From Each According To His $15M Salary, To Each According To ... Good Lord, We Really Are Going To Blow This!

What the f***?

Those three words best describe the collective feeling of Braves fans on the morning of September 28, 2011? The Braves are one loss from completing one of the great collapses in baseball history. After all of their terrible play over the course of the month, they woke up on Saturday morning with a three-game lead and five games to play. Since that time, they have lost four in a row, scoring a whopping four runs in the process. Last night, with the season very much hanging in the balance, Fredi Gonzalez pulled a Bobby Cox in October special, sticking with the underperforming veteran - Derek Lowe - until it was far too late. Yes, the Braves are in a difficult spot because of the injuries to Jair Jurrjens and Tommy Hanson,* but the rookies who have replaced them have been perfectly fine. Of the Braves' five starting pitchers this month, Randall Delgado and Mike Minor have the lowest ERAs of the five.  How much better would Jurrjens and Hanson have done than a 3.11 ERA in 52 innings?  Maybe they would have pitched a smidge deeper into games, but that's it.  Meanwhile, Derek Lowe, a guy who is taking up a smidge over one-sixth of the team's payroll, has an 8.75 ERA and a 1.99 WHIP in five starts.  He has been the losing pitcher in all five.  If by some simple twist of fate the Braves do make the playoffs** and Lowe pitches in any capacity other than long relief, then Frank Wren ought to relieve him of command on the spot.

* - Was anyone else completely non-plussed when Hanson and Jurrjens failed to return from the All-Star Break with their arms intact?  That's how baseball is now.  You have a good young pitcher and you immediately start counting the days until some arm injury that initially sounds innocuous, then the team can't figure out what's wrong, and then he's finally seeing Dr. Andrews.  Baseball manages to combine a turtle's pace with high-impact injuries.  Bravo, Abner Doubleday!

** - I'd put the odds at this stage at around 30%. They should win tonight with a favorable pitching match-up, but their odds in a one-game playoff will not be good.  The playoff would just be insufferable.  The Cardinals will be up 6-2 in the seventh and then Tony LaRussa will prolong our misery with a bevy of "look at me!" switches.  And G-d only knows what happens when he gets into the One-Game Playoff Supplement to his Compendium of Unwritten Baseball Rules.  Fredi could redeem a season's worth of frustration by decking LaRussa in a stupid, futile gesture at the end of a dispiriting collapse.  That would make the whole thing worthwhile.

And then, let's discuss the offense.  It has been a sore spot all year, with just about every offensive regular underperforming his PECOTA (or whatever Baseball Prospectus is calling it these days) projection, but September has been a total freefall.  The top of the order - Michael Bourn and Martin Prado - both have sub-.300 OBPs this month and have walked a grand total of nine times.  Brian McCann is in free-fall, having slugged .313 in September.  The team collectively has a .301 OBP in the month.  By way of comparison, the Giants - a team that is having a historically bad offensive season - have a .303 OBP for the year.  Parrish raus!

The glass half-full thought for a morning that desperately needs it is that I wouldn't trade places with a Cardinals fan for a second.  Yes, the Cards look likely to pull off a remarkable comeback.  All that gets them is a likely defeat at the hands of the Phillies.  Their franchise player is a free agent, which means that they are either going to lose him or they are going to have to sign him to a payroll-crippling contract.*  They don't have a single good, young position player now that their cantankerous manager chased off Colby Rasmus because his stirrups weren't perpendicular to his big toe or whatever else it is that LaRussa views as necessary to baseball success.  They rely on Dave Duncan to stitch together a pitching staff every year.  Their farm system is blah.  In contrast, the Braves have young keepers at first (Freeman), third (Prado), catcher (McCann), and right (Heyward), assuming that Parrish has not done permanent damage to some or all of them.  We finally have a lead-off hitter.  The Braves have five quality young starters and three quality young relievers, assuming that Fredi hasn't destroyed the relievers with overuse this year.  Do you detect a theme here?  The Braves' future is very bright if the on-field coaches don't screw it up.  Maybe the real silver lining here is that a collapse like this requires at least one fall guy in the dugout.

* - If you think that Derek Lowe making $15M next year is bad, think about paying twice that amount for Albert Pujols' age-39 season.

Thomas Dimitroff: Mr. Jones and me Tell Each Other Fairy Tales

Here is the abstract of Cade Massey and Richard Thaler’s academic article regarding the value of NFL Draft picks:

A question of increasing interest to researchers in a variety of fields is whether the biases found in judgment and decision making research remain present in contexts in which experienced participants face strong economic incentives. To investigate this question, we analyze the decision making of National Football League teams during their annual player draft. This is a domain in which monetary stakes are exceedingly high and the opportunities for learning are rich. It is also a domain in which multiple psychological factors suggest teams may overvalue the chance to pick early in the draft.. Using archival data on draft-day trades, player performance and compensation, we compare the market value of draft picks with the surplus value to teams provided by the drafted players. We find that top draft picks are overvalued in a manner that is inconsistent with rational expectations and efficient markets and consistent with psychological research.

Massey and Thaler conclude that the most valuable picks in the Draft are second round picks because the players taken with those picks are closer to first rounder than one would think in terms of quality and they are significantly cheaper.  (Note: changes to the salary scale for rookies might alter the analysis.  Always in motion is the future.) 

Massey and Thaler’s conclusion is consistent with what our own senses can tell us about the most and least successful teams in the league.  Which teams are the best run teams in the NFL?  The Patriots and Steelers immediately come to mind.  Do those teams trade up into the top ten?  No.  The Steelers generally stay put and take players in the late first round spots that they invariably occupy; the Patriots actively try to trade down, as they did last night.  Conversely, the Redskins are probably the worst run team in the NFL and what is their usual strategy?  Mortgaging a quantity of picks for a few stars.  How does that work out for them?

With that context in mind, I have a simple question for Thomas Dimitroff: what the f*** are you doing?  You just traded two first round picks, one second round pick, and two fourth round picks for one player?  It’s painfully clear that the Falcons’ brass went down to the dealership, fell in love with one particular car, and let the salesman jack them for it. 

This approach would make sense if the Falcons were truly one player away from being a Super Bowl team, but their brass are letting a lucky season cloud their judgment.  The Birds were outgained on a per-play basis.  At best, they were a ten-win team masquerading as the #1 seed in the NFC and they were ruthlessly exposed as a pretender by the Packers.  There are needs all over the roster, starting with the fact that they have only one defensive end who can generate pressure and he is about to turn 33 years old.  Assuming for the sake of argument that the Falcons would have batted 50% on the fourth round picks, the Falcons just traded four players for one.  In the modern NFL, this is a smaller scale equivalent of the Herschel Walker trade or Mike Ditka giving up the Saints’ entire Draft for Ricky Williams. 

And the worst part is that Dimitroff is a good evaluator of talent.  I wouldn’t care about the Hawks giving up draft picks because they are going to waste those shots anyway.  Dimitroff knows how to grade players.  Unfortunately, it also appears that he didn’t learn everything about pick value from his former employer.

Look, I’m the same guy who thought that the Falcons were making a huge mistake when they drafted Matt Ryan, that Arthur Blank was overreacting to Vickkampf by rolling the dice on a great white hope because Ryan made good eye contact in his interview.  Three winning seasons later, it’s safe to say that that assessment was wrong.  However, I’m also the person who didn’t jump on the bandwagon when the team was winning in November and December.  I think I have a good handle of where the Falcons are as a team and they are not at the stage where they can sacrifice five picks for one player. 

Ese Portugues…

We all interpret events through our own experiences and emotions. That little truism partially explains why I like sports analysis that focuses on stats and x’s and o’s, as opposed to armchair psychology and moralistic judgment. (That one sentence explains why I barely listen to sports talk radio anymore.) It’s hard to infect a diagnosis of the Braves’ issues getting on base or the proper shape of Barca’s attacking three with personal biases. Anybody can prattle on about a team’s motivation going into a game; not everyone can do the intellectual heavy lifting to explain in technical terms whether that team is a favorite or an underdog.

Sometimes, however, a story comes along that begs for a little Herbstreitian coverage. Pep Guardiola’s verbal fusillade directed at Jose Mourinho yesterday is one such story. Here is what Guardiola said regarding Mourinho:

Tomorrow at 8.45, we will meet each other on the pitch. Off the pitch he has already won.

In this room [press room], he's the f*****g chief, the f*****g man, the person who knows everything about the world and I don't want to compete with him at all. It's a type of game I'm not going to play because I don't know how.

I won't justify my words. I congratulated Madrid for the cup that they won deservedly on the pitch and against a team that I represent and of which I feel very proud.

Off the pitch, he has already won, as he has done all year. On the pitch, we'll see what happens.

Guardiola usually takes a measured approach in his comments to the media. He rarely complains about officials, even when his team ends up on the short-end of the refereeing stick. He also rarely takes shots at opposing players or managers. Until yesterday, Guardiola had mostly ignored Mourinho’s typical bullshit.

Given the uncharacteristic nature of Pep’s remarks, my first thought when I read them was “on crap, the pressure is getting to Pep. Mourinho beat Barca in the Copa del Rey and now he is under Guardiola’s skin. It makes no sense to get in the mud with a pig.” Later in the evening, I read a few tweets from Guillem Balague and Sid Lowe, both of whom took the position that Guardiola is sending a message to his players: “we’re done with Real being the aggressors. I am going to stand up to Mourinho; you stand up to Pepe, Xabi Alonso, and Sergio Ramos.”

I came to the realization that my initial reaction was colored by my own pessimism about the match today. Barca are without all three of their established left backs, which will mean that Carles Puyol will have to be shifted out to the left and one of the team’s two defensive midfielders will have to go back into the center of defense. (Putting Puyol at left back addresses the weakness that Ronaldo exploited for the goal in the Copa del Rey Final. Ronaldo came in from the right win and outjumped Adriano to head in the winner. Puyol is much better in the air than Adriano or Maxwell.) Additionally, Andres Iniesta is out, which weakens Barca in the midfield and reduces their tactical options as the match progresses. Barca haven’t looked good for several matches, whereas the Real reserves just pummeled Valencia at the Mestalla, illustrating the gap in squad depth between Spain’s two giants. UEFA have picked Wolfgang Stark to ref the match, which isn’t a good draw because he is a relatively permissive ref. And looming over the proceedings is Mourinho and two painful memories for Barca fans: the 4-2 loss at Stamford Bridge in 2005 and the 3-1 loss at the San Siro last year.

Maybe it’s recency taking over and I’m ignoring the fact that any team bringing Messi, Villa, Pedro, Xavi, Busquets, Mascherano, Puyol, Pique, Dani Alves, and Valdes into a match stands a pretty good chance of winning. The last time that Barca went into a match as the underdog (as Guardiola has portrayed them) was the Champions League Final in 2009, a match in which the Blaugrana produced a performance that will go on this team's "Best of All Time" application. The last time that the Blaugrana were eliminated by a Mourinho team in the Champions League, they won the rematch the next year with a famous 1-2 win at Stamford Bridge and then a 1-1 draw at home. Either of the results of the last two matches against Real over 90 minutes - 1-1 and 0-0 - would be good, so it's not like Real have shown anything other than the ability to play on even terms with Barca. Still, I can’t shake feelings of dread and that was the filter through which I heard Guardiola’s remarks. The (banal?) point here is that what we hear is determined by where we are intellectually and emotionally.

Now, go out there and shut Jose up, will you boys? To paraphrase Senator Martin from Silence of the Lambs, send this thing back to England.

C3PO, You’re Up

When I make small talk at cocktail parties about backgrounds, I almost invariably get the question “wait, so you grew up in Macon and went to the University of Michigan?  How did that happen?”  (This question usually comes about 45 seconds after making the joke that I didn’t live in Macon for my whole life and that’s why my knuckles don’t drag on the ground when I walk.)  My answer is that Michigan was an antidote to everything I hated about Macon.  In short, my adolescence was spent as a red-headed Jewish liberal debate star with less than “stylish” clothes (as if a polo shirt and khakis is the definition of style) at an non-diverse private school where open displays of prejudice were the norm and outsiders (read: people whose parents weren’t members at Idle Hour) were shunned.  I was attracted to Michigan by the end of middle school because it was everything that Macon wasn’t: big, progressive, diverse, intellectual, and welcoming of outsiders.  The last quality was especially important to me.  By design, I was going to a school where I wouldn’t know a soul, so a public university where one-third of the students were from out-of-state fit the bill perfectly.  If I’m not from here, then you won’t be either.

I bring up this back story not because my therapist told me to vent, but rather to express why I hate the Brady Hoke hire with the heat of a thousand suns.  Michigan hired Hoke because he coached at Michigan before.  Let’s ignore the fact that his eight-year coaching record has produced a losing record, or the fact that he wasn’t exactly in demand by other schools, or that he has expressed a disdain for the spread offense that is the one part of the team that worked in 2010.  Let’s hire Hoke because he has Michigan on his resume and only Michigan Men need apply.  There’s a word for that line of thinking: inbred.  I have this crazy preference for evidence-based decisions and there is no evidence to support hiring Brady Hoke at this stage in his career other than the fact that he’ll know how to place an order at Zingermann’s.

My verdict on the Hoke hire depends somewhat on my view of the Lloyd Carr era.  I liked Carr as a coach and as a representative of the University, but I wasn’t upset when he retired in large part because he had not done a good job of surrounding himself with top-notch coaches.  It’s in this respect that he is no Bo.  Bo Schembechler created modern Michigan football and one aspect of his greatness was that his coaching tree was excellent.  Carr, on the other hand, doesn’t have a coaching tree to speak of.  Thus, the two obvious candidates for Michigan’s head coaching position were Jim Harbaugh – a Bo quarterback whom Carr declined to hire when he was looking for a quarterback coach – and Les Miles – a Bo lineman/assistant whom Carr reputedly did not want as his replacement in 2007.  If Dave Brandon’s much-discussed Process was designed to bring back a Michigan Man from Bo’s lineage, then that would have been fine because hiring a Bo protege is can be done on merit.  The fact that the Process produced the one sickly branch from the Carr tree is the reason why Hoke’s hire has been greeted by articles with titles like "Advice for the Despondent."  I couldn’t agree more with this description by Brian Cook:

I'd rather have Rich Rodriguez entering year four with a new defensive staff than this, a total capitulation. Does anyone remember Tressel's record against Lloyd Carr? 5-1. Change was necessary. It didn't work, but that doesn't mean you go back to the stuff that required change.

Lloyd’s teams looked out of date by the end of his tenure, especially against spread opponents.  (Might I mention the Appalachian State game as Exhibit A?)  So that’s why I feel nauseous about the prospect of hiring a coach who expresses the following about the offensive style of the two teams that played in the national title game last night:

“Right, wrong or indifferent, when you’re zone blocking all the time -- when you’re playing basketball on grass -- you practice against that all spring, you practice against it all fall and then you’re going to play a two-back team that wants to knock you off the football,” Hoke said. “I don’t think you’re prepared.

“I think there’s a toughness level (required in college football). I still believe you win with defense. That’s been beaten into my head a long time, but I really believe that. The toughness of your team has to be the offensive front and your defensive front.”

So let’s summarize.  The University of Michigan is a great research institution based on the concept of open inquiry, but its football program just hired a coach who ignores all evidence regarding the dominant offense in modern football.  The University of Michigan is supposed to represent the values of tolerance and open-minded thinking, but its athletic director just concluded a coaching process where he did not interview a coach who was not a former Michigan player or coach.  The University of Michigan’s football program is the winningest in college football history and leads the nation in attendance on an annual basis, but with a massive pool of revenue from which to pay a coach, it just hired a guy with a 47-50 career record.  For the first and last time, I will quote Michael Rosenberg (excluding fisking purposes, which come up on a weekly basis): the University of Michigan is better than this.

What do we Know about the Falcons?

As the local professional football collective comes down the stretch, they are 12-2, which gives them a two-game lead over the Saints and Eagles for the best record in the NFC. Unless something goes terribly wrong, the Dirty Birds are going to be at home for the NFC playoffs. At first glance, the Falcons’ record is deceiving because the team has won seven straight games decided by one score after losing the opener in Pittsburgh in overtime. They look like a team whose record flatters. However, the Falcons are also second in the NFC in point differential, so maybe they aren’t a lucky team after all. The best team in the NFC in terms of point differential is Green Bay, a team that last year and this year seems like less than the sum of its parts. Great offense, good defense, and yet still loses more games than they should. Do we point a finger at Mike McCarthy? They’re the anti-Falcons: good statistical profile, but mediocre record because they lose close games.

When I say that the Falcons don’t have a good statistical profile, this is what I mean:

	Yards per play gained	Yards per play allowed	Margin
Eagles	6.3	5.3	+1.0
Giants	5.8	4.9	+.9
Saints	5.7	5.2	+.5
Packers	5.6	5.1	+.5
Bears	5.0	5.0	0
Falcons	5.0	5.6	-.6

Eeek. We can explain away that low yards per play gained number by pointing out that the Falcons have a low variance offense that consistently churns out first downs by getting medium-sized gains without giving up sacks or penalties. The opening two drives on Sunday against Seattle were the Platonic ideal for this team’s offense: 15 plays and 51 yards for a touchdown, followed by 14 plays and 51 yards for a field goal. At the end of two drives, the Falcons had ten points while gaining a mere 3.5 yards per play. (Put in context, the hapless Panthers have the worst offense in the league and they gain 4.3 yards per play.) Yards per play doesn’t quite do this offense justice. The Falcons don’t hit big plays, so their number isn’t very high, but they score points just fine because they are rarely in third and long and they convert makeable third downs on a consistent basis. The Falcons are first in the NFL in total plays and second in first downs. The offense may look like a tortoise, but we ought to remember who wins the race in Aesop’s fable.

The defense, on the other hand, is harder to justify. They are significantly worse on a per play basis than any of the other contenders in the NFC. They are decent at denying opponents first downs (11th in the NFL), but that’s probably a function of the fact that the offense keeps the ball all day. The saving graces for the defense is that they are good against the run (seventh in yards per rush allowed) and they force turnovers (fifth in the NFL). (The Falcons are not unlike the Patriots, who also allow 5.6 yards per play and get by by forcing turnovers. The Pats, however, are better on offense.) That said, the NFL is a passing league and the Falcons give up a lot of passing yards. Should we feel confident that we can win consecutive playoffs games against Aaron Rodgers and then Mike Vick or Drew Brees? Yes, the Falcons beat Green Bay and New Orleans this season, but both games were very tight and the Falcons needed a little bit of good fortune both times.

So how much does yards per play matter? Can the Falcons win a Super Bowl when their opponents are outgaining them by a healthy margin? Let’s look at the last decade’s worth of conference champions:

	Yards per play gained	Yards per play allowed	Margin
‘09 Saints	6.3	5.5	+.9
‘09 Colts	5.9	5.0	+.8
‘08 Steelers	4.9	3.9	+1.0
‘08 Cards	5.9	5.3	+.6
‘07 Giants	5.1	5.0	+.1
‘07 Pats	6.2	4.9	+1.3
‘06 Colts	6.0	5.5	+.5
‘06 Bears	5.0	4.6	+.4
‘05 Steelers	5.4	4.6	+.8
‘05 Seahawks	5.8	4.9	+.9
‘04 Pats	5.5	5.0	+.5
‘04 Eagles	5.9	4.9	+1.0
‘03 Pats	4.8	4.4	+.4
‘03 Panthers	5.1	4.7	+.4
‘02 Bucs	4.9	4.2	+.7
‘02 Raiders	5.8	5.0	+.8
‘01 Pats	4.9	5.3	-.4
‘01 Rams	6.6	4.7	+1.9
‘00 Ravens	4.7	4.3	+.4
‘00 Giants	5.1	4.6	+.5

Eeek squared. 19 of the last 20 conference champions have had a positive yards per play margin. In fact, only two of 20 conference champions have been lower that +.4: the ‘01 Patriots and the ‘07 Giants. Both of those teams won the Super Bowl, but they needed to pull two of the biggest upsets in NFL history to do so. Is that what we’re counting on to make the Super Bowl? You wouldn’t know it from reading the paper or listening to the radio, but this Falcons team doesn’t fit the statistical profile of the vast majority of conference champions.

Again, we need to point our fingers at the defense. There are six teams that have made the Super Bowl averaging five yards per play or less and five of them came home with the Lombardi Trophy. (An interesting side note: there are four teams on the chart that allowed less than 4.5 yards per play and every one of them won the Super Bowl. If you drop last year’s Super Bowl in which both teams had top offenses, there have been seven teams to make the Super Bowl with an offense gaining 5.8 yards per play or more and six of those teams lost. Let’s file that away in the memory bank if the Eagles or Patriots make the Super Bowl.) There isn’t a single team on the list that allowed 5.6 yards per play, although there are two teams that allowed 5.5 yards per play and both of them won the big game.

So we have one team as our beacon of hope: the 2001 New England Patriots. A young team with a burgeoning star at quarterback that got hot, won a ton of close games, and then pulled a massive upset in the Superdome. There’s actually a larger point to be made here: it might not be hyperbole to say that the Falcons are built on the Patriots model. Look at the three New England teams that won the Super Bowl. One had a negative yards per play margin and the other two were a nothing special +.4 and +.5. Those New England teams won with superior turnover margins: +8 in 2001, +17 in 2003, and +9 in 2004. If there is a secret to having a positive turnover margin, then Thomas Dimitroff has brought it from Massachusetts. Maybe we aren’t doomed after all. If the Tuck Rule comes into play in the Falcons’ first playoff game, then I’m headed for the nearest casino to bet on the Dirty Birds in Dallas.