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
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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.
"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!
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}.
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.
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.
