JC Bradbury – of Sabernomics fame and the author of forthcoming book The Baseball Economist – noted in an interview with Baseball Digest Daily that he was a fan of DIPS. For those who have not heard of this, DIPS is a metric used to evaluate the productivity of a …
Two weeks ago Martin Schmidt penned The Keeping Score column for The New York Times. This was Marty’s second Keeping Score column. In today’s New York Times you can see my first. The piece, entitled “To Get a Grip on Turnovers, Follow the Bouncing Ball”, expands upon a point made …
The opening game to the 2006 NFL football season featured two quarterbacks previously employed by the Detroit Lions, Charlie Batch and Joey Harrington. Of the two, Batch had the better game. Of course, Harrington didn’t actually play (people can insert cheap Harrington joke here). As I watched Batch play so …
Martin Schmidt has written another Keeping Score column for the New York Times. In “Numbers Often Lie When It Comes to Football” Marty makes a point we make in the ninth chapter of The Wages of Wins. Unlike baseball and basketball, the statistics tracked for players in the NFL are …
Why are player statistics tracked? Since the 19th century baseball has been tracking a host of statistics for its players. The same can be said for basketball and football since the inception of the NFL and the NBA. But why is this necessary? We know in each contest which team …
Our book has many, many end notes. And these are recommended reading since some of what we think are the most humorous comments in the book are tucked away in these notes.The following, though, is not one of the funny comments (at least, it wasn’t meant to be funny). On …
Much of this forum recently has been devoted to the discussion of basketball. Our book, though, is about so much more. The first part of The Wages of Wins examines labor disputes, the ability of team to buy wins in baseball, and competitive balance in various sports leagues. Not until …
Believe it or not, training camp for most NFL teams starts in a couple of months. Which reminded me of a poll on ESPN from early March – I know if you’re randomly thinking about ESPN polls from days gone by you my friend need a life! The on-line poll …
A few days ago I reviewed the quarterbacks who have played for the Lions since 1972, the last year a Detroit signal caller was named to the Pro Bowl. My basic point was that although quarterbacks for the Lions often go on to great success off the football field, on …
Recently The Economist “In a league of its own” explored the reasons the NFL has been so successful. One of the reasons listed is the institutions that exist in the NFL, such as revenue sharing or a cap on team payrolls. Given these institutions the article argues that “… teams …