Tag: baseball

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Cal Ripken Sit Down!

Cal Ripken is a decent player. I don’t think anybody would seriously mistake him for Brooks Robinson, but he used to hit pretty well for a shortstop. But his range was never very good, so they used to let the grass grow long on the Baltimore infield to slow those hard grounders down so Cal would have a chance at them. People used to say that he made up with intuition what he lacked in speed– as if speedy shortstops at the major league level didn’t have any intuition. Then they finally moved him to third base where his limited range was less of a liability. And he’s still a fairly decent hitter. Well, 12 home runs this year isn’t all that special for a third base man… I think Ed Sprague, God help us, has more.

Cal Ripken’s real claim to fame, of course, is the streak. Everyone in Baltimore, and sometimes around the league, raves about THE STREAK. Even Sports Illustrated, which usually has more sense, occasionally chips in with a little tribute to the STREAK.

And what is this streak? Consecutive hits? Consecutive 30-home-run seasons? Consecutive successful stolen bases? Consecutive game-winning RBI’s? Consecutive put-outs? Consecutive at bats without striking out? Consecutive games without an error? Consecutive games played without the use of steroids?

Nah. You see, those kinds of streaks actually help your team win victories. No, no, no– Cal Ripken’s streak is for showing up at consecutive games. That’s right: he shows up. More than 2,600 games in a row by now. Hey, there he is again, Iron Man Cal!

And interesting point here is that nobody else is even close. Why? Because IRON-man Cal is so much more durable than other players, and such a consistent hitter that he deserves to be in the line up every day, whereas poor old Mark McGuire has to sit out once in a while to stay effective?

Nah. Because no other manager in baseball is allowing any other player to develop such a streak. They don’t want it. They are deliberately sitting players out once in a while– even Mark McGuire– just so they don’t get any ideas in their heads about setting a new streak. The truth is that a streak of consecutive games played doesn’t help your team win, and, in fact, may even hurt your team’s chances. Your manager is forced, every day, to work his line-up around the one immutable fact of your streak. Try out a new, promising third-base man for a game or two? Oops, can’t. Try a left-handed batter against this strong righty? Not today, or the next day, or the next week. See if a bit of rest puts some juice back into his line-drives? Oh no, can’t break up the streak!

I told some friends about five years ago that I didn’t think Baltimore would ever win a World Series as long as Cal Ripken kept his streak going. So far, I’ve been right. Why? If Ripken is a decent player, and he is that– though he is vastly over-rated by most– why does the streak hurt the team? Baseball has become very competitive in the past few years. Teams like Cleveland, long the doormats of the AL, have built themselves into contenders. To maintain such a high level of competitive performance requires that the complete focus of the team be on one goal only: winning as many games as possible. Ripken’s streak robs the Orioles of that kind of focus.

Ripken, by the way, is not the saint he pretends to be. He’s smart and says all the correct things to reporters, but he’s also a prima donna who often travels separately from the team and stays in separate hotels. He pulled strings to get his brother, Billy, the job at second base– he hit about .200 with no power. The owner of the Orioles, Peter Angelos, loves Ripken and let his father manage the team until it became rather clear to everybody that he was in way over his head. Then he had to be fired, which created a lot of tension with Cal, and again disrupted the team’s chemistry.

Cal says, why should I sit out when I can still play? I got news for Mr. Ripken: there’s about 10 million other guys who all think they can play too, including your brother Billy. Until the Orioles show that they are willing to make decisions around the success of the team, instead of one player’s selfish statistics, the Orioles, and their fans, will be losers. If I became manager of the Orioles tomorrow, the first thing I would do is tell Mr. Ripken that the streak is over.

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The Sacrifice Bunt

The Sacrifice

Time and time again, if you are a baseball, fan you will see the following: a team comes up to bat in the late innings of a ball game. The lead-off batter gets on base with a walk or single. The next batter comes up and the manager instructs him to “sacrifice”: bunt the ball to the right side of the infield for a sure out in order to advance the runner to second base. If he succeeds, the colour commentator will rave about him “getting the job done” and “advancing the runner”. After the next two batters strike out and fly out, no one ever says, “Gee, I guess giving up that out on the sacrifice was pretty stupid, eh?”

Does the sacrifice bunt make sense? It must work. Almost every manager in the league does it, often two or three times a game. If everyone does it, it must be right.

The sacrifice bunt emerged as a strategy at a time in baseball history before there was such a thing as a designated hitter. Late in a close game, if a runner got on and the pitcher was the next batter, it made sense, because:

a) pitchers didn’t hit very well (a .200 average was considered good), and,
b) pitchers didn’t run very fast, making them very susceptible to the double play, and,
c) it was usually a good time to bring in a relief pitcher anyway. But nowadays, American League teams use it just as often.

It is possible, with a bit of computer programming and lots of free time, to create a “simulation” of thousands of baseball games. I set up such a simulation once to test the theory that the sacrifice bunt is a stupid strategy. I ran thousands of games in which, after the sixth inning, every time the lead-off batter got on, the manager used the sacrifice bunt. Then I ran the same series of games with no sacrifice bunt. Since there is no way of knowing which hitter exactly is coming up to bat in these situations, I created an average team with a set of batting and on-base percentages that reflected the abilities of a normal range of players.

It didn’t surprise me that the second simulation showed many, many more runs scored than the simulations using the sacrifice bunt. Consider this: the following batter, in most situations, will have an on base percentage (hits + walks) in the neighborhood of least .325. So roughly 1/3 of the time, he will advance the runner anyway, without giving up an out. The next batter has the same 1/3 chance of advancing the runner without giving up an out. And so does the next. And… here is the key point… so does the next batter. Without a sacrifice, you still have three outs to work with. With the sacrifice, you only have two. How significant is that? Consider some other factors. The next batter will, of course, often hit a double, a triple, or a home run instead of a single. With the runner on first, the first baseman has to hold the runner on, leaving a gap in the infield. The pitcher is often distracted by the runner. A fast runner has a chance of stealing the base anyway– I saw Tim Johnson use a sacrifice when he had Alex Gonzalez– a good base-stealer–on first. Finally, with the runner on second and one out, if the next hitter is “hot”, he will get walked anyway, setting up a potential double play. And don’t forget that without a runner at first, the first base man doesn’t have to cover the runner.

I’m not saying the sacrifice never works. But a lot of people make the foolish assumption that the odds of getting the hit you need to score a run are roughly the same after a sacrifice as they are before. In fact, they are substantially less, because one less batter is going to get a chance to drive in that run, and because the sacrifice ensures that the “batter” following a lead-off single or double invariably “hits” a single. In other words, over a season, or even a short series, the sacrifice will fail to achieve it’s desired objective– scoring a run– far more often than simply letting the next three batters do their job.

Well, if a sacrifice is so stupid, why do managers do it? The answer is simpler than you might imagine. Consider the World Series Champions of 1992 and 1993, the Toronto Blue Jays, who were managed by Cito Gaston. I don’t think anybody in this world would think that Cito was a smarter manager than Bobby Cox, one of the shrewdest skippers in the league. Why did he win? He simply put good talent on the field and let them play the way they were capable of. He put Roberto Alomar at second base and watched him make unbelievable fielding plays. He penciled in Devon White in centre field and watched him swallow up every fly ball hit there. He had the finest defensive third baseman in the league that year in Kelly Gruber (’92), and he had terrific pitchers, including Henke, Ward, and Wells, who didn’t give up a single run in relief until the final game. He won in spite of his questionable management. He won in 1993 in spite of the idiotic managerial decision to let Jimmy Key leave as a free agent and so they could retain Jack Morris, who contributed nothing to the 1993 victory. He won because Paul Molitor, John Olerud, Roberto Alomar, and Devon White, had terrific years.

Well, what exactly, then, is the role of the manager? The role of the manager is to call for the sacrifice bunt. What if the sacrifice bunt is a stupid strategy? Then what would the manager do? Send for the closer in the 9th inning of close games?

It’s like the famous question asked of Keith Richards, of the Rolling Stones: “Why don’t you sing more often?”

Keith replied, “then what would Mick do?”

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Sports Economics

Everybody knows that salaries for professional athletes are completely absurd, but nobody seems have any rational idea of what can be done about it. The basic argument against doing anything is that if people want to pay $55 to sit in a huge stadium and watch a bunch of spoiled athletes shoot hoops or shag fly balls or run into each other, what’s to stop them? It’s a free country.

Ah, but it’s not that simple. There are rules by which all businesses in the U.S. and Canada must operate. Most of these are good rules, designed to prevent collusion and restraint of competition. But professional sports do not abide by these rules: they have an exemption, granted by the government. The solution to the problem of outrageous sports salaries is really very simple. You remove or modify the legal exemption. Bang. Done.

Few people understand what the meaning of this exemption is. The meaning is that professional sports teams are not subject to the usual rules of competition, even though they are for-profit businesses. They are allowed to cooperate together to form a single league with a de facto monopoly over players and venues. In exchange for this exemption, the leagues are supposed to provide a commissioner to ensure that the interests of the sport are served. In reality, in practice, all the commissioners serve only one interest, that of the team owners. New franchises are handed out like lollipops because the astronomical entrance fees are divvied up among the established owners.

What would happen if the exemption were abolished? It would take a while, but we would begin to see minor leagues flourish again and some of them would grow into genuine competition for the Majors. Most medium-sized towns would be able to support a professional team because, with a multiplicity of smaller leagues instead of one, exclusive, big league, players salaries would decline to a rational level. And instead of a very small number of black athletes emerging from the ghettos to make it very, very, very big, we might have a large number of black athletes playing on a large number of professional teams, making a decent living for themselves, and helping bring business to their home communities with medium-sized stadiums, where fans will also actually get a decent view of the game.

We would have to kiss goodbye to the concept of “THE” Major Leagues. Big deal. And no more publicly-funded stadiums, one of the most insane ideas of our time (why are we taxpayers subsidizing the outrageous salaries of professional athletes?).

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The Wrong Issue: Welfare Bums in Ontario

A surprising number of my friends and acquaintances absolutely agree with Mike Harris when he says he wants to kick those lazy free-loaders off the welfare roles and put them back to work. Why should the government subsidize able-bodied adults who should be out there working? Why am I working hard just so my tax dollars can pay for you to have a good time?

Maybe I agree, maybe I don’t. The thing is, I don’t think most people realize how much a smoke screen this issue is.

The thing is, when the government writes a check for $450 to Mabel Smith (not a real person) and her two children because she doesn’t have a job and needs to pay for her apartment and food, we cry “hand out”! Welfare bum! Parasite!

But when a corporation receives a tax exemption…. we get confused. The government doesn’t give Molson Breweries, for example, a check, so it isn’t a handout… or is it?

You tell me: what’s the difference? There isn’t any. If Molson owes the government $10 million in taxes on it’s net profits and the government says, hey, tell you what, pay me $5 million instead, what we have is the government giving Molson’s $5 million dollars as surely as if they handed it to them in small denominations in a little black briefcase. If it was true, this would be a massive government “hand-out”. It would be unfair.

Well, the government does this all the time. It does it when it allows corporations to deduct the cost of renting a box at the Skydome as a “business” expense. It does it when it allows corporations to pollute the environment without paying the cost of cleaning it up. It does it when it uses tax money to pay for sports stadiums, or when it defers taxes on a new factory, or subsidizes the cost of electricity for aluminum plants. It does it when it builds highways and bridges for the cars manufactured by Chrysler, GM, Ford, and Toyota. It does it when it helps bail out the banks that made stupid loans to third world despots who used the money to buy weapons from American manufacturers. It does it every time two businessmen go out for lunch and bill their expense accounts.

The most egregious example of this kind of lavish government subsidy of the rich is, of course, professional sports. The Minnesota Twins are, at this moment, demanding that the hardworking taxpayers of the State of Minnesota fork over about $400 million to pay for a new stadium for the Twins. The owner of the Minnesota Twins is a billionaire. But, he weeps, he can’t afford a new stadium. The old stadium, built to last 30 years, is only 15 years old, but it doesn’t have a private entrance for the boxes, you see, so those rich people actually have rub shoulders with ordinary plebes on their way to their exclusive, private, privileged seats.

At the same time, these idiot owners are offering their players contracts for up to $100 million over seven years. Everyone on the face of the earth knows that this is insane, but most people seem to think that it doesn’t directly affect them because they don’t go to many professional sporting events and if the owner wants to squander his money like that, so be it. The truth is though that you and I are paying Joe Carter $6.5 million to hit 25 home runs and bat .240 this year, because we paid for the Skydome with our tax dollars and the money that the Blue Jays didn’t have to pay for a stadium was thereby freed up to pay for their players. Just to add insult to injury, they gave the exclusive food concession rights to McDonald’s so they could charge twice the regular price for a hot dog. You would think that since we paid for the stadium we could at least get decent food at a fair price. And, of course, McDonald’s is thereby getting a government subsidy. Where are all the free market believers when it really matters?

This is madness. This is insane. This is the product of a society that is full of macho sports freaks who get visibly upset when they hear about a welfare mother spending $30 of her money on booze and cigarettes instead of food but stare with envy when see a basketball star show up with his two bodyguards. What that welfare mother should really do is learn how to play baseball.

The solution is simple. The reason Minnesota even considered subsidizing the stadium for the Twins was the threat to move the Twins to another town that would be willing to pay for a stadium. (Minnesota turned them down). It should be illegal for any town or any state or province to subsidize, with tax dollars, a professional sports stadium. All of the other subsidies should also stop, including “hidden” subsidies, like the costs of dealing with environmental damage caused by factories and industries.

Every corporation should be required to clean up after themselves– if they complain that they can’t afford to do this, they shouldn’t be in business. Should car manufacturers pay to build roads? They’ll scream bloody murder. They’ll say that it would make cars too expensive. Well, isn’t that a thought! You mean the real cost of cars is far higher than the sticker price? How about the cost of bodily injuries caused by speeding? Maybe we should have built up the public transit services instead of the highways. Maybe we should have more trains and buses today and less Firebirds and Intrepids. Read the history of the development of our cities: this idea is not as far-fetched as you think.

Finally, no bank– including the IMF– should be allowed to loan money to any government that is not certifiably democratically elected. Why should the people of Brazil or Argentina pay for F-14 fighter jets ordered by the illegal governments that ran those countries in the 1970’s? Do you know what those jets were used for? Nothing. Do you know where the money is coming from to pay back those loans? It’s coming out of the schools and hospitals and development projects that are needed to help the average people of these countries survive.

Either that, or we should learn to shut up about welfare recipients.