Insider published an explosive report today on Dr. Meredith Wills’s latest research involving MLB’s baseballs in the 2022 season. The headline-grabber? Signs point towards Major League Baseball slipping better balls for home run hitters into Yankees games.
The data is not nothing. I want to make that clear. I’m not about to say that Insider is wrong, and I’m certainly not about to disparage Dr. Wills’s work. But the way data Insider shared leaves a lot more questions than the author, Bradford William Davis, implies.
The clearest problem with the data is this: It’s a non-random sample of 204 baseballs, and it’s relying on a similarly non-random subset of 36 baseballs to make its big claim about these special “Goldilocks” balls. 204 is sizable, but 36 is not, especially if the sample is non-random. Davis concedes that the sample isn’t random. Davis concedes that the balls only came from 22 of the league’s 30 ballparks. But we get no details on how many came from where, and that makes the Yankees thing, which is the huge thing, because it shows special treatment being afforded one team and really one player, Aaron Judge, in whose home runs MLB had a major vested interest, suspect. It’s a reckless use of data. There just isn’t enough sample there to be making this claim.
The other problem is a little more technical, but let me try to explain: Dr. Wills grouped balls not by weight, but by production batches (they evidently put a serial number on these guys), and then measured the weights of various production batches (specific weights point to specific advantages for hitters). Her argument regarding the Goldilocks balls is that they’re heavier than the standard baseball, but the Insider piece doesn’t share a U-Test or anything like that which would tell us whether the difference is statistically significant. Maybe Dr. Wills has done that test, and maybe Davis or his editors just found that piece too boring for laypeople, but it’s a really important thing to see if you’re going to allege that MLB was trying to move the needle on Aaron Judge’s home run total.
Again, Davis and Wills may be right. I hope they aren’t, because that would be infuriating (think of the careers affected if some hitters are giving worse balls to hit and some pitchers are given worse balls to pitch), but they may be right. The problem is that this article doesn’t come close to proving that they’re right, and I don’t know about Wills, but Davis is going around Twitter promoting this like it was written on stone tablets atop Mount Sinai.
A problem with journalism as an industry these days, at least in my opinion, is that journalists confuse reporting information from experts with being experts themselves. This is something that really bothers me about that New York Times podcast, The Daily. There are elements of that here, and elements which spring from it. Most journalists take basic statistics courses at some point in their studies, I’d imagine, but few are statistical experts, and so in facet upon facet upon facet of media, we get irresponsible uses of data. People don’t understand probability. People don’t understand how to run a good statistical test. But they think that they do. They think they’re more data-literate than they are. And public understanding of issues suffers because of that divide.
I Was Wrong About Willson Contreras
I really thought Willson Contreras would wind up back with the Cubs. I wrote it a number of times. I thought the Cubs thought Contreras’s price would come down to meet theirs, and that this was why they didn’t trade him at the deadline for whatever mediocre prospects the Mets offered.
It turns out, Contreras got his bag. He got a hearty but not obscene contract, five years with the Cardinals, at a price which is reasonable if you believe in Willson Contreras as a player. The Cubs, then, don’t believe in Contreras, it turns out, or don’t believe in him at that level. They think he’s at least a little worse than the median projection does, and therefore not worth the expected dollar-per-win price. Or perhaps they think they’re going to get so many better deals elsewhere that they need to save space in whatever the budget is. Hopefully the situation’s the latter, because that implies good things are coming. If it’s the former, hopefully the Cubs are wrong—because we really like Contreras—but it would be a good sign regarding the Cubs’ evaluation of talent if they turn out to be right.
Why didn’t they trade Contreras in July? That’s the big puzzle here, but I think it comes down to this: The trade market is not perfectly efficient. There are too few people involved and too many time constraints, so instead of Jed Hoyer being able to call all 29 teams and negotiate a price for Contreras (and every other team being able to do the same thing with every other conceivable trade chip), Hoyer has to spend late July prioritizing the best deals. Those deals, this year, didn’t involve Contreras. Teams liked him, it turned out, but not enough to pay the Cubs a good price in that specific situation. Now, here we are. It’s sad. We really liked Contreras.
The Cubs did sign Jameson Taillon last night, and that’s fine and good. Taillon fills some rotation space and should be expected to be a fine middle-of-the-rotation starter, which is something the Cubs desperately need. We’re still, though, waiting on bigger signings. At the moment, FanGraphs is showing the Cubs’ roster about ten WAR short on paper of contending for a playoff spot. Ten wins is a lot of upgrade. It’s Carlos Correa and Koudai Senga and a handful of savvier, smaller signings and/or some overperformance by guys already on the roster. That all probably isn’t going to happen. The Cubs could get Senga, and they could get Dansby Swanson, and even that might not be enough. The last piece—guys overperforming expectations—is going to be necessary if 2023 is going to be a playoff year. Otherwise, it’s a possible inch towards .500, and a feeling that next offseason has to be the big, splashy one to accelerate the improvement.
In other baseball news, Aaron Judge is staying with the Yankees, which is a great decision if MLB really is feeding him better balls there (I jest, but the timing is funny). Very #GoodForTheGame, keeping a star with the team which drafted him. Let’s move on before I get too wistful about the old Cubs core.
The other big signing today was Masataka Yoshida, a 29-year-old Japanese slugger who’ll jump the Pacific and jump the whole dang continent too, joining the Red Sox. There’s been a lot of grumbling about Red Sox inaction, but between this and the Kenley Jansen signing overnight (oh yeah, the Red Sox signed Kenley Jansen), this is action. We’ll see if it impacts the scuttlebutt on them and Xander Bogaerts.
Of Course Kevin Warren Wants the Playoffs Up North
We keep getting more guarantees on the new playoff format, with the Rose Bowl relenting last week. The only two questions left that I see are the exact calendar for 2024 and 2025 and whether we could get on-campus quarterfinals in 2026 and beyond.
It’s this on-campus piece that Kevin Warren was asked about at a panel this morning in Las Vegas, and obviously, the Big Ten commissioner said, “Please. Give us home games for the quarterfinals. For the love of God make LSU play Michigan in the snow.” Or something to that effect.
It’s a little uncomfortable to get into this, because there’s race at play and socioeconomics at play, but in general, there is more speed among recruits in the South and there is more girth among recruits in the North. Wisconsin can perform competitively at times on the national stage by being a bunch of big, beefy boys who push their opponents around. LSU gets its kicks by being fast as hell.
Cold-weather bad-weather football should favor big, beefy boys. Getting a team like this year’s Michigan to play a December game in the Big House should give the Big Ten an advantage over the SEC. So, of course Warren wants it, and of course SEC commissioner Greg Sankey doesn’t.
If money ultimately wins out, as it’s said to do, it’s hard to imagine college football not going to home games for the quarterfinals. Alabama meeting Michigan in Ann Arbor is simply a better product than the two playing in the Fiesta Bowl or somewhere similar. That said, the SEC is smart and the SEC won’t go down easily. It’ll also have at least the ACC on its side, though the Big 12 would likely side with the Big Ten, as—importantly—would Notre Dame. (The Pac-12? Neutral sites, please, they aren’t getting home games in the foreseeable future anyway, even in scenarios where they do continue to exist.)
As a fan, I think we want to see SEC teams play up north in December. They’re huge too, they should be fine, but this feels like a reasonable challenge. Part of football, traditionally, is winning in the cold now and then. Ever hear about the Ice Bowl? It’s not like we’re changing the game, and it’s fair to want teams to prove themselves in a variety of circumstances. I don’t think it would move game lines by more than a point or two (and it wouldn’t always be snowy, or even all that cold), but think of what Michigan did to “the Big Ten’s SEC team” in the snow last year. That was fun. That was exciting. That was enlightening. So hopefully, we’ll get to a spot where Warren gets his home games.
Other college football news: Jeff Brohm is hired at Louisville, reportedly, which leaves Purdue now searching. Brohm, a Louisville guy, brings some new vitality to the program, which is exactly what we said about Kenny Payne. Again, though, as we said here earlier this week: Coaching a team with Louisville’s fanbase’s willingness to spend against ACC competition? That’s a great situation for Brohm.
Wisconsin Won’t Die
It was supposed to be a down year for Wisconsin on the basketball court, and it still is something of a down year, but with the Badgers handing Maryland its first loss last night, starting Big Ten play 1-0, they’re now 7-2 overall with losses only to Kansas and Wake Forest and only by a combined four points. The Wake loss is rough, and the wins haven’t always been pretty (they beat Dayton 43-42), but a team that looked a lot like a bubble team looks, a month in, a lot like a tournament team.
If they do make it, it’ll be Greg Gard’s seventh NCAA Tournament bid in eight chances, and while the Bo Ryan peaks haven’t been there, they weren’t really there for Bo Ryan either in his first decade at the helm. The program keeps doing its thing, staying competitive, hunting opportunities. Maybe it’ll never get back to the Kaminsky team in terms of stature, but what a high floor.
In other bigger games last night, Duke had no problems with Iowa and Texas had a lot of problems with itself in Madison Square Garden, Illinois ultimately downing the Longhorns in overtime. Just yesterday, we had Texas in our national-championship-contender category, but it’s slop like that which makes them hard to trust. It’ll be nearly a month before they’re tested again, with four buy games sandwiching a trip to Dallas to play Stanford before conference play begins. For now, I’ll leave them in, mostly because all the other teams in that category (Houston, UConn, Purdue, Virginia) similarly have a concerning flaw.
Among our other-characters category, Arkansas had a tough time against UNC-Greensboro after losing Trevon Brazile to a torn ACL in the first half. Brazile isn’t the only hugely talented player the Hogs have, but he was third on the banged-up team in minutes so far, and his absence thins the front line. We’ve also learned that Michigan—not in a category, too close to NIT Stu’s turf for that right now—lost starting point guard and Princeton transfer Jaelin Llewellyn, also to a torn ACL. Bad news for a team already having a bad time, and now going into Minneapolis tomorrow night facing a possible bad loss.
Joke’s Over?
Is the Silly Season done for F1 & IndyCar & NASCAR? It sounds like it…for the most part. Looks like we’re just waiting to find out who Callum Ilott’s teammate will be at Juncos Hollinger in IndyCar, and we’re waiting to find out who’ll drive for Live Fast, maybe, in NASCAR, though it’s probably B.J. McLeod, since he owns that team? (1. I’m using Wikipedia for all this. 2. Both of those are the 78 car!) Ok, I’m seeing we don’t have drivers yet at Front Row or Rick Ware, either, though Cody Ware seems assumed to be in the 51 car, and we haven’t heard anything saying Michael McDowell or Todd Gilliland is out at Front Row. Those are the others, among chartered teams.
So, Silly Season’s mostly done. And honestly, the only thing I really have a thought on that we haven’t discussed before is Jimmie Johnson retiring from IndyCar so soon. He’s back in NASCAR, he’s only driving it part-time, he’s a part owner in Petty GMS, and he’s going to have to try to qualify for the Daytona 500 since he doesn’t have a charter. He’s still talked about doing a little IndyCar on the side, but man—it really didn’t translate. And his team was solid, which makes one wonder whether IndyCar is really freakin’ hard, or if it’s just impossible to completely change cars and all that and have success without a long time learning. I don’t think I know enough to know, but it was a fascinating little experiment that entirely didn’t work. I’d like to read someone like Jeff Gluck break it down.
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Viewing schedule for the evening:
- 6:30 PM EST: Michigan State @ Penn State (BTN)
- 9:00 PM EST: UConn @ Florida (ESPN2)
