Final PCS Rankings: Congratulations, Jose!

Well it's really just a formality at this point, but the final rankings have been calculated, and it's official: with his clutch performance in the Grand Finale Riddle Puzzle, Jose is hereby crowned the 1st ever SoSG Puzzle Championship Series Champion. Congratulations Jose! He edges out season-long puzzle rival QuadSevens, who fends off Fanerman for the runner-up slot.

Here are the full rankings (and my personal apologies to Mr. Customer and Julie Hibbard for inadvertently leaving them off the 'others receiving votes' section of the previous rankings):

Current Rank	Previous	Player (Wins)	PCS Tour Points
1	1	jose (3)	557
2	2	quadsevens (2)	449
3	4	fanerman	427
4	3	steve	370
5	6	mike scioscia's t.i. (1)	275
6	5	daniel	260
7	8	neeebs	250
T8	8	berkowit28 (1)	235
T8	10	erin	235
10	7	gil gamesh	185

Others receiving votes: sax/karros 143, karina 125, mr. customer 115, cigarcow 105, loney fan 80, jbowes 50, stolenmonkey86 50, orel 30, dusto magnifico 25, ricardo 20, alex cora 10, delino deshields 10, julie hibbard 10

Of the two prize options available to him, Jose has chosen the puzzle creation option. So look forward to his concoction in the not-too-distant-but-not-necessarily-too-immediate future. We'll let you know. And that also means the well-worn path between SoSG's regional post office and the one serving Quad's house will be trodden once again, as we will be shipping him the Furcal bobblehead as runner-up.

But that's not all. Just for kicks, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to merge puzzles and graphs. So here's a visual representation of the ups and downs of PCS Season I since the inception of the rankings 10 puzzles ago (due to space constraints, only puzzlers who at some point were in the Top 5 are included):

(click image to enlarge)

A few observations:

• Up through Puzzle #8 was The QuadSevens Era. If the season ended at any point before Puzzle #9, Quad would have been the unquestioned champ. He was able to maintain his top ranking throughout this period in spite of facing a worthy challenger in SoSG Orel. But as it would turn out, there was a greater threat on the horizon...
• And that threat was named Jose. Puzzles #9 through #13 defined The Jose Era. Jose may have benefited from Quad's early rivalry with Orel, as it allowed him to rise strongly and steadily during the QuadSevens Era yet still remain under the radar.
• Puzzles #14 and beyond.....? Don't look now, but both Fanerman and Steve have been doing an impressive imitation of Jose's previous rise to stardom. Will history books one day speak of the Fanerman or Steve Era? Only time will tell, my friends, only time will tell.

Well there you have it. Hey, I'm just trying to keep busy until 3:30pm.

Dodgers' Season Not That Weird

Aren't these 2008 Dodgers weird and streaky? While they seem quite worthy of their 0.500-ish record, it sure seems like they get there in a backwards fashion. A mere two weeks after sweeping the Phillies, they get swept by the Nationals. Not to mention that their current 3-game winning streak follows a 1-10 stretch, which itself followed a 6-1 stretch. What gives?

Well, maybe not as much as you think. I put this perceived weirdness to the test, taking a simple look at the Dodgers' record against six categories of opponents (Real Bad, Bad, Not Great, Decent, Good, and Really Good), based solely on their current winning percentage (as opposed to their winning percentage at the time of each game). Here's the result (through yesterday's games):

So while there's some minor backwards correlation (the Dodgers seem to fare slightly better as teams go from not great to decent to good, and do better against bad teams than real bad teams), in general it's not really far off from what you'd expect. They do the best against bad teams, and the worst against really good teams.

Now, regarding their perceived streakiness, I took a look at their winning % after a win vs after a loss, as well as after a 2-win/loss streak and after a 3-win/loss streak. Here's the result:

	Win %
Overall	0.493
after 1 W	0.507
after 1 L	0.471
after 2 W's	0.455
after 2 L's	0.486
after 3 W's	0.571
after 3 L's	0.421

Acknowledging there's not enough data to reach a firm conclusion, I won't try to do so. But judging from the fact that their win % is lower than their overall win % after both single losses, 2 consecutive losses, and 3 consecutive losses, I think there may be some validity to their perceived streakiness, at least when it comes to losing*.

*note that in spite of any validity to perceived winning or losing streakiness, I stand by my assertion that any correlation between higher or lower win % and a preceding win or loss streak isn't caused by the preceding winning or losing, but is a result of either 1) how good the team is relative to its opponent at the time the games are played (including injuries, suspensions, or, as some have noted, who's pitching or site of game, etc), or 2) randomness.

This Week's Daily Graph of the Month

Ready or not, here comes another graph:

(click graph to enlarge)

(data through Monday's games)

Let me walk you through it. First, the basics:

• Each team's OPS is plotted along the X axis
• Each team's ERA is plotted along the Y axis
• The size of the circle corresponds to each team's win total
• AL teams are in red and NL teams are in blue (NL West teams are dark blue)
• The MLB average is the black circle

In theory, as you move towards the upper right of the graph, the circles should get bigger, as a strong combination of pitching and hitting is thought to produce wins. Conversely, the lower left should be populated with small circles. An eyeballing of the graph seems to be in line with this, with the Braves and the Angels probably being the biggest (though not particularly big) exceptions to each of these trends, respectively.

So far nothing mind blowing, just a pleasant scatterplot along the X and Y dimensions. But now, we divvy up the teams along two whole different dimensions:

First, based on the combination of their hitting and pitching, each team is categorized as either Tier 1 (the strongest), Tier 2, Tier 3, or Tier 4 (the weakest), as separated by the green arcs. This is how the cookie crumbled:

• Tier 1 (7 teams): White Sox, Tampa Bay, Boston, Cubs, Philadelphia, Oakland, and Atlanta.
• Tier 2 (10 teams): Toronto, Dodgers, Angels, Arizona, Milwaukee, St Louis, Yankees, Minnesota, Detroit, and Texas.
• Tier 3 (9 teams): Baltimore, Mets, Florida, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Houston, Colorado, Cleveland, and San Diego.
• Tier 4 (4 teams): Seattle, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, and Washington.

The MLB average lands slightly on the Tier 2 side of the Tier 2/Tier 3 border, whereas the Dodgers are squarely in Tier 2 in spite of their sub-0.500 record. Might this suggest they are playing a bit below their expectation given their level of hitting and pitching (a la a pythagorean expectation theory)? It sort of seems so to me.

The next step was to overlay a completely different grouping on top of this categorization. The second grouping divided the teams into five new categories, depending on how heavily they leaned towards either hitting or pitching. Here's how this cookie crumbled:

• Pitching-Dependent (4 teams): Oakland, Dodgers, Toronto, and Angels.
• Pitching-Based (7 teams): White Sox, Tampa Bay, Atlanta, Arizona, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington.
• Balanced (11 teams): Boston, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Yankees, Minnesota, Mets, San Francisco, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Houston, and Kansas City.
• Hitting-Based (4 teams): Cubs, St Louis, Detroit, and Baltimore.
• Hitting-Dependent (4 teams): Texas, Florida, Colorado, and Pittsburgh.

So let's take a look at this second grouping. First, keep in mind 'balanced' doesn't necessarily mean 'good'. It just means the team hits at approximately the same level of competence as it pitches, regardless of whether that level is high (Boston), medium (Minnesota), or low (Kansas City). The Dodgers land deep in Pitching-Dependent territory - no surprise there - with only Oakland depending more heavily on their pitching. On the other side of the coin is Texas, whose league-leading OPS but 2nd-worst ERA make it the league's most unbalanced team. And once again the MLB average is right around the middle.

Conventional wisdom would say the best place to be is in the Tier 1/Balanced intersection, where only two teams - Boston and Philadelphia - reside.

Anyhow, that's all I've got to say for now. Once again thanks for reading through the rather dry text. And please don't hesitate to post any thoughts/comments, I'd be interested to hear them.

The Race to 0.400 Officially Begins

We can officially begin the 0.400 watch. Halfway into the season, Chipper Jones still sports a robust 0.394 BA, a comfortable 30 points ahead of second-place Lance Berkman. The Dodgers, meanwhile, enjoy a 0.363 BA (Binary Average) after throwing two more binary shrimp on the barbie this weekend. The Dodgers stand a staggering 67 points ahead of 2nd-place Oakland.

All facetiousness aside, I really do find it unbelievable that in almost 1 out of every 3 games, the Dodgers score 0 or 1 runs (the 4 games in which they scored 11 runs bring their Binary Average up to 0.363). While both Jones and the Dodgers need to produce a spectacular 2nd half to match Ted Williams' 1941, it's been a long time since the Chase for 0.400 has been interesting this late in the season.

And for those hoping at some point we'll get tired of these binary musings, well the chances of that happening are about 0 or 1 in 1,000,000.

UPDATE: Inspired by Cigarcow's and Sax's discussion in the Spain post below, I did the research: Over the past 14 years in Euro and World Cup competition, Spain has put up a binary score in 17 of 34 games, for a binary average of 0.500. Time to step it up, Dodgers.

Gø B1ue!

A few weeks ago, I stated that "while I don't know this 'percentage binary' figure for the other teams, I'm willing to bet the Dodgers are tops in the league".

Well, I decided to research it and this is what I found (through Monday's games):

(click graph to enlarge)

Sure enough, the Dodgers are far and away tops in the league, with 26 of 69 binary games (38%). In a very distant second, third, and fourth place are Oakland (28%), the Chicago White Sox (26%), and San Diego (26%), respectively. Even if you take away the four binary games in which the Dodgers scored 11 runs, it's still not even close.

P.S. I just noticed that this inadvertently serves as a good companion piece to Sax's post below. Our messages are aligned: the Dodger offense sucks.

Dodgers' Sixth Sense Shows Signs of What's Happening

The Dodgers' 4p game today in Detroit will leave us west coast fans plenty of time to go see a movie tonight, and why not consider "The Happening"? M. Night Shymalan's latest twist-filled motion picture, which opens today against The Hulk Reloaded, was not shown in advance to many critics, leaving pre-movie buzz to be pretty sparse. Which begs the question, how will "The Happening" perform this weekend at the box office?

Well, we at SoSG have pored over the data, to help you plan your weekend festivities. And what is really eerie (though appropriate for Shymalan given his supernatural and otherworldly subject matter) is that certain Dodgers' performances seem to line up pretty closely with the box office performance of Shymalan's last five movies. And what's more, these same statistics all augur quite poorly for the prospects of "The Happening." Quite simply, "The Happening" won't be happening.

Spooky, isn't it?

First, let's check out the box office data. Here, we have the box ofice receipts (from imdb.com) of Shymalan's last five movies: The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, and Lady in the Water. We've left a blank for the unknown of this weekend's debut, "The Happening." (click image for larger view)

Next, we take that same data, and index it against the first data point, such that 1999 = 100. (click image for larger view)

Finally, we compare this performance against the key statistics of five past and present Los Angeles Dodgers:

• Mike Piazza grounded into double plays;
• Chan Ho Park hit by pitches;
• Hideo Nomo wins;
• Jeff Kent strikeouts;
• Shawn Green RBI.

And the end result isn't pretty: (click image for larger view)

These Dodger predictors, all of which tracked the shape of Shymalan curve fairly closely, indicate that "The Happening" will take in a range of 0% to 22% of the box office receipts of his 1999 movie, "The Sixth Sense." At most, according to the Dodger oracle, M. Night is looking to clear ~$65M in revenues with this flick--floating not much higher than the concrete boots worn by "The Lady in the Water."

Sure, Chan Ho could peg a couple more batters this year (note that these stats don't include hits inflicted by Park's karate kicks), or Kent could go back to his mid-May whiffing ways. But I don't see Piazza, Nomo, or Green upping their numbers any more this season, which is bad news for "The Happening."

"What's Happening," indeed. I'm just curious how Marky Mark is going to do in the role of "Rerun".

Debunking the Myth: Winning Streaks

I generally don't believe in the concept of a team "getting hot" or "going cold". That doesn't mean a team isn't capable of, say, losing 5 consecutive games after winning 10 of 11; I just think attributing such streaks to the team "being in a groove" is largely misguided (though psychologically convenient).

Let's take winning streaks. How often do you see an otherwise mediocre team rip off 5 consecutive wins and hear people say things like "they're in a zone." I think "being in a zone" or "hitting a groove" almost never* has anything to do with it - I instead believe winning streaks are due almost exclusively to two things:

    1) How good the team is (including injuries, suspensions, etc)
    2) Randomness

So I begin by trying to debunk Hypothesis 1: a team improves its chance of winning a game if it's coming off a win in its previous game.

To evaluate this hypothesis, I looked at the games for each of the 30 mlb teams since the beginning of last season - roughly 210 games per team - to see if their winning % was any different in games when coming off a win as they were overall. Here's the result:

(click graph to enlarge)

The bubbles to the upper left of the diagonal represent teams that do indeed seem to show a higher winning percentage coming off a win. Well, exactly half of the 30 MLB teams are above the line, half below. The white dot indicates the overall average, which resides barely above the line (overall, MLB teams won 50.6% of games after a win vs 50% of all games overall).

Well, not exactly conclusive, but the fact that the white bubble lies barely above the line doesn't debunk the hypothesis. Maybe a team really does have a slightly better chance of winning a game when coming off a win. Let's continue.

The next step was to look at Hypothesis 2: a team improves its chance of winning a game if it's coming off a win streak (i.e., is "hot"). To do this, I looked at teams' winning percentage after 2-game winning streaks. Turns out such teams won their next game 50.4% of the time, again barely over 50% but slightly less than the 50.6% above. So thusfar, for small 1-game and 2-game streaks, results are still inconclusive and no concrete myth-debunking has occurred.

When I got to 3-game winning streaks, it started to get interesting. The overall win % in the next game after a 3-game winning streak dropped to 47.7%. And this is based on 776 cases, so it seems like a decent sample size (and I mean 'seems' in the strict statistical sense of the word).

So it seems like the hypothesis is taking some hits. Let's keep going. Win % after a 4-game streaks? 45.8%. And after a 5-game streak, it dropped further to 45.5%. I stopped there, as sample sizes beyond 5-game streaks were getting pretty thin.

Add to that the fact that teams with 3-, 4-, and 5-game winning streaks are more often than not among the better teams, and thus would tend to have an overall expected winning percentage greater 50%. This makes their sub-50% win % after streaks even more telling and further weakens the myth. Factoring this in, let's check it out graphical-style:

(click graph to enlarge)

I won't go so far as to say this proves anything, as a proper analysis probably involves Bernoulli Trials and R squared values and other stuff I'll leave to you mathematicians out there. But the bottom line is if an otherwise mediocre team is coming to LA on a 5-game winning streak, my response will continue to be: "Bring 'em On!"

*The '02 A's and '07 Rockies may have been in a zone.
For a related article regarding the '07 Rockies, click here.
For an article debunking the 'basketball-players-with-the-"hot hand"-myth', click here.

To Graph or Not To Graph: That is Never a Question

I don't know why, but I have a strange fascination with these sector graphs. Maybe it's because they're graphs, who knows. In anycase, they inspired me to take a moment and put together this bad boy:

(click graph to enlarge)

It's pretty straightforward:

• The average age of the team is plotted along the X axis
• The number of games above/below 500 is plotted along the Y axis
• The size of the circle corresponds to the team's total payroll
• The color of the circle designates the league or division in which the team plays

After an admittedly brief look at the results, here are my - you guessed it - five takeaways:

      1. Rich doesn't mean good. A lazy eyeballing of the graph doesn't reveal any obvious pattern of bigger circles above the 0.500 line or smaller ones below it. While the free-spending Red Sox, Angels, and Cubs are all safely above water, similarly sized behemoths representing Detroit, Seattle, and of course the Yankees are significantly submerged.

      2. Young does mean cheap. Each of the 11 smallest circles are bunched safely to the left of the centerline (Florida, Tampa Bay, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Washington, Kansas City, Minnesota, Arizona, Baltimore, Texas, and Colorado). Similarly, the 5 biggest circles are all to the right (NY Yankees, Detroit, NY Mets, Boston, and Chicago Sox). The biggest exception to this rule is the Angels, who have the 6th biggest payroll yet the 11th youngest team.

      3. By some bastard child of the transitive property, there is little correlation between age and ability to win. Both the 5 winningest teams (Arizona, Cubs, Boston, St Louis, the Angels, and Tampa Bay) and the 5 losingest (San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Colorado, and Detroit...boy, the NL West sucks) are scattered broadly across the age axis.

      4. The Marlins and Rays know something we don't. See that teeny tiny dot waaay off to the left? That's Florida. Despite the oft-noted observation that their entire payroll is smaller than A-Rod's (and less than half the payroll of the 2nd cheapest team), and the fact that they're far and away the youngest team, they still boast the 3rd best record in the NL even after a recent 2-5 slide. And Tampa Bay, with both the 2nd cheapest and 2nd youngest team, are winning at an even greater clip.

      5. The Dodgers are slightly above average in all three dimensions. This is indicated by their position just offset to the upper right of center. Of the 30 MLB teams, they are the 13th oldest, 11th winningest, and 8th richest.

While none of these observations is revolutionary, a properly- conceived graph can tell the story like nothing else can. And yes, it's still early - it'll be interesting (at least to me) to see how this graph looks at the end of the season.

Thanks for reading. Please share any thoughts or questions.

Graphing Russell Martin, Part 3

Graphing Russell Martin, Part 2

Marching Toward Mendoza, Part 2: Jones' Slow Start Without Parallel Among Peers

ESPN.com's Jerry Crasnick added Andruw Jones to his top-nine "slow starters" list, and Jones "leads the list" with the lowest batting average of any of the other candidates:

Andruw Jones, Dodgers CF (.156, one homer in 64 at-bats)

Jones' early travails rekindle bad memories from last season, when his .222 batting average, .724 OPS and penchant for killing rallies made it a tough sales job for agent Scott Boras.

Jones turns 31 Wednesday, so it's hard to believe his bat speed has vanished. But he messed himself up swinging for the fences in the quest for big money a year ago, and it might require an overhaul to resurrect the old Andruw.

"He's in a horrible habit where he has no back-side pivot to unlock his hips, and every swing is an uppercut swing," said a scout. "It's a grooved swing, and if you happen to hit his bat, he's swinging ... so hard that he can do some damage. But there's very little adjustment to be a good hitter."

Just weeks into Jones' tenure with the Dodgers, the team's fans are already booing him with fervor. He has also become a target for acerbic Los Angeles Times columnist T.J. Simers, who dared him to climb on a scale last week and began referring to him as "Tubbo" when Jones' weight popped up at 248. So much for a Southern California honeymoon.

Concern level: 7.5 [on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being "PANIC"; this is also the highest number of any candidate in the column]. Hitting coach Mike Easler has his work cut out for him.

Yikes, "Marching Toward Mendoza" could be a longer campaign than we at SoSG had anticipated.

What's that? You want an updated graph? Okay, if you insist.

Graphing Russell Martin

Inspired by Sax's graph of the "Druw Jones Industrial Average", I decided to take a closer look at the conventional wisdom that says Russell Martin's '07 was superb until the last month, at which point the wear and tear of the season took its toll.

Certainly a perfunctory look at his batting average by month seems to support this theory:

Month	Average
April '07	0.314
May '07	0.293
June '07	0.284
July '07	0.303
Aug '07	0.300
Sept '07	0.259

Why, he batted no lower than 0.284 in any month until his horrid 0.259 in September! Furthermore, looking at his running cumulative average, one might fixate on the fact that throughout the season his average wavered between 0.366 and 0.288, and conclude that because his season-ending average of 0.293 was near the nadir, it further supports the theory that he got worse as the season wore on.

While both monthly average and cumulative batting average are oft-used and easy-to-digest metrics when attempting to identify temporal trends, I dislike both. I dislike monthly average because:

• The analysis ends up being defined by arbitrary boundaries (i.e., when each month begins and ends).
• It removes any continuity. Analysis becomes limited to 6 discreet data points, which removes the ability to see any intra-monthly and almost all inter-monthly trends.

And I dislike looking at cumulative averages because as the season goes on and at-bats pile up, one's batting average becomes less and less sensitive, which removes both chronological symmetry and the ability to decipher much past the all-star break.

So let's take a look at my preferred metric - the progressive average of Martin's trailing 20 games - and graph it against cumulative average:

(click graph to enlarge)

With the cumulative average, you will see the wide swings at the beginning, but once you get to about August, the at-bat denominator gets so big that his average hardly moves and any trend becomes very difficult to identify. However, with the trailing twenty games average, you can see that while he definitely sucked the last two weeks if the season, he had two earlier periods of equal or greater suckitude, and each time came back strong.

Presented another way, if one looked only at the cumulative average graph, could Martin's early-August swoon be spotted? After all, his average hovered just below 0.300 that whole time. And similarly, looking at only monthly averages, his 0.303 July and 0.300 August also completely hide this swoon.

Anyhow, I am very late for a meeting and don't want to get fired today so I will leave it at this.

Andruw Jones: Marching Toward Mendoza

No, not "munching" toward Mendoza--"marching" toward Mendoza. Since April 4 (game 4 of the season), Andruw Jones has not matched or surpassed the .200 batting average level, commonly known as the Mendoza Line. That's a streak of 15 games below .200 for the $18MM man ($36 over two years).

We here at SoSG are graph-crazy, so as a public service we are tracking Jones' batting average progress, as well as (more recently) regress. Here's the latest, after 19 games:

(click on graph for larger, Andruw-sized image)

What Exactly Are You Guys Doing Here?

Below is a pie chart of showing visit lengths to Sons of Steve Garvey:

As you can see, three-quarters of our audience bails on us after five seconds or less. I'd just like to ask: What exactly are you guys doing here? Is it like when you do a Google Image Search with SafeSearch off and run across some horrific image and go "AAH! AAAAH! Get me away from that!" and close the window as fast as humanly possible? Would you stick around longer if we posted more pictures of scantily clad women? Just let us know—we're not proud.

Open Tryouts for Dodgers' Fifth Starter Begin

I sure as hell hope the Minotaur, Clayton Kershaw, is ready to go. Here's two lines from last night's debacle in the desert:

Loaiza, 4IP, 4H, 4ER, 1BB, 2K, 1HR, 6.75 ERA
Park, 1.2IP, 3H, 1ER, 1BB, 1K, 1HR, 5.40 ERA

It is embarrassing to trot out Este-bomb Loaiza as the starter, only to watch him promptly give up four runs in the first inning, including a towering home run to Mark Reynolds that Vin Scully described as going "halfway to Tucson." But after the Dodgers battle back to score a run and then two more, making it a one-run game, we leave Chan Ho Park on the mound who puts the game out of reach (before Scott Proctor comes and gives up four more earned runs, kicking us again in the nuts).

Loaiza and Park, these are the two guys that are "fighting" for the fifth slot in the lineup? How exactly are they fighting? By trying to see who sucks less? I loved how Jon headlined it "Loiaza and Park and Pray for Dark", btw--this was spot on).

We have too little offense this year to concede four or five runs with one of these guys on the mound. For Eric Karros' sake, I've put together a quick graph of my confidence levels around our starting pitchers, and it's not pretty (nor is it scientific). But it is representative.

Unlike Loaiza and Park.

Blue World Order?

This week's Sports Illustrated unveiled its annual pre-season Player Value Rankings (PVR), in which they rank each MLB player from #1 (A-Rod) to #425 (Brad Ausmus at #406 was the lowest I could find) based on their projected performance this season.

Let's see how the pecking order of the Dodgers' primary position players is shifting compared to last season (Matt Kemp is omitted as he wasn't ranked in '07):

(click on graph to enlarge)

The biggest positive movers are, no surprise, youngsters James Loney (up 184 spots to #58) and Russell Martin (up 86 to #32). These two take over the top two spots on the team from Rafael Furcal and Juan Pierre. But ageless Jeff Kent also fared well. The 40-Year-Old Vergin' on joining the 1,500 RBI club moved up 42 spots to #73.

On the flipside, Nomar plunged 98 spots to #201 and Pierre is down 66 to #133. And while Andruw Jones would have been the top dog on last year's Dodgers, his poor '07 dropped him to 4th on the '08 team.

Of course these are only one magazine's pre-season surmisations. In a couple months it could be a whole new ballgame.

If X Games 12 Falls in the Forest,...

...but no one is there to watch it, does it make a sound?

Winter X Games 12 starts today. Yawn.

Each year about this time (just as I do every summer), I have to laugh at how desperately ESPN attempts to push the X Games upon sports fans who just don't care. If not for the forced placement of X Games across all of the ESPN/Disney banners (I'm sure Gretchen Bleiler, who graces the cover of this week's ESPN the Magazine, merits more public attention than that other fly-by-night sporting event next weekend), I don't think anyone would even know that the event existed. Sports Illustrated doesn't even whisper its name. Newspapers barely mention it, and those that do only do so because the event is local (i.e., the Los Angeles Times) or they feel somehow like they are missing out on a key niche sport.

But here's the dirty little secret of the X Games: No one, not even the target demographic, really cares. But advertisers, desperate to shill their wares to this demo, think it's a goldmine. So they come, and they fund the events...so to ESPN, it's cost-less.

Sure, kids today like to skateboard and snowboard, and the feats of athletic prowess in the X Games demonstrate a whole heck of a lot of skill. But the failure of extreme sports' ability to perform more than two times a year (other tours have cut back or gone bankrupt) are just one reflection of the overall lack of resonance or interest. Heck, even Disney on Ice and Ringling Brothers can do a national tour. X Games can't.

The microscopic television ratings are another key barometer. Tricks on a skateboard ramp or halfpipe are far less interesting to watch than Australian rules football or even billiards, a fact underscored by the events' pathetic television ratings (ESPN boosted viewership statistics by putting it on sister network ABC about six years ago; last August's Summer X Games rankings placed the ABC telecasts with 0.8 and 1.1 ratings, well behind other coverage of the PGA, MLB, NASCAR, and even the meaningless NFL Hall of Fame Game--2007's X Games barely beat out beach volleyball and the LPGA). Today, the few press releases highlighting X Games television viewership are carefully-worded statistical cuts on niche demographics, or obfuscations about streaming video traffic on the unknown EXPN.com site).

The athletes themselves don't make for compelling drama, either, again despite ESPN's omnipresent cross-promotions. Scott Willoughby of the Denver Post wrote: Among the more disturbing revelations...was word from ESPN's Chris Stiepock, general manager of the X Games, that professional bowling outranked a recently released HD documentary about Kelly Slater's quest for an unprecedented eighth world surfing title by something like eight viewers to one on ESPN2.

Look, I've been to both Summer and Winter X Games before; I saw Mike Metzger pull off consecutive backflips on his motorcycle in Philadelphia in 2002, which was an amazing trick. Admittedly, the events are marginally more compelling in person. But, short of that poor soul who plummeted 40 feet at Staples Center during last year's event, can you remember any other highlights or accomplishments from that X Games? And if all we can recall is disaster rather than achievement, isn't it more of a circus than a sporting event (see fourth paragraph, above).

For all those potential advertisers considering sponsorship, I've thrown together the following graph. (Click on the picture for legible text.)

X Games 12 is here. Which means, four more days before I can watch my favorite sports highlights again, without the unnecessary and irrelevant noise.

A Look Back at 2007

Happy New Year (a day late) from SoSG. For those of you who are just now emerging from the haze of your 2006 New Year's Eve celebrations and missed the past 366 days, no worries - I've got you covered in the world of sports (though you may have some explaining to do to your employer). Here's my 3-minute take on all the past year's probable, improbable, exhilarating, and depressing sporting moments that didn't include the words 'Vick', 'Bonds', or 'Donaghy'. Enjoy!

Graphs Gone Wild

It may look like a mess, but the 2007 Dodgers' "Performance/Salary Map" presented below is teeming with brilliant insight. So please bear with me (click on graph to enlarge):

Here are the basics of what's going on above:

• The on-field performance* and annual salary** of each player on the 2007 Dodgers*** is plotted along the horizontal and vertical axes, respectively.
• Blue is for hitters, red for pitchers.
• The players' 2004 performance/salary is marked by the small dot.
• The players' 2007 performance/salary is represented by the larger circle.
• If a player was not in the majors in 2004, he has only the circle, not the dot
• The size of the circle corresponds to the age of the player.
• The players' 3-Year Trendline (2004 to 2007) is marked by the arrow connecting the dot and the circle.

*Measured by OPS for hitters and ERA for pitchers.
**From USA Today.
***Only players with at least 400 AB's or 80 IP's in 2007 are included, with Saito (64.1 IP) the only exception.

So what does this tell us? Well let's first look at the four primary quadrants, which players fall into each, and what it all means:

• Upper-right quadrant (Stars) - This represents players who are paid well and perform accordingly. Jeff Kent and Brad Penny are the only players who fall into this category.
• Lower-right quadrant (Bargains) - These guys have a relatively low salary yet put up strong numbers. Not surprisingly, all the players here in their 1st or 2nd year (Saito, Martin, Broxton, Ethier) and thus can still be gotten cheaply.
• Lower-left quadrant (Role Players) - This quadrant is where 2nd-tier players with 2nd-tier salaries land. And sure enough, the two players in this category (Hendrickson and Tomko) personify 2nd tier.
• Upper-left quadrant (Busts) - These guys signed handsome contracts yet aren't getting it done on the field. Sadly, this is also the most crowded quadrant on the Dodgers' Map, with Nomar, Wolf, Lowe, Furcal, and Pierre elbowing for position.

Even more can be culled from noting the direction in which the players' 3-Year Trendlines are pointing. Again, there are roughly four categories:

• Up and to the Right (Approaching Prime) - Presumably players approaching or in their prime who show on-field improvement and receive a corresponding improvement in salary. Lowe and Penny are the two Dodgers in this category.
• Down and to the Left (Past Prime) - Theoretically, a trendline in this direction would represent a player past their prime - i.e., one who is showing a decline in both output and salary. Gonzo and Nomar are the two Dodgers in this category, so I guess we can get rid of the word 'theoretically' above.
• Down and to the Right (Players Getting Screwed by Their Ballclubs) - These players are getting a raw deal salary-wise from their team, as they are being paid less over the years despite putting up better numbers. Shockingly, there were no Dodgers in this group.
• Up and to the Left (Players Screwing Their Ballclubs) - Players who have managed to get larger contracts from their current ballclub despite performance decreases. Alas, this is where the plurality of the '07 Dodgers fall, with Pierre, Furcal, Hendrickson, Wolf, and Tomko. Yikes.

So I guess it doesn't bode well that both least desirable quadrant and the least-desirable Trendline category have the most Dodgers. But I guess since I'm too lazy to create Performance/Salary Maps for other clubs for comparison purposes, I can't make any hard conclusions. But to put things in some perspective, let's see where A-Rod's would appear on this Map:

(click on graph to enlarge)

So A-Rod's performance and salary are literally "off-the-chart". That, my friends, is the brilliant insight I promised at the top.

Dodgers, Yankees Show History of Ponying Up

With everyone speculating a) who will spring for A-Rod and b) if the first of the 8 digits in his annual salary will reach '3' (BTW I also have an 8-digit salary - it's just that the first several digits are '0'), I thought I'd take a graphical look at mlb salary history.

The following data are plotted below from the period 1984 - 2007:

• Average mlb salary in nominal dollars
• Highest mlb salary in nominal dollars
• The average 1984 salary growing at the rate of inflation

(click graph to enlarge)

Shocking discovery: both the average and the highest mlb salary have grown far faster than the rate of inflation. Equally shocking: in 3 of the last 4 years, it was the Yankees paying out the highest salary.

Sarcasm aside, I was mildly intrigued to notice that during 4 of the 12 seasons ranging from 1989 to 2000, the Dodgers paid out the highest salary (to Orel Hershiser, Darryl Strawberry, Gary Sheffield, and Kevin Brown, chronologically). Does this mean we have any hope for A-Rod? Probably not, but it does mean we have a good chance of overpaying for someone else.