa lost their first game a week and a half after a story quoting me, and the Saints lost their first game this past Saturday before the story was even published.

Financial Fallout on Tiger Woods

2009-12-15T12:08:00.002-06:00

I do not have much to add on this topic, but I figured I would provide a series of links to some interesting discussion of the cost to Tiger Woods of his transgressions.

http://thesportseconomist.com/2009/12/tiger-financial-fallout.htm

http://www.cnbc.com/id/34411400 (H/T)

http://thesportsbizblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/tiger-departs-scene-but-will-his.html

http://thesportsbizblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/tiger-endorsements-update-accenture.html Specifically on Accenture.

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/12/tiger-woods-will-pay-15-million-per.html (H/T) Estimate of the cost in lost endorsements.

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2009/12/tax-consequences-of-tiger-woods.html (H/T) On the tax implications.

College Football Playoff IV: Congressional Involvement

2009-12-12T09:25:00.002-06:00

Congress has decided to try and force a playoff on college football I-FBS. Many blogs are opposed to Congressional involvement (for instance Coyote Blog, Market Power, Cranky Con, and Café Hayek). Some of those writers may actually favor a playoff but are opposed to Congressional involvement or think that it has more important matters to deal with. I am opposed to Congressional involvement both because I oppose their objective but also based on principle that Congress should stay out of it. However, if a college football playoff keeps Congress from having time for another Cash for Clunkers or similar program, I will make that trade.

Playoff Creep

2009-12-11T14:18:00.003-06:00

One of my biggest concerns about a college-football playoff is the problem of playoff creep, i.e. that the number of teams would increase over time. A four-team or an eight-team playoff might end up with the best team winning fairly often, but a 16, 24 or 32 team playoff could have a very low correlation between the best teams and the championship teams. However, there is always going to be a debate about who should be the last team in, so there will always be pressure to include more teams. As further evidence of my point, the NCAA basketball tournament is considering increasing the number of teams from 65 to 96. As a fan of William and Mary, I probably should applaud this as it may be the only chance for my team to finally get to the NCAA tournament. Well, maybe they won't need help this year. Regardless, I think this proposal would have a huge negative effect on the importance of the regular season.

The four key effects on the importance of the regular season:

1) The big conference teams will be able to get in with a lower number of wins. Assume that all of the teams that made the NCAA tournament plus all of the NIT at-large teams plus NIT automatic bid team Davidson would have made a 96-team tournament in 2008. Then add in three additional teams, which using the NCAA's methodology, I guess to be Cincinnati, Houston and Nevada. That would mean the seven BCS conferences would get the following number of teams into the playoffs:

ACC: 9 of 12

Big 10: 9 of 11

Big 12: 9 of 12

Big East: 11 of 16

Pac 10: 7 of 10

SEC: 7 of 12

Only five BCS conference teams with a winning record would have missed out. Three of those teams were in the relatively weaker SEC (Ole Miss, Vanderbilt and Alabama), and the other two were barely above .500, Seton Hall (16-15) and NC State (16-14).

2) The potential 1, 2 and 3 seeds will have less to play for. The key gains for being a 1 seed as opposed to a 2 seed are that you avoid playing the likely other best teams in the country until the Final Four (other 1 seeds) and that you get an easier game in the first round. There has never been a 16 seed to beat a 1 seed and only four times has a 15 beaten a 2. Part of the reason is that the 1 and 2 seeds should be the best teams in the country, but another reason is that the 15 and 16 seeds are substantially worse than even the 14 and 13 seeds. There is a tremendous drop-off in quality of teams moving from 13 to 14 to 15 to 16. The last upset by a 15 seed was in 2001, and one reason for that is because the committee has gotten better at seeding the low seeds. The top teams get a real advantage by getting a top seed, playing a much weaker opponent and it gives them a little incentive to play well during the season. However, if the tournament expands to 96 teams, the 1 seeds will play the winner of the 16-17 game, which will now be a much better team. Last year, it would have included teams such as Kansas State, Kentucky and Tulsa. The old 15 and 16 seeds would now be 23 and 24 seeds and likely out of the tournament by the time the top teams play. The difference between being a 1 or 6 seed would drop considerably.

3) The mid majors would actually increase their at large bids. My projections of last year's tournament would have added at-large bids for the WCC, CAA, MAAC, Southern and MVC (2 teams) conferences. Those conferences had no at large bids last year. The mid-majors' regular season might actually influence their likelihood of playing in the tournament.

4) There would be a big difference between being an 8 seed and being a 9 seed, since the 8 seeds would have a bye and the 9 seeds would not. Teams at this borderline would have an incentive to win their last games to avoid an extra game.

If the key factor is making the regular season meaningful, reasons 1 and 2 argue against increasing, while 3 and 4 would argue in favor of increasing. It seems to me that the first two reasons are more important than the last two. Reason 4 only applies to a particular type of middling team. Reason 3 could be lessened if the committee would select a few more mid-majors for a 64-team tournament. In particular, the large conferences, which get the most attention, would have a particularly reduced importance to the regular season.

College Football Playoff Part III: A Great Link

2009-12-03T15:36:00.002-06:00

A few weeks ago, I got a link to a great website that discusses the pros and cons of a playoff in college football, the National Championship Issue. There are a series of articles on a possible playoff. The introduction can be found at:

http://thenationalchampionshipissue.blogspot.com/2009/05/arguments-for-against-di-college.html

and an index of the arguments:

http://thenationalchampionshipissue.blogspot.com/2007/05/index-of-arguments.html

November Links

2009-11-20T14:41:00.002-06:00

A couple of links:

The push for public subsidies for new stadiums has reached a new level of absurdity: blaming the lack of a Jumbotron for a fumble. Snarky Bears' fan follow-up: maybe the Vikings can blame this miss on the lack of wind patterns in the dome.
My co-author for the college football playoff article, Tim Kane, was on the Nightly Business Report earlier this week. He was on the 11/16/09 episode at the 22:30 mark. Tim talked about the importance of entrepreneurship for employment growth.

College football playoff, part II: Examination of a 4-team playoff

2009-11-16T12:51:00.002-06:00

As a follow-up to my earlier post on my article on a college football playoff, I will be expanding on the issue of a four-team playoff.

There are a number of issues related to problems with a college football playoff. Here are the key ones for me:

Tradition of the bowls
The fact that college football is different is a plus
Expanding the playoffs would not necessarily improve the chances that the best team would win
The regular season matters more in the current system
The optimal number of playoff teams is not going to be constant

That last point I will expand on in a later post.

In many respects there is already a playoff system. It is just a playoff with two teams. So there has already been a little bit of destruction on points 1 and 2 with the creation of the BCS. In terms of fairness, I think a legitimate argument could be made that a four-team playoff might be optimal in terms of "fairness". It only has two rounds, so the probability of the best team getting upset is not extremely high. In general the regular season would still matter. However, even here there would be exceptions, such as the upcoming SEC championship. If Alabama and Florida win out, so that either team's only loss is to the other, I think they would have a pretty compelling case for inclusion in a 4-team playoff. If 2 out of the 3 of Boise St., TCU and Cincinnati lose out, the loser of the SEC championship game would almost be guaranteed of going to a four-team playoff. That result would seem to make that game pretty anti-climactic. If Boise State, TCU, Texas, Cinci and the SEC champion are undefeated there would still be at least one undefeated team missing out on a four-team playoff. The argument in that scenario would be that the optimal number of teams in the playoffs this year would be six. Even in the season most mentioned for needing a playoff, 2004, there were three contending teams (all with one loss), and then a mishmash of teams with two losses. A three team playoff might have been optimal in that year but even then there would be controversy over who got the bye week.

These cases all point to the likelihood that the playoffs would ever-be expanding. A four-team playoff excluding Boise State and TCU would lead to calls for an eight-team playoff so that those teams could be included. Then the ACC and Pac-10 would call for an automatic bid, since they'd be missing out on the post-season, and a sixteen-team playoff with eight automatic bids would be created. The Sun Belt, Conference USA, the MAC and Notre Dame would then want their own automatic bid, and the play-offs would be expanded to 24 teams.

My one compromise solution would be a +1 system. The bowls would go back to the old system of conference tie-ins, i.e., the Rose Bowl with the Pac-10 and Big 10, and the Sugar Bowl with the SEC champion. Then a week later there would be a National Championship game between two of the bowl winners. The system would bring back a lot of the tradition of the bowl games, allow the regular season to mean something, and give the smaller conference teams a chance to prove themselves in a bowl game to see if they are worthy of playing for the national championship. Also, it would hopefully limit the amount of playoff creep by keeping the bowls in place.

Was Belichick’s decision to go for it on 4th down correct?

2009-11-16T12:20:00.002-06:00

Belichick is getting blasted for his decision to go for two late in the game against the Colts last night (see here, here, here and probably a hundred other places). A detailed statistical analysis seems to suggest that it was actually the right call. See these posts (1, 2) at the pro-footballreference.com blog and this one at Advance NFL Stats. For a less cerebral analysis in support of the decision see Merril Hoge.

One last point. It seems from this video that Peyton Manning was not happy about the Patriots going for it at the time. Since football games are zero-sum games, what is good for the Colts is necessarily bad for the Patriots. If the Colts want them to punt, then the best thing for the Patriots is to not punt. However, this analysis assumes rationality on the part of both teams, which may not be a correct assumption.

Would a college football playoff be fair?

2009-11-13T09:46:00.002-06:00

Tim Kane and I have a new article at RealClearSports arguing that a college football playoff would be less "fair" in determining a national champion than the current system. I hope to have a couple of smaller follow-up posts here in the next couple of days.

Tim is a friend of mine from graduate school who blogs regularly at Growthology.

Chase Utley

2009-11-04T15:53:00.002-06:00

Has Chase Utley gone from Bobby Grich to Derek Jeter in one World Series? Grich is one of the most overlooked players in recent history. I remember reading in Ryne Sandberg's autobiography that at the start of Sandberg's second year the team said that they wanted to turn him into a second baseman like Grich. At the time I had no idea who Grich was* but have since realized he was a really good player. Jeter is a great player who is often overrated by the media.

For the last few years I have felt that Utley has been the overlooked star of the Phillies. Utley has the profile of a player that is likely to be overlooked as he does many things well (hit for power, get on base, really good defense). Well, with his recent heroics in the World Series things may have begun swinging completely the other way (see here and for the counter argument).

* I have become more obsessed with baseball in the last 13 years.

Shameless self-promotion

2009-10-29T15:38:00.004-05:00

I was mentioned in a story in the Daily Iowan about the impact of the Iowa football team on the economy of the area.

I-FCS Cupcakes

2009-10-26T14:13:00.002-05:00

One of the more interesting topics in sports economics lately has been the market for cupcakes in college football, teams who are brought in just to get beat. These payouts can be quite profitable for small schools that cannot make big money selling tickets to their home games. Phil Miller and Stephen Karlson point to a story on Michigan bringing in Delaware State just to get beat. Delaware State had to forfeit a conference game to play the game:

You see, the Michigan Wolverines dangled $550,000 in front of the Hornets to play this Saturday. The only catch Delaware State already had a conference game set against North Carolina A&T set for that date.

So what did the Hornets do? Well what every Football Championship Series team would do: forfeit the conference game, take the money and, oh yeah, lose to Michigan 63-6.

I will quibble with one point made. I do not think every FCS (I-AA) school would do that. I do not think any team that has a shot at a playoff spot would make that decision. Also, FCS has a lot of schools that have long histories and reputations to protect. It is hard to imagine schools with prestigious reputations like William and Mary, Lafayette, or the Ivy League schools forfeiting a game for a payout. Also schools with strong reputations as top teams in FCS, even if they are having non-playoff seasons such as Georgia Southern, would not make this decision. Most of the schools most in need of the money may not feel comfortable enough with their position in their conference to forfeit a conference game. Because the MEAC is a conference made up specifically of HBC schools the connections between the schools may be stronger, and Delaware State might have been less concerned about punishment from the conference.

Given all of the reasons above, there are probably only a handful of teams in FCS that would make a similar decision.

White Flag Trades

2009-10-13T16:28:00.003-05:00

Last week the Missouri S&T promotions department did a profile on the ongoing research of my undergraduate student, Samantha Schussele. She is doing a study on the effects on attendance of a White Flag Trade. A White Flag Trade is defined as a trade by a team of a key player for prospects when the team is still in contention for the pennant. Her research is continuing, and so far the effects on attendance are not clear.

Minor League Baseball Returns to Richmond

2009-10-07T13:47:00.002-05:00

Minor league baseball is returning to Richmond, as the AA Connecticut Defenders will move there next year (H/T Sabernomics). Richmond for a long time had the AAA franchise of the Atlanta Braves. Before last season the team moved to Gwinnett County in exurban Atlanta. One advantage of this move was that having a AAA franchise nearby is advantageous to the major league team, since AAA players are often being called up to the major league team. However, the major issue was that Gwinnett County agreed to build a new stadium, while the park in Richmond was "old" (1985). J.C. at Sabernomics has covered the issue extensively over the last year (see here, here, here and many more).

A few years ago (data from 2003, published in 2006) I did a study looking at the relationship between minor league baseball team locations and various factors (population, income, distance from major league teams, etc.). However, it does not include stadium age or quality, which I was treating as an endogenous factor, i.e., a large city will have more resources to invest/waste on a ballpark. Over time baseball teams have distributed themselves very efficiently with few outliers from the predicted pattern. Table 6 of my paper presents the biggest outliers for AAA, AA, High-A and the metropolitan areas with no teams. According to the model, Richmond should have either a AAA or AA team (leaning towards AAA). If Richmond did not have a team at the time of the study, it would have been 5^th on the AAA list and 1^st on the other three. Richmond with no baseball team is clearly underrepresented by baseball.

Regardless of the stadium issues associated with the Richmond Diamond, the appeal of the Richmond market relative to Norwich, CT was too much for the Defenders' new ownership to ignore. Richmond's metropolitan area population in 2007 was 1,211,101, while Norwich's was 263,770. An additional one million potential fans can make up for a large number of other problems.

More on the Olympics

2009-10-05T18:30:00.003-05:00

JC at Sabernomics has more on this idea that Chicago was actually close to winning the Olympic vote. He discusses the idea that there was a Chicago/Rio coalition and that one of the two was going to win. He also points to evidence in support of Chicago being close in that the futures' markets were pointing to Chicago and Rio being in a dead heat.

Could Chicago have been close to winning its Olympic bid?

2009-10-05T15:02:00.002-05:00

Was Chicago actually fairly close to winning the vote for the 2016 Olympics? Given the discussion of Chicago finishing 4^th, only getting 18 of 94 votes, and being eliminated right off the bat, this would be very much in conflict to conventional wisdom. However, my intention in this post is to show that it is possible that Chicago could have come close to winning or even have won the final vote with just a few more votes in the first round of voting.

To look at whether Chicago may have been close to winning, first we need to look at the voting results:

City	Round 1 Votes	Round 2	Round 3
Rio	26	46	66
Madrid	28	29	32
Tokyo	22	20
Chicago	18

This implies the following revealed preferences of the voters:

Name	# of Voters	1^st Choice	2^nd Choice	3^rd Choice	4^th Choice
Rio	26	R	?	?	?
Chicago	18	C	R	?	?
Madrid	28	M	?	?	?
Tokyo	21	T	C/R	C/R/M	C/M

The Tokyo voters preferred Rio to Madrid, but it is not clear where Chicago fell in their rankings. So if Chicago could have survived the first round, even barely, the preferences of the voters are consistent with a possible comeback victory for Chicago.

The second key to victory under this scenario would have been a few voters who could have switched to Chicago in the first round, especially if they switched from Tokyo. There may be some evidence of that possibility:

Some IOC members theorized that a few voters who liked Chicago actually voted for Tokyo in the first round, figuring the American city would get through easily and not wanting the Japanese capital to be embarrassed.

Now this is all speculative, but it is at least possible. I will present four scenarios based on feasible preferences of voters. In each case I will transfer three votes from Tokyo to Chicago to begin with. I will not include any strategic voting, i.e., each voter votes for their highest remaining choice. I will also assume that all voters' preferences remain the same once the voting changes. Lastly, I will also ignore the fact that the vote totals increased after the first round.

Scenario 1: Chicago, 2^nd Choice City (Chicago Ultimately Wins)

Name	# of Voters	1^st Choice	2^nd Choice	3^rd Choice	4^th Choice
Rio	26	R	C	M	T
Chicago	21	C	R	M	T
Madrid	28	M	C	R	T
Tokyo1	15	T	C	R	M
Tokyo2	4	T	R	C	M

The original Tokyo voters are broken into two groups based on whether Chicago or Rio is their second choice. Changing the three voters from Tokyo to Chicago eliminates Tokyo in the first round (19 for Tokyo). In the second round Madrid is eliminated (C: 36, R:30, M:28). Finally Chicago ends up winning in the final round over Rio, 58-36. Chicago would beat any of the other cities head-to-head. In this scenario all that would be needed would be to survive the first round.

Scenario 2: Tokyo to Chicago, Madrid to Rio (Chicago Ultimately Wins)

Name	# of Voters	1^st Choice	2^nd Choice	3^rd Choice	4^th Choice
Rio	26	R	C	M	T
Chicago	21	C	R	M	T
Madrid	28	M	R	C	T
Tokyo	19	T	C	R	M

The scenario begins the same as Scenario 1, as Tokyo is eliminated in the first round. Under this scenario however, Rio is eliminated in round 2 (C:40, M:28, R:26) as the Tokyo voters all switch to Chicago. In the final round, Chicago wins handily 66-28 as the Rio voters vote for their second choice, Chicago. The interesting aspect of this scenario is that Rio would have beaten Chicago head-to-head, 54-40. So, Rio wins if Chicago cannot survive the first round. Chicago wins if Rio cannot survive the second round. Rio wins if they both make it to the finals.

Scenario 3: Madrid Wins

Name	# of Voters	1^st Choice	2^nd Choice	3^rd Choice	4^th Choice
Rio	26	R	M	C	T
Chicago	21	C	R	M	T
Madrid	28	M	C	R	T
Tokyo	23	T	C	R	M

Tokyo is eliminated in the first round and Rio in the second round. In this case however, the Rio voters prefer Madrid to Chicago and Madrid wins the final vote.

Scenario 4: Conventional Wisdom before Voting (Rio Ultimately Wins)

Name	# of Voters	1^st Choice	2^nd Choice	3^rd Choice	4^th Choice
Rio	26	R	C	M	T
Chicago	21	C	R	M	T
Madrid1	18	M	C	R	T
Madrid2	10	M	R	C	T
Tokyo1	9	T	C	R	M
Tokyo2	10	T	R	C	M

As in the previous three scenarios, Tokyo is eliminated first. The second round allows Chicago and Rio to advance to the finals (R:36, C:30, M:28). Finally, Rio wins the final vote, 54-40.

The key to all of the above possibilities is that they are consistent with the revealed preferences of the voters (with the exception of the three voters whose votes are changed from Tokyo to Chicago). It is also consistent with the geographical solidarity that the voters seem to exhibit.

The scenarios where Chicago ultimately succeeds are probably not the most likely, as there seems to have been a lot of sentimental support for Rio. Scenario 4 seems the most likely to me, but a variation of scenario where Chicago barely beats Rio in the final round certainly seem plausible to me.

Welcome

2009-10-05T14:49:00.001-05:00

Welcome to my new blog. I hope this to be a place where I can post analyses at the intersection of economics and sports.