Category: Understanding Sports

How does the NFL Supplemental Draft work?

Dear Sports Fan,

I recently posted this question on Fancred, “Raise your hand if you understand the supplemental draft at all.” Barely anyone raised their hand, and we’re all sports fans on Fancred! Can you help? How does the NFL Supplemental Draft work?

Thanks,
Jake N.

Dear Jake N.,

Hey Jake — I think I can help. Every spring, the NFL holds an entry draft for any player who has played at least two years of football since high school and would like to play in the NFL. This is a giant event with over 200 players selected and many more who declared themselves eligible for selection but who were not picked. When a team picks a player in the draft, it means that they have the exclusive right to negotiate and sign a contract with that player. No other team can try to sign them. Players who don’t get picked become free agents and are able to negotiate with any team that wants them, and indeed, many of them get signed, albeit to shorter, less lucrative contracts. Every year though, there are a few players who slip through the cracks. Either they intended to be in the draft but messed up their paperwork or, at the time they needed to make the decision, they wanted to stay in college for another year, but since then, something has changed in their life. This change could be a life event –  a death in the family, an expected child, or it could be something more salacious, like having become academically ineligible for another year at college or getting in trouble with the law. The Supplemental Draft, held in July, is a chance for players who missed the draft but have a qualifying reason (the NFL decides) to enter the NFL this year, to be chosen by teams.

The Supplemental draft is a reasonably simple procedure but it’s badly named. It works much more like a blind auction than a draft. The first thing that happens is that an order of teams is established. All the NFL teams are divided into three groups: teams that won six or fewer games last year, teams that won more than six games but didn’t make the playoffs, and teams that made the playoffs. Within each group, a random drawing is done to establish an order. Once the order is set, teams can make bids on eligible players. This year there are seven eligible players. Teams bid on players by declaring a number from one to seven. These numbers are meant to be the equivalent of the round in the normal draft the team would have selected the player if they had been the normal draft. Of course, as with most elements of sport, there’s no obligation to be truthful. Teams bid whatever they think will work, not what they actually would have done. Once all the bids are in on a player, the team which claimed they would have drafted the player in the earliest round (1st is better than 2nd is better than 3rd and so on) gets the right to negotiate with that player. If there are two or more teams with the same bid, the team that is earlier in the order gets the player.

The reason why the numbers correspond to draft rounds, instead of being totally arbitrary, is that there is a cost for winning a supplemental draft bid. When a team drafts a player through the supplemental draft, they lose the equivalent round draft pick in next year’s normal NFL entry draft. This is a fairly big cost, considering that the pool of players to choose from is so much bigger in, say the fourth round of next year’s draft compared to the handful of players in the supplemental draft. As such, teams virtually never bid very high for players in the supplemental draft and in many years, the draft comes and goes without a single player being picked. The only exception to this rule is firmly an element of the NFL’s history, not its present. In the mid-1980s, a couple players used the supplemental draft as a means of controlling which team they ended up with. This loophole, most famously used by Bernie Kosar to get to the Cleveland Browns and by Brian Bosworth to avoid the Indianapolis Colts and Buffalo Bills, was firmly closed in 1990.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

Understand the odds – how betting on tennis works

When Americans think about betting on sports, our first thoughts usually turn to football and horse racing. Over in England and Europe, the sports to bet on are soccer and tennis. To explain how betting works in tennis, I called on Luke Rees, a British sports fan and writer. Here’s what he wrote:

When placing a bet on a tennis match, it can often be quite confusing to interpret the various odds available. There are numerous markets to pick from, and also many different options for those looking to boost their profits, meaning punters often decide to stay clear of the tennis game.

This article will outline the basics of reading the odds, and provide advice for tennis spectators who want to make the game a little bit more interesting.

Betting On the Money Line

Money line bets are the most basic and popular market in tennis (and the majority of sports for that matter, including horse racing). Essentially, the bookies provide the odds on the outright winner of a match, and you simply pick your favorite for the win. The favorite in a match is given a negative (-) money line, and the underdog is indicated with positive (+) money line.

Here’s an example:

  • Andy Murray -190 (favorite)
  • Vasek Pospisil +300 (underdog)
  • Negative money line: this indicates the amount of money needed to bet in order to win $100 in profit. So, in the example above, it would require a $190 wager on Andy Murray to win $100 in profit, for a total pay-out of $290.
  • Positive money line: this indicates the amount of money that would be won from a $100 wager. In the example above, a $100 bet on Vasek Pospisil would result in a $300 profit if he wins the match, for a total pay-out of $400.

The first step to take when making a bet is to look at the money line and decide if it is worth taking out a bet. For instance, you may decide that betting on Pospisil is not worth it at 4/1 odds ($400 return for $100 bet) because Murray is currently the strong favorite. But say the money line on Pospisil was 8/1 or +800: you might have a different opinion if you stood to make a $900 return.

The money line is used not only for individual games, but also for betting on a player to win the tournament outright. This is commonly referred to as Outright Winner betting: you can see some Wimbledon outright winner predictions at Bookmakers, for example.

Betting ‘Each Way’ means you place two bets, one on the player to win the tournament and one on them to finish in the top 2 places (i.e. to reach the final).

The Handicap Market

The handicap (or HCAP) market is another popular market. This is because rather than predicting the outright winner, you are instead betting on how a certain player performs. A handicap market simply means that one of the players is given an advantage at the beginning – usually by adding a certain amount of games to their overall score.

Let’s take the same tennis example. This is how it might look:

Andy Murray -7.5 -190 vs. Pospisil +7.5 -190

The money line is even on this bet, what has changes is the handicap. In both cases, a wager of $190 would bring back a $100 win if the right player is chosen. The pay-out is even, because the spread has balanced out the competition between the two players.

Imagine that this is the result from the match: 6-3 6-4 6-4

Totals Games Won – Murray 18 vs. Pospisil 11

As you can see, despite losing the match in straight sets, a bet on Pospisil would have actually been the winner in this case. The handicap of +7.5 games for Pospisil gets added to his 11 games won to give him 18.5 total. That is a half-game ahead of Murray in this case, and so a bet on Pospisil would be paid out.

Betting on Accumulators

One final interesting way to bet – if you’re feeling especially confident and want to boost your profits throughout a tournament – is to place multiple bets on a series of matches. These are known as Doubles, Trebles, and Accumulators. For the bet to come through, you have to get each result correct, otherwise there is no pay-out.

Imagine a $30 single bet on Novak Djokovic to beat Andy Murray at odds of -250 (or 2/5) returns just a $10 profit. This may not be particularly appealing, so to make it more worthwhile you could put down a treble on three different games. If all of them pay out around -250, your $25 stake will make you $50 profit. After each correctly predicted match outcome, your profits go up exponentially.

With the tennis season well underway, and the U.S Open just around the corner, now’s the time to get down to the bookies with your new betting know-how. But always remember, never bet what you can’t afford!

Luke Rees is a sports writer and enthusiast from London, UK, who likes to cover tennis, cycling, and football (or soccer to y’all). His most memorable sports experience was watching Federer and Roddick in the Wimbledon final in 2009 – he was rooting for Roddick, but Federer absolutely smashed it!

How valuable is a signed baseball bat?

Dear Sports Fan,

How valuable does signed stuff actually get? If, for *cough* example, I had a little league bat signed by Brooks Robinson in the 80’s, would that be valuable or just something that a million other kids had?

Thanks,
Justin

Dear Justin,

Brooks Robinson is an awesome dude. During a 23 year Major League Baseball career, all as a member of the Baltimore Orioles, he went to 18 All-Star games and won 16 consecutive Gold Glove awards as a third baseman. He played in the World Series four times and won it twice. He had a great nicknames: The Human Vacuum Cleaner and Mr. Hoover. Elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983, he in one of only 16 people to be voted in during their first eligible year. At 78, Robinson is still active in the baseball community, serving as head of the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association. There is a 1,500 pound statue of him in downtown Baltimore. And yet, unless there is something particularly special about the signed bat you have, it’s probably not worth very much.

Sports autographs can mean big money, with the most valuable signatures going for millions of dollars, but they’re also big business. Memorabilia companies arrange for athletes to sign lots and lots of balls, uniforms, bats, gloves, baseball cards, and posters. As a result, the vast majority of signatures are not worth all that much. There are a multitude of factors that effect how much a signed item is worth but the underlying principle is that the more rare something is, the more valuable it is. Here are some of the factors that effect your bat:

  • Is it authentic and authenticated? — Two different things, an authentic item is one that is both real (the bat is a bat, not a loaf of bread shaped into a bat) and really signed. An authenticated item is one that has been certified to be authentic by one of a number of companies that exist for this sole purpose.
  • Is it game-used? — A bat that was used in a game by Robinson is worth more than one that wasn’t. Of the bats that weren’t, those that were produced for him to use in a game are worth more than those that were produced primarily so he could sign them before being sold to the public.
  • Is there something special about your item? — Did Robinson use it to hit during a memorable game? Was it the last he ever used? Or the first? Did he set a record with it? Use it to injure an offensive pitcher? Is it a brand he didn’t normally use? Is he someone who rarely ever signed bats? Again, rarity converts to value when it comes to signed items.

The Professional Sports Authenticator’s website has a handy chart showing the estimated value of “normal” signed items from a large number of professional baseball players, including Brooks Robinson. It suggests that your bat, if authentic and authenticated and in good condition, would be worth $100. If only you had something from the next Robinson on the list… Jackie Robinson! That estimate seems about right, if a little high, based on a search of sold Ebay signed Brooks Robinson bats that ranged from around $25 to $150.

You could sell it and probably make a little money. Although, since brand new baseball bats on Amazon are going for between $20 and $60 themselves, you’re almost better off just keeping it and using it as a baseball bat!

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

How do suspensions in soccer work?

Dear Sports Fan,

Can you explain to me how Clint Dempsey was supposedly suspended from games but is starting tonight? I’m confused. How do suspensions in soccer work?

Thanks,
Brian Cadavid

Dear Brian,

As we now know, Clint Dempsey did play in last night’s Gold Cup match between the United States men’s national team and Honduras. It’s a good thing for the team that he did, too, because he scored the team’s two goals on their way to a 2-1 victory. It was a bit of a surprise though. Last night’s game was played less than a month after Dempsey was thrown out of a game he was playing for his club team, Major League Soccer’s Seattle Sounders, after grabbing a referee’s notebook out of his hands and tearing it up.

This violation, as silly as it seems, by the letter of the rules, qualifies as assaulting the ref. A violation of this type is supposed to come with a minimum of a six game suspension. If Clint Dempsey had received a six or more game suspension for assaulting the referee, he would have been banned from taking part in any official soccer while serving the six game suspension. Since the Sounders only had three games between Dempsey’s infraction and last night’s USMNT game against Honduras, a six game ban would have excluded Dempsey from participating. SB Nation’s Sean Steffen wrote a post about this logic before the ruling had been handed down. When the ruling came, it was a major surprise: only three games. As Doug McIntyre wrote for ESPN, “It’s good to be a big-name star like Clint Dempsey in Major League Soccer.” Crisis averted – Dempsey would be able to play in the Gold Cup.

The way that this suspension worked is the exception, not the rule in global soccer. In the vast majority of leagues, and even in the MLS for non-assault based infractions, yellow cards, red cards, and suspensions that a player receives do not bleed over into other forms of competition. This is important because soccer players, way more than players in any other sport, play in different competitions simultaneously. In the course of a month, a player may play for a national team and for his or her club team in a league game and in one or more cup or tournament games. For example, Clint Dempsey was playing in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup when he earned that red card. His team’s next game was a normal MLS league game. And then, as we know, he went and played for the national team. The same trichotomy exists, perhaps even more, for players who play in European club soccer. Each league and cup and tournament has its own rules about suspensions. Although they are all quite similar, thanks to the octopus-like international soccer organization, FIFA, when it comes to suspensions, they each have mostly separate jurisdictions. A yellow card picked up in the Champions League does not carry over into the British Premier League or Spain’s La Liga. A suspension a player gets during an international game for their country usually only pertains to international games.

The fact that if Clint Dempsey had been suspended for six games for his “assault” on a referee, his suspension would have applied not just to games played for the Seattle Sounders but also to games played by the U.S. men’s national team is the exception that proves the rule. Most suspensions in soccer only apply to the form of soccer being played when the player commits the act that gets him or her suspended.

Thanks for your question,
Ezra Fischer

The lesson of the 2015 World Cup champion USWNT

It’s hard to believe in retrospect but after their first three World Cup games, the U.S. women’s national soccer team was in a state of crisis. After their first game, a 3-1 win against Australia, a staff writer for the Australian Football Federation concluded that the USA “just aren’t that good.” After the U.S. team’s next game, a 0-0 draw against Sweden, some of their fans were beginning to wonder if that staff writer had been correct. After the team’s third game, a lackluster 1-0 win over Nigeria in what was supposed to be the easiest game of the group stage, the rumors, doubts, and criticism began to flow freely. Despite being undefeated through the group stage and advancing to the single elimination knockout stage as a group winner, the American team did not look or feel like it could win the World Cup.

The problem, according to a consensus of critics, was that the team’s talented players were being misused by coach Jill Ellis. She was playing the wrong combination of players in the wrong formations with the wrong tactics. Although soccer is a very fluid game, players (other than the goalie) can generally be said to be playing in one of three positions, defense, midfield, or striker. Formations are referred to in soccer short-hand by a series of numbers referring to the number of players in each position, starting with defense and moving through midfield to striker. The U.S. had been playing a 4-4-2, which is a traditional formation made popular by Brazilian men’s national teams and Milan’s club team in the 1990s. When it’s at its best, the four midfielders each have distinct roles. Two play on either side of the field, supporting the outside defenders when the other team has the ball and joining the attack when their team has it. In the center of the field, one of the remaining two midfielders plays a primarily defensive role, almost as a fifth defender, while the other focuses on being an offensive playmaker. Of the U.S. team’s four starting midfielders throughout the first three games, three of them prefer to focus on being the offensive playmaker. As is said about cooks in a kitchen, that’s too many. As is said about having two starting quarterbacks in football, if you have that many playmaking midfielders, you really have none, because none of them can be effective.

The United States entered the elimination stage of the World Cup without any major changes to their lineup and were able to beat Colombia 2-0 without ever looking truly commanding. During the Colombia game, two of those three playmaking midfielders, Megan Rapinoe and Lauren Holiday, picked up their second yellow cards of the tournament (a yellow card is like a misdemeanor offense in soccer) and were suspended for the team’s next game, a quarterfinal matchup against China. This crisis, the loss of two of the team’s most talented players, provided an opportunity for coach Ellis. Forced to replace Rapinoe and Holiday with lesser known players, Ellis made sure that each of her four midfielders had distinct roles, well suited to their games. Enter 22 year-old Morgan Brian who played that defense-first midfield role which freed Rutgers University’s own Carli Lloyd to push up into her preferred offensive midfield role. The team responded with their best game of the tournament, beating China only 1-0 but looking dominant throughout.

Coach Ellis had clearly found something that worked but the question remained, would she have the nerve to bench Holiday and Rapinoe, two of her most well-known and talented players, in the team’s next game now that they were no longer suspended? And if she did, would that even be a wise decision against the powerful German side? Surely, going back to the team’s setup from the first four games was not the answer, but what was? Building off the success of the lineup against China, Ellis found a third solution. She reinserted Holiday and Rapinoe but changed the team’s shape. Instead of playing a 4-4-2 as she had throughout the tournament, she switched to a 4-5-1. This created distinct roles for Holiday and Rapinoe without interrupting the newfound and effective dynamic between Brian and Lloyd. The U.S. beat Germany 2-0 in Montreal in front of 51,000 screaming fans. In the tournament’s final game, Ellis repeated this setup and was rewarded with an almost unheard of four goals in 16 minutes and a long-awaited World Cup Championship.

The lesson of this parable is that talent is nothing without correct deployment. Okay, perhaps not nothing, the U.S. was still able to advance to the quarterfinals before finding a better way to play, but they likely would not have met their ultimate goal without being redeployed. Putting players into distinct roles which they understood and which fit well with each other was the key to propelling the team to a World Cup championship. The biggest benefactor and most obvious exemplum of this is Carli Lloyd. Winner of the tournament’s version of an MVP trophy, the Golden Ball, Lloyd scored six goals and had two assists, all after the formation change. Before then? Nothing. Whether you’re a player or a coach, a musician or a conductor, an employee or a manager, the message is clear: find a way to put yourself and the people you direct into well-defined roles that play to strengths. Success will follow.

How to keep the World Cup spirit going: watch the NWSL

The 2015 World Cup has been an amazing success for soccer and women’s sports throughout the world. If you’re reading this post, than you are probably sad that the tournament is coming to a close. Trust me, everyone who is involved with women’s sports and women’s soccer in particular is as well. The problem with relying on events like the World Cup and the Olympics to expand the reach of women’s soccer is that they only come around once every four years. The rest of the time, women’s sports get very little coverage from the media and very little attention from the vast majority of sports fans. This has a negative impact on the ability for female athletes to improve. It’s hard to find full-time professional jobs as athletes. There simply aren’t that many professional teams out there and those that exist pay far less than men’s professional teams, often not enough to live on. It’s a vicious cycle common to women who play sports at the vast majority of levels in the vast majority of the world: women’s sports are perceived to be not as good as men’s, therefore they don’t receive as much support, therefore they don’t provide as many opportunities for women to train, play, and improve, therefore the play isn’t as good as in men’s sports, which leads to them being perceived as worse, which leads to them not getting support… and so on into infinity. We can stop this cycle and we should!

As I wrote the other day, for women’s sports to thrive, strong professional leagues are a must. So, step one – support the professional leagues that do exist for women! Let’s start with the National Women’s Soccer League. The NWSL is a nine-team professional soccer league in its third year of existence with teams spread across the United States. The level of play is extremely high — every team has at least a couple World Cup players and as many as eight. The games that I’ve been to – Boston Breakers home games – have been great fun. Attendance is good, even in bad weather, and the atmosphere is great. Lots of cheering, lots of popcorn, lots of enjoyment. If you’ve enjoyed hosting or going to watching parties at home, you can keep it going with NWSL games. Every game is available live and for free on NWSL’s Youtube channel. Thanks to the success of the World Cup, three regular season games and all three playoff games will even be on terrestrial cable.

Here is everything you need to know about the nine NWSL teams including where they play, when their next home game is, how much their tickets cost, and which of your favorite World Cup players are on each team.

Boston Breakers

The Boston Breakers play their home games at Soldiers Field Soccer Stadium in Boston, Massachusetts. Tickets are available for $15 to $25 with all kinds of package deals available. Their next home game is Thursday, July 9 at 7 p.m. against the Chicago Red Stars. You can view their whole schedule here. The Breakers had four players in the World Cup this year: USA backup goalie Alyssa Naeher, Australian attacker, Kyah Simon, Brazilian defender Rafaela Travalao,  and Mexican defender Bianca Sierra.

Chicago Red Stars

The Chicago Red Stars are in first place in the NWSL Their home field is the Village of Lisle-Benedictine University Sports Complex in Lisle, Indiana, a suburb of Chicago. Tickets run from $10 to $75. Their next home game is Saturday, July 18 at 7 p.m. against the Boston Breakers. You can view their whole schedule here. The Red Stars are tied for first in the number of players they sent to the World Cup with eight: Americans, Julie Johnston, Christen Press, Lori Chalupney, and Shannon Boxx, Canadians, Melissa Tancredi, Adriana Leon, and Karina LeBlanc, and Abby Erceg, the one NWSL player from New Zealand’s national team.

FC Kansas City

FC Kansas city are the defending champions of the NWSL. The team plays at the Swope Soccer Village Championship Field within Swope Park, Kansas City’s largest public park. Their next home game will be on Wednesday, July 15, at 7 p.m. against the Houston Dash. Here’s the rest of their schedule. FC Kansas City is one of the best deals in the league, or anywhere else, with single game tickets ranging from just $11 to $25! The team has a talented and athletic bunch of World Cup players including Americans Becky Sauerbrunn, Amy Rodriguez, Heather O’Reilly, and Lauren Holiday, as well as Australian international, Katrina Gorry.

Houston Dash

The Houston Dash share their home field with the Houston Major League (men’s) Soccer team, the Houston Dynamo. They both play in Houston’s BBVA Compass Stadium. Ticket prices range from $15 to $42. Their next home game is Sunday, July 12, against the Chicago Red Stars. View their entire season schedule here. The Dash were represented in the World Cup by six players, three on the Canadian World Cup team and three on Team USA. The three Americans were all big parts of the team’s run: Meghan Klingenberg, Morgan Brian, and Carli Lloyd. The three Canadians were: Erin McLeod, Lauren Sesselmann, and Allysha Chapman.

Portland Thorns

The Portland Thorns won the NWSL’s inaugural championship in 2013. Why call a team “The Thorns?” Portland is known as “the Rose City,” so it’s actually a pretty clever name. They play their home games in Providence Park, the same convenient downtown location as the men’s MLS team, the Portland Timbers. The team’s next home game will be Wednesday, July 22, at 10 p.m. ET against their rivals, the Seattle Reign. Tickets go from $13 to $35. You can find a printable version of the Thorns’ schedule here. The Thorns were the other NWSL team with the giant tally of eight World Cup players: German goalie, Nadine Angerer, Jodie Taylor, the sole English national team player in the NWSL, Australian Steph Catley, Canadians  Kayln Kyle, Rhian Wilkinson, and living legend Christine Sinclair, as well as Americans Alex Morgan and Tobin Heath.

Seattle Reign

Of course, when you talk about clever names for sports teams, there’s literally nothing out there more clever than this team’s name, the Seattle Reign. Oh, sure, Seattle people may tell you that it rains more elsewhere but really, learn how to take a joke people! The Reign play in Memorial Stadium, conveniently tucked into Seattle’s Lower Queen Anne neighborhood. The team’s next home game is on Saturday, July 11, at 7 p.m. against the Western New York Flash. Tickets range from $19 to an incredible $400 experience that gets you a “pitchside table” with four seats! Their well-designed home page shows everything you’d need to become a fan including a full schedule and roster. The Reign only had two players in the World Cup, but they’re big ones! USA goalie Hope Solo and midfielder Megan Rapinoe both call Seattle home.

Sky Blue FC

Although many professional sports teams play in New Jersey (ahem NFL’s Giants and Jets and MLS’ Red Bulls,) only a select few are strong enough to claim Jersey as their home. One of those is NWSL’s Sky Blue FC. The team plays its games in Rutgers University’s Yurcak Field in Piscataway, New Jersey. There’s probably plenty of parking and, unless things have changed since I went to school there, it should be pretty easy to sneak into a free campus bus that goes there. Tickets are pricey (but only if you compare them to other NWSL teams), ranging from $19 to $60. The team next plays at home on Saturday, July 11, at 7 p.m. against the Portland Thorns. You can view the team’s whole schedule here. World Cup players on Sky Blue FC’s roster include one of the USA goal-scorers against Germany, Kelley O’Hara, as well as the team’s elder stateswoman, Christie Rampone, two Australians, Caitlin Foord and Samantha Kerr, Jonelle Filigno from Canada, and Mexico’s Monica Ocampo.

Washington Spirit

Tied for second place currently are the Washington Spirit. The team plays northwest of the capital city at the Maryland SoccerPlex in Boyd, Maryland. Tickets to the games range from $25 to $70. Their next home game is against the Seattle Reign at 7 p.m. ET on Saturday, July 18. Right now, they’re running a promotion on their website – sign up to throw your hat in the ring for two free seats to that game. Their whole schedule can be found here. The Spirit have the most international group of World Cup players in the league: two Mexican players, Veronica Perez and Arianna Romero, two Nigerian players, Francisca Ordega and Josephine Chukwunonye, Haley Raso from Australia, Diana Matheson from Canada, and Americans, Ali Krieger and goalie Ashlyn Harris.

Western New York Flash

The Western New York Flash play just outside of Rochester, New York, in Sahlen’s Stadium. The Sahlens are the first family of the Western New York Flash. Father, Joe Sahlen, is team owner, daughter, Alex Sahlen once doubled as a player and team president but is now just the president, and her husband, Aaron Lines, is the coach! Their next home game is Sunday, July 19, at 3 p.m. against Sky Blue FC. You can see their whole schedule here. Tickets range from $10 to $60. The Flash had a small but mighty contingent at the World Cup: Nigerian, Halimatu Ayinde, Cameroon’s one NWSL player, Ajara Nchout, and Americans Whitney Engen and Sydney Leroux.

What is a force play in baseball or softball?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a force play in baseball or softball? I’m new to watching and it seems like force is an important concept but I’ve yet to here a good explanation. Can you help?

Thanks,
Caroline

Dear Caroline,

The force play is one of the most integral concepts in baseball and softball. Without an understanding of it, not much in the game will make sense. Unfortunately, because most baseball broadcasts assume that all of their viewers grew up playing or watching baseball or softball, there aren’t commonly explanations of what a force play is or what its implications are. A force play is a kind of short-hand; a convenience that the defense or fielding team gets to use against the team that’s trying to score.  In some situations, instead of having to tag the opposing player with the ball to make an out, a defensive player with the ball can step on a base and immediately create an out. The reason for this convenience is predicated on a single concept – two base runners can never occupy the same base at the same time.

How do we make the leap from two players not being able to be on the same base at the same time to being able to get someone out just by stepping on a base? Let’s run through a scenario where there is no force play available to the defense. Imagine that there is a base runner on second base but not first or third. When the player that is batting hits the ball into the field, he has to run to first. The player on second can either stay on second base or run to third. He starts running and then sees that the opposing team has a chance to throw the ball to third before he can get there. If he keeps running, he’s likely to get tagged by the player with the ball before he can make it safely to third. So, he turns around and runs back to second base. If he can make it back there without being tagged, he’s safe. He has options – second or third base. Either one is a safe haven. There is no possible force out.

Now we’ll take a similar scenario but add in a force play. Imagine everything were the same except that instead of having only a runner on second base, there was also a runner on first base when the batter hit the ball. The batter still has to run to first base. But wait! There’s a runner already there. If he stays put, there will be two runners on first base — and we know that’s not allowed. So, the runner on first base has to run to second. Now our runner on second base faces the same dilemma. He has to run to third or else he and his teammate who started the play on first base will both be occupying the same base. So, he starts running to third. The fielding team makes the same play and throws the ball to the defender on third base. The guy running from second to third sees that he’s in trouble but unlike in our first scenario, he can’t turn around and run back to second base. He has teammates already on first and second base, so he can’t run backwards. He has to run forward.

In an imaginary baseball world without the force play rule, the defender standing on third base with the baseball would wait for the runner to get to him and then step forward to tag him with the ball. This would work close to 100% of the time because the runner has no options other than to run straight into the defender. In effect, the outcome of the play is set by the time the defender gets the ball on third base. The out is fait accompli. Instead of waiting for the inevitable, baseball created the force out rule. If a runner has no option but to run forward to a base, and a defender can get to that base with the ball before the runner does, it’s immediately an out.

This seemingly small convenience has widespread tactical consequences. The double-play, one of the most exciting plays in baseball, when the defense records two outs on a single hit, would be drastically less possible without the force out. The most common double play, one where there is a runner on first when the batter hits the ball and the defense is able to get the ball to second base, step on it, and then throw the ball to first base before the guy who hit the ball can get there, relies entirely on force plays or outs. If the defense had to wait for the runner on first to get to second before being able to get him out, they’d never have enough time to throw the ball to first before the batter got there.

Here are the two scenarios we described above:

Scenario 1: Home plate [•] First base [ ] Second base [•] Third base [ ]

Scenario 2: Home plate [•] First base [•] Second base [•] Third base [ ]

Can you figure out where the force plays are in these other scenarios?

Scenario 3: Home plate [•] First base [ ] Second base [ ] Third base [•]

Scenario 4: Home plate [•] First base [•] Second base [ ] Third base [•]

Scenario 5: Home plate [•] First base [•] Second base [•] Third base [•]

If you answered – first base for scenario three, third base for scenario four, and first, second, and third base and home plate for scenario five, you’re well on your way to being a baseball and softball force play expert! Here are two bonus facts you might also have picked up on. First base is always a force out. It’s not intuitive because there are no runners moving behind the batter, but nonetheless, once he hits the ball, he has to move to first base. He cannot simply stay at home plate and try again next time. The other bonus fact is a pretty advanced tactical one. In terms of force outs, it’s sometimes better defensively to have more players on base. Referring again to our first two scenarios, the defense may not have been able to get anyone out in the first one, but definitely would have been able to in the second. This goes against what seems to be the normal logic of playing defense in baseball — you want fewer people on base not more. In some situations, teams will intentionally walk a batter to get more runners on base so that they create more force play opportunities during the next at bat.

Thanks for your question,
Ezra Fischer

For women's sports to thrive, look beyond the World Cup

So far, the women’s 2015 World Cup has been a great success. Sure, it’s had its sore spots: the cringe-inducing spectacle of people playing soccer on artificial turf that literally melts their cleats and burns their feet; the lackluster performance of the United States team so far; the mostly empty stadiums for some Round of 16 games; but overall, it’s been a great time for soccer and women’s sports in general. The games have been fast, exciting, and as a whole, quite competitive. There have been viewing parties all over the country, from bars and living rooms to town squares and outside city halls. Even President Obama got into the act, showing support for the U.S. team.

One way that you can tell that women’s sports has hit the jackpot of popular support with this World Cup is by noting how quickly and vociferously opponents of equality in sport get shouted down in the media. Early this week, Sports Illustrated’s Andy Benoit provided an example when he tweeted his belief that women’s sports in general are not worth watching. As you might expect, Benoit was roundly condemned for his tweet. He was mocked by former Saturday Night Live actors Amy Poehler and Seth Myers (who themselves were good-naturedly mocked by Fox Sports 1’s Jay Onrait and Dan O’Toole). His contention that women’s sports are not worth watching was debunked by innumerable columnists around the country, my favorite of which was Will Leitch in Sports on Earth who argued that anyone who thinks women’s sports are boring, are in fact, boring themselves:

People like Benoit toss out these justifications for not watching women’s sports out of some sort of faux sports purity, like he’s really just out to watch the pinnacle of athletic achievement every night, like anything less than the “best” and the “fastest” and the “strongest” is somehow a waste of one’s time. But this isn’t why we watch sports at all; we watch because every game we watch, we have a chance to see something we’ve never seen before. Dismissing that out of hand isn’t a way of demanding the highest quality performance every game (as if that’s something that could be done anyway); it’s a way of confirming your preexisting biases. It also devalues the actual athleticism on display, and the amount of work it required of everyone to get there.

Although the reaction against Benoit’s comment suggests that he was voicing a fringe, minority opinion, he was not. His attitude towards women’s sports is quite mainstream. Benoit simply made the mistake of speaking out against women’s sports during the World Cup, one of women’s sports two or three most popular events at a time when it’s never been more popular. If you think anything he said was new, you should watch this bitingly ironic video the Norwegian national team made before the World Cup began:

Negative attitudes like the ones the Norwegian team mocked in their video are all too common in the sports world and are relatively safe to voice during the 45 months out of every 48 when a World Cup or Olympics is not going on. This is bad for elite female athletes, it’s bad for people who love watching sports, it’s bad for girls who aspire to be athletes and their parents. I actually can’t think of anyone it is good for. It’s bad for everyone. Unfortunately, as popular as events like the World Cup and Olympics are, they can’t solve the problem because they only come around once every four years. To solve the gender inequalities in sports, a more consistent, permanent force is needed.

Tanya Wheeless, a former executive of the professional basketball teams, the Phoenix Mercury and Suns, wrote recently about the challenge of sustaining interest in women’s sports beyond the World Cup in Time magazine. She suggests that the critical variable in equalizing the opportunities and rewards provided by sports to women is investment:

What if the likes of Nike, Adidas, Coke, and Gatorade spent as much promoting female athletes as they did men? What if women’s leagues had the same marketing budget as men’s leagues? What if the National Women’s Soccer League got as much airtime in the U.S. as the English Premier League?

Naysayers will say all of that would happen if the interest were there. I say, increase promotion and the interest will follow. It’s the difference between having a market and creating one.

Wheeless could not be more right. The future of women’s sports must be bolstered by strong professional leagues. Professional leagues provide opportunities for athletes to get the training and experience they need to become world class. Without strong professional leagues, athletes are left making gut-wrenching decisions, like that of Noora Raty, perhaps the best women’s hockey goalie in the world, who retired at 24 for financial reasons, or Monica Quinteros, the 26 year-old Ecuadorian soccer player who left her job as a gym teacher to play in this year’s World Cup. You think they might have stuck with their sports if they could have made a living doing so? Yeah, so do I.

We don’t need to leave it to “Nike, Adidas, Coke, and Gatorade.” We can do something about this ourselves. We can contribute to equality and the success of women’s sports by becoming a fan of an existing women’s professional team. That’s exactly what I aim to do with the local professional women’s soccer team, the Boston Breakers. I’ve been to one game so far this year and it was a lot of fun. Held in a Harvard University complex convenient to most of the greater Boston area, Breakers games provide high-quality soccer in a thoroughly enjoyable atmosphere. I’m going again this Sunday when the Breakers take on the Western New York Flash at 5 p.m. Tickets are available and affordable. Join me!

There’s really no excuse to continue watching only male sports. There are successful women’s basketball and soccer leagues: the WNBA and NWSL, and later this year, a brand new professional women’s ice hockey league, the NWHL will begin. The WNBA is carried on television by the ESPN family of channels and you can buy streaming access to all the games for only $15. The NWSL goes a step further and puts all of its games on Youtube for free! If you’re reading this post now, you can watch those games. So join me, over the next year and more, in supporting women’s sports by putting our eyes and our wallets were our mouths are!

Why is 50% written .500 and said "five hundred" in sports?

Dear Sports Fan,

Here’s something I don’t get about sports. Why is 50% called “500” in sports? Is this some kind of metric system thing? Or is it for a purpose?

Thanks,
Emily

Dear Emily,

There are a variety of numbers in sports that are expressed as a number between zero and 1,000 when they more naturally might be thought of as a percentage. For example, a team that has won half its games and lost half its games is often said to be a “500 team” or playing “500 ball.” What this means is that they have won 50% of the games they’ve played. Likewise, a basketball player who scores on 38.9% of the three point shots she attempts may be said to be “shooting 389 from downtown.”

There’s nothing magical about these numbers, they’re just like percentages — a way of expressing the result from one number being divided by another. In the case of percentages, we take one number, divide it by another number, and then multiply the result by 100 and smack a percentage sign next to it. Thus one divided by two, which is .5 becomes 50%. The difference between a percentage and a sports number is that instead of multiplying by 100, sports numbers get multiplied by 1,000. At least when spoken out loud. A lot of times when you see a sports number like this written out, it will actually be written as “.500” even though no one would ever read it as “five tenths” instead of “five hundred” in a sports context.

If you always want to express a ratio to the hundredths place, it kind of makes sense to multiply by 1,000 instead of 100. It’s certainly easier to refer to something that happens three times every eight times it’s attempted as “three seventy five” than “point three seventy five” or even “thirty seven point five percent.” It’s not surprising that sports people feel that their numbers need this level of accuracy. People who live in and around sports often seem to be obsessed with accuracy to the point of over-precision. For example, players eligibly to be picked in the NBA draft tonight have their height measured down to the quarter inch with and without shoes! Commentators in many sports will often argue about whether it looks like something a player did took .25 seconds or .28 seconds. As if the commentators can actually judge a hundredth of a second difference from their perch at the top of the stadium! Because the difference between winning and losing in sports can sometimes be as slim as a fraction of an inch or a hundredth of a second it’s tempting to believe that all metrics in sports need to have that level of detail.

 

In defense of the sports way of expressing percentages, its historic source is a number that reasonably should be expressed to the tenth of a percent: batting average in baseball. Batting average is a player or team’s number of hits divided by their number of at bats. It’s not the best metric in baseball, in fact it’s a reasonably misleading one, but it does have a very long history. For many years, it was considered a key statistic in measuring how good a player was doing against to his current competition and for making historical comparisons. Baseball is obsessed with statistics because it creates them so nicely. Its long, 162 game season virtually guarantees that any measure one can imagine will have a statistically significant sample over the course of a year. With 30 teams and well over a dozen position players on each team, not even to mention the 120+ history of professional baseball, if you really want to know how a player’s batting average compares to his peers, you do need to take that number to the third decimal point. It would be far less interesting to say that Manny Machado and Adrian Gonzalez have the same batting average of 30% than to say that Machado is 18th in the league, with a .304 (pronounced “three oh four”) batting average and Gonzalez is 30th with a .296. Eight tenths of a percent may not seem like much, but over the course of a season (162 games times roughly 3.5 at bats per game) that’s a difference of four or five hits.

 

Of course, the source of the habit doesn’t matter so much if it is misapplied. Team records are the clearest form of misapplication. The problem with using this kind of number to express a team’s record is that aside from the most obvious numbers like .333, .666, and any of .000, .100, .200, and so on, these figures are very hard for us to translate into numbers in our heads. Quick — tell me how many wins and losses a team whose record is .527 has. According to the current MLB baseball standings, the answer is 39 wins and 35 losses, like the Toronto Blue Jays have. Although these numbers are convenient for creating a standings table (because they allow an easy comparison of teams who have played different numbers of games) they probably should not be displayed. In terms of figuring out how well your team is doing, the order of the teams in the standings and the games back metric are far, far better.

Regardless of how reasonable or unreasonable the sports percentage expression is, it’s deeply engrained in sports culture and seems to be here to stay. It’s easy to wonder though, if this small form of numerical manipulation makes it easier for sports people to mangle numbers in much sillier ways, like the habit of asking players to “give 110%.” That’s a story for another day.

Thanks for your question,
Ezra

What's so enjoyable about the NBA draft?

Dear Sports Fan,

The NBA draft is tonight, which means half of my friends will be glued to the television and the other half will be glued to their phones, getting constant updates and reading Twitter. I have to say, I enjoy basketball as much as the next guy but I don’t get the whole draft obsession. What’s so enjoyable about the NBA draft?

Thanks,
Josh

Dear Josh,

Sports fans come in many different flavors. Some people love a particular team but won’t watch a game between two other teams. Some people will watch any game but don’t really want to be bothered with having a favorite team. Some people care only about the on-the-court tactics. Some people love to watch beautiful bodies in motion. Some people follow a sport for the celebrity lives of its players. Somewhere in that mess of flavors, is a variety of fan who loves the draft. Here are some of the characteristics of that type of fan:

  • Love of the unknown – This is a key characteristic for most varieties of sports fan. Sports, after all, are one of the few types of entertainment (literally reality TV) where anything can happen at any moment. Still, during a game, the possibilities are limited by the players involved. LeBron James is unlikely to forget how to pass the ball. The New York Knicks aren’t going to miraculously become the best team in the league in an instant. Deron Williams isn’t going to dunk over Marc Gasol. During the draft, everything is possible, anything can happen, and it often does. Trades between teams involving picks and players happen frequently during the draft, as well as surprise player selections. Despite all the research, no one really knows how good each of the players eligible to be picked is going to be, so any pick could be the one that launches a team to the promised land of NBA greatness.
  • Hope springing eternal – For the type of fan whose primary focus is the fortunes of a single team, the draft offers the promise of success in the upcoming year. The pinnacle of this excitement comes when a favorite team has a high pick – one of the first five – or has stockpiled several reasonably high picks. The draft is set up so that generally teams who did worse last year have the best draft picks in this year’s draft. That optimizes the excitement of the draft for this type of fan.
  • Enjoys the setup more than the conclusion – For some fans, and I count myself in this category, enjoying the NBA draft is an extension of how they feel about all types of activities. Some people just like the setup more than the conclusion. I find examples of this all over my life. When watching movies or reading books, I gravitate towards beginnings over endings. For example, I love the first half of the famous movie, the Seven Samurai, with its long recruitment sections when each samurai is individually introduced, more than the final half when all the fighting happens. I love the first two thirds of the Usual Suspects for the same reason. It’s the same way with books. How about video games? I’ll start a dozen games without finishing any of them. Movies? Half the time, I spend more time browsing titles than actually watching them. Sometimes that’s all I do! The draft is all the setup with none of that pesky playing of games to get in the way of my enjoyment.

It’s also possible that your friends are college basketball fans in addition to being NBA fans. In that case, they have a vested interest in the draft because they already know the characters. One thing that almost every brand of sports fan likes to do is to think about who is better and who is best. The NBA draft is a form of ranking college (and international) basketball players from best to worst. Since that’s something college (and international) fans already do in their spare time, it’s fun for them to see if their instincts are similar to the collective wisdom of 30 NBA teams.

Thanks for your question,
Ezra Fischer