Mailbag: Declaration Of Harbaugh, Shot Clock Impact, Baseball Competitiveness, Sea Cucumbers Comment Count

Brian

I did.

you asked for it

"Soon he will start appearing in historically significant photos and no one will remember that he was not, in fact, present."

-Nick

DeclarationOfHarbaughy

Harbaugh put his Jim Harbaugh on the Declaration of Independence, and war was avoided. The British decided to do anything else at all; Harbaugh was forced to invent the game of baseball so he could play it with himself.

Shot clock effect on upsets.

Brian,

Given that lowering the shot clock from 35 to 30 seconds had little to no effect in the NIT, and that we can expect the same for a full season, I wonder if a side effect of the change might be fewer upsets.  While efficiency might not change, the number of possessions will.  I would think that with more possessions the better team is likely to win, because more possessions mean less randomness and greater reversion to the mean overall. 

Give EMU 50 possessions against Michigan vs. 100 possessions against Michigan, and I would think that they would have a better chance to win with 50 possessions than 100.  Could the 30 second shot clock actually make March Madness less maddening by reducing upsets?  Thoughts?

-A slightly amused reader who still hopes for upsets

I think that's correct. I still remember that game back in the Amaker era when Illinois was at their apex and Michigan was rolling out Dion Harris and walk-ons named Dani. Michigan's strategy was to run the clock down without running offense and have Harris take a contested shot—the most Amaker strategy ever—and it worked for a while.

Anything that increases the number of trials without making those trials significantly less reliable indicators of talent should reduce upsets. It should be a real effect, but it might be so small as to not be reliably measurable. Maybe Kenpom will address it once he's got a big ol' bag of data.

I have gotten a lot of questions/assertions about the 30 second shot clock—far more than I think the change warrants. The differences are going to be minor. The median NCAA team saw only 10.7% of its shots go up in the period of time just erased. Some of that time can be reclaimed by being more urgent about getting the ball up the floor. (For example, the NBA's back court violation is an eight second call, not a ten second call.) The net impact is likely to be less wasted time and approximately equal efficiency. That's a good change for the game.

More on shot clock

I don’t believe this will affect the quality of shots as much as it will affect substitutions…

On a number of occasions I watched several teams, Wisconsin and Michigan included, essentially ‘waste’ at least 5 seconds tossing the ball back and forth outside the 3 point arc without any other movement. Case could be made this was simply being used to offer the players a short rest on offense, meaning that the top players likely play longer before substitution.

This may mean that teams with deep and talented benches gain an advantage…so the question may become whether it is the team with the best starters or the team with the best top 9 that wins.

-Howard [ed: a basketball referee]

There's another effect: if teams do decide to make those five seconds up by being quicker that's going to result in more pressure to get up and down the floor and more tired legs late in games. That'll be something to watch next year: does the percentage of bench minutes go up as a result?

Again: probably marginal impact but one that I would argue is unambiguously good.

[After the JUMP: another theory of baseball competitiveness, sea cucumbers.]

More baseball.

I got another interesting post on the sudden competitiveness of Big Ten baseball with a  pretty good theory:

Hey Brian,

I enjoyed reading your take on the increasing parity in college baseball, at least in the case of the B1G v. South and West.  My brother played in the College World Series in what I like to call the Gorilla Ball Era (mid 90s - early 2000s), I played at an East Coast college during more reasonable offensive years (mid 2000s), then I have been loosely following college baseball since. 

I think the biggest driver behind the Midwest schools and East Coast schools gaining ground on the SEC, ACC, and Pac12 is the bat change. While the bats have been detuned over the last 15 years by way of barrel size (2 3/4 to 2 5/8) and weight ratios (-5 to -3), until 2011, the biggest, most talented dudes would just beat the hell out of the non-baseball schools with 8 doubles and 3 HRs per game. 

In 2011, for the first time, they materially deadened the bats to where it looks like most guys are hitting with wood or really explosive wet paper towel rolls. Offensive numbers plummeted immediately, and in 2012, Purdue got a #1 seed in the regionals, and Stony Brook and Kent State made the CWS.  In 2013, we had Indiana get a national seed and make the CWS. 

This wouldn't have happened with gorilla bats or even the pre-2011 slightly detuned gorilla bats. With significantly less offense, games have become closer, and it has enabled the team that can play small ball, pitch well, and play solid defense compete with anyone. Basically, as long as you can recruit reasonable athletes, good coaching can go a much longer way than it used to. With the gorilla bats, if you weren't LSU, Miami, Stanford, USC, etc. and didn't have 3 monsters and 4 other guys that could rake naturally or via roids, you were going to be chasing 12 runs with singles. 

Chris

College baseball went to a vastly less run-heavy configuration. That was going to increase parity no matter what. The Big Ten investing in the sport only closed that gap further.

Whether you like that likely depends on your geographic location. I'm not a big baseball fan because so much of the game feels random. 100 wins is a benchmark of the best team, which is equivalent to an NFL team going 10-6 or an NBA team winning 51 games. The playoffs are a literal crapshoot in which teams of approximately equal quality face off in series about 50 games too short to determine which of them is actually better. It's tense, I'll give it that. It doesn't feel particularly meaningful. (College hockey, which I do like a lot, has this problem worse than any other sport in the universe.)

Gorilla Ball era college baseball may not have been particularly competitive but with a short season with limited interaction it was at least definitive. Your tastes will vary on how much upset potential you like in your sports. I prefer football and basketball to soccer (on the foreordained side of things) and baseball and hockey (on random side of things).

I wanted to announce this collaboration some other way.

Thanks for backing Hail To The Victors 2015 by Brian @ MGoBlog.

just fyi, this showed up as a "you might also like" when i backed HTTV: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/953213599/manifesto?ref=thanks

"Manifesto is a playful, queer dance narrative performance that explores Womanhood. And California Red Sea Cucumbers."

i can see the parallels.

-Ben

I wanted to keep my side hobby on the DL until it was ready, but here we are.

Sea cucumbers have always bothered and enthralled. They have mouths. They wave about. They look more like enormous multi-colored slugs than cucumbers. Cucumbers are only notable for being very boring. I mean:

image

I wonder where Sea Cucumbers land on the Bo Ryan index

Someone screwed up the naming spectacularly here. And now I will dance about this conflict.

Comments

Michael

May 19th, 2015 at 12:29 PM ^

An individual baseball game is more "random" because there are far more variables at work than there are in basketball, for example, where the same 6-8 guys play the same 6-8 other who run more or less the same plays. In baseball the batter-pitcher matchup, coupled with just how difficult it is for the offense to score in general produces such outcomes.

I think baseball would be less "random" if the playoffs were as inclusive as other leagues, where the top 6-8 from the AL/NL each make it and they play a 7 game series (5 game series are too short IMO). In that scenario I think the better teams would win out at a similar rate as in football. 

That being said, I would hate that as a baseball fan. I think the 1 game play-in game is an abomination that should be strapped to an ICBM and launched into the sun.

InterM

May 19th, 2015 at 1:09 PM ^

The randomness of MLB playoffs is more tolerable to me than, say, NHL playoffs because the teams that make the playoffs have proved their worth over a long season.  And precisely because of that lengthy season and the difficulty of making the playoffs in baseball, I could not agree more that a single play-in game at the end of the season is the worst idea ever in professional sports.

stephenrjking

May 19th, 2015 at 2:18 PM ^

I'm a bit confused--you are praising a response that says that suggests less randomness would be a good thing, and that it can be achieved by adding teams and going to full 7-game series for all rounds.

I agree with you that there is value in rewarding regular season success with a playoff berth. Too many teams dilute the product, and baseball is one sport where the long regular season really has to mean something.

...Which is why the one-game playoff, while gimmicky and bizarre, works for me. It is reserved for Wild Card teams, which makes a division title a real and valuable achievement. Basically, it's a one-game coin flip that throws off your pitching rotation.

To me, this is superior to the old days of the past decade where the Red Sox and Yankees would both make the playoffs and the games played in the last two months meant nothing. Last year, the A's faced a real consequence for their late-season collapse, and the Tigers earned a real reward (which the bullpen, naturally, gave back) for how they played in the regular season.

The season mattered.

One thing I do agree on: all series should go 7. 5-game series are silly.

cm2010

May 19th, 2015 at 2:17 PM ^

I don't see how adding more teams would make the playoffs less random. All that would do is give more teams an opportunity to win the WS, and provide the good teams more chances to have a rough stretch that would eliminate them from the playoffs. 

I would also like to stretch the Division Series from a 5-game to a 7-game series, but it ultimately won't make much of a difference. You are only forcing the winning team to win one more game. In baseball, that's almost nothing.

I am going to be in the vast minority on this, but I like the current Wild Card set up. Because baseball is so random, and teams have to play a grueling, 162-game season to qualify for the playoffs, division winners should be rewarded, and the playoff structure should be constructed to favor them. The extra wild card was created to serve three purposes: provide more opportunities for teams to make the playoffs, provide an exciting (and profitable) event, and to award division winners by making wild card teams jump through an extra hoop to win the WS.

If the Wild Card series is any longer than a day or two, you are essentially icing the division winners. Baseball is a game of rhythm and timing. When players (especially hitters) have a long time off between games, it's harder to hit, especially when you're facing the quality of pitchers that are in the playoffs. Thus, anything more than a one-game "series" disadvantages the division winners. If you want a good example of this, see the 2006 WS (yeah, I went there). If you don't want to be subject to the random Wild Card game, then win your division. 

InterM

May 19th, 2015 at 2:29 PM ^

This argument in favor of the play-in game rests on a faulty premise -- namely, that there was a good reason in the first place for adding a second wild card team.  Once you've added that second team, I'd agree that it would be a bad idea to extend the playoffs (and ice the division winners) with an extended wild card series.  But one wild card team was enough, if you ask me -- it rewards a team with a good regular season that nonetheless failed to win its division, but it's unnecessary to reward more than one such team, especially when one wild card produces an optimal four-team playoff scheme.

cm2010

May 19th, 2015 at 2:46 PM ^

1) The 2nd WC team was the brain child of Tony LaRussa and Joe Torre, while they were working for Bud Selig. They created it because it was, in their mind, too easy for WC teams to win the WS. Also, in a tight division race, there was no incentive for the two teams to try and win the division, but rather just make sure they at least secured a spot in the playoffs. Adding the second team forced good teams to continue to go after the division title to ensure they don't have to participate in the play in game.

2) More teams have a shot to make the playoffs, which gives more fans reason to follow their teams into August and September. I can't fathom why that is anything but good.

3) It means there will be more "buyers" and fewer "sellers" at the deadline, which leads to fewer teams turning into glorified farm teams. This leads to greater parity (and more competitive games) over the course of the entire season, and especially at the end of the season.

It would be great if there were a way to expand the Wild Card "series" to three, five, or seven games without disadvantaging the division winners, but I don't see a realistic way of doing that.

Michael

May 19th, 2015 at 3:34 PM ^

I understand these arguments, but I think some of the positive components of what you outline are overridden by what happened in 2012 during the first iteration of this format. A 94 win Braves team had to play an 88 win Cardinals team and ultimately lost a game played under protest due to one of the worst calls I have ever seen. Anyone who watched that game - which wasn't many because it started at 5PM on a Friday - should understand why a one game anything in baseball is not tenable; precisely because of that randomness.

That the Cards went on to win the WS is a moot point, as they had no business being given equal treatment to a team that had a 6 game advantage on them, which played in a superior division, and which had won 5 of the 6 games against the Cardinals that season. 

Any benefit is far outweighed by the above being allowed to happen.

stephenrjking

May 19th, 2015 at 4:08 PM ^

Bad calls can happen in any game in any situation, in any sport. It doesn't need to be a play-in to cost a team dearly, either.

The Braves put themselves in the position of relying on one game by not winning their division. The game itself may be capricious, but they exposed themselves to that by not winning. Their downfall could just as easily come from a bad pitch by a good pitcher, a freak error, or a relief pitcher who just "doesn't have it." That's baseball on any given day. Avoid it. Win your games.

The Giants won it that year BTW. I don't blame you for messing that up, I've tried to forget about that World Series myself.

cm2010

May 19th, 2015 at 4:19 PM ^

Yes, that was possibly the worst call I've ever seen in my life, and yes, it was a major factor in the outcome. However, the Braves had plenty of opportunities to overcome the call, which they failed to do. But that's not the point. Furthermore, the Cards did not win the WS that year, in fact, they lost in the NLCS to the Giants (a division winner), who won the WS. This is also not the point.

Saying that a system didn't work out well for one team in one year, so therefore that far outweighs the positive impact it has on the entire league over the course of several years is a preposterous argument. No system is going to be completely fair, and the nature of division play means that there are going to be certain divisions that are better than others. That's not going to be fixed unless you want to dissolve divisions and take the top four teams each year. I'm not in favor of this as I enjoy the added rivalries division play brings. The Cards, for example, have a legitimate rivalry with every other team in the Central. We lose that if we dissolve divisions.

However, more often than not, the two wild card teams are going to have a record within a few games of each other. What happened in 2012 is an anomoly (for a number of reasons), not the norm. Changing the system due to the result of one game is extremely shortsited and ill advised. Furthermore, the benefit of the current WC system isn't supposed to make things fair between the two WC teams, but to give the division winners an advantage over the WC teams. In that way, the system did exactly what it aimed to do in 2012. The Braves had every opportunity to win their division that year and failed to do so. Two of the three division winners had better records than the Braves (and the Giants had the same record), and they were rewarded for such. The Braves were punished for not winning their division, and thus had to jump through an extra hoop. That didn't give the Cards an advantage over the Braves, it gave the Giants, Reds, and Nats an advantage over the Giants and Cards, which is the way it should be.

j-turn14

May 19th, 2015 at 5:24 PM ^

The problem with saying division winners should have an advantage is that baseball doesn't play a balanced schedule, so winning a division doesn't prove anything except you're better than the other teams in your division. As long as there's an unbalanced schedule, I see no reason a division champion deserves a significant advantage over a Wild Card team. If they go back to playing a balanced schedule, I wouldn't have as much of a problem with the WC play-in format.

 

cm2010

May 19th, 2015 at 6:09 PM ^

With the unbalanced schedule, the only thing we really know is who the best team in each division is, so why wouldn't we give preference to that? If you didn't win your division, then you shouldn't have the same playoff positioning as the team that won your division. If due to unbalanced schedules we don't know who is better between a WC team in the East vs. the West, or a WC vs. a division winner in another division, why wouldn't we give preference to what we do know? That each division winner is the best of their 5-team group. Winning your division should mean something.

As I stated earlier, I prefer the divisions and unbalanced schedule because it helps foster regional and divisional rivalries. I, as a Cards fan, get much more excited to play the Cubs and Reds (and now the Pirates), than I do to play the Braves or the Rockies. For the Tigers fans out there, would you rather watch the Tigers play more games against the Royals, or watch more games against the Rays? For me, this system strikes the best balance between competitive fairness and fan entertainment. 

cm2010

May 19th, 2015 at 6:16 PM ^

Winning a division with a balanced schedule would still only prove that the division winner is the best team in its division. In fact, it would be less conclusive since there would be fewer intra-division games.

Michael

May 19th, 2015 at 6:14 PM ^

It seems to me that you and I will never agree, since the core of my argument is that the playoffs should be decided by series (7 game series at that) in order to determine who is the better team. Short series and the spacing between the games allow teams to roll out their aces twice a series, whereas longer series are a test of depth.

Baseball has always been about the depth of teams. That is why the regular season is so long, and that is why until recently it was considered absurd to have anything but series. I don't entirely disagree with you and see that there is some merit to your reasoning, but I disagree with you entirely that these benefits outweigh the assault on the very core of the game itself. 

There are 162 games in the regular season, and if one wildcard makes it in by a couple games over the next best ones, then so be it. Just like the Braves, they could have helped themselves by winning their games. 

 

cm2010

May 19th, 2015 at 6:24 PM ^

But as you said, testing depth is part of the core of baseball, which is why extra weight should be given to the results of a 162-game regular season, rather than the results of a 7-game series. If that means that teams that don't win their divisions aren't guaranteed a playoff series, then so be it.

PurpleStuff

May 19th, 2015 at 12:37 PM ^

Illinois has hit 50 HR this year to their opponents' 20.  They aren't playing small ball.  The IU team that went to Omaha hit 53 HR to their opponents' 18.  As for changes, the seams on the ball were lowered this year and power numbers have gone up nationally, yet the Big Ten is thriving.

The Big Ten is not a small-ball conference in the way, say, the Big West is (where teams like Fullerton, Irvine, Long Beach, and Santa Barbara have had success with big ballparks and few home runs).

Expansion (Maryland and Nebraska are/were solid programs), coaching (which in college baseball is a lot about roster building/management with limited scholarships), and investment have made the difference in the conference. 

 

PurpleStuff

May 19th, 2015 at 2:41 PM ^

Illinois and Maryland have both hit 50 home runs (tied for 21st nationally).  Texas A&M, Miami, and FSU are the only Power 5 schools with more.  MSU has hit 43.  Cal leads the Pac-12 with 41 while league leader UCLA has 28.

The Big Ten isn't better simply because the big boys stopped hitting as many home runs.  While overall numbers did drop, the Big Ten (at least among the top teams) is hitting home runs at pretty much the same rate as everybody else.

Erik_in_Dayton

May 19th, 2015 at 12:38 PM ^

My 8th grade biology teacher had a sea cucumber and various other exotic things in a couple of aquariums.  Someone dropped a pen into the acquarium with the sea cucumber - possibly with the intent of messing up the chemistry of the tank - and the sea cucumber kinda-sorta ate it.  And then it died. 

And that is my sea cucumber story.

ST3

May 19th, 2015 at 2:05 PM ^

In 6th grade science class, we were studying pH levels using bromothymol blue. I decided it would be interesting to test the pH level of the class fish tank. It's kind of hard to disguise the fact that someone dropped BTB into the fish tank, so my experiment was discovered immediately by the teacher. She threatened to keep the entire class after school until someone fessed up. I meekly raised my hand and admitted to the BTB affair.

DualThreat

May 19th, 2015 at 12:59 PM ^

The e-mail/response regarding the shot clock is precisely why I think UM should be running a no-huddle, hurry up offense in football.  

(Edit - And why Hoke's slow "get to the line of scrimmage with 5 sec on the game clock" offense was not only bad at a tactical level, in not being able to adjust to the defense, but was also was bad at a strategic level overall.)

saveferris

May 19th, 2015 at 1:01 PM ^

There's another effect: if teams do decide to make those five seconds up by being quicker that's going to result in more pressure to get up and down the floor and more tired legs late in games. That'll be something to watch next year: does the percentage of bench minutes go up as a result?

I don't know if it was Ira or Craig on the Michigan Insider promoting the idea that teams with smaller benches are more desirable than teams with deeper benches, but you should definitely throw this out there on Thursday and watch heads explode.

dragonchild

May 19th, 2015 at 1:17 PM ^

On a number of occasions I watched several teams, Wisconsin and Michigan included, essentially ‘waste’ at least 5 seconds tossing the ball back and forth outside the 3 point arc without any other movement.

I get that it's boring to watch, but this is not a waste.  Passing the ball back and forth doesn't just grind down clock, though that's definitely one aspect of it.  It also puts the defense in a bind.  In certain defenses such as the 2-3 zone, the perimeter defenders shift position based on ball possession.  You're forced to choose between expending energy playing disciplined defense when the offense is just tossing the ball back and forth, or dailing back the effort -- but expect the offense to pounce on that.  Or you can play undisciplined and go for a steal, but again that's just giving the offense the advantage.  Each pass has a small chance of some sort of lapse.  Michigan used this to try to open up opportunities against Syracuse, for example.

MI Expat NY

May 19th, 2015 at 1:47 PM ^

I don't think that's what he's talking about.  I think he's saying that plenty of teams take a very long time to initiate the offense even after bringing the ball up.  And he's probably right.  The only way you need 35 seconds to get a good look as an offense is if you're really bad at offense or you're wasting time.  

FWIW, perimeter passing with no other physical movement is the least effective strategy against a zone defense.  

Needs

May 19th, 2015 at 3:19 PM ^

This is exactly what's he's talking about. I noticed MSU, in particular, bringing the ball up on a wing, looking for a secondary break, and then slowly resetting their offense with the ball up top such that they would be 15 - 20 seconds into a possession before they even started to run an offensive set. They were essentially starting their offense at the same time an NBA team would on the shot clock, only with unnecessarily consuming 10 seconds of game time, while they passed the ball on the top without running anything off the ball or running any on ball screening action.

If the 30 second clock gets teams to initiate offense 5 seconds sooner, it will greatly improve the flow of the game. 

Don

May 19th, 2015 at 1:43 PM ^

Since "varnish cache server" is a priority at MGoBlog, I've decided it's time to varnish my cache server as well. However, I don't know which is best—satin, semi-gloss, or gloss? And should I use polyurethane or shellac? Any suggestions are appreciated.

Esterhaus

May 19th, 2015 at 5:21 PM ^

 
Civilization needs a revised document I propose to call the Supra HARBAUGH Carta. Milk, khakis, satellite camps and SMS messaging are fundamental human rights.