Baseball Archives - Page 6 of 9

Why is the bunt controversial in baseball?

Last week we answered a great question about what bunts are in baseball. We decided to split up our answer into two parts: How does a bunt work in baseball? and Why is the bunt controversial in baseball?

Dear Sports Fan,

How does a bunt work in baseball? And why is it so controversial right now?

Thanks,
Otis

— — —

Dear Otis,

One of the best things about baseball is how long we’ve been playing it professionally in this country. The first professional league started in the 1870s. Baseball fans love that their sport has such a long professional history in this country and they keep a lot of it alive. Bunting has been alive as a strategy since the very beginning of professional baseball and it’s been controversial for one reason or another for almost the whole time! Let’s take a quick trip back in time to see how bunting and the reasons for its controversy have changed. To help as along our way, I found two wonderful articles about the history of baseball and bunting that I’m going to lean on heavily. The articles are “Why do baseball players still bunt so damn much” by Erik Malinowski for Bleacher Report and “Baseball’s long and complicated relationship with the bunt” by Randy Leonard for The Atlantic. I recommend reading both!

In the 1870s, baseball was basically an adolescent. It was played by established rules but they weren’t the rules that it would settle into in time. The two rules that we’re concerned with are the shape of the bat and the rule that determined what a foul ball was. Today, of course, bats are rounded and a foul ball is one that either falls outside of the lines that extend from home plate to the outfield or passes first or third base to the outside of the bases. In 1870, these rules were a little different. The shape of a batter’s bat was up to him and critically to the subject of bunting, a flat bat was allowed. The foul rules were different in that a ball would be called fair no matter where it landed as long as it first hit the ground in fair territory. The combination of these two rule differences made bunting a particularly effective strategy. The flat bat made it much easier to do and the fair/foul rule made it much more effective because you had far more territory open to you to direct the ball away from fielders. Bunting was so effective that in the 1870s, a bunting specialist named Ross Barnes led the league in hits and batting average more than a third of the time.

Effective as it may have been, bunters took their share of abuse. According to Leonard, fans in the 1870s “jeered that it was effeminate” and in 1904, then president, “William Howard Taft publicly scorned the bunt.” And there’s more:

In 1873 The Boston Globe called bunting “the black game,” an acknowledgment of one’s “weakness at the bat,” and a few years later the Detroit Free Press called it a “babyish performance.”

There is something that feels, even to this day, underhanded about bunting. You feel instinctively that the batter should be trying to hit the ball hard not let it bounce gently off of their bat. When a bunt doesn’t work, it feels foolish, but when it does work, it makes the defense look foolish in a way that a hard-hit line drive or even a home run does not. The bunt plays against the ultra-masculine image of sports and for that reason it can be controversial. That’s not the main reason why the bunt is controversial today.

The bunt is controversial today because it’s basically been proven to be a bad idea. Baseball has been undergoing a statistical and cultural revolution since the 1980s. Many stats that once were seen as meaningful indications of performance, like RBIs and runs, have proven to be mostly meaningless and have been replaced with better stats. The statistical reality of bunting is that even when it works, the team that does it is intentionally sacrificing an out to advance a runner. The value of doing this is negative. A team with no outs and a man on first base (a normal scenario before a bunt) has a better chance of scoring a run that inning than a team with a runner on second and one out (a normal scenario after a bunt.)

Bunts are back in the news in a big way because the Kansas City Royals have been bunting like crazy. Or, more accurately, they have been bunting like they are a team from the 1980s, as Will Leitch suggests they might be in his enjoyable Sports on Earth article:

Watching them [the Royals] play — the five sacrifice bunts, the seven stolen bases, the lack of homers and strikeouts — has me thinking that this isn’t just the first time the Royals have made the playoffs since 1985: I’m honestly concerned that this team has been beamed here from the year 1985.

And they’ve been winning. The Royals are 4-0 in this year’s playoffs and are only four wins from making it to the World Series. Are they doing this because of or in spite of their bunt-happy retro style? Dave Cameron looked into the four bunts of their wild Wild Card victory for fangraphs.com and concluded that of the four, one bunt was a mistake, one was unclear, and two were “probably positive.” Overall, Cameron writes that:

In late game situations where one run is paramount, bunting can often be the correct play, and the don’t-bunt-ever reaction can be just as incorrect as the bunt-always fanaticism.

Looking at the comments under his article, it’s clear that many readers and baseball fans don’t agree. After 140 years of baseball history, the controversy about the bunt may just be getting started.

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

How does a bunt work in baseball?

Dear Sports Fan,

How does a bunt work in baseball? And why is it so controversial right now?

Thanks,
Otis

— — —

Dear Otis,

A bunt is a baseball tactic where the batter hits the ball softly and directs it onto the ground. This tactic is often used as a form of sacrifice where the batter knows that she is likely to be thrown out at first base but a runner already on first, second, or less normally, third base will be able to easily advance to the next base. It’s a very old tactic and has always been controversial for one reason or another for more than a hundred years. Bunting is in the news a lot right now because the Kansas City Royals have been bunting far more than normal and have won their first two playoff games. Let’s make this a two-part post. We’ll handle how bunts work in the first half and then look into why it’s controversial in a second post.

How does a bunt work?

When a batter decides to bunt or is given instructions to bunt, she waits until the pitcher is starting to pitch and then quickly does two things: she slides her hands up the barrel of the bat and separates them for better control; as she is doing this, she pivots so that her body opens up towards the pitch. Once in bunting position, the batter does her best to make contact with the top half of the ball, so that instead of popping up for an easy out, the ball goes downwards. Advanced bunters are able to also direct the ball towards their base or first, whichever is going to be harder for the defense to field.

Getting into bunting stance does not count as a swing. A strike can only be called if, once the player is in bunting stance, they make a “movement indicating an attempt to contact the ball.” This is a wrinkle in baseball’s rules so obscure that most players and umps don’t even know this, so you will see players draw back from their bunt position if they believe the pitch is out of the strike zone and they want to ensure themselves a ball instead of a strike. A better known bunting rule is that a foul ball on a bunt attempt may count as a player’s third strike. If a batter swings at the ball and fouls it off, that can never count as a third strike, but a bunt attempt can. A foul ball is one that passes outside of first or third base. Since most bunts don’t go that far, wherever the ball stops rolling determines whether it’s fair or foul. Here’s an example of a bunt hit perfectly down the line which flummoxed the defense which was hoping it would roll foul:

If the defensive team notices that a batter is trying to bunt or thinks they might from the context of the game, they may shift where they line up in the infield to position themselves better to respond to a bunt. This usually means closer to home plate. When a bunt is made, the infielders will charge towards the rolling ball and try to get to it in time to pick it up and throw a runner out. Here’s a third baseman fielding a bunt perfectly:

As we mentioned before, a lot of bunters bunt with the intention of sacrificing themselves for the good of a runner on base. This is called a sacrifice bunt and is most often done to move a runner from first to second base. Once on second base, a runner is generally though of as in “scoring position” because they can usually make it home on any ball hit safely into the outfield. This makes it less necessary to sacrifice an out to move them to third base. A special kind of sacrifice bunt is called a squeeze play. This is when a sacrifice bunt is made to get a runner from third to home base. Sounds crazy, right? An even more daring play is the “suicide squeeze” where the runner from third starts running home before the batter even makes contact with the ball. This takes real confidence in the ability of the batter to successfully bunt the ball because if they don’t, you’ve got the catcher standing there waiting to tag the runner out. Some players use the bunt without any sense of sacrifice. They bunt because they are good at bunting and fast enough to make it a reasonable way to get safely to first base. Bunting for a base hit means that you’re basically giving up on the idea of hitting a double, triple, or home run (although doubles do sometimes happen off of bunts!) but it can still be a good strategy, especially if you can surprise the fielders by bunting when they are not in position to field the bunt.

So, that’s how a bunt works. We’ll dig into why bunts are controversial soon.
Ezra Fischer

What are outfielders in baseball or softball?

Dear Sports Fan,

What are outfielders in baseball or softball? How many of them are there and what is the difference between the outfield positions?

Thanks,
Jack

— — —

Dear Jack,

Outfielders are the players who play farthest from home plate. If you imagine a baseball field seen from above, there’s the diamond that the four bases make, which is covered with a dirt and then the area beyond it, which is grass. The outfielders are those players who play literally out in the field. There are three outfielders in competitive baseball and softball: left field, right field, and center field. In “beer-league” or recreational softball, there is sometimes a fourth outfielder added into the mix. The primary responsibility of outfielders is to track the ball when it is hit, do the complicated calculation of where it is going to land, figure out in a split second whether or not they will be able to catch it, and then sprint to the best spot to catch it or, if that’s impossible, to grab it and throw it to the correct teammate in the infield. Playing in the outfield requires speed, good judgement, and a strong arm. Although it only happens once every dozen games or so, outfielders also have to be ready physically and psychologically to climb or smash themselves into the outfield wall while going at full speed to catch the ball. Although the outfield positions are much closer to each other than the infield positions are, there are some differences in what is required at each position.

Center Field

Center fielders are the unofficial captains of the outfield. They cover the most ground and field the most balls. They are also responsible for coordination if there’s any indecision about who is going to field a ball. In case the player trying to catch the ball misses it, outfielders back each other up on every hit. For center fielders, this means they are either fielding or backing up their neighbor on every single ball hit to the outfield. That’s a lot of running! Center fielders need to have endurance as well as speed.

Left field

Left fielders field the second most balls in the outfield. This is especially true in youth, recreational, or college ball because most hitters are righties and most righties naturally hit the ball in the direction of their swing — towards left field. The left fielder is able to have the weakest arm of all the outfielders. This is because, if a ball is hit to left field, there’s no real chance of getting the ball to first base before the runner gets there. In this case, the left fielder is usually able to throw the ball to the second baseman — or the third baseman who runs over to a spot between the outfielder and second base — in time to stop the runner from getting to second. If there’s already a runner on base and the ball goes to left field, the necessary throw to prevent things from getting out of hand is the shortest one possible — to third base. This great, old-school, typed Outfield Fundamentals by Mike Evans points out that a right-handed player will find left field easier.

Right Field

Right fielders field the fewest balls, but when they do, they have to make the hardest throws to prevent runners from advancing from first to second base or second to third. The throw from right field to third base is particularly far, difficult, and important. The reason why right fielders field fewer balls than the other positions is because batters tend to find it easier to “pull” the ball across their bodies as opposed to angling it to the “opposite field.” Only left-handed batters can pull the ball to right field. The practical result of this is that right fielders tend to be the weakest fielders in the outfield. In recreational softball or baseball, right field is frequently a place you can stash someone who really doesn’t know how to even catch the ball because so few balls will be hit to them. In major league baseball, where pretty much everyone knows how to catch, the difference between fielders is smaller but right field is still the place where you’ll find players who deserve their spots on the team because they are great hitters but who aren’t great fielders.

Outfielders cover an extraordinary amount of space in an impressive way. Baseball fields don’t have to have standard dimensions and in fact, they vary quite a bit. According to Business Insider, the average ball park is 2.49 acres. The largest field is home to the Colorado Rockies and is .18 acres bigger than average. The smallest is Fenway Park in Boston which is .15 acres smaller than average. That might not seem like a big range, but consider that the outfielders in Boston play their home games in a park 14,375 square feet smaller than the outfielders in Colorado. These differences, can play a part in how a team constructs their lineup. The Red Sox may be able to do with better offensive players who are weaker defensively in the outfield while the Rockies first priority has to be defensive range.

Hope this has helped you understand what outfielders in baseball and softball are,
Ezra Fischer

Gifts for Sports Fans: Who's on first?

Abbott and Costello’s comedy routine, “Who’s on first” is a classic that remains funny today. It’s a wonderful slow burn where Lou Costello gradually gets angrier and angrier at Bud Abbott’s answers about a fictional baseball team because they don’t make sense to him. Explaining a joke always ruins it, so instead of trying to do it myself, let’s just enjoy the comedy genius of this Wikipedia explanation:

The premise of the sketch is that Abbott is identifying the players on a baseball team for Costello, but their names and nicknames can be interpreted as non-responsive answers to Costello’s questions. For example, the first baseman is named “Who”; thus, the utterance “Who’s on first” is ambiguous between the question (“Which person is the first baseman?”) and the answer (“The name of the first baseman is ‘Who'”).

Hysterical, right? I’m sure you’re LOLing already, if not ROTFLing. Seriously though, I think it’s one of the best routines out there. I enjoy it so much that I couldn’t help but label the positions with who played them (I know… first base…) in the skit throughout my post explaining what (second) each infield position does. Abbott and Costello are well worth enjoying with the sports fan in your life. Here are some great ways to enjoy their comedy and proudly represent yourself to the world as someone well versed in the history of sports and comedy.

You can listen to the skit for only 99 cents (or free from a transactional perspective if you have Amazon Prime) here.
Buy their entire collection of Universal Pictures films for $86.54 here. This includes Naughty Nineties and One Night in the Tropics, both of which have versions of Abbott and Costello performing Who’s on First.
There’s a variety of wonderful shirt options, as you might expect. Here are a few of my favorites:
- The baseball jersey that has the name “Who” on the back, with the number “one.” Quick aside: thanks to Wikipedia, I found out that there have been two actual baseball players with Abbott and Costellian names: there was Allie Watt in 1920 and Chin-Lung Hu in 2007, of whom legendary announcer Vin Scully said, “Shades of Abbott and Costello, I can finally say, Hu, is on first base.”
- There’s a classic t-shirt with a picture of Abbott & Costello performing the skit with the full text on the back.
- For the visual learners out there, there’s a nice indie looking design with a baseball diamond drawn and filled in with the players’ names. This comes in all different formats: t-shirt, hoodie, men’s, women’s, baby’s, and more.
- Finally, if you’re looking for the ultimate combination of nerdy comedy references, buy this shirt with a design that shows the classic time and space traveling phone booth from the show Doctor Who in the position of first base on a baseball diamond. Very clever!!
If you’re looking for other ways to physically represent the hilarity of the skit in your house, there’s a pair of Abbott & Costello animated dolls, a Throw Pillow, and a 27×40 poster.
Last but not least, and possibly going fast, is a copy of the 1978 “Who’s on First” Memory Game! There seem to be cards with names of players on them which you place on a baseball diamond board to challenge the other person’s memory and patience.

If you are a sports fan, a history fan, or a comedy fan or are looking for a present for someone who fits that bill, these are all great options.

Why do catchers paint their nails in baseball?

Dear Sports Fan,

I stayed up late last night to watch the exciting playoff game between the Kansas City Royals and the Oakland As and one image kept jumping out at me: the catchers and their BRIGHT YELLOW finger nails. Why do catchers paint their nails in baseball?

Thanks,
Vera

— — —

Dear Vera,

I noticed that too and did some research about it this morning. Catchers paint their finger nails (or color them in other ways) so that their fingers are more easily visible to the pitchers on their team. Before each pitch, the catcher and pitcher need to communicate about what pitch to throw and where to throw it. This communication is important for practical reasons — the catcher needs to be able to catch the ball and he can often do subtle things to help fool the batter and even the ump — and for tactical reasons. Catchers have the primary responsibility for what pitches get thrown when and where. So, how do they communicate? And why does it involve colored nails?

Catchers communicate with pitchers through an occupational sign language. From their catcher’s squat, they stick one hand between their legs and flash a series of hand signals. There’s a simple standard for these signs. Baseball-catcher.com lists the simplest version of the language:

One Finger = Fast Ball
Two Fingers = Curve Ball
Three Fingers = Slider
Four Fingers and/or Wiggle Fingers = Change Up

Major league catchers use far more complicated signs because, even shielded between their legs, the signals might be seen by an opposing player, coach, or even a plant in the audience with a set of binoculars and a cell-phone.

The pitcher stands over sixty feet away from the catcher. We know from David Epstein’s amazing book, The Sports Gene, that baseball players have extraordinary eyesight. Major league players average 20/13 eyesight, which means they can see from 20 feet what the rest of us can see from 13. Even if sixty feet looks to them like 39 feet would look like to a “normal” person, that’s still pretty far. I just measured out about 40 feet in my apartment. From that distance, I could easily see a hand size object but I’m not sure how well I’d be able to translate fast moving hand signals with close to 100% certainty. Add to that the pumping adrenaline of performing in front of 40,000 screaming fans, the overwhelming pressure of a close game, and the mental sloppiness that comes from pushing your body to its limits of exertion, and you can understand why any visual aid would be useful!

So, catchers started adding a bright, contrasting, easy to see stripe of color on their fingers. At first it was just white tape on the fingers or finger tips. Then catchers like Yankees Russell Martin started painting their finger nails. In a 2011 Newsday column, Martin was quoted commenting about his bright orange nail polish:

“At first, I just put white on it. I used to use Wite-Out and then I’d have to take it off after games and it was messy. I just decided to put on a color that kind of pops out.”

[begin rant]

A quick aside about nail polish on male athletes and coverage of it.

I get that men don’t normally wear nail polish. In our culture that’s more common for women to do. I think it’s probably fine to recognize the humor of some of the most stereotypical masculine people out there, professional athletes, adopting a stereotypically feminine habit. The Newsday article does a good job with this by asking whether the Yankees were going to hire a staff manicurist and by describing Martin’s use of nail polish as a sign of his commitment to his team and to winning. Contrast that with the purely offensive way For the Record sports covers Russell Martin. In one short paragraph, they suggest wearing nail polish may be “how you get gay” and predict a homosexual “love triangle” between Martin and his teammates. Nice work guys — I guess that’s what we should expect from a site whose site’s main navigation bar’s first four categories are Pro, College, Hot Chicks, and Title IX. Here are a few of the headlines from their Title IX section:

Kate Upton in classy animal print photo sheet [VIDEO]
Slovenian triple jumper Snežana Rodić and her awesome butt
[VIDEO] When girls try to be coordinated
Diana Taurasi likes ironing her man clothes

This is everything wrong with one segment of sports culture. Even if you’re okay with a sports site having a “Hot Chicks” section, naming a section of your website after the landmark equal rights law that mandated equality for women in educational or other federally funded programs, which included almost all youth and college sports, and then filling it with sexist, disgustingly insulting junk is totally unacceptable. How more insulting could you possibly get?

[end rant]

From nail polish, the evolution continued to custom-made finger-stickers. The catchers in last night’s game looked to me like they were wearing the neon green stickers made by a company called Game Signs. Game Signs boasts that their “signal enhancement stickers are easy to use, easy to remove and durable enough to withstand the roughest of games.”

The stickers look great, and I’m sure it’s nice to be able to peel them off after a game, but I think that if my hands were going to be shown in close-ups on HD TVs around the country, I might just get a manicure anyway!

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

What are infielders in baseball or softball?

Dear Sports Fan,

What are infielders in baseball or softball? Doesn’t everyone play in the field?

Thanks,
Jacqueline

— — —

Dear Jacqueline,

Infielders in baseball or softball are players who play any one of these four positions: first base, second base, third base, or shortstop. Each of these positions have their own unique set of responsibilities which favor particular skills. With some exceptions, of course, the positions seem to attract or mold the personalities of people who play them in distinctive ways. The wrinkles of each position often shape the roles players play when their team is up to bat in addition to when they’re on defense. Although some major league players shift from position to position, most stick to one spot for the majority of their careers. As an added bonus, infielders in baseball were the focus of one of the funniest comedy bits of all time. Starting with first base and moving to third, we’ll describe each position in detail. For describing where things happen, we’ll use the perspective of the batter. As we go through the positions, I’ll notate the names of the players on Abbot and Costello’s team.

First Base

First basemen (the eponymous Who) stand farthest to the right as seen from the batter’s point of view. Their primary defensive responsibility is to bustle over to their base when the ball is hit into play and be their to catch the ball if one of their teammates gets it in time to try to throw the runner out at first. If the first baseman catches the ball while she is touching first base before the batter runs to first base and touches it himself, the batter is out. A throw to first base is the most common outcome from a hit and there are often reasonably close calls between the runner getting there first and the first baseman catching the ball. The first basemen plants one foot on his base and reaches, stretches, lunges, for the ball. Shaped by this requirement, the first baseman is the biggest of the infield players. He doesn’t need to run very much and every inch of height and wingspan help him reach the ball a split second earlier or snag errant throws that might go over a smaller player’s head. This has implications for batting too. Since size is an advantage at first base in a way it often isn’t at other positions, first basement are often big power hitters who aim for home runs whenever they can. After all, if you get a home run, you don’t have to run as fast. Playing first base is a challenging position. It’s hard to hide there because every infield hit is going to involve you catching the ball.

Second Base

Second base (What) is the least glamorous of the infield positions. Before the ball is hit, second basement usually line up between second base and first or just to the right of center from the batter’s perspective. They are in one of the least likely spots for a ball to be hit (assuming the majority of batters are right-handed) and their job is easiest when a ball does come to them. The throw from where a second baseman lines up to first base, where the play most frequently is, is quite short. The one truly exciting thing that a second baseman does is play a vital role in most double plays. A double play is when a defensive team is able to get two outs on a single hit. This usually happens when there is a runner on first. Because two runners cannot occupy one base at the same time, the runner at first is forced to run to second as her teammate runs from the batters box to first base. If the defensive team can get the ball, throw it to second base and tap their foot on second base while holding the ball, they can then try to throw the ball to first base and beat the runner there too, making for two outs. There are all types of strange ways to make this happen, but usually it involves someone throwing the ball to the second baseman, who stands on second base, catches the ball, and whirls around to throw it to first base. Runners headed to second base in this situation will slide at the second baseman dangerously, trying to break her nerve (or her ankles) to prevent the throw to first. As a result, second basemen are often small, agile people who have become very good at leaping out of the way while throwing accurately. Second baseman use their speed on offense too, often hitting first or second in the order.

Shortstop

The shortstop (I don’t give a darn) is the most glamorous position in the infield and arguably the whole team. Shortstops have the most balls hit at them and they are hit the hardest. Shortstops are athletic and acrobatic, leaping or diving to catch or even just get in the way of balls hit between second and third base. Once they get their hands on the ball, they have the second farthest throw in the infield from their position to first base. Often, instead of throwing to first, they might flip the ball to the second baseman to start a double play or just sprint over there and touch the base themselves. Shortstops are proud of their position and rightly so. In any casual game of baseball or softball, the best athlete in the group plays shortstop by default. Shortstops can have such an impact on defense that they can sometimes get away with being a weaker hitter compared to other positions.

Third Base

Third base (I don’t know) takes guts and a rocket arm. Third basemen line up closest of any infielder to the batter, so when a ball comes to them, it gets there fast! Playing third base, even in a rec-league softball game, can be a harrowing experience because so many of the hits come at you so quickly. Once a third baseman has successfully fielded a ball, they have the farthest throw to get it to first base. If you imagine a baseball field as a triangle between home plate, first base, and third, the line from third to first is the hypotenuse. On a major league baseball field, the distance from third to first is over 125 feet! When a third basemen stops being able to reliably make that throw, because of physical limitations or mental blocks, he or she has got to move to another position.

The infield positions are all unique and their peculiarities shape how baseball is played. Personality and physical attributes define who will be best playing which position. I hope this post has helped make the positions more understandable and baseball more enjoyable to play and watch.

Thanks,
Ezra Fischer

Get ready for the baseball playoffs

It’s amazing how fast a 162 game season can fly by! The Major League Baseball playoffs start this week with two single elimination games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Tuesday’s game is between the Oakland Athletics and the Kansas City Royals at 8 p.m. ET on TBS. Wednesday’s is between the San Francisco Giants and the Pittsburgh Pirates at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN. Whether you’re a diehard fan or someone, like me, who tunes in just for the playoffs, here are some resources for watching and enjoying playoff baseball.

Why do people like baseball?

Written by early contributor to Dear Sports Fan, the pseudonymous Dean Russell Bell:

There’s real beauty in a ball game – there’s nothing like the sound of a ball hit solidly by a wooden bat; or watching the mechanics of a smoothly turned double play, and the way incredibly skilled players make it look so effortless; or the one on one duel between pitcher and batter, or the sheer improbability of a human hitting a tiny orb moving at 95 miles an hour – let alone hitting it hundreds of feet.

Plus, choosing to watch a baseball game isn’t that much of a commitment:

You could do anything while watching a baseball game – knit, iron, write the great American novel. It’s the most easily-casually watched sport there is.

How do the Major League baseball playoffs work?

This is a quick walkthrough the format of the baseball playoffs. It’s a confusing playoff system because it has, “the most variety of format of all of the major sports’ playoffs. The MLB playoffs consist of four rounds and three different formats.” If this sounds like it doesn’t make sense, that’s because it really doesn’t. Towards the end of this post, I write a little bit about how these playoffs are unfair to players, teams, and fans.

What’s the difference between the two leagues in baseball?

Tuesday night’s game is played under a different set of rules from Wednesday’s game. This post explores what the differences are and how they got that way. It’s a handy companion for making sense out of the two sets of rules and their implication on tactics:

Mostly what it does is make it less likely for American League teams to win 2-0. So, they tend to build their entire line-ups based on this fact. They concentrate on finding bigger, stronger, slower guys who can hit home-runs. The fact that they can play these guys in a game without needing them to run around and try to catch the ball helps too! The National League teams, on the other hand, feel like they might be able to win with fewer runs, so they tend towards smaller, faster players who can steal bases, bunt, and play excellent defense.

Keep an eye out for more about baseball in the next week.

How does a baseball team operate smoothly?

From the Washington Post, here’s an article called “The Nationals employ more than 1,100 people who never get an at-bat or throw a pitch” by Barry Svrluga that goes in depth on the operations of a major league baseball team and gives a little bit of well-deserved credit to the people who make the buses literally run on time. Here are a couple great bits from the article.

So from his spot as gatekeeper, concierge, liaison… [Vice President of Clubhouse Operations, Rob] McDonald has not only watched as the Nationals have transformed from baseball’s Island of Misfit Toys into an organization that expects to compete for a division title every season, but he has helped shape it, in tiny but tangible ways.

“The reality is,” [baseball player, Drew] Storen said, “I’m pretty terrible at life during the season. These guys take the pressure off.”

What is the magic number in baseball?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is the magic number in baseball?

Thanks,
Mike

— — —

Dear Mike,

The “magic number” is a calculation used to state how far a team is from achieving a goal. Most frequently, it’s a metric that show how close a team is to winning their regular season division or conference title, or to making the playoffs.

The term “magic number” is used in other sports as well as baseball, but these days, with the baseball playoffs quickly approaching, we’re seeing it most often in baseball news stories. Some recent examples are this article on The Detroit Sports Site which begins, “The Detroit Tigers’ Magic Number to clinch the AL Central stayed stuck on seven with Sunday’s loss in Kansas City.” or this article on SB Nation’s LA Dodgers blog, True Blue L.A., entitled, “MLB standings 2014: Dodgers and Giants both lose, magic number now 5.” There are websites devoted completely to following the magic number, like Playoff Magic. We’ll look at their Major League Baseball (MLB) section later. First, let’s talk about how the magic number works.

I find the easiest way of thinking about the magic number is that it is the number of games a team needs to win for them to achieve a goal no matter what another team does. This makes some intuitive sense. Let’s take a simple scenario. There are two games remaining in a season. My team, the Flywheels, is ahead of the Steampunks by two games in the standings. All I have to do is win a single game to make it impossible for the Steampunks to catch up. My magic number to end the season ahead of the Steampunks is therefore one. Let’s say though, that the Steampunks play one of their remaining games before our team, the Flywheels, does. If they lose, then they only have one game left and they are still down by two games in the standings. My magic number moves from one to zero. I don’t need to win any more games to assure myself that I’m going to finish the season ahead of my rivals. A team’s own result can change their magic number but so can another team’s win or loss. The magic number is a relative calculation.

In more complex situations, the magic number is harder to derive by instinct. Luckily, there are a few easy formulas to follow to calculate it. The best follows the logic of our previous example. It’s the second option on the Wikipedia entry about the magic number:

The magic number can also be calculated as WB + GRB – WA + 1, where

WB is the number of wins that Team B has in the season
GRB is the number of games remaining for Team B in the season
WA is the number of wins that Team A has in the season

This second formula basically says: Assume Team B wins every remaining game. Calculate how many games team A needs to win to surpass team B’s maximum total by 1.

Let’s use this formula on our example of the Flywheels and the Steampunks. We didn’t say how many games there had been in the season, only that there were two left. Let’s say it’s a 20 game season. The standings today look like this:

Team A: Flywheels – 12 wins, 6 losses, 2 games remaining
Team B: Steampunks – 10 wins, 8 losses, 2 games remaining

To calculate the Flywheel’s magic number, we take the number of wins the Steampunks have (10) add the number of games remaining for the Steampunks (2) subtract the number of wins that the Flywheels have (12) and add one to get… one! It works!

One important thing about the magic number that makes more sense when you see how it is calculated, is that it can only ever measure the distance between two teams. In a three way race for a division title, the leading team will have a magic number in comparison to each of the teams chasing them. If someone says that a team has a single magic number showing how far they are from achieving a goal, it’s safe to assume that every other team other than the one used to calculate that number has been mathematically eliminated from contention.

Returning to Playoff Magic’s MLB page, here’s one example of how the magic number is working in this year’s run to the baseball playoffs.

The AL or American League Central still has three teams in contention. The Tigers are in the lead with 86 wins after 155 games. The Royals are in second place with 84 wins after 154 games. The Cleveland Indians are running third with 81 wins after 155 games. There are 162 games in a baseball season, so the Tigers and Indians have seven games left while the Royals have eight. The magic number is most easily understood as how many games does a team need to win to stay ahead of the teams behind them even if they win every remaining game. If the Royals win all their remaining games, they’ll end the season with 92 wins. If the Indians win every remaining game, they’ll end the season with 88 wins. To end the season ahead of the Indians, the Tigers need to win a total of 89 games or three more than they have now. Tigers’ magic number vis-a-vis the Indians is three! To end the season ahead of the Royals, the Tigers would need 93 wins or seven more than they have now. Tigers’ magic number vis-a-vis the Royals is seven! Those magic numbers show up in the table on the Tigers’ row. The 5 on the Royals row in the Cleveland Indians column is the Royals magic number in relation to the Indians. In this case, the achievement is not winning the division but ending the season ahead of the Indians.

I hope that helps explain the magic number. In case you’re wondering what the GB means in the standings table, it stands for “games back.” Games back is another story completely but luckily, I wrote all about what “games back” means last year.

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

Basketball and Baseball Uniform Posters

One of my favorite professional experiences came several years back when I was working as a business analyst for Return Path. My boss back then, Jack Sinclair, found an Edward Tufte one-day course and decided to send me to it. Tufte is one of the foremost practicers, proponents, and gurus of data visualization, the art of showing information through graphics. One of Tufte’s favorite techniques is the use of small multiples. Small multiples are graphics that repeat the same basic frame over and over again in a single view to emphasize the differences. Think the frames of a flip-book but instead of flipping from one to another to deliver a message, you display them all at once.

A good example of this is Tufte’s reworking of an instructional display of air-craft marshaling signals, as reproduced by businessweek.com.

One of my favorite creative poster companies, Pop Chart Lab, has a couple of sports posters that use this principle of small multiples. They’re running a sale through August 29 on these and other charts. Use the code, “solongsummer” to get 15% off. My favorite is the visual compendium of baseball uniforms. This poster shows 121 tiny baseball uniforms from teams from 1869 through 2014. Each tiny uniform is a lens to an era. Baseball, with it’s rich cultural of historical respect and nostalgia lends itself perfectly to this treatment.

Also good is a similar visual compendium of basketball uniforms. The concept is the same and it still works. Basketball has a shorter history and doesn’t really share the timeless nostalgia of baseball. What it does have though is a strong fashion and pop-culture presence. Hidden among the professional jerseys of this poster are jerseys from movies like White Men Can’t Jump and He Got Game as well as jerseys designed for record companies like Bad Boy and No Limit Records.

Both posters are available for $35 before the 15% discount and are printed in my home borough of Queens. Get ’em while they’re hot!