Varitek Isn't The Weak Link

I don't live in Boston anymore. But I still live in Red Sox Nation. This means that the radio next to my desk gets WEEI. The hot topic this week is how Jason Varitek's offensive drought is hurting the team.

Tek is definitely worrisome. However, his OPS of .672 is only 118 points below his career average.

Predictions At The Halfway Point

As of today, the average Major League team has played exactly 81 games. We are officially at the halfway point. For about an hour last night, the Tampa Bay Rays had the best record in baseball! Are they for real? What about the Cubs, White Sox and other division leaders?

Using Baseball Mogul 2009, we updated our database to reflect current records and injuries, and we simulated the second half of the season one thousand times.

How You Can Fix The Wild Card!

It's been almost ten years since we came up with the right way to fix the current wild card system.

Did Bill Belichick Use the "Maddux Gambit" Against Tony Dungy?

This weekend, we will see the third post-season matchup between Tom Brady's New England Patriots and Peyton Manning's Indianapolis Colts. As my fellow New Englanders know, the Patriots have won the previous two games. At least some of the credit for these two wins was given to Belichick for "outcoaching" Tony Dungy in both meetings. But when the Pats and Colts played in Foxboro during the regular season this year, it looked like Dungy was doing the "outcoaching".

Fixing the NBA Draft

I watched the NBA Draft Lottery last night.

I didn't watch the NBA Draft. I watched the NBA Draft Lottery.

The Lottery could be more exciting than it is. They start with twelve ping-pong balls in a spinning plastic drum. But we don't get to see the balls bounce around. The balls are drawn off-camera, and then the results are put in an envelope. And then millions of Americans turn on their TV to watch the envelopes get opened. Live! :)

It's like bingo, but worse. It's like waiting for your grandmother to go play bingo. Then, when she gets home, asking her what happened. As an American, that makes me sad. We have nothing better to do than watch a TV show that reveals -- second-hand -- the results of "Bingo For Billionaires".

The good news is that we can fix it. We don't have to allocate draft picks like a church pastor calling out bingo numbers. We can replace the NBA Draft Lottery with an NBA Draft Tournament.

The NBA Draft Tournament

Instead of putting all 14 non-playoff teams into a big bucket and playing bingo, we put all 14 teams into a single-elimination tournament bracket. We get all the excitement of the NCAA Tournament (aka "March Madness") but with the your team's top draft pick resting in the balance.

Here's how it works:

1) Divide the 14 non-playoff teams into two brackets containing 7 teams each (one bracket for each conference).

2) In each bracket, the teams with the most regular-season wins play each other in a 1-game playoff. The loser goes home and the winner advances to play the next team (ranked by regular-season wins).

3) Continue until you have one winner from each conference. These two teams play head-to-head in a "Championship Game" for the #1 pick.

4) Award the remaining picks according to how far each team advanced in the NBA Draft Tournament.

For example, these are what the brackets would have been for the 2007 NBA Draft Tournament:

	Western Conference		Eastern Conference
Game #1	Los Angeles Clippers (48-34) at Golden State Warriors (40-42)	Game #2	Indiana Pacers (35-47) at Philadelphia 76ers (35-47)
Game #3	Winner of Game #1 (above) at Sacramento Kings (33-49)	Game #4	Winner of Game #2 (above) at Carlotte Bobcats (33-49)
Game #5	Winner of Game #3 (above) at Portland Trail Blazers (32-50)	Game #6	Winner of Game #4 (above) at New York Knicks (33-49)
Game #7	Winner of Game #5 (above) at Minnesota Timberwolves  (32-50)	Game #8	Winner of Game #6 (above) at Atlanta Hawks (30-52)
Game #9	Winner of Game #7 (above) at Seattle SuperSonics (31-51)	Game #10	Winner of Game #8 (above) at Milwaukee Bucks (28-54)
Game #11	Winner of Game #9 (above) at Memphis Grizzlies (22-60)	Game #12	Winner of Game #10 (above) at Boston Celtics (24-58)

Championship Game

Winner of Game #11 vs. Winner of Game #12

But Is It "Fair"?

This tournament model has the advantage of maintaining the "integrity" of current system. In other words, the worst teams still have the best chance to earn the #1 pick. But they actually have to earn it -- on the basketball court.

The team with the worst record (the Grizzlies) has to win 2 games in a row to win the tournament. If each game is a coin flip. this gives them a 1-in-4 chance. This is exactly equal to the 25% chance they have with the current ping-pong ball system.

The team with the 3rd-worst record (the Bucks) would have to win 3 games in a row to win the tournament. This is about a 1-in-8 chance (12.5%). Their chance under the current system: 15.6%.

At the other end, we have the Pacers, with the best record in the Eastern Conference among those hat missed the playoffs. Indiana would to win 7 games in a row. Assuming each contest is evenly matched, that gives them a 1-in-128 chance (about 0.8%). This is just a bit better than their odds under the current lottery system (0.7%).

Scheduling

Another problem is that the NBA Playoffs get more boring with each round. Well, more accurately, playoff games get more sparse with each round. The gap between the Conference Finals and the NBA Finals is about 4 days. And then we stretch one series over two weeks in June. This year we ended the year with 15 games spread over 26 days.

We fix this by scheduling the Draft Tournament during the scheduled off-days, with two games each night, leading up to a "final four" weekend:

• June 3rd (Sunday): Game #1 and Game #2
• June 5th (Tuesday): Game #3 and Game #4
• June 8th (Friday): Game #5 and Game #6
• June 11th (Monday): Game #7 and Game #8
• June 13th (Wednesday): Game #9 and Game #10
• June 16th (Saturday): Game #11 and Game #12 (the semi-finals)
• June 18th (Monday): Championship Game

Fixing Overtime In The NFL

Every year there's a clamor to "fix" overtime in the NFL. The complaint is that the results of a crucial game (especially a playoff game) can often be "decided by a coin flip".

The most popular idea is to adopt something like the NCAA, where each team is guaranteed a chance to score. I've also heard the idea to get rid of "sudden death" and play overtime periods until one team ends the game with the lead, much like in the NBA. I've even heard that field goals should be outlawed in overtime.

All of these ideas are horrible.

How To Turn Anything Into An Incomplete Pass

Here's the rule I've learned after years of instant replay in the NFL:

By throwing that red flag, you can turn ANYTHING into an incomplete pass.

Brady fumbles. Belichick goes to his sock and pulls out the challenge flag. Incomplete pass.

Polamalu intercepts. Dungy grasps at straws desperately. Incomplete pass.

I've seen this happen more than once. The two examples I just mentioned are the most absurd. But completions and interceptions get overruled all the time for one simple reason. Using today's NFL rules, a complete pass frequently LOOKS like an incomplete pass when viewed in slow motion.

Shift everything down to 1/8 speed and the refs see the tiniest movements of the ball in the receiver's hands. They say he was "bobbling it" and never established control. A perfectly good completion in real-time can look like a turbulent froth of primordial ooze when viewed under the microscope.

I play ultimate frisbee whenever I can. It's a lot like football in that your job is to catch the "ball" before it hits the ground. It's a classic American game of of "People vs. Gravity". Like the NFL, some ultimate players make some AMAZING catches: laying out for a disc that's about to hit the grass or go out of bounds. These feats of athleticism should be rewarded, regardless of weather the disc grazed a blade of grass as the player was finishing his catch.

For the NFL, I say "loosen up the completion rules". If it looks like a completion in real-time, it probably was a completion. Give these guys credit for the outstanding plays they are making, and play on!