How to get serious about steroids in sports

I have a proposal for dealing with steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in sports.

I have the case of Major League Baseball in mind because of what I see as the scapegoating of Barry Bonds to cover up the more important underlying scandal that if Bonds did use steroids when it’s alleged he did, he did not break the rules as they stood at the time. Since a huge range of substances could qualify as "performance-enhancing drugs" in sports—can any among us explain why caffeine doesn't count?—the rule-makers must take responsibility for creating specific and effective deterrents.

I bring this up not to defend Bonds or to get into assigning blame for the outdated rules of a few years ago. Instead, I mean to illustrate the extent to which the lessons of the Bonds case do not seem to have sunk in. The rule-makers (in baseball’s case, the players’ union and the owners, perhaps in that order) still don't seem interested in writing the toughest possible rules.

Here's my proposal: define banned substances, test aggressively when reliable tests are available, and save samples in the care of a neutral, confidential agent. Then test retroactively as new procedures become available so that players can't get away with using HGH, for instance, by taking advantage of the fact that the tests haven't caught up to the drug. Then enact this rule: if reliable tests from two separate samples EVER show you were juicing, your very existence is stripped from the official records of baseball. No asterisks, no nothing. If we catch your HGH use in 2018, you never played.

Don't you think that would get in players' heads a little?

Cinderella story

Many recent news accounts have referred to the improbable presence of George Mason in the Final Four of the NCAA men's basketball tournament as a Cinderella story. In this recent story, Dan Wetzel extends the metaphor, asking readers to entertain the question, "Why not George Mason?"--that is, why couldn't GMU win two more games and become the tournament champions?

(A side note: Wetzel's piece is a beautiful example of "angle" journalism, as I call it. He seems to have nothing to say other than that George Mason has a chance, though a small one, of winning two more games. Does anyone think otherwise? Of course GMU could win two more! Of course the probability is small! All Wetzel does is call attention to his own expert angle on the issue by emphasizing an improbability. He says nothing that isn't plainly visible in the point spreads or betting odds on the upcoming games.)

But I digress. Wetzel closes his piece by extending the Cinderella metaphor: "Of course, in the original, Cinderella lived happily ever after."

Not necessarily.

(Another side note: one of the most useful and surprisingly accurate tidbits of textual analysis I've ever picked up was the notion that if you want to find a writer's most ideologically loaded and debatable point, look for whatever follows "of course" or "obviously" or "certainly." Unintentional ironies often lurk in those assumptions of consensus.)

There are three problems with this common usage of the Cinderella metaphor.

The first problem is the idea of an "original" Cinderella story. As a near-universal folk tale, Cinderella has no identifiable original version. But this is a nitpick; let's translate "original" to "standard" and use Charles Perrault's version, the basis of most English-language storybook Cinderellas.

The second is the underlying assumption that Cinderella is an underdog who achieves a social standing far beyond what she had reason to expect. Not so much: Cinderella is the daughter of a man with significant class standing--a "worthy man" who has the money and connections to get his stepdaughters to the prince's ball and have them dressed well for the occasion. Cinderella is a high-born woman with immense cultural capital, and her story is one of restoration and moderate rise in status. Arguably, from this perspective, George Mason would have the story least like Cinderella's among the four possible winners of this year's tournament because GMU is a true upstart. The other three teams all seek a restoration of former glories; UCLA's former dominance is too great to make it a true Cinderella, but the slipper fits Florida and LSU fairly well--both programs have made the Final Four, but not too recently, and neither has won a championship.

The third, and perhaps the most important, problem is the statement that "Cinderella lived happily ever after." Perrault's story says no such thing, and his ending is maintained in the modern translations I've seen. Cinderella does seem to be happy, but the narrator does not address her future. Moreover, the established marriages range from grotesquely dysfunctional (Cinderella's father and step-mother) to suggestively creepy (the prince's parents). The story seems to go out of its way to contradict the assumption that people of high station find lasting happiness automatically. Cinderella has her moment, but no more.

So let's enjoy the success of George Mason. GMU is this season's most remarkable underdog story. But even--or especially--if they win the championship, their story will not be Cinderella's.

A better March Madness pool

A friend, Doug Cutchins (co-author of this book), and I have created an auction-style pool for the NCAA men's basketball tournament. We enjoy the format and invite others to follow along. Update--from here to the end of the paragraph added. In keeping with the theme of this blog, I'll emphasize the underlying logic of the idea: most tournament pools simply reward correct picks. Some recognize the limitations of that model and reward upsets. Both of those approaches lead to insincere picks by rewarding contrarianism; if you want to win the pool, you can't simply make sensible choices and fill out your bracket. A market captures the advantages of rewarding upset picks while avoiding the incentive for insincerity. If everyone in the pool thinks St. Bonaventure will win the championship, they can all bid accordingly, according to their sense of the Bonnies' probability of winning in each round, and the market will determine how much the team's output is worth. Upset picks are rewarded automatically because underdogs command lower prices than favorites--and the underdog/favorite distinction is determined by participants rather than the selection committee.

As with all pools, it is not necessary to wager real money to enjoy the competition. Here's the way we announced the pool, slightly revised for this general context:

We like basketball, but we have tired of the standard pool format—its blunt all-or-nothing payouts, its overweighting of the final games, its inability to let participants express their degree of confidence in teams beyond simple brackets.

We think we have a better way. We propose an auction, to take place at 7:30 p.m. on March 14th (the Tuesday between the announcement of the brackets and the tourney) at a location yet to be determined. In the auction, taking eight participants by way of example, eight participants each buy “ownership” of eight tournament teams with a fictional budget of $25 each, so every basketball team is on one of our participants’ teams. (The winner of the play-in game would count as one team.) The teams are bought in a standard auction format, with rising bids in ten-cent increments, so players express their confidence in each team’s prospects with their bids. Then each player gets credit for each game his or her teams win. We believe that wins should increase in value in each round of the tournament, though not so much that they cheapen clever picks in the first two rounds. To that effect—after many drafts—we have come up with this payout scheme:

Each of 32 first-round winners earns 1.25% of the pot ($2.50 in an eight-person league)
Each of 16 second-round winners earns an additional 1.50% ($3.00)
Each of 8 third-round winners earns an additional 2.00% ($4.00)
Each of 4 fourth-round winners earns an additional 2.50% ($5.00)
Each of 2 fifth-round winners earns an additional 3.00% ($6.00)
The tournament champion earns an additional 4.00% ($8.00)

It’s up to each player to decide how much of his or her $25.00 to bid on each team. In an eight-person league, the tournament champion would earn its owner $28.50 (14.25% of the pot), in addition to any winnings generated by the player’s other seven teams.

We like this system because, unlike most common approaches, it allows players real flexibility in pursuing overall strategies, making trade-offs between, say, a #1 seed or two #3 seeds. It lets the little market of the auction determine the relative costs of teams instead of relying on the rankings of the committee. It lets participants enjoy a strong sense of identification with eight specific teams instead of the traditional 64 picks, most of which are widely shared with other players. It creates payouts that reflect players’ performance with some subtlety; prizes will spread out rather than simply going to the luckiest player or players. And best of all, it lets us enjoy a late-evening time of sports banter and good cheer to raise our spirits before the tourney tips off.

The details:

1. Each player has the right to spend $25 of fictional money in the auction. The player may spend less than 25 imaginary dollars in the auction, but the 25 real dollars will remain in the pot.

2. The auction will proceed in a steady rotation, with players putting teams up for bid in turn. The nomination constitutes an opening bid, as in “St. Bonaventure for two dollars!” All bids must meet two conditions: the player must have space on his or her eight-team roster for a team (players who have drafted eight teams will no longer nominate teams in the auction), and the player must reserve enough money to make a minimum bid of ten cents on each of eight teams. If St. Bonaventure is nominated first, for example, everyone would be able to bid up to $24.30, the amount necessary to buy St. Bonaventure and seven teams at the minimum price of ten cents. Also, skip bids are fine; if someone nominates St. Bonaventure for two dollars to start the auction and you want to bid $24.30 right away to ensure control of the Bonnies, you are welcome to do so.

3. As bidding slows down on each team, someone will count down the sale clearly, as in “St. Bonaventure to Erik for $8.60, going once . . . going twice . . . sold!” The count should give all bidders reasonable time to pipe up. Players may occasionally interrupt the countdown by asking for brief time-outs, but this privilege should not be abused, lest the abuser be subject to taunts, scorn, and mockery.

4. The statkeeper will send out an update with standings and commentary every round.

Baseball MVP talk: quality, value, and chance

For a starting point, I'll take this column by Sean McAdam supporting David Ortiz over Alex Rodriguez for MVP in the American League.

Now, this is an unusually stupid column. A writer who says that "it's impossible to imagine that anyone could be more valuable to his team than David Ortiz is to the Boston Red Sox" is simply not taking language seriously. Sadly, however, the column does seem to reflect the level of thinking among most writers who explain their votes--and the writers elect the MVP.

First, I'm going to articulate what I think would be the traditional "stathead" position on McAdam's column, a position I support almost entirely, and then I'll explain a complication I've come to consider in the statheaded approach.

The most fundamental problem with McAdam's argument is that he's using statistics as an advocate rather than as an analyst. He cites a hodgepodge of stats, ranging from those that do a good job of measuring individual hitting production (slugging percentage) to traditional triple-crown stats that have long been shown to be lacking because they depend on teammates' performance (RBI) and exclude important information such as a hitter's walks and doubles. McAdam's standard is simply to cite the evidence that makes Ortiz look good. One name for that approach is intellectual dishonesty. Another is sports opinion journalism.

The problem is not that some sports opinion writers say thoughtless things or twist evidence to make their cases. They are paid to generate readership (or viewership), and partisan columns can serve that purpose well. But the need for a writer to present an original angle in a debate is directly at odds with the writer's function as a voter in the awards race. To analytical purists, the awards would ideally reflect the application of the best analytical practices we know of; thoughtful people can disagree about the details of the standards, but they must agree that an even-handed account of available evidence is the only reasonable starting point. But sports opinion writers can't do that, for reasons I'll return to.

Baseball offers analysts more objective evidence about individual performance than other sports do. In football, the performance of running backs depends on that of everyone else on the team--the rest of the offense has to create running opportunities, the coaches need to call running plays, and the defense needs to maintain control of the game to avoid a desperate pass-based comeback attempt. Baseball's pitchers and hitters, however, are almost entirely on their own, and the team-based elements of their performance are fairly easy to recognize and disregard in the data generated by baseball's uniquely long seasons. Therefore, statheads say that we can and should factor out statistics that depend on team performance (pitchers' W-L records, hitters' RBIs and runs scored) and test measures of individual performance based on their demonstrable effectiveness. For hitters, the quick statheaded way to account for nearly all of offensive production is to add on-base percentage plus slugging percentage to create a stat called OPS, for "on-base plus slugging." As it happens, this year's MVP race is a no-brainer by that standard: Rodriguez led Ortiz easily in on-base percentage (so McAdam didn't mention that stat), and he also overtook Ortiz in slugging at the very end of the season, finally leading Ortiz in OPS, 1.036 to .999. If Ortiz were a valuable defensive player, his contributions could still justify an MVP award, but, of course, defense is also in Rodriguez's favor, as he played a solid third base every day while Ortiz did not take the field. Because defense hurts his argument, McAdam writes, "Defense has never been much of a factor in MVP voting. If it were, Ozzie Smith, Mark Belanger and Bill Mazeroski would have been serious contenders. They weren't." But this is patent silliness: it's simple and accurate to say that hitting is more important than fielding, but fielding still counts for something--especially when one player plays a skill position, allowing his team to pack more offense into its lineup, and the other clogs the DH hole, robbing his team of offensive flexibility. For all these reasons, Rodriguez clearly had the better individual season, and the fact that I like the Red Sox and Ortiz better than the Yankees and Rodriguez won't change that. A good stathead applies the same standards every year and knows why those standards are better than others. By those standards, the MVP is A-Rod's, hands down. And the infuriating problem with the situation is that his case will be damaged because it's too easy to make: Rodriguez was widely considered the best player in the AL before the season started, and he played better than anybody else. Nobody's going to attract readers with that storyline. And that's why I believe that sports journalists should be stripped of their voting power; the conflict of interest is too great to overcome when voters explain their logic in print for money.

Now here's a twist, where I'm going to diverge a little from statheaded methods. I've addressed the distinction between individual and team-dependent stats, but there's a third category: situational stats, which, for hitters, generally measure performance in "clutch" situations, variously defined: in the pennant race, at the ends of close games, with runners on, and so forth. Some such stats are easily dismissed: in a one-run game, a home run in the first inning is not less valuable than a home run in the ninth, even if the latter is more memorable. The more interesting question is how we should evaluate a single that drives in two runs versus a single with two outs and nobody on.

The statheaded approach, grounded in a lot of careful analysis, has been to contend that the two singles should count the same. At the major league level, hitters do not seem to have special "clutch" abilities; good and bad clutch performance in a given season seems to result mostly or entirely from chance variations rather than special psychological characteristics. If two hitters have similar seasons and one happens to drive in more runs (because of timely hitting rather than more opportunities), statheads say that the difference essentially doesn't count because the hitter could not control it. You shouldn't get credit for luck.

And that was my position, without reservations, for a long time. But about four years ago, in research summarized here, Voros McCracken introduced what he calls DIPS, based on a compelling thesis that pitchers can control a few factors consistently (strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed), but the number of fair balls that drop for hits against them is largely random. The details are beside the point here; the short version is that McCracken introduced the idea that we can separate a pitcher's performance from his results: if two pitchers each allow four runs per nine innings (and all else is equal), McCracken's method might tell us that one of them was lucky and one unlucky--they had the same results, but one pitched better.

This insight is extremely valuable to people investing in baseball players for the future--you want the guy who really pitched better on your team next year, not the guy who got lucky. The consequences of this approach raise a troubling issue for individual awards based on the past, however: these two pitchers were, demonstrably, equally valuable to their teams, but we can reasonably say that one of them pitched better. And the logic underlying everything I said above is that being better and being more valuable are the same. By traditional stathead logic, in which we credit players only for achievements stripeed of demonstrably random effects, we could give Cy Young awards based on normalized hypothetical results for pitchers rather than what opposing hitters actually did against them.

I'm not ready to do that, so to be consistent, I must entertain this question: if David Ortiz was blessed by fate in ways that enabled his performance to benefit his team because of chance, should he get a little credit for that? By McCracken's logic, I'm giving that kind of credit every time I compare pitchers by ERA.

Honestly, I still don't want to give Ortiz bonus points for pleasing Fate, and I certainly don't think such credit should overcome a clear-cut MVP choice like that of Rodriguez over Ortiz. But I do think our new insights into evaluating performances separately from the results they produce raise serious theoretical questions about statistical analysis of sports performance.