Presidents of the United States of America at the Nationals Games

The presidents run races in between innings at the Nationals games in Washington, D.C.

They also throw t-shirts to the crowd.

I am sure after a game there presidents' approval ratings couldn't be higher!

Detroit Tigers to defeat New York Yankees later today.

At the hated Yankee Stadium to watch the Detroit Tigers defeat the hated New York Yankees.

How often does the winner of the third game win the World Series after a split first two games.

As I noticed searches landing on my earlier posts about World Series probabilities, I noticed that fans are asking "How often does the team that wins the third game of the World Series win the whole thing". From history that chance is 68%, from a simulation in which it assumed that either team has a 50% chance of winning a game it is 65%.

A better questions relates to the current situation going into tonight's World Series game. If the teams split the first two games, how often does the winner of the third game go on to win the series? In history, teams have split the first two games 50 out of 99 times, and the next team to win has gone on to win it all 35 of those games or 70% of the time. The simulations show a similar 50% of the trials have a split in the first two games, and 70% of those splits have the team that wins the third game willing the Series.

How often does the first team to win a game win the World Series if they lose the second game?

After last night's loss of the Phillies to the Yankees the World Series is tied one game to one game. I thought that I could update the information from yesterday on the probability that the team that wins the first game of the World Series wins the whole series.

Now the question is "What is the probability that the team that wins the first game of the series and loses the second wins the World Series?" A review of 100 years or so of World series data (plus looking at each series on wikipedia) shows that 50% of the time the teams in the World Series split the first two games. This provides our data set. 50% of the teams that won the first game and lose the second win the World Series.

That makes perfect sense, now the teams are one and one and each team has to win three games to win the whole thing. It becomes a best of five series. Simulations with 10,000 trials and assuming that the teams win 50% of the time confirm the historical trend. In 50% of the cases when the teams split the first two games, the winner of the first game goes on to win the World Series 50% of the time.

How often does the winner of the first game win the World Series

The Fox announcers off-handedly mentioned after the Phillies first game win that the team that won the first game of the World Series has gone on to win the Series in the past six years. I wondered if this was an interesting statistic or an obvious one. If you think about it, once a team wins one game of the series they only have to win three more games, where as there opponent must win four to win. Winning the first game has an inherent obvious advantage. Perhaps that stat isn't so interesting.

We can simulate a World Series by choosing a probability of winning a game, 50% seems a fair starting point, and then counting games. Once a team wins four games, perform no further game simulations for that series. Simulating 10,000 series allows the collection of some statistics and probabilities. For instance, the number of games in a series if the games are a toss up (one team wins 50% of the time) is shown in the chart below.

The exact result for how many games will occur in a World Series if each team wins 50% of the time is 4 games 1/8 of the time, 5 games 1/4 of the time and 6 and 7 games 5/16 of the time for both. This is a good check on our simulation.

The results from 100 years of World Series (including only best of seven series) closely parallels the simulations, with four game series slightly more common.

To answer the first question, 10,000 trials shows that if the games are a toss up the winner of the first game goes on to win the World Series 65.6% of the time. A glance back at almost 100 years of World Series, (eliminating ones that were not best of seven, and using wikipedia to see which team won first), shows that historically the first team to win wins the series 66% of the time. Perhaps that stat from Fox isn't so surprising.

Varying the probability that one team (say the National League team) wins from 50% lets the simulation explore the probability that the first team to win a game wins the series. Obviously if one team wins 100% of the time, they win the first game and the series. This is also the same as if one team wins 0% of the time, the other team wins the first game and the series. The middle result (50% probability of winning a game), reported above, is 65.6%. The plot below shows how this varies with the probability of the National League team winning. Given that the historical result is that the first team to win a game in the World Series wins the Series 66% of the time, it is reasonable to expect that the chance one or the other team would win a given World series game is close to 50%, or at least somewhere between 40% and 60%.

Finally the simulation reveals the number of games played, the series winner and the winner of the first game. The plot below shows that histogram.


Because the simulation is only 10,000 trials, the results here are probably plus or minus 0.5%.

Venn diagram of Baseball team names and origins

This fascinating diagram of Major League Baseball team names groups them together by type and origin.


There are more links with the origins of the team names at FlipFlopFlyBall.com. The name origin of "Phillies" is obvious, but did you know the Detroit Tigers are names after the Detroit Light Guard military unit, known as "The Tigers." So they are only named after an animal because what they were named for was named after an animal.

(via Neatorama, via Kottke)

In honor of MLB calling today 09/09/09 - Baseball Day - Current players with #9

Today is 09/09/09, and at 9:09 MLB has been giving away prizes to commermorate the day. In honor of the day, here are all of the players currently wearing #9 on their unforms according to wikipedia:

Michael Abrey, first baseman for the Baltimore Orioles
Gregg Zaun, catcher for the Tampa Bay Rays
Carlos Guillén, left fielder for the Detroit Tigers
David DeJesus, center fielder for the Kansas City Royals
Chone Figgins, third baseman for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
Jack Wilson, shortstop for the Seattle Mariners
Hank Blalock, first baseman for the Texas Rangers

Hunter Pence, right fielder for the Houston Astros
Omir Santos, catcher for the New York Mets
Miguel Cairo, infielder for the Philadelphia Phillies
Reed Johnson, outfielder for the Chicago Cubs
Hernán Iribarren, infielder for the Milwaukee Brewers
Gerado Parra, center fielder for Arizona Diamondbacks
Ian Sewart, infielder for Colorado Rockies
Juan Peirre, outfielder for the LA Dodgers

Just in case you need it for a triva question today.

Hey Detroit Tigers fans go vote for Brandon Inge to be at the All Star Game

Hey Detroit Tigers fans, Please go vote for Brandon Inge of the Detroit Tigers to go to the All Star Game at MLB.com (ballot is first headline on righthand side) - he deserves it. Voting ends Thursday at 4pm.

If you don't have a National League favorite, please stringly consider adding Shane Victorino of the Phillies on the National league side of your ballot.

Hey Phillies fans - All Star Game Final Vote Information

Hey Phillies fans, when you vote for Shane Victorino to be an All-Star at MLB.com, please add your vote for Brandon Inge on the American League side, he really deserves it. The voting ends Thursday at 4pm so please get those votes in now.

New iPod Touch - woo hoo!

My Father's Day gift this year was an iPod Touch for myself. Conveniently my iPod Nano click wheel had failed so I felt it was time for an upgrade. Apple gave me 10% off of the new iPod for recycling my old one, which was worth it since I won that one in a raffle a few yeays ago anyway.

The iPod Touch is still very new to me, but the first thing I did was try to load MLB at Bat 2009, and I got a notice that it needed the 3.0 software. How gutsy is it that I paid all of this money for the iPod and then to get the particular funtionality I needed I had to pay another $9.99 to upgrade to 3.0? Once I loaded MLB at Bat 2009 after the upggrade I was able to watch live streaming of the Detroit Tigers vs. St. Louis, how cool is that. The picture had nice resolution and the built in speaker was adequate, but it was even better with headphones. MLB at Bat 2009 also has all the scores, play-by-play, pitch-by-pitch, and audio both home and away for every game, but it was the video that drew me in. However it does cleverly figure out where you are so that it can obey blackout restrictions (cleverly is intended sarcastically, still can't watch what I want, when I want, where I want, on what I want). There will be two games a day.

I am sure that I have much more fun to go with this new IPod Touch. Streaming video was my favorite so far, but I also like that I can put all of those pictures of Linus on there to show people, since who prints out pictures anymore, its all digital now.

What are you favorite apps? Suggestions?

Detroit Tigers beat Baltimore Orioles on Saturday

It turns out that the Detroit Tigers did beat the Baltimore Orioles on Saturday (They also won today). here are some pictures from the game. The bets one would have been of me catching a foul ball because we were right behind home plate. However the guy sitting behind me caught my foul ball! I would have probably dropped it anyway.

Here is Jim Leyland and a coach looking at Everett's hand after he was hit by a pitch.


Leyland is my favorite coach, as much from when he coached the Pirates as for now coaching Detroit.

Ordonez and his crazy hair at bat.


Ordonez at second after his hit.

It was a good game and the weather was great after two really rainy nights. I picked the correct game to go to.

Baseball curve ball part skill part illusion

It turns out that while curve ball in baseball really does curve a bit due to aerodynamic forces and they way it is thrown, that there is an optical illusion component. Many players claim that a curve ball seems to suddenly break, more than the physical science would seem to indicate. Turns out that is due to the eye shifting between central vision and peripheral vision as the pitch reaches the batter. Researchers from
American University, USC, Dartmouth and the SUNY College of Optometry have put together and excellent application that lets you see the origin of the effect. Try it. When you look at the falling spinning ball head on it appears to fall straight when you look at it with your peripheral vision by staring to the right the ball seems to fall at an angle top the left. Switching between the two viewpoints makes it seem as if the falling ball jumps to the left.

It has been pointed out that curveballs really do curve (see also the essay "The Hell it Don't Curve" and this thesis) but in our Cartesian dualist influenced society it always has to be either-or instead of both. Seems that curveballs do curve and that an optical illusion enhances this effect. This simulation does not appear to be the first of its type. Here is one that focuses on the batter's point of view, and other POV's of your choice.

I would love to see this insight combined with high speed photography of curve balls to see if the comparison holds in real life as with the simulation (already done in the thesis above and elsewhere). Perhaps instead of just a regular baseball one could also use a ball painted half black and half white. Does that enhance the effect? What other variables could you change? I want a machine that throws baseballs with control to change the pitches every which way, a high speed camera and computer to capture the data (It exists). I can always design the experiments, and great minds think alike since much of this has been done, I just don't have the resources or time to follow through.

(via Neatorama's Upcoming Queue, via the Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest)

Baseball's Blackhearted Blackouts

I suppose I am late to the historical rant about Major league baseball's controversial television blackout policy. What I am looking for, sparked by my desire to watch baseball when I want and where I want, was the newest map of the MLB blackout areas. I was hoping it would help me to understand the poor implementation of the YES network, MASN and MASN2 on FIOS TV as well as the unnecessarily expensive MLB Extra Innings.

Apparently even MLB.TV on the web blacks out games in your local area because you are supposed to go buy tickets or watch it on the approved local channel. This has caused a lot of angry discussion among fans and commissioner Bud Selig had asked for a review of the policy. MLB.tv should also take back its slogan "Sign up for MLB.TV and never miss a game again!", it isn't true. It doesn't look like the review and changes to the policy occurred in time for this season. Thus the policy is painful and restrictive and doesn't mesh well with this strange new world of the internet. From the article summary:

• Local Live Blackout: ALL LIVE MLB.TV games will be blacked out in each applicable Club's home television territory (except for certain home television territories for which MLB.com may offer in-market subscription services) or in Japan.
• National Live Blackout (Regular Season): Due to Major League Baseball national exclusivities, each Saturday until 7:00 PM EST (beginning May 17, 2008 and continuing for remaining Saturdays during the regular season) and each Sunday night (for games that begin after 5:00 PM EST), all scheduled webcasts of games played within such time period will be blacked out.
• National Live Blackout (Post Season): Due to Major League Baseball national exclusivities, during the MLB postseason, if you live within the following nations or territories, webcasts of all postseason games will be blacked out: United States, Canada, Guam, US Virgin Islands, South Korea and Japan.
• NOTE: Due to broadcast restrictions, new MLB.TV and Condensed Game archives are limited to a playing time of five minutes in duration until 6 am ET on the day following that on which the applicable game commenced play.

The national blackouts are because either Fox (on Saturday), or ESPN (On Sunday Night) and now MLB Network (on Wednesday's) has exclusive rights to televised games. This also screws up MLB Extra Innings on cable, since many of those games are blacked out according to these rules also.

In my searches I found at least two maps of the blackout areas for the various teams. I also found maps close to but not exactlye blackout maps, whihc were somewhat helpful. They are somewhat similar to the United Countries of Baseball map from Stange Maps.


The maps below are based on some more rigorous data. The unincorporated territories above are certainly incorporated in real life, because there is money to be made, or imagined to be made. Or one could use this map based on survey results.

However, my goal is to find a map generated using official data from MLB and even to find the data myself.



This version (click on pic for bigger) was created by a helpful wikipedia user but does not get correctly credited in many articles on the topic (like here at the Biz of baseball).

I like the version above (click picture above for bigger) from a Yahoo article (map is presented without a credit), that includes the cities and team names so it is clearer when you look at a region. If multiple teams coexist in a region, all of those teams are blacked out on MLB.com or on MLB extra innings, with the expectation that you should watch the game on a local channel. This get really bad in baseball free Iowa, or if your cable company doesn't carry the correct local channel.

One can use the"Am I in a local live blackout region" dialogue box at the bottom of any of the MBT.tv mediacenter pages, to get a list of the blackout zip codes for any of the teams. Picking each team in succession would allow a file to be built and then the right software could map from that. I am surprised that I cannot find a Google maps mash up that does just that. I now have a list of all of the teams and their respective blocked out zip codes, I now need a list of every zip code with its lat. and long. and perhaps the population for fun, and I could make my own maps.

YES network makes itself more useless

Hey, YES network. I am so glad that you worked out your deal with Verizon FIOS TV to be on their network, even though I hate the Yankees. That means I can see other favorite American league teams, like Detroit or the Angels, in HD on my FIOS TV... or does it.

From the article:

First they say:

"The Yankees have one of the largest fan bases of almost any team in sports, even outside the New York area," says Verizon representative Deidre Mulcahy. "YES programming is a great way for Yankee fans -- and baseball fans in general -- to get more behind-the-scenes and in-depth programming on the Yankees."

But then the other shoe drops:

The YES Network, which stands for Yankee Entertainment and Sports, will be the first regional sports network available in all of the Verizon's FiOS markets, and will be offered at no additional charge. Outside of the network's New York and New Jersey base, however, the programming will not include Yankees and Nets games.

Instead, those customers will see substitute YES programming, such as "Batting Practice Today" (featuring news, analysis, match-ups and BP coverage of the Yankees and opponents), "Yankeeography" (a Yankees biographical series) and the "Joe Girardi Show."

(bold mine)

You idiots, nobody wants to see these other crappy shows, they want to see baseball games. The draw of your network would be for those vaunted fans of the Yankees (not me) all over the country to get to see the games on the YES network. At least I am not paying extra for it. Somebody wants to make a buck and make me sign up for MLB Extra Innings instead.

When will I get to watch what I want, when I want, where I want, without some other charge being tacked onto my experience? The Yankees and their network suck!

Understanding the World Baseball Classic Brackets

For those of you starved for baseball and not excited about Spring Training, there is the World Baseball Classic this year. 16 teams from around the world compete. It is a truly international cast, perhaps more world series than the World Series, however there are strict rules about player participation, especially pitchers, since afterward most of these players must go back to play in their real jobs in the major leagues. The excitement this year seems to be that the Netherlands is doing better than expected. Remembering that the Netherlands includes Antigua and Barbados and recalling all of the talent in baseball from the Caribbean perhaps explains this, though they had to beat the Dominican Republic twice to move to Round Two.

A friend and I were wondering how the games would progress and who would be in or out if they win or lose so I went to the website to figure it out. After many minutes spent deciphering the pool play procedures I realized that a diagram for each round would be the best way to understand it. You are welcome to read the rules to determine it for yourself. I thought the brackets on the website were less than self explanatory, but easier to understand now that Round One is almost completed.

The diagrams below are state diagrams (or directed graphs or maybe tree diagrams) for the World Baseball Classic. The diagram below shows the order of play for each of the Pools A, B, C, D.


Each game is clear with, for example, W2 refering to the team that won game 2 or L4 referring to the team that lost game 4. Two teams from each Pool advance to Round Two, a winner and a runner up.

In Round Two the first two games match a winner from one pool to the runner up from another. Pool A and B from Round One go into Pool 1 for Round Two and Pool C and D from Round One go into Pool 2 for Round Two. Play then follows much the same process as above. Below is the diagram from Round Two.

Two teams advance from each Pool 1 and 2, a winner and a runner up. As displayed in the diagram below, in the semifinal the winner of Pool 1 plays the runner up of Pool 2 and vice versa. The winners of these games go on the the Finals.


The winner of the Finals receives accolades as shown, while the loser gets a hardy hand shake and a good job.

Baseball Salaries still not correlated with performance

There are lies, there are damned lies, there are statistics, and then there are baseball statistics.

A number of hits from TheBigLead sports blog to an earlier discussion of baseball salaries vs. team performance has prompted me to check that conclusion again with more data. The conclusion was that there is little correlation between salary and winning games. Later, Paul suggested we read Moneyball, I read The Baseball Economist instead.

The Big Lead helpfully pointed to the USA Today baseball salaries database where I collected total team salaries going back to 1988. I also collected the wins for every team through those years (2007 to 1988). So now I have more data to support the boring conclusion that team salaries don't seem to correlate with team wins.

In order to eliminate the change in salaries from year to year I normalized the yearly salaries of each team to the median (half the team salaries above, half below) salary for that year. The median salary is set at 100%. I also normalized the team wins for each year to the median number of wins (usually about 81, since 162 games are played and over the entire set of teams half are lost and half are won). This normalization makes sense because it costs some amount to run a baseball team, but we are interested in seeing if paying more than that amount, or more than the other guys increases our ability to win more games than the other guys and make it to the playoffs.

The plot (click it for larger) shows that the effect is weak, an increase of 10% over the median team salary yields only a 1.7% increase in games won over the median (about 1.4 games) and the correlation only explains about 15% of the difference in winning. 85% of the difference are due to other factors. This is true with and without the traditional Yankees team salary outliers from 2003 through 2007.

What if we look at last year's salary's effect on this year's performance? We get an even smaller effect and a worse correlation.

So if salaries don't have a real effect on baseball wins and wins is what managers and owners aim for, why do they keep paying the big salaries? Paul says read Moneyball, and some teams are using SABRmetrics and other statistics to find the biggest bang for their player buck, why isn't it reflected in the salaries vs. wins? Nearer and dearer to my heart, why did the Detroit Tigers choose to pay a $137 million, team payroll (#3 below) and they are in last place in the central division, behind Kansas City for goodness sake?

This year's salaries:

rank	team	salary
1	New York Yankees	$209,081,577
2	New York Mets	$137,793,376
3	Detroit Tigers	$137,685,196
4	Boston Red Sox	$133,390,035
5	Chicago White Sox	$121,189,332
6	Los Angeles Angels	$119,216,333
7	Los Angeles Dodgers	$118,588,536
8	Chicago Cubs	$118,345,833
9	Seattle Mariners	$117,666,482
10	Atlanta Braves	$102,365,683
11	St. Louis Cardinals	$99,624,449
12	Philadelphia Phillies	$98,269,880
13	Toronto Blue Jays	$97,793,900
14	Houston Astros	$88,930,414
15	Milwaukee Brewers	$80,937,499
16	Cleveland Indians	$78,970,066
17	San Francisco Giants	$76,594,500
18	Cincinnati Reds	$74,117,695
19	San Diego Padres	$73,677,616
20	Colorado Rockies	$68,655,500
21	Texas Rangers	$67,712,326
22	Baltimore Orioles	$67,196,246
23	Arizona Diamondbacks	$66,202,712
24	Kansas City Royals	$58,245,500
25	Minnesota Twins	$56,932,766
26	Washington Nationals	$54,961,000
27	Pittsburgh Pirates	$48,689,783
28	Oakland Athletics	$47,967,126
29	Tampa Bay Rays	$43,820,597
30	Florida Marlins	$21,811,500

Delaware's elected officials take in the American pasttime

Friday was opening day and a birthday party for a friend (Happy Birthday!) at the Delaware Blue Rocks and many of Delaware's elected figures were there. The team was honoring the late team president Matt Minker which I think was the extra reason that all of the officials were there as they read from various proclamations honoring Minker.


The first pitch was greatly delayed by these dedications. First to speak was Governor Minner, with a proclamation.








Then Senator Carper in a blue Blue Rocks baseball cap. That's the Minker family next to him. They made them stand out for almost the entire presentation after they were given the proclamation by Minner.




The first ball was supposed to be thrown out by Congressman Castle, who also spoke.








There was no Senator Biden to be found, and the mayor of Wilmington sent his chief of staff. Here is the governor, the mayor's chief of staff, the congressman and the senator waiting for the game to start.







I thought Mike Castle was to throw out the first pitch but Tom Carper threw one, and that stupid Rocky Bluewinkle (MySpace) jumped in front when I took the picture.





Then Carper waited around while Castle threw his "first" pitch. Mike castle was in a suit because he said he was also supposed to be at an event at the riverfront center near the stadium. I thought he was a good sport for doing both things.



I didn't get to see my favorite character Mr. Celery (MySpace, mascot page) because the Blue Rocks failed to score, in fact we left after 9 innings because neither team had scored. Wilmington lost to the Myrtle beach Pelicans 2-0 in 13 innings, according to the box score, but 2-1 according to the recap (which I think is a typo). However, there was some excitement during the popcorn, hot dog and peanut race.

Without the express written consent of Major League Baseball

Whenever I daringly post from a baseball game in progress (such as in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington this year, or Chicago's Wrigley Field) I always jokingly put that I am worried about copyright or describing the game, because I don't have the "express written consent of Major League Baseball". My reporting must be bad or I am a small fry because I never had any trouble.

One of Cory Doctorow's students, Crystal Larsen, had a final project in the class to explore getting press credentials to bloggers so that they could write about MLB games. I guess credentialing is a first step towards easing up on the heavy hand the MLB has and would open up sports writing to a whole new crowd. I don't expect that I would want any credentials for my infrequent visits. But I do have some friends that are crazy about baseball that might be interested.

Phillies lose 8 to 1, we stink!

Phillies Lost yesterday. Th only good news is that we are only 16 games away from being the first franchise to lose losing 10,000 games over its lifetime. Go Phils.

There was no love for Barry Bonds in the park yesterday as he was heckled every time he walked out to us in the outfield and every time he went to bet. No home runs from Bonds either he went 0 for 4 and apparently had no home runs in Philadelphia. 10 more home runs for his record but not here.





Apparently this liberty bell lights up when the Phillies hit a home run. I did not get to see that yesterday either.

As american as baseball and apple pie

The new house hosted its first game of catch as some guests and I through baseballs back and forth a few times before the chicken was done on the grill. Nothing more American than throwing a baseball back and forth. Memorial Day weekend also signals flag flying season. I was unable to get the apple pie into this picture, though we did have one for dessert.

I picked this picture because apparently I either run funny or was about to fall down (I am the stumbling man on the left). It is an action shot. The truth, justice and the American way picture is harder to compose, since those qualities are so abstract.