The Escondido Beavers

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.