HSAC is a Harvard student organization dedicated to quantitative analysis of sports strategy and management. This blog is student-run and features the original contributions of Harvard undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and affiliates. You can contact harvardsportsanalysis@gmail.com for questions about our work or joining the club.

Pass the Victory, Please

By Daniel Adler

Does throwing for over 300-yard mean success for the passer’s team?  It does, especially lately, according to an article by Michael David Smith in the Wall Street Journal.  Recently, the winning percentage for teams with a 300-yard passer is on the rise.  Mike Martz reasoned that teams are now using the pass to get ahead and not just passing to desperately catch-up when trailing, “Teams are throwing because they want to now, not because they have to,” Martz told The Journal.

Matt Cassel is 2-2 when attempting 40 passes or more; Tom Brady is 16-9

However, looking at the outcome for 300-yard passers does not tell the whole story.  We would expect those throwing for big yardage to have a good chance of winning—this makes the sub .500 winning percentage in some years quite surprising.  To really confirm Martz’s story, we need to consider how teams fare when a quarterback attempts a certain number of passes.  If teams really are passing more by choice, we would expect to see improved outcomes not just when a quarterback passes over 300 yards, but also when they attempt a certain number of passes.  The incidence of 40 attempts is relatively similar to the frequency of 300-yard passers, so it seems like a convenient starting point.

The NFL Flops on Thanksgiving, Again

By Jonathan Adler

What exactly has the NFL been feeding us? (Photo: Baltimore Sun Sports Blog)

Is the NFL taking its Thanksgiving fans for granted? It seems that year after year, the Thanksgiving Day schedule features lousy matchups and even lousier outcomes. This year, America was treated to three supremely boring football games. Detroit was beaten into submission by the Packers, Dallas hammered Oakland, and the only stirring moment in the Broncos win over the Giants was when Josh McDaniels’s f-bomb was caught by NFL Network mics.

Is it our imagination, or are we watching inferior football games on Thanksgiving? Looking at the numbers, it’s not a turkey-induced error in memory, it’s the truth: In the past five seasons, Thanksgiving Day games have been significantly less competitive than other regular season games.

Strikeouts and the Anna Karenina Principle, or: Why K’s Don’t Hurt MLB Batters

By David Roher

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Leo Tolstoy's beard, seen here giving Bruce Sutter's beard a run for its money.

So begins Leo Tolstoy’s 1878 masterpiece, Anna Karenina, an engrossing novel about late 19th century statistical analysis in baseball. Or about Russian aristocratic society. I’m not sure; I read it pretty quickly.

I only had to pay attention for the first sentence, since it’s only the above quote that’s pertinent. Its meaning is essentially that in order for a family to be happy, a lot of different things need to work out, while only one of those things needs to fail in order for a family to be unhappy. Scholars and authors like Jared Diamond have extended this idea beyond families: the “Anna Karenina principle” is that any one factor can cause the failure of its system. An important corollary is that if the system does indeed work, then it inherently possesses all of those factors.

After the jump, I’ll try to use this principle to answer a perplexing question: why do Major League hitters who strike out more perform better?

Listening to Larry Johnson: How Good Was Your Head Coach as a Player?

By Jonathan Adler

Jim Zorn, NFL QB & future Head Coach (vintageseattle.org)

Former Kansas City Chiefs RB Larry Johnson was frustrated with his head coach, Todd Haley, and decided to vent via his Twitter account. The former Chief announced to the online community that, “my father got more credentials than most of these pro coaches. … google my father!!!!!!!”

Unfortunately, my Google search of “Mr. Johnson” returned over 43 million results, so I’m still looking for information on Larry’s father.

But in the meantime, I decided to examine one aspect of a coach’s “credentials” that is generally overlooked: playing experience. At the start of the 2009 season, the NFL coaching ranks boasted a diverse field of former players – from a Hall of Fame linebacker to a Division III sack artist.

Yet Another Article on a Controversial 4th Down Call from a New England Team…Yale

By David Roher

A program for The Game, from 1968. (the-game.org)

Harvard and Yale played their 126th football game (known around these parts simply as “The Game”) yesterday. We elected not to do a preview on the blog because the outcome was obviously a near certainty. However, it is worth looking at one play in The Game that drew a lot of scrutiny.

Up 10-7 in the 4th quarter but facing 4th and 22 on their own 25 yard line, Yale’s coach, Tom Williams, elected to call a fake-punt, direct-snap-reverse run, which gained them only 15 yards. The call elicited sporadic chants of “Bel-i-chick! Bel-i-chick!” from the Harvard cheering section, according to an anonymous source (fine, my roommate). Harvard went on to score a TD and win.

Committed To Losing

By Daniel Adler

This article also appears on the Huffington Post.

In last week’s New York Times, economist Richard Thaler discussed Swoopo.com, a so-called “entertainment shopping” site.  The premise is relatively simple and somewhat diabolical.  Unlike normal auctions sites such as eBay—which operates as a modified second price auction—Swoopo.com bidders pay to place each bid in addition to the final selling price.  Though the items sell for far less than retail price, the aggregate of money spent on bids is huge.  Some auctions go in 1 cent increments, so the site rakes in 61 times the final sale price (60 cents for each cent the bid goes up and the actual price).

So what does this have to do with sports?  Yes, Richard Thaler wrote my favorite sports economics paper, but there is an even greater connection to the world of sports…

Predictors of PGA Tour Scoring Average: Does the Driver Matter?

By John Ezekowitz

Should Tiger worry about his wayward driver?

The beauty of golf lies in its apparent simplicity: the goal is to get the ball in the hole in as few strokes as possible. So many factors go into getting the ball into that hole, however, that scoring is the furthest thing from simplicity. For professional golfers (and for all golfers, really), success can be measured by their scoring average. The inevitable question is then what goes into a scoring average? Which parts of the game, from driving to putting to short game, are significant predictors of better scoring? How should a PGA Tour player prioritize his practice to emphasize factors significant in scoring? Join me after the jump as I attempt to answer these questions and more.

Television and the Potential NFL Lockout

By Jake Fisher

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The Washington Post reported two weeks ago that NFL television ratings are the highest they’ve been in 20 years. Obviously, this is good news for business.

The National Football League, as a business, is the king of the sports world. The NFL raked in $7.6 billion in 2008, making it the planet’s richest league. But the NFL, just like any business in a recession, is not immune to downturn. Like the Corleone family had the Tattaglias, the NFL business has its own daunting obstacles.

Possibly the greatest threat to the NFL’s short-term economic stability is the potential lockout in the 2011 season. Let’s take a look at the debate surrounding this impending work stoppage and the history of sports lockouts/strikes to see how NFL business could be affected.

Moneyball: Dead, Alive, or on Life Support?

By Daniel Adler

The following article also appears on Huffington Post.

This summer, much was made of the end of Moneyball. The teams with the five highest win totals—the Yankees, Angels, Dodgers, Red Sox, Phillies—rank 1^st, 6^th, 9^th, 4^th, and 7^th in opening day pay roll. Most of those teams took on even more salary during the season, so their final payroll ranks may even be higher.

After a few years of increasing parity in which we saw the A’s flourish, the Twins constantly competitive, the Marlins win a World Series, and even the Rays win the American League, disparity appeared to be on the rise this season. Harkening back to the late-1990s and the environment that spawned the Blue Ribbon Panel, this season seemed to be an extreme case of the haves versus the have-nots. The small market clubs who had recently feasted on undervalued players appear to have lost their competitive advantage since the big spenders started to buy into the same philosophies—in many cases hiring Ivy League stat geeks like ourselves. Michael Lewis’ concept of Moneyball was not about On-Base Percentage, but it was rather about finding undervalued assets. Was this the year the big market clubs finally started valuing assets correctly? Did money spent play a bigger role this season than in recent years? Intuition (and the Yankee World Series victory) says yes, but let’s take a look at the numbers.

Checking up on Monday Night Football

By Jonathan Adler

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On Monday Night Football this week, while the mighty Browns were humbled (for the 14^th time in 15 games) against the Ravens, commentators Ron Jaworski, Jon Gruden, and Mike Tirico did their best to keep the broadcast interesting. During the second half, they discussed what they believed to be an oddity: some of this season’s leading rushers are playing on some of the least successful teams. To illustrate their point, they cited top-10 rushers like Tennessee’s Chris Johnson (6.7 yards/attempt, 3 team wins), San Francisco’s Frank Gore (5.6 yards/attempt, 4 team wins), and St. Louis’s Steven Jackson (4.8 yards/attempt, 1 team win). With these players in mind, it does look like some powerful backs are having trouble carrying their teams to victory.

But how unusual is a season in which unsuccessful teams feature good running backs? Is there normally a relationship between rushing success and team success?