PS3s at New Yankee Stadium?

Yankees strike deal with Sony

So, according the article linked above, the Yankees have struck a sponsorship deal with Sony which includes, in addition to all the usual signage and so forth, flat panel TVs set up around the stadium, including on the concourse, to broadcast the game for when you step away to take a leak or buy more nachos or whatever. Okay, so far, so good. I've always been in favor of sponsorship deals, because as far as I'm concerned, if a sponsor is paying money to someone producing a good I'm enjoying, that's less money I have to pay them. Furthermore, having TVs set up around a baseball park is actually pretty nice; when I went to see the Brewers in the playoffs at Citizens Bank Park in Philly they had TVs set up broadcasting the game, and it was cool.

What caught my eye, however, is this passage: "In addition, Sony PlayStation 3 entertainment systems and VAIO notebook computers will be available to fans in select locations throughout the Stadium."

Seriously? I mean, I know most people think baseball is boring, but seriously? People are going to spend hundreds of dollars to go to a baseball game...so they can go play GTA 4 between innings? (In fact, it's even worse than that, 'cause it's not like they'd ever put GTA 4 on one of those things, so you'll have to play, I dunno, Sonic or something like that). I dunno, I'm not at all an opponent of new sponsorships, and I'm not even much of an opponent of fancy new features at ballparks, but this one just seems a little ridiculous to me.

BTW, when I was typing out "New Yankee Stadium", I realized I felt like there should be a nickname for the new park. I mean, "New Yankee Stadium" is a nickname to begin with, because it's officially just "Yankee Stadium", just like the old one, but we all know it's not the old one. I'm not a huge fan of David Chalk, Devil Rays blogger at Bugs and Cranks, but I do think his nickname for old Yankee Stadium was pretty apt: "That Old Dump in the Bronx". With this in mind, I think it'd be appropriate to nickname the new stadium "That New Dump in the Bronx". If that's too long, another one that occurs to me is "Yankee Stadium III", in recognition of the fact that the old stadium was really "Yankee Stadium II" ever since the mid-70s remodel.

Trevor Hoffman, and this year's Gabe Kapler

The Brewers signed Trevor Hoffman to a 1 year, $6 million deal, with incentives that could raise it to $7.5 million

Not a huge surprise, as the rumors have been picking up steam the past few days. I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, it's picking up a solid relief pitcher for not too much money, so it's hard to get terribly upset about it, but on the other hand, the Crew needs another starting pitcher way more than a closer. The bullpen really wasn't a problem last year, and frankly I don't think it'd have been a problem this year, even before the signing of Hoffman. Doug Melvin has done an excellent job of picking up cheap pieces to pitch in, and last year showed us that the cheap pieces can be just as valuable. I mean, who would've thought Salomon Torres would be our closer? And yet, he performed brilliantly.

With that in mind, I'm more interested in guessing who'll be this year's Gabe Kapler signing for the Crew. In other words, who'll be the under the radar pick-up that's ignored at the time but ends up being an essential piece? I've got my money on R.J. Swindle. The Brewers picked him up back in November for the league minimum salary. He only has 4.2 major league innings to his credit, all for the Phillies, and was shellacked in them, but that's a small sample size, and his minor league numbers are quite honestly incredible. Against lefties in 51 Triple-A innings, he's got 1.41 BB/9 and 15.53 K/9, for a K:BB ratio of 11. (Yes. Eleven.) Furthermore, he's no slouch against righties, either, striking them out at a nearly 8 K/9 clip and walking them about as much as he walks lefties. All told, in 146 minor league innings he has an 8.19 K:BB ratio and has given up 0.03 HR/9. Clearly these numbers won't be as good in the majors, but they should still be stellar (the major league equivalency on minorleaguesplits.com suggests a 5.57 K:BB and 0.04 HR/9), so in other words he's fantastic at the three things that pitchers actually have control over (striking guys out, not walking them, and keeping the ball in the ballpark). If he gets opportunities to play and can keep up what he's been doing in the minors, he could be a breakout star.

The Pat Burrell signing

I'm a couple of days late on this one, but I was thinking earlier today that the Rays' signing of Pat Burrell for 2 years and $16 million makes the Phillies look even worse for the Raúl Ibáñez signing. The Phillies signed Ibáñez for 3 years and $30 million to replace Burrell, essentially, even though Ibáñez is 4 years older, isn't as good offensively, is even worse defensively (which is saying something), and, apparently, is more expensive than Pat the Bat. It's absolutely incredible how that worked out. The Phillies ended up paying more money and committing to more years for a player that's straight-up inferior. It suggests a few things:

-We've been seeing the effects of the depressed economy on free agent signings, but this seems to suggest that it's worse than people thought it would be even a few months ago when everyone knew it was bad. (Supporting this notion is the fact that the players' union encouraged free agents to turn down arbitration, even though this has come back to hurt several players [Jason Varitek, for one].)

-The Rays got a tremendous deal. I've heard it suggested that Burrell gave them a discount for some reason. I suppose this is possible, and it would somewhat excuse the Phillies for signing Ibáñez, but it's looking more and more like the market for all-hit no-glove guys just isn't there. I mean, even Manny bloody Ramirez can't get signed, let alone guys like Adam Dunn and Bobby Abreu. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they (Dunn and Abreu) get deals in the same ballpark.

-Perhaps the Phillies' front office has a real problem with Pat Burrell. I haven't really looked into that, but if there is a problem, it's certainly not a widely known one, because it's not the sort of thing that comes up every time he's mentioned. Furthermore, I also haven't heard any suggestions that he's a problem in the clubhouse. Clearly I don't work in the front office of an MLB team, and if I did, maybe I'd think differently, but I think if I were GM and I had a personality problem with a player, if he went out and performed well and didn't cause trouble in the clubhouse I'd keep paying him and try to re-sign him. But maybe there were bigger problems afoot in Philly.

"The Germans make great stuff, y'know"

So über-blogger Joe Posnanski had a piece mentioning infomercials, and of course ended up talking about the Shamwow. One of the things he highlighted is the fact that the Shamwow ad stresses the fact that it's made in Germany, and he wondered why. To wit:

"If it said: 'Made in USA,' OK, I’d get it, we’re trying to play the patriotic card. But what possible good could come out of people knowing that the ShamWow is made in Germany? Are there people out there thinking: 'Well, Germany is known for their shammy-type products. Who could forget the ShamCow, which was only a four inch square but could suck up an entire half-gallon carton of milk. And the ShamPlow. Those Germans are Shammerrific.'"


I think the idea is that it’s not made in China, Taiwan, Korea, Pakistan, etc. People have an idea that stuff made there is somehow inferior, because they don’t understand how exploiting comparative advantage reduces cost, and figure if it’s that much cheaper, there must be something wrong with it. The recent well-known problems with goods coming from China only reinforces this view. Products from Germany don’t have this same stigma because, if anything, they tend to be more expensive (just think about cars: Mercedes, Porsche, etc.).

This, of course, lends some credence to ideas of upward-sloping demand curves: people assume that if something is more expensive, it must be better. Clearly this phenomenon does not often dominate, but I wonder how pervasive it is.

NFL Overtime

The Colts-Chargers game yesterday went into overtime, which in the NFL is still sudden death. Sudden death, of course, gives a huge advantage to the team that wins the coin toss, and sure enough, the Chargers won the toss and scored on the first possession to win the game.

This led me to wondering, of course, just how much of an advantage winning the toss gives you. I did some research and found out that since regular season overtime was implemented in 1974, teams winning the toss had won approximately 52% of the games and teams losing won approximately 44%, with the rest ending in ties (if there is no score during the 15 minute overtime period, the game ends in a tie). However, the percentage of OT games won by the team winning the toss has grown closer to 60% since 1994, when the kickoff was moved back from the 35-yard line to the 30-yard line. This change has increased the chances of scoring on a possession.

One suggestion for improving NFL overtime is to move the kickoff back to the 35-yard line for overtime. I decided to model overtime games to see how much this would help.

It is fairly easy to construct a model based around the probability of scoring on a possession. Assume for now that the teams are evenly matched and have an equal chance of scoring on any given possession, and call their chance of scoring a probability P. Scoring on a possession wins the game, so their probability of winning the game is the sum of the probability they'll score on any of their possessions. The probability they'll score on a given possession is P times the probability that no one has scored and ended the game yet, which is (1-P)^2n, where n is the number of possessions the team has had. This creates an easily solvable geometric sum, which can be seen in this chart:



As you can see, reducing the probability that the team will score on a given possession (which is what moving the kickoff line back up would accomplish) does reduce the advantage of winning the toss, but no matter how low you reduce it, the team that wins the toss is still favored.

Proponents of the sudden death overtime say that losing the toss is no problem because your defense should be able to stop the drive. This should be obviously fallacious, but as a different way of looking at it, I modeled the case where the team that wins the loss is worse than the other team, and by this I mean, is less likely to score in a given possession. Here's a chart for the odds of winning, given their probability of scoring in a given possession, for a team 20% less likely to score on a possession (NB. When I say 20% less likely, I mean 20 percent, not 20 percentage points, i.e. if the team that won the toss has a 35% chance of scoring on a possession, the other team has a 42% chance, not a 55% chance.)



As you can see, even if the team winning the toss is significantly worse than the other team, their odds of scoring on a possession need to be brought down to 15% or less for them not to be favored to win!

Another overtime method suggested is the "two possession rule"; that would involve each team getting at least one possession in overtime, and then it would revert to sudden death. While this still favors the team winning the toss, it is not nearly as much as an advantage. Here's the chart for evenly matched teams (NB. that I was unable to account for the differences in scoring field goals and touchdowns, so I just modeled the case where both teams have to score a touchdown--which has been suggested as a variant of the two possession rule):



The blue line represents sudden death, and the red line represents the two possession rule. As you can see, the team winning the coin toss has a fairly low advantage for a wide range of scoring probabilities. What's particularly interesting is that for cases where the team losing the toss is better, there's a range where the probability of the team winning the toss winning the game goes down even as their probability of scoring on a possession goes up. To make it really obvious, take the case for a team that is 50% better losing the toss:



As you can see, the red line has a clear dip in it. This is because as the probability of scoring on a given possession goes up, it produces two countervailing forces. On one hand, it increases the chances of winning, for obvious reasons. But because of the way I've set the model up, it also increases the chances of the other team scoring even more, which reduces the first team's chance of winning. In the sudden death case, the first force dominates over the entire range. However, in the second case, the latter force dominates for much of the range. Again, a lot of this is wrapped up in the arcana of how I set up the model, but it makes one point clear: under the two possession rule, how good the team that loses the toss is becomes a lot more relevant.

Here's a link to the spreadsheet I made: NFL Overtime

"If it saves just one life, it's worth it."

A few years ago, the town I live in built a stoplight at an intersection where a high school girl had died in a car accident. While they were building it, I drove past there with a friend of mine and his mother. When he commented that there was really no need to build a street light there, his mother said, "If it saves just one life, it's worth it."

Now, it's possible that his mother knew how much it cost to build and maintain a streetlight there, and decided one life would be worth it, but it's far more likely that she meant that any expense is justified if it saves "just one life"; i.e., lives have an infinite value. This, of course, is absurd, because it would imply we should devote all of our resources towards saving lives. This, in turn, becomes even more absurd, because there are various places towards which resources must be directed to save lives (food, shelter, healthcare, etc.), but if lives have an infinite value, it becomes impossible to efficiently determine just how these resources should be allocated towards saving lives. Infinite values do not work well in a market.

In short, it's clear that lives do not have an infinite value, and there must be some finite value we could place on a life. There must be some dollar value that it's not worth spending, even "if it saves just one life". However, as a society we're extremely uncomfortable placing a finite value on a life, and try to treat all lives as having infinite value, even though this is an untenable position. It is, I think, not difficult to see how many political disagreements can and do stem from this dilemma.

The invisibility of luck

I got this passage off of Curt Schilling's blog; he's the one responding to the question:

"Bradford: When referencing this potential move, some have cited the Yankees decision to go with high-priced talent in the early 2000’s instead of the “heart and soul” guys that were on the championship teams. Is that kind of chemistry/clubhouse influence overstated?

Me: No, no and a million more times no. The easiest way to figure that out is to play fantasy baseball right? Take the 2004 Yankees on paper, play them against ANY other 2004 team and play a 5×5 league. How do they fare? I’d expect REAL well and pretty dominating? There is so much that happens outside the 3-4 hours of games each day
that impact and influence teams in a way no statistician or ‘expert’ can ever hope to define or quantify. It affects wins and losses, it affects clubs state of mind, it affects everything."

Let me preface this by saying I don't dislike Curt Schilling like a lot of people do; sure, he's loud and opinionated, but isn't that what we want from athletes? Don't we get tired of them not giving real answers to questions?

Anyway, with that out of the way, his answer is quite fascinating for how it illustrates the average person's complete unawareness of luck, randomness, and small sample size. He points out the fact that the 2004 Yankees would dominate any other 2004 team in fantasy baseball as evidence of the effect of intangibles on baseball performance. It's hard to see how that's evidence because, in real life, the 2004 Yankees damn near made it to the World Series. Schilling clearly believes it was intangibles and clubhouse vibe that made them miss it, but, let's face it: they lost their ticket to the big show over the course of 4 games. That's an extremely small sample size, it could have easily gone the other way, and the Red Sox had luck on their side. Now, granted, this isn't to say the 2004 Red Sox weren't a good team, because they were a great team, and got to the World Series in part through excellent performances. However, it's not enough just to be good; sometimes you need luck on your side, too.

What's fascinating about this is that Schilling, of course, was right in the middle of that Red Sox performance. He, clearly, believes that luck played no role in his team's victory, but rather it must have been entirely their performances. Although he has benefited from luck, he is blind to it. I suspect this happens quite often to people. When remarkable things happen to them, they are blind to the extent to which it was just dumb luck, and must find reasons to ascribe to them.