Politics is Everywhere, Even in the Brackets

Brad Smith, a UNC undergrad who is currently making his mind up about IR grad schools, writes:

Stated explicitly, the question I hope to answer here is: "Does Obama systematically favor teams from "swing states" when filling out his NCAA bracket?" My theory is that Obama does, indeed favor teams from swing states because, by doing so, he only stands to gain. As long as his predictions are not absolutely outrageous, Obama can favor a battleground state's team over the team of a state that he either expects to win outright or expects to have no chance in in order to curry favor with that state's voters. This might seem like a silly political move at first, but if you think this wouldn't make a difference in the way people might vote, you've never met someone from rural North Carolina. On a more serious note, it makes an intuitive sort of sense that during an election year a presidential candidate should waste no opportunity to squeeze out a little more favor from voters in strategically valuable states. I think that's exactly what Obama's doing here, which leads me to my hypothesis:

Hypothesis: Obama will predict more wins for teams from swing states than the "average" individual who fills out an NCAA bracket.

He has a little toy stats model and (surprise!) finds some basic support for the hypothesis.

My bracket got screwed by Mizzou and -- to a lesser extent -- Duke, but I'm totally fine with the latter.

OT: Does Yadier Molina Hurt the Cardinals By Being Awesome?

Note: While watching the All-Star game, I grabbed some data and wrote this post for Viva El Birdos, the best blog covering my favorite sports team, the St. Louis Cardinals. Since it's kinda-sorta rat choicey I thought I'd toss it up here too. Oh who am I kidding... I'm putting it here because I don't feel like writing another post tonight. If I thought hard enough I'm sure I could squeeze out some relevance for IPE, but I'm not going to bother. Skip it if you like.

It's generally accepted that in terms of preventing other teams from stealing bases Yadier Molina is one of the best, if not the best, catchers in MLB. Al Hrabosky is fond of saying that Yadi is so good that teams just don't steal on him anymore (and Al's not the only one). Which always made me wonder... Given that base-stealers must be successful at least 75% of the time to benefit their team, is it really a good thing if Yadi's excellence at throwing out stealers prevents teams from running? After all, if teams ran on him more, he'd generate more outs. Perhaps it would be better for the team is Yadi was worse, thus generating more attempts, thus generating more outs.

I had a few hours to kill tonight, so I thought I'd plot some data, all of which comes from Baseball Reference. The first graph shows the percentage of would-be stealers that Yadi has caught in his career, as well as the National League average.

As expected, Yadi has been very good over the course of his career, well better than the league average, although so far this year has been his worst. But has his success had an effect on other teams? In other words, do teams run on Yadi much less than other catchers? This next graph shows the stolen attempts for Yadi (per 162 games) compared to the NL average. (Formulas: (SB+CS)*(162/GP) for Yadi; ((SB/G)+(CS/G))*162 for NL.)

Okay, so teams really don't run on Yadi: he routinely has 50-60 fewer attempts against than the NL average catcher -- or would have, if he played all 162 games. So Yadi has fewer attempts against but more outs per attempt than the average catcher. We might think that the team would benefit if we could maximize the number of outs made (so long as the percentage of caught stealing remains above 25%). How does this translate into outs over the course of a season? (Formulas: CS*(162/GP) for Yadi; (CS/G)*162 for NL. Again this is normalized as if Yadi played in every game.)

The answer is... there's not a huge effect, but Yadi's prodigious ability to catch potential base stealers probably doesn't help the team, and might even hurt it a bit. In four years (2004, 2008, 2009, 2011), Yadi generated fewer outs on the bases than the NL average. In two years (2007, 2010), he generated more. In two years (2005, 2006), he generated almost exactly the same. In no year is the difference all that large. For the stats-minded: I doubt the effect is statistically significant, but in this case a failure to reject the null hypothesis is very interesting, since it contradicts the Hrabosky-esque conventional wisdom. Obviously this is a crude analysis, but often simple stats are the most illustrative. 

The broader point that I'm interested in making is that baseball, like all games, is strategic. If a player is really, really good (or bad) at one thing, then other teams will respond by changing their approach to the game in order to neutralize that advantage. Think of NBA teams fouling Shaq intentionally to make him shoot free throws. Or MLB teams walking Barry Bonds 232 times (!) in 2004. In some cases, it might benefit the team if the individual player were a little bit worse, so that their opponents didn't focus so much attention on them. 

In other words, Yadi probably hasn't hurt the team with his cannon arm, at least not much. But he hasn't helped the team much either. It would probably be better for the team if he was slightly above average (say, 30-35% caught-stealing rate rather than 40-50%) but not enough for teams to drastically alter their base-running patterns. 

Winter's Officially Over

Just Sayin'

TAR!

Fire it up, folks. It's time to fly the flag. Tough game of course, but we're on the upswing. Should be good.

Something and Yellow

This?



Or this?



I respect both franchises, but I hate Big Ben and the Steelers have won too much lately, so go Pack! Either way, this:

Bizarre Geopolitical Analogy of the Day

Philadelphia got a foot of snow over the weekend. The mayor declared a state of emergency. The NFL responded by postponing Sunday's scheduled game until Tuesday. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell didn't agree with that decision:

"It goes against everything that football is all about," Rendell said Monday on radio station 97.5 The Fanatic in Philadelphia. ...

"My biggest beef is that this is part of what's happened in this country," Rendell said. "I think we've become wussies."

"We've become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything," Rendell added. "If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down." ...

"What do you think [Hall of Fame coach Vince] Lombardi would say?" Rendell asked Monday. "He would say that we've become a nation of wusses."

To which the citizens of Pennsylvania (should have) responded:

Actually, governor, if this was in China it would have been in a state-of-the-art, heated, dome. Of course, that wouldn't matter because they just would have geo-engineered the weather so there wasn't a foot of snow in the first place. There would have been high-speed rail that picked us up at our houses and dropped us off in our seats. They wouldn't be doing calculus because they've invented a new form of math that is even better, and then they invented computers (that only speak Chinese) to do the calculations for them. Basically, if this was China the government wouldn't suck so much.

Fly the Flag

Hard Power

USA 2-0 Spain.

If soccer explains the world, then what does it mean for the U.S. to stun the world's #1 team, who hadn't lost since 2006?

Gallows Humor

Does this mean that the central bank of the United States is now the main sponsor of Manchester United? As a Liverpool supporter, I'd certainly hope not. But if so, can the Fed be considered independent any longer?

If the Fed's next action is to lend money at low rates to the Chicago Cubs so they can re-finance their exorbitant free agent acquisitions, then I'm joining the Ron Paul rEVOLution in calling for the abolishment of the Fed. That would be the last straw for this St. Louis Cardinals fan.