100 Leagues and Counting

I've been yammering on about how many venues I've been to (420 now) and also mentioning the Quest for 400 as I begin to plan a move back to North America, where I can finally go on a couple of really extended trips. This sort of self-indulgent scorekeeping is something that most stadium travelers do in some form or other, whether it is the number of games, venues, or some combination thereof. One aspect that I haven't seen mentioned though is the number of leagues and competitions that have been witnessed. When I counted this for myself last week, I came up with the grand total of 98, which meant that my Super Rugby visit in Perth would be my 100th league or competition. Does reaching such a milestone deserve a post? Probably not, but when has that stopped me before.

First, the rules about what counts and what doesn't. Essentially any separate league or association in which teams compete against one another can be counted only once, regardless of the location, whether it is the regular season or post-season (pre-season games never count except in baseball, where the Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues are special entities), or the league changes its name.

So if I see the Leafs in Toronto one year, then an NHL game in Europe the next, and a Stanley Cup Final after that, that just counts as one league. Of course, the AHL, ECHL, CHL, OHL, WHL, QMJHL, etc are all separate leagues. The World Junior Hockey Championship would count once, as would any special competition such as the Spengler Cup.

Major League Baseball is one entity, so no double counting the American and National Leagues, but each minor and independent league counts once.

NCAA sports may have separate conferences but they are meaningless. If you see an NCAA football game in the Big Ten and the SEC during the season and then the Sugar Bowl, that's still only one competition. Similar with NCAA basketball and March Madness, and any other college sport.

Soccer competitions get their own special rules. I may see an English Premier League game, an FA Cup match, and a League Cup fixture and that counts as 3 leagues, because each is managed by a different entity and each features different teams. International soccer counts both the World Cup and Confederations Cup, as they are distinct events.

International cricket has 3 varieties (test, one-day, 20/20), each of which can be counted once. Domestic competitions such as the IPL and County Cricket are naturally separate.

High school and non-pro sports should be ignored, even those that are well-covered. If you want to count the Little League World Series, go ahead, but I will not. Horse racing and other events that depend mostly on the performance of animals are also not up for consideration.

Got it? Good. Here are the 102 leagues I have seen:

The Leagues

Hockey (16)
National Hockey League
American Hockey League
ECHL
Central Hockey League
Southern Professional Hockey League
Ontario Hockey League
Quebec Major Junior Hockey League
Western Hockey League
Canadian Interuniversity Sport
Alberta Junior Hockey League
Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League
World Cup of Hockey
World Junior Hockey Championship
Asia League Ice Hockey

Central Ontario Junior B Hockey League (defunct)Japan Hockey League (defunct)

Baseball (25)
Major League Baseball
Cactus League
International League
Pacific Coast League
Eastern League
Southern League
Texas League
California League
Carolina League
Florida State League
South Atlantic League
Midwest League
New York Penn League
Northwest League
Arizona Fall League
American Association
Frontier League
Can-Am League
Northern League
NCAA
Nippon Professional Baseball
Nippon Professional Baseball Minor Leagues
Japanese Industrial League
Japanese University
Chinese Professional Baseball League (Taiwan)

Football (7)
National Football League
Canadian Football League
NCAA
Canadian Interuniversity Sport
Arena Football League
Australian Football League*
West Australalian Football League*

Basketball (10)
National Basketball Association
National Basketball Development League
NCAA
Canadian Interuniversity Sport
Women's National Basketball Assocation
EuroLeague
bjLeague
Asean Basketball League
Philippine Basketball Association
Philippine Basketball League

Soccer (17)
World Cup
Confederations Cup
Major League Soccer
Professional Development League
English Premier League
Ligue 1
Eredivisie
Coppa Italia
Championnat National
J League
J2
Emperors Cup
Japanese Football League
S League
V-League
Malaysia Super League
Malaysia Cup

Rugby (6)
World Rugby Junior Championship
Super Rugby
National Rugby League
Shute Shield
Japan Top League
Rugby 7s

Cricket (4)
International Test
International ODI
International 20/20
English County Cricket

Racing (4)
Formula 1
A1
GP2
Indy Car

Racquet Sports (3)

ATP Tour
NCAA Tennis
World Table Tennis Championship



Golf (2)
NCAA Women's
EPGA

Fighting (2)

One FC
Muy Thai

Volleyball (2)
Canadian Interuniversity Sport
World Volleyball Championship

Others (4)
National Lacrosse League
Winter Olympics
Japan Sumo Association
Asian Swimming Championships

*I'm including Aussie Rules in Football for simplicity.

There are a few other leagues I'd like to add to the list, mostly based in Europe, but I doubt this number will increase much over time. I'll update it here on occasion.


Best,

Sean

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Who Really Won the Olympics?

The London Olympics are over and as expected, America came out on top. For me, it was not a particularly enjoyable fortnight as the time difference meant that I missed most of the great performances. Back home in Canada though, there has been much national angst as Canadian athletes brought home a solitary gold among 18 overall medals. Personally, I thought that was a reasonable achievement; we are not blessed with America's population so to garner 18 medals is fine, even if 12 were bronze. As James Mirtle of the Globe and Mail said, there's no shame in celebrating bronze, as long as it is not in hockey.

One of the problems with the Olympics is the unbalanced playing field. It is not really fair to compare countries against one another based purely on medals. There are so many other factors that can be used to get a better idea of which nation performed beyond their expectations.

As an example, let's compare medal totals for Canada (1-5-12) and Brazil (3-5-9). Sure, Canada gained one more medal overall, but Brazil had the better record. Even then, gold medals alone are not a proper measurement either; North Korea's 4-0-2 puts them ahead of Spain at 3-10-4 in the official rankings. And medals don't even take into account populations or economics. Most notably, Grenada's single gold coming from a population of just over 100,000 is amazing. So rather than accept the prevailing standard, I decided to combine all of these elements to get a more interesting look at the medal standings.

First, I awarded points on a 5-2-1 basis for gold, silver, and bronze. These are purely arbitrary numbers based on a gold being worth more than 2 silvers, while a silver is equivalent to two bronzes. Again, just an arbitrary choice which actually didn't affect the rankings much. As an example, Japan (7-14-17-38-80) and France (11-11-12-34-89) switched places with Japan falling from 6th to 8th and France jumping up 2 spots by virtue of their extra 4 golds (those numbers are G-S-B-Total-Points). Canada suffered one of the biggest drops, falling from 13th to 22nd, just ahead of Belarus who had one of their gold medals taken away after the winner was caught doping.

The next step was to divide this point total by the population, which I took from the always reliable Wikipedia. Multiplying this number by 1,000,000 results in a stat that I have creatively dubbed Medal Points/Million People or MPMP. To illustrate, the US had 317 points using the 5-2-1 system and with a population of about 314 million, gets 1.01 MPMP, in other words about one medal point for every million people. This puts them 40th on the list with the aforementioned Grenada taking 1st at 47.62. Canada falls down to 47th at 0.77. The top 10 by this stat (MP are medal points):

Nation          MP     Pop      MPMP
Grenada          5    105,000   47.62
Bahamas          5    353,658   14.14
Jamaica         32  2,705,827   11.83
New Zealand     39  4,434,590    8.79
Trinidad & Tob   8  1,317,714    6.07
Hungary         53  9,962,000    5.32
Croatia         19  4,290,612    4.43
Lithuania       14  3,187,700    4.39
Slovenia         9  2,057,970    4.37
Denmark         21  5,584,758    3.76

The problem here is that less populous nations have a massive advantage as you can see above, where not a single country has a population above 10 million. So I also incorporated each nation's economy using GDP per capita, which is a reasonably accurate measure of a country's wealth. Dividing GDP per capita (in $US) by Medal Points gives a number (GDP/MP) that represents how much each Medal Point cost each resident of that country. It is obviously just a theoretical calculation, since each nation doesn't spend all of its wealth on sport, but it gives a rough idea of how much each medal "costs". Naturally, poor countries with a few medals are at the top of the ranking. Ethiopia, the poorest nation to take home a medal (GDP is just $360 per person), managed 7 medals for 20 medal points, which means each Ethiopian paid $18 for each medal point. Qatar, the richest country in the world with a GDP 273 times greater than that of Ethiopia, netted only 2 bronze medals, each costing over $49,000. Canada ended up in 54th, with each medal point costing $1,868. The top 10 and bottom 5 are below:

Nation      MP     GDP     GDP/MP
Ethiopia    20     360       18.0
China      267    5414       20.3 
Kenya       23     851       37.0
N. Korea    22    1200       54.6
Russia     204   12993       63.7
Ukraine     49    3621       73.9
Uganda       5     478       95.6
Cuba        37    5397      145.9
USA        317   48387      152.6
Jamaica     32    5402      168.8
...
Bahrain      1   23132    23132.0
Singapore    2   49271    24635.5
Hong Kong    1   34049    34049.0
Kuwait       1   47982    47982.0
Qatar        2   98329    49164.5

So how can these varied measures be combined to give an overall ranking? After much thought and experimentation with complicated mathematical formulae that involved logarithmic analysis (yeah, right) I decided to simply average the 3 rankings: medal points (MPR), medal points per million (MPPMR), and GDP/MP. Here are the top 20 and bottom 5:

Nation         MPR    MPPMR   GDP/MPR   AVG
Great Britain    4      14      13      10.3
Jamaica         20       3      10      11.0
Hungary         11       6      19      12.0
Cuba            17      12       8      12.3
Russia           3      30       5      12.7
USA              1      40       9      16.7
Kazakhstan      14      21      17      17.3
South Korea      7      28      18      17.7
Ukraine         13      39       6      19.3
Belarus         23      19      16      19.3
Germany          5      32      24      20.3
Australia        9      11      41      20.3
France           6      31      27      21.3
New Zealand     15       4      45      21.3
Georgia         38      15      15      22.7
China            2      66       2      23.3
North Korea     25      43       4      24.0
Czech Republic  21      18      35      24.7
Netherlands     12      16      47      25.0
Italy           10      38      28      25.3
...
Greece          75      68      78      73.7
Morocco         79      83      61      74.3
Kuwait          79      61      84      74.7
Hong Kong       79      72      83      78.0
Saudi Arabia    79      82      80      80.3

So Great Britain actually "won" the Olympics! Jamaica and Hungary round out the top 3, while the US falls to 6th due to their large population. Belarus remains in the top 10 despite losing that gold. Canada ended up right in the middle at 43rd out of 85 countries that won a medal, exactly where we like to be. Smarter sports fans could probably figure out a way to include all those nations that went home empty handed, but I think the final result here is pretty intriguing.

Obviously, this is an arbitrary analysis with no scientific merit whatsoever. Please don't take it seriously. You can easily adjust the rankings by playing with the weightings or changing the point system. It is actually rather interesting to do so; if you would like the original data, please let me know and I will forward it to you.

In the meantime, I'm looking forward to Sochi in 2014. At least I'll be in the same time zone!

Best,

Sean

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Will Ichiro Help the Yankees?

I've been busy lately getting settled into Singapore and a new job, so haven't had much time to post. But there is a lot going on in sports, most obviously with the London Olympics getting started. As well, UEFA's Champions League and Europa League are in the middle of their qualifying rounds, and are great for dreaming about future sports road trip destinations. After all, who wouldn't love to spend a day in Moldova watching Sheriff Tiraspol hosting Dinamo Zagreb?

For baseball fans, the biggest news over the past week was the Ichiro trade. After 11 1/2 seasons in Seattle, Ichiro finally had enough of losing and requested a move to a contender. Now he is in the AL East as the Yankees were only too happy to welcome him, especially with the Mariners paying most of his salary. Seeing Ichiro in pinstripes brings back nightmares from the 2000 off-season, when I worried he might end up there after being posted by the Orix Blue Wave. Thankfully Seattle grabbed him and he has enjoyed a hall-of-fame career since then.

However, it is obvious that he is on the downside, with his numbers dropping considerably over the past two years. My favourite "unusual" stat is bases/out (BOP) which I wrote about last year. It is more intuitive than OPS and not as difficult to calculate as some of the more elaborate metrics such as WAR or wOBA+. Let's look at Ichiro's stats since 2001:

Year  G  AB   H  SB CS BB SO  BA   OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF  BOP
2001 157 692 242 56 14 30 53 .350 .838 316 3   8   4  4 .880
2002 157 647 208 31 15 68 62 .321 .813 275 8   5   3  5 .823
2003 159 679 212 34  8 36 69 .312 .788 296 3   6   3  1 .780
2004 161 704 262 36 11 49 63 .372 .869 320 6   4   2  3 .892
2005 162 679 206 33  8 48 66 .303 .786 296 5   4   2  6 .787
2006 161 695 224 45  2 49 71 .322 .786 289 2   5   1  2 .818
2007 161 678 238 37  8 49 77 .351 .827 292 7   3   4  2 .839
2008 162 686 213 43  4 51 65 .310 .747 265 8   5   3  4 .754
2009 146 639 225 26  9 32 71 .352 .851 297 1   4   2  1 .848
2010 162 680 214 42  9 45 86 .315 .754 268 3   3   3  1 .751
2011 161 677 184 40  7 39 69 .272 .645 227 11  0   1  4 .603
2012  98 414 109 16  3 17 40 .261 .642 146 10  1   0  4 .570

Remember, BOP is (TB + BB + HBP + SB + SF + SH) / (AB-H+CS+GDP+SF+SH). It is by no means a perfect stat but it does provide a very understandable way to present a player's offensive value. For every out he makes, how many bases does he achieve? The average this season is .683, so an average player should get around 68 bases for every 100 outs.

As you can see, Ichiro was always between .750 and .900 in his first ten seasons. This is actually rather low for someone with such a high average and stolen base totals, mainly because he rarely walks. In his rookie campaign 2001, he was unintentionally walked 20 times in 738 plate appearances! This is terrible for a lead off hitter, but it was easy to ignore as he hit .350 on his way to the MVP and ROY awards. (As an aside, he finished 22nd in the AL that year in BOP, behind such luminaries as Corey Koskie and Frank Catalanotto, not to mention teammates Edgar Martinez, Bret Boone, and John Olerud.)

Now that Ichiro is hitting around .260, his failure to take free passes is really hurting. His BOP has fallen to  .570 right now, which ranks him 140th of 153 qualifiers in MLB. I expect his defense is still superior to the average but his overall value is questionable at this point. I think the Yankees will soon realize that the Ichiro they have is not the Ichiro of old and makes far too many outs for less than 2 bases per game.

You might notice in the stats above that Ichiro's OPS and BOP numbers are quite similar for each year. This is not unusual; BOP is rarely more than 20% higher or lower than OPS. They generally count the same thing, just in a different manner. 

For those interested, Mike Trout leads the majors with 1.233 bases/out, while Blue Jay Edwin Encarncion is 6th overall at 1.083 (3rd in the AL, with the washed-up David Ortiz taking 2nd at 1.109).

Team BOP

I also computed the BOP for each team and compared it to the average and OPS. As you can see, there is a considerable difference in the rankings for BOP and batting average. Note how Toronto zooms from 18th to 6th while KC tumbles from 5th to 19th.  However, there is little variation between the OPS and BOP rankings:

        Team              BOP  AVG RK  OPS RK
1 New York Yankees       .770 .263  9 .794  1
2 Texas Rangers          .756 .277  1 .785  2
3 St. Louis Cardinals    .745 .277  2 .776  3
4 Colorado Rockies       .730 .265  7 .764  4
5 Arizona Diamondbacks   .727 .265  8 .761  6
6 Toronto Blue Jays      .724 .254 18 .756  8
7 Boston Red Sox         .721 .266  6 .761  5
8 Los Angeles Angels     .721 .271  3 .759  7
9 Milwaukee Brewers      .709 .247 21 .735 12
10 Detroit Tigers        .708 .269  4 .754  9
11 Chicago White Sox     .701 .259 13 .742 10
12 Cincinnati Reds       .696 .252 19 .734 14
13 Washington Nationals  .696 .256 16 .735 11
14 Atlanta Braves        .695 .256 17 .729 15
15 Cleveland Indians     .694 .257 15 .734 13
16 New York Mets         .682 .259 12 .727 18
17 Minnesota Twins       .680 .262 10 .727 17
18 Philadelphia Phillies .673 .259 14 .719 19
19 Kansas City Royals    .669 .267  5 .728 16
20 Tampa Bay Rays        .663 .233 28 .691 24
21 Miami Marlins         .660 .241 24 .692 23
22 San Francisco Giants  .658 .261 11 .704 20
23 Oakland Athletics     .651 .229 29 .686 25
24 Pittsburgh Pirates    .649 .243 23 .704 21
25 Baltimore Orioles     .636 .239 26 .702 22
26 San Diego Padres      .633 .237 27 .671 29
27 Houston Astros        .630 .240 25 .681 26
28 Los Angeles Dodgers   .627 .248 20 .679 27
29 Chicago Cubs          .612 .245 22 .679 28
30 Seattle Mariners      .597 .229 30 .650 30

The similarities between the two stats mean that BOP will never get much attention as OPS has become a key metric over the past few years. I still prefer BOP though and will occasionally write about it here.

Best,

Sean

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Home Advantage in the Big 4 Sports

During the recent NHL and NBA playoffs, I kept track of the scores each game. This enabled me to find a few meaningless stats that made for good Twitter fodder. The one that I found most interesting though was one of the simplest: the number of times the home team won. In the NBA playoffs, the home team win-loss record was 54-27 (.667) while in the NHL it was just 48-41 (.539).

That got me to thinking. It's usually obvious that the NBA has the largest home advantage, but just how different is it compared to the other leagues? So I took the regular season standings from the most recently completed seasons in all big 4 sports and calculated the home records across all teams, which are shown below:

NBA  743-487   .6041
MLB 1359-1071  .5592
NFL  143-113   .5586
NHL  638-592   .5187

First a note on the NHL numbers. The actual home records are 638-434-158 (.5829) but I've combined the regulation losses with overtime losses because that's what I'm concerned about - how often the home team wins. An overtime loss may net you a point in the standings but it is still a loss and the fans go home unhappy. (As an aside, home teams won only 139 of extra-time tilts, a surprisingly low 46.8%).

As expected, the NBA has the most obvious home advantage at just over 60%. Only six clubs had losing home records; naturally those were the six worst teams in the league. I wonder if this helps explain the NBA's popularity - home teams winning more often keeps fans coming back.

What surprised me was that baseball and football have similar winning percentages when playing in friendly confines; I would have expected NFL teams to enjoy playing at home much more with loud crowds hampering the opposition offense. NHL squads have the least advantage playing at home (again only looking at wins and losses), which is not surprising as it is the sport with the most parity at the moment.

So why is there such a discrepancy in basketball? Sixteen squads had winning records at home and losing records on the road. What is it that makes it so tough for these teams to win in visiting arenas?

Travel probably has something to do with it as road teams are often playing back-to-back games and arriving early in the morning before a game that night. Familiarity with the actual playing area might also contribute, in that it's simply easier to make baskets in an environment that you are used to. The crowd should also be a factor; basketball is a game that thrives on momentum and having your fans behind you helps you during a run. But overall, I don't think anybody has a convincing explanation to explain the home advantage in the NBA. I found a few studies on-line but none of them made any meaningful conclusions. Suffice to say that home teams win far more often in the NBA than they do elsewhere.

This distinct home advantage in the NBA is one reason that I find the league to be the least interesting. For me, it is the randomness and unpredictability of sports I find most intriguing. The Giants winning the World Series was foreseen by few, even during the playoffs. How many had Pittsburgh and Green Bay in the Super Bowl at the start of the season? But the NBA is somewhat more predictable (this year's playoffs being an enjoyable exception). Essentially, strong teams win at home and on the road, weak teams lose everywhere, and if the teams are evenly matched, the home team wins most of the time. I wonder if the new CBA will lead to more parity and a change in these statistics. We'll see in 2013!

Best,

Sean

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Why Ties Suck in Baseball - 2010 Postseason Edition

Regular readers know I don't particularly like a lot of things about Japanese baseball. The long games are the most annoying problem, but a close second is that ties are part of the game. I've posted how ties are ignored in the standings which is stupid because teams with more wins end up with worse records.

Well, I now have another reason to hate ties. Last night's Japan Series game went 15 innings and finished 2-2. The Chiba Lotte Marines led the series 3-2 over the Chunichi Dragons and both teams had their aces going, so it was expected to be a pitcher's duel. And it was.

I watched the first couple of innings in which each team scored a first-frame run before losing my TV rights for a couple of hours. When I regained them, it was 2-2 in the 9th, so I watched the rest, hoping for a result.

What I saw instead was some pretty bad baseball. In the 10th and 11th, Lotte had the leadoff batter reach and attempted a sacrifice bunt. Both times the bunt was popped up and resulted in a double play. Chunichi was no better, popping up one bunt and having another sacrifice attempt result in the lead runner being thrown out at second. So much for fundamental baseball. Chunichi's clutch hitting was also abysmal, with runners left in scoring position in innings 10 through 14. All-in-all, not a classic championship game.

I feel for the fans who spent 5:43 watching for nothing. Even worse are the fans who bought game 7 tickets expecting to see a championship. They might still if Lotte prevails tonight, but if Chunichi wins, then there will be a game 8 on Monday night. Roadtrippers who traveled to Nagoya and have to return Monday are out of luck if that happens. It's even possible that tonight's game could end in a draw, but from game 8 onward, there are no ties.

Having a set ending also reduces the strategy required for an extra-inning game. Knowing that the game will end after 15 innings allows managers to bring in their closer in the 14th without worrying about using him up. A game with no fixed end forces managers to really use all their strategic smarts to ensure proper use of the remaining pitchers.

Finally, having a championship series game (un)decided in this manner is just stupid. If the NHL ever goes to a shootout in the playoffs, you can bet I'll be complaining about that too.

Best,

Sean

Update: Lotte won game 7 in 12 innings to take the series 4-2-1. So the tie the night before didn't have a real impact on the series. But a 3rd place team winning the Japan Series still leaves me disillusioned. What's the point of a baseball season again?

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Why the Wild Card Sucks (and how to fix it)

The AL East sees the two best teams in baseball fighting it out for the pennant. The winner gets to enjoy the playoffs while the loser...gets to enjoy the playoffs. Such is the influence of the wild card, which allows the best second place team in each league a spot in the post season. It removes the excitement from pennant races, which are the most important part of a baseball season. That's why it sucks and needs to be fixed.

How to fix it

There are other imperfections in MLB, most notably the difference in teams per league. This is unfair to NL squads who have less chance to make the playoffs (1/4 or 25%) then their AL counterparts (2/7 or 28.6%). In a single season, that may not be significant but it does make a difference over an extended period. In particular, the NL Central has 50% more teams than the AL West, which makes a Cubs' division title that much more unlikely than one for the Mariners.

The other problem is the unbalanced schedule caused by interleague play. Teams with geographic rivalries (Yankees/Mets, Cubs/White Sox, etc) play each other 6 times while often their divisional rivals play those teams not at all. This season for example, the Jays had interleague games against Arizona, Colorado, San Diego, and San Francisco, St. Louis and Philly. 5 of those 6 teams are in the playoff hunt. The Yankees meanwhile got 6 against the Mets, and 3 each against Arizona, Houston, LA Dodgers, Philadelphia. Not really fair.

Jayson Stark of ESPN advocates another wild card team, but I am not happy with that idea. I think the point of the long season is that the best teams advance and then play each other in longer series. More playoff teams is not the answer. Instead, here is what MLB needs to do.

Expansion

Fifteen teams in each league is not going to happen. So in order to level the playing field between the two leagues, add two more teams to the AL. Portland, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and Sacramento are all large markets that have AAA teams (well, Portland has lost theirs) and might be able to support a major league franchise. Of course, none of the big 4 sports will put a team in Vegas and Sacramento will be voted down by the A's and Giants, so let's stay that MLB decides to add teams to Portland as well as Salt Lake.

Realignment

The next step is to realign into four divisions of four teams. I would see the following as workable:

AL East      NL East
NY Yankees   NY Mets
Boston       Philadelphia
Baltimore    Washington
Tampa Bay    Florida

AL Central   NL Central
White Sox    Cubs
Toronto      Atlanta
Cleveland    Cincinnati
Detroit      Pittsburgh

AL Midwest   NL Midwest
Kansas City  St. Louis
Texas        Houston
Minnesota    Milwaukee
Salt Lake    Colorado

AL West      NL West
LA Angels    LA Dodgers
Oakland      San Francisco
Seattle      San Diego
Portland     Arizona

See how nice that looks? This makes 8 potential pennant races, keeps most divisional rivalries intact (Cubs/Cardinals is the most glaring one that would be lost) and removes the need for a wild card. Toronto escapes AL East purgatory too, good for their fans but probably not for the franchise who enjoy all those Boston and Yankee roadtrippers.

Meanwhile the White Sox and Cubs would be playing most of their games outside their time zone, which would definitely cause some problems. So we'll give them more of the expansion money.

Scheduling

The next step is to balance the schedule. It has to remain at 162 games, and the interleague rivalry matches must also be kept. Therefore, every season, each division plays its counterpart plus one other division from the other league. This means that the AL East and NL East teams would meet every year, and then the AL East would take on the NL Central one year, the NL Midwest the next, and then the NL West after that. Three game series are the norm in interleague play, so each team would get 24 balanced interleague games. Then the geographic rivals would get 3 additional games to match what is happening these days. In the divisions above, I've listed these rivals on the same line and think that this should be maintained year to year. Yes, Toronto and Atlanta are not natural rivals, but with 6 games annually, something could develop.

With 27 interleague games on the slate, there's 135 games left. This works out nicely to 7 games against teams in other divisions in your league (84 total) and 17 games within your division (51 total). Yes, there's a small imbalance with home and away matches but that is not significant enough to derail the plan.

That's it. A nearly balanced schedule, no wild card, and the possibility of 8 pennant races. Now that I've fixed baseball, I'll look at improving the NHL playoffs to make their season more meaningful.

Problems

I'm obviously ignoring many problems that would arise with this plan; dilution of the product, teams losing divisional rivalries, and the fact that Bud Selig likes the Wild Card. Oh well, it's just for fun. Enjoy and let me know your thoughts.

Best,

Sean

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MLB Does Change Calls After the Fact

A couple of months ago, Armando Galarraga lost a perfect game on a blown call by Jim Joyce. Fans and media debated the increased use of instant replay while baseball stood its ground, declaring that the human element is part of the game. Turns out this is not entirely true.

If umpires blow a call, tough luck to those who were on the wrong side of the decision. But if an official scorer makes a mistake, well, then we can go ahead and change that. Two weeks later if need be. I'm referring to an article on MLB.com that explains that Ichiro had a hit taken away after MLB reviewed the scoring decision.

The game took place on August 8th with Kansas City visiting Seattle. In the bottom of the 8th, Ichiro chopped one to short that Mike Aviles fielded cleanly but then threw wildly into the stands, giving Ichiro second base. The original call was an infield hit and a throwing error, but MLB changed this to be a 2-base throwing error instead, so Ichiro has one less hit now. It shouldn't make much difference in the long run, but as he has been struggling (for him) lately, it's no lock that he'll reach 200 hits. I imagine this story will get more play should he finish with 199.

To be fair, the official scorer did seem to have a hometown bias (check the video in the link above) and was rather generous in giving Ichiro the hit. But I don't understand why the Royals formally complained; the error made no difference to the statistics of any of their players as the run was unearned regardless. Interestingly, the boxscore has yet to be updated - Ichiro's stats are correct as he did get one hit in the game, but the linescore still shows 8 hits for the Mariners.

Ultimately though, this story illustrates baseball's hypocrisy. If the human element is part of the game, then it should be that way for everybody. But if only official scorers are subject to second-guessing, then why not use replay as well? Of course, double standards are nothing new to the powers that run baseball. I'll stop complaining now so we can all sit back and enjoy watching the Yankees and their $200 million payroll fight their way to another playoff spot.

Best,

Sean

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What .500 means in the NHL

In sports, it's common to refer to teams as x games above or below .500 to get an idea of how well they are doing. But in the NHL these days, it's a meaningless assertion. Since the NHL instituted an extra point for overtime or shootout losses, some games have 3 total points awarded, while others only have 2. So just because a team has an equal number of wins and losses doesn’t mean it’s a .500 club.

Let’s take the 2009-10 Toronto Maple Leafs as an example. They are now 7-12-7, which on its own isn’t particularly terrible. But when you realize that those 7 OT losses are in fact losses, you can say that the team is 7-19, a truly horrible record. Yes, they get a point for those losses, but their opponent got two, so the Leafs fall further behind in the standings. A better example might be the New York Islanders, who are 10-10-7 – looks good at first, but in reality this team is struggling and currently out of the playoffs.

So what makes a .500 team in the NHL these days? To figure this out, you need to determine how many games go to overtime and therefore have that extra point awarded. This season, the number of overtime games is actually quite high – out of the 390 games played so far, 106 (27.2%) had bonus hockey. This means an extra 106 points available for the teams that win. So to determine what a .500 record should be you have to take the total number of points awarded (886) divided by the total number of teams (30) to get 29.53 points. Of course, right now teams may have played a different number of games, but the 390 total games played averages to exactly 26 games per team. So you’d be looking at 3.5 more wins than losses to be considered around .500 at this point in the season. Extrapolating these numbers for an 82-game schedule shows that 93.13 points would be required to be an average (.500) team. That's 11 more wins than non-OT losses and not that easy to achieve.

I suspect that by season’s end, the playoff cutoff will again be around 93-94 points and we’ll hear how wonderful it is that .500 teams can’t make the playoffs anymore. Now you know this isn’t quite true.

Best,

Sean

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