Archive for category sports
Downhill racing, like statistics, means never having to say you are certain
Immediately after starting my first process development as a chemical engineer in the summer of 1974 between my junior and senior years at University of Minnesota, I learned that the real world does not operate exactly as one would expect from the first principles of science learned in school. All my results varied, making it difficult to know what was real and what occurred due to chance. That led me to embrace statistics as preached by my supervisors at General Mills Chemical. (Thank goodness for the company’s agricultural heritage and thus an appreciation for the knowledge imparted by pioneering statistician Ronald Fisher to crop developers.) Thus, I can appreciate the randomness of Olympic results, particularly for downhill ski racers.
As explained by two-time gold medalist Ted Ligety in the New York Times, The Best Ski Racers Often Do Not Win Gold. Two days later Breezy Johnson won gold in downhill by only 0.04 seconds. (Sadly, this was the race where Minnesotan Lindsey Vonn crashed.) To provide some context, blink your eyes—this typically taking more than twice as long as the margin of Johnson’s victory.*
Ligety explains that the greatest women’s skier of all time, Mikaela Shiffrin, has won only 20% of her Olympic races, whereas Michael Phelps, the best swimmer ever, won over 75% of his Olympic races. He says this far greater uncertainty stems from variables such as wind, snow, light and ruts. By watching the audiovisual breakdown by Ligety et al (see for yourself by clicking the link above in you did not do so already), I gained a great appreciation of these and other factors affecting the outcome of any given race.
“If … a cloud comes and there’s super flat light … and … the girls in front of you had sun … that is going to make a huge difference. When you are in the start gate you have to go no matter what.”
– Trica Mangan, two-time U.S. Olympian
P.S. Along these lines of the razor’s edge separating skiers at Olympian levels, I highly recommend the classic 1969 movie “Downhill Racer” starring Robert Redford. After he died in September, I watched this for the first time. I highly recommend it. Gripping!
*Check out the amazing graphics theTimes provided after the race to See How Breezy Johnson Won
Bulky-bonneted NFL players—not a Super look
Posted by mark in sports, Uncategorized, Wellness on February 6, 2026
On Sunday the Seahawks play the Patriots in the Super Bowl. I will be on the lookout for any with oversize “bobbleheads”—a derisive term by J.J. Watt of the Cardinals for fellow players who wear Guardian Caps to protect themselves against concussions. The manufacturer of these soft-shell, foam-padded, helmet claims a 40% reduction in HARM—head acceleration response metric,* That is a very clever acronym, but does it really lessen brain trauma? The NFL thinks so, citing nearly 50% reduction in concussions for players wearing them. Many position players, for example, running backs and linebackers, must wear Guardian Caps during all practices involving contact—use in games remaining optional.
However, as recently reported by the New York Times,** “independent neurologists are generally skeptical, if not outright dismissive, of the benefits of any product claiming to reduce concussions because few rigorous studies have been done to demonstrate their effectiveness.” The rate of concussions in NFL preseason practices from 2018 to 2023—after the advent of Guardian Caps—declined between 54 and 62 percent. However, the statisticians who gathered the data admitted that the use of the protective covering did not significantly reduce concussions from helmet hits.
“There’s no question that every injury or injury reduction strategy is multifactorial.”
– Jeff Miller, NFL’s chief spokesman
I’ve suffered several concussions—the first one in 3rd or 4th grade (I forget) gym class diving at a dodge ball and smacking into the wall.
After that I joined a football team at a small playground that in my 8th grade made it to the Saint Paul City ‘superbowl’ the year of Superbowl I. However, every full contact practice and game caused me such headaches that I shifted over to playing ‘pickup’ touch football. This saved me (I hope) from persistent post-concussion syndrome turning into chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
Many years later playing with me buddies from General Mills Chemical R&D I knocked myself out diving for a softball hitting my noggin on a sprinkler head. (I am a bit too competitive at sports!)
My third concussion, the cause of which I’d rather not discuss, sent me to ER for dozens of stitches and a night in intensive care at Hennepin County Medical Center.
So, I can feel the pain and very much hope that further developments in head protection will protect contact-sports players of all ages from concussion and CTE.
*See their video on The Science Behind Guardian Caps
**“The Questionable Science Behind the Odd-Looking Football Helmets,” Ken Belson, Feb. 3, 2026.
Today’s Major League Baseball batters all hit below average
Posted by mark in sports, Uncategorized on October 24, 2025
This headline gets your attention if you like statistics. It makes no sense without the context: See Baseball Reference’s report on batting average (BA) by year. In 2000 MLB batters averaged .270 (expressed as “two seventy”), but after years of decline they bottomed out at .245 (two forty-five) or so. This reflects a more analytical approach to hitting that disrespects batting average as a metric, it being likened to counting the number of bills in your wallet but not amount of money.
Nowadays MLB teams value players who excel at on-base-plus-slugging (OPS). This mashup of stats creates percentages over well over 100 (“one thousand” in baseball terms) for the utmost elite players—in 2025 only Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees and Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers. MLB adopted OPS in 1984 after Pete Palmer introduced it in the pioneering book (co-authored by John Thorn) The Hidden Game of Baseball, A Revolutionary Approach to Baseball and Statistics.
OPS combines simplicity with reasonable accuracy and I think that is why it is popular.
– Jim Thorn, Why OPS Works, Fall 2019 Baseball Research Journal, Society for American Baseball Research (SABR)
I’ve been a fan of baseball since 1961 when the Washington Senators moved to the Twin Cities to become the Minnesota Twins. I was 8 years old then. My grandpa had been following the Minneapolis Millers since the late 19th century as a young boy. He turned 8 in 1896 when his home team won their first Western League pennant.
Grandpa was an accountant, so, naturally he collected statistics on every Twins game—carefully ruling out rows and columns for the 9 batters and 9 innings and noting each players batting average. Because of that I am a holdout for appreciating players with high batting averages. I would rather see more hits and the strikeouts that come along with trying to hit a home run at every at bat.
On the other hand, I do not doubt that a lot of people will tune in tonight for Game 1 of the World Series to see if Shohei Ohtani lives up to his “Shotime” nickname by blasting at least one home run, if not several as he did in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series. American League fans like me will be rooting for George Springer (3rd in MLB for 2025 OPS at .959) of the Toronto Blue Jays to hit another dramatic home run like he did for in Game 7 of the AL Championship Series.
Baseball is the greatest game!
Maori manu dive bombers making a big splash
Posted by mark in sports, Uncategorized on June 3, 2025
My daughter Emily and her husband Ryan (pictured) will soon be enjoying a massive upgrade to their above-ground pool.
I am hoping to see him jump off the roof of the house and perform a Maori manu (meaning “bird”) dive like these World Champ bombers in Auckland, New Zealand.
A team of fluid dynamic and biomechanics experts at Georgia Tech ingeniously deployed a quarter-pound, 7-inch high ‘manubot’ to work out how these daredevil divers create splashes exceeding a height of 30 feet. See Mastering the Manu—how humans create large splashes (published May 19 by Interface Focus) for their findings. Figure 1a tells the story: By contorting their body into a V shape, the Manu masters create an air cavity that creates a ‘Worthington’ jet-splash—named after the discover who delivered this discourse on the physics phenomenon in 1894.
“It’s very difficult to master, it can be quite dangerous, and it requires millisecond control.”
– Pankaj Rohilla, co-author of Mastering the Manu
On second thought, I will back off on my son-in-law going dive bombing—best this be done by Maoris or manubots.
Bulbous bats hit the sweet spot for bashing baseballs
Posted by mark in sports, Uncategorized on April 4, 2025
According to the lore of Major League Baseball (MLB), in 1919 Babe Ruth hit the longest homer run ever recorded—purportedly 575 feet, but probably closer to 540 feet. See the bat he used, which sold in 2003 for over $56 thousand, at this auction site. Notice the clean lines.
In the early days of baseball, batters preferred bats made from hickory and oak due to their durability. But when Babe Ruth played, ash became the preferred choice for its lighter weight, allowing for increased bat speed and power. In 1998, the MLB approved maple, which despite its heaviness and propensity to shatter catastrophically, is now used by nearly all players, in part due to ash becoming very scarce due to invasive insects.*
Now attention to bats has shifted to their shape. The New York Yankees set the baseball world on fire by using “torpedo bats” in game 2 of their 2025 season to hit 9 home runs—a notable exception being Aaron Judge (AJ) who hit 3 of the home runs with a conventional Chandler model AJ99 (aka the “gavel”, ha ha).
Developed by an MIT PhD physicist—Aaron Leanhardt, torpedo bats push their barrel closer to the player’s hands, thus providing a better chance of hitting the ball on the sweet spot. They look like an elongated bowling pin, not elegant like the bats I saw being turned out at the Louisville Slugger factory a few years ago.
So far as I’m concerned the ‘jury remains out’ on torpedo bats, especially given the counteracting results by the Judge (see my pun there?). I will be watching for statistical evidence based on a representative and sufficiently sized sample.
Stay tuned!
PS: By the way, baseball bats, specifically their shapes, cannot be patented because they fall within the rules of the game, making them ineligible for protection. That opens up the market for bat-makers to feed the frenzy for torpedo bats, for example Louisville Slugger’s Pro Prime Pink model TPD1. Wow!
Analytics explain why the NFL stiffs running backs
My Minnesota Vikings are on a roll this year due to unexpectedly stellar play from their quarterback Sam Darnold. After being drafted very highly, Darnold turned out to be a dud. But suddenly he blossomed—no doubt helped greatly by our superstar wide receiver Justin Jefferson. This Sunday the Vikings play in London against the New York Jets and their future hall-of-fame QB Aaron Rodgers.
There’s no doubt that quarterbacks are the most important factors for success in the NFL, so it’s no surprise that there’s a positive correlation of 0.7 between annual passing yards and annual revenue according to Harvard economist Roland Fryer.* But it’s quite shocking that he finds a negative correlation of 0.01 for the value of running backs. I agree with Fryer that its delightful to “see analytics put to good use but sad to see football’s best position taking a back seat.”
Go Darnold, go Vikes!
P.S. As reported earlier this year by SI, The NFL Treats Elite Wide Receivers Very Differently From Top Running Backs. As a case in point, they highlight the huge contract just signed by Jefferson. “Show me the money”—the demand given by the wide receiver to his agent Jerry McGuire played by Tom Cruise—isn’t working for running backs, though they do make a lot more money than kickers or punters as seen in this ESPN ranking of pay by position.
*Comments on “The Economics of Running Backs,” Wall Street Journal, September 4.
Australia overcomes USA for Olympian heights: Seriously?
Now that Tom Cruise swooped in on the Stade de France outside of Paris and carried off the Olympic flag to Los Angeles, the final reckoning can be made on which country ‘won’ the 2024 Summer Games. I figured that by tying for tops in gold medals and winning the most silver and bronze, the USA was the clear winner.
However, to be fair, one must take population by country into account (within reason by excluding very small countries such as Grenada, who only need to win a few medals top the Olympic chart on a per capita basis). Earlier this year Robert Duncan and Andrew Parece proposed a population-adjusted probability-based index “U”.*
See how your country ranks in by this measure in this final ranking for the Paris Olympics. Aussies rule—gold medals to all! The Peoples Republic of China, who outnumber Australians by 53 to 1, fall to 89th on the list—second to last. Ouch! Kudos to France for coming in second (silver) and Great Britain third (bronze). The USA ranks fifth—not too bad.
Congratulations to all the Olympians and the organizers of this summer’s games for a very entertaining spectacle. Let’s not bogged down by the medal counts—all who participated get full credit for their all-out efforts.
*Per equation 9 in their Journal of Sports Analytics vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 87-104, 2024, research paper on Population-adjusted national rankings in the Olympics
Major League Baseball’s grand-slam experiment to pick up its pace
Posted by mark in sports, Uncategorized on March 30, 2023
It’s Opening Day today for Major League Baseball (MLB), when hopes for a championship season hit a peak before reality sets in for most of our teams. Excitement runs higher than usual this year because trial runs at lower levels emboldened Major League Baseball (MLB) into implementing drastic rule changes aimed at speeding up the game. The biggest impacts will come from a new pitch clock, a ban on the infield shift and limits on pickoff throws.
Results from MLB’s spring training—wrapping up this weekend—look very promising: The average time per game dropped to about 2.5 hours—down 26 minutes from last year. That will keep me, a Minnesota Twins season-ticket holder, in the game—no more bailing out in the later innings and listening to the finish on the radio during my half-hour drive home from Target Field.
Another likely effect of the MLB rule changes will be more attempts to steal bases, increased this spring by almost 50% from 2.1 to 3.1 per 100 plate appearances with a success rate of 77.2 percent—up from year’s 71.3.* Let’s go!
These new rules for 2023 augment one adopted in 2020 to limit overtime games—the placement of a “ghost runner” at second base beginning in the 10th inning. The October issues of Significance magazine** reports remarkable agreement of actual results versus predictions generated by a natural experiment on this rule—a reduction of about 15 minutes per game. Even better!
“This is the game we all want to see — get the ball, pitch the ball, keep the defense on their toes.”
Actor Bryan Cranston speaking on behalf of MLB
PS It’s hard to argue with the efficacy of natural experiments based on this MLB example and the methodology being awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.*** However, if at all possible from an ethical, practical and political perspective, a planned experiment laid out in randomized fashion remains the ‘gold standard’ for predictive modeling. Why not take over a baseball league or a specific team, preferably the lowest level possible, and run a designed experiment? I did so successfully for my softball squad. See how and the results in this 2007 StatsMadeEasy blog.
*Statistics on game time and stolen bases from Tyler Kepner, The New York Times, 2023 MLB Season Preview, 3/27/23.
**“Baseball’s natural experiment,” Lee Kennedy-Shaffer.
Major League Baseball goes all in for humidors to dampen homeruns
As I reported back in 2018 in my blog on Boffins baffled by baseballs being bashed beyond ballpark borders, MLB experimentally imposed humidors in select stadiums with high rates of home runs, such as Coors Field in Denver and Chase Field in Phoenix. The moistening evidently worked well enough* to make humidors mandatory for all teams, including my home-town squad—the Minnesota Twins, this season.
Perhaps the humidors will dampen down the homers a bit, at least in the drier climates of Denver, Phoenix and the like. But, despite dealing with the reduced coefficient of restitution (?), our “Bombas” blasted 6 round-trippers on Sunday at Target Field in Minneapolis. So, I am skeptical (though happy for my Twins).
This will not be a big deal in most parks but the most humid parks (San Francisco, San Diego, Miami, Tampa Bay) may get an offensive boost as the humidors will dry the balls out a little.
Eno Saris, baseball analytics writer for The Athletic, Mar 25, 2022 tweet
I suggest that MLB try deadening bats to further reduce home runs. This worked well for the Little League—reducing homers by 70%.** The trick will be working out a way to do it with wood. Going to plastic and/or metal would be ruinous for the Grand Old Game.
In any case, it would be great to see MLB get back to fast moving shorter games. Though home runs are exciting, they do not balance off the boring plethora of strikeouts and the inaction of the 7 position players.
*For the statistics, see this Hardball Times April 26, 2019 blog by David Kagan on The Physics of Humidors: A Second Case Study at Chase Field.
** “Little League Slows the Home Run Revolution”, Wall Street Journal, Amanda Christovich, 4/19/19.
Banging my head against the wall about concussions in football
Posted by mark in sports, Uncategorized on October 17, 2021
Being a big fan of football at all levels—grade school (oldest grandson Archer, pictured, going good on the gridiron), high school, college (season-ticket holder for Golden Gophers) and NFL (long-suffering Vikings fan), I hate to see players going down with concussions and their long-term effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). I suffered several sports-related concussions myself, which makes me even more keen to see advancements in their prevention. Therefore, I was excited to see this report by ESPN on soft-shelled helmets being tested by NFL players.
Unfortunately, however, the statistics on impact reduction, less than 10%, do not appear to warrant putting on a comically squishy covering over a hard-shell football helmet. The advantage is just too marginal. On the other hand, when doing anything involving an appreciable risk without a helmet, for example, riding a bicycle, wearing one becomes essential for concussion reduction. According to this 2017 article in the Journal of Neurosurgery on helmet efficacy they provide significant protection against “devastating intracranial injury”—skull fractures and the like.
Therefore, I am pleased that, unlike most of his teammates, Archer wears his unglamorous helmet.
However, the bad news from neuroscientists is that helmets are “not efficacious” for protection against concussions.
Heads up!