Go for it on 4th down, researchers say

Discussion in 'The Tiger's Den' started by SoLa in NoIll, Jul 30, 2003.

  1. SoLa in NoIll

    SoLa in NoIll Founding Member

    Joined:
    Oct 14, 2002
    Messages:
    726
    Likes Received:
    4
    Interesting article on coaches' reluctance to take risks, from the NY Times.

    (You have to register to see this article for free, so here's the link and the entire article.)

    http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/30/sports/30risk.html

    July 30, 2003
    Caution Is Costly, Scholars Say
    By DAVID LEONHARDT


    The ball shot down the left-field line, and the Yankees' speedy second baseman, who had singled in the inning, raced toward third base. With two outs in the eighth, the Yankees down by 3-2 and the ball caroming off the outfield wall, the third-base coach faced a decision on which the season would turn: should the runner try for home?

    Then the professor stopped the VCR.

    This has become an annual ritual in a graduate school class at the University of Chicago taught by Richard Thaler, an economist widely considered to be a serious candidate for a Nobel Prize. Thaler plays a videotape of Game 2 of the 1980 American League Championship Series, stops it during the crucial sequence and asks the students to weigh all the information before making their own decision.

    Be it at Chicago, Duke, Harvard or the University of California at Berkeley, some of the nation's top economists, psychologists and statisticians are coming to see sports as a subject that requires their attention. Trying to understand human decision-making, they are writing papers about such choices as when to punt, or when to take out a basketball player in foul trouble. About 25 of them gathered in the spring for a two-day academic conference in Arizona, where they went to a spring training game once their work was done.

    Their research is quickly leading to a theory that will resonate with any fans who have ever screamed for their team to go for it on fourth down: the professors say that managers, coaches and players are often far too cautious for their own good.

    "Teams are averse to going for all or none," said Steven J. Sherman, a psychology professor at Indiana University, who came up with the idea for the conference with Thaler when they were having dinner in an Afghan restaurant in Chicago last year. "Teams don't want to do something that puts the game on the line right now."

    They intentionally walk Barry Bonds even though statistics offer a clear argument for pitching to him. Giving him an automatic place on first base usually leads to more runs in the inning than one of his at-bats does.

    Behind by 2 at the end of a basketball game and playing a superior team, coaches generally do not attempt a 3-point shot. Yet that shot often offers a better chance of winning than the combined odds of making a 2-pointer at the buzzer, then winning in overtime.

    In football, unless the head coach of the team on offense is named Bill Parcells, fourth down almost invariably leads to the appearance of a kicker. But having studied about 700 N.F.L. games, David Romer, an economist at Berkeley, argues that teams would fare better by going for first down far more often than they do.

    Much of the professors' interest in these question stems from the simple fact that they are sports fans. Romer began his research after his skepticism had been piqued one Sunday afternoon while he was driving to Home Depot and listening to a Raiders announcer expound upon the obvious virtues of the field goal. At the conference in Arizona, Bill James, a baseball writer recently hired by the Boston Red Sox as a consultant, was a bigger attraction than any of the intellectual stars in attendance, a few professors said.

    "All of the academics in the room were jealous of Bill James," said Thaler, an energetic man who is quick to make self-deprecating jokes. "He had the job they really want: adviser to the Red Sox."

    But there is also a more serious undercurrent to the work. In recent years, economists and psychologists have become increasingly interested in the ways that people do not act rationally. Known as behavioral economics, the field examines why stock-market bubbles happen and why many people do not save enough money for retirement, among other things.

    Sporting events, which are played out step by step in the most public of settings, allow the researchers to determine the precise moment that somebody veers from good sense.

    "My justification for doing this is that it's the one really high-stakes activity where you get to watch all of the decisions," Thaler said. "If Bill Gates invited me to watch all of his decisions, I'd talk more about that."

    The professors say that coaches and managers often go awry when faced with a decision involving an obvious, yet ultimately sensible, risk. They seem to focus too much on the worst-case scenario: the Bonds home run, the game-ending brick, the failed fourth down. Travelers who drive hundreds of miles because they are afraid of a plane crash make the same mistake.

    In the most recent Super Bowl, the Oakland Raiders' coaching staff sent in the punting unit when faced with fourth-and-4 on the Buccaneers' 45-yard line during the first quarter. Going for the first down, after all, would have risked giving the Tampa Bay Buccaneers excellent field position.

    That decision may indeed have been the correct one, given the strength of Tampa Bay's defense, but punting on fourth-and-4 from just past midfield, which teams do, is usually a mistake, according to Romer's research. The chance to keep a drive going when a team is so close to field-goal territory is usually more valuable than the 30 or so yards of field position the team gains by punting.

    Or imagine a basketball player who makes about 50 percent of his 2-point shots and 40 percent of his 3-pointers. If his team is down by 2 in the final seconds and he takes the 3-pointer, the team has a 40 percent chance of winning. If the coach instead designs a play that gives him a 2-point shot, the team has only about a 25 percent chance of winning: the 50 percent chance that he will tie the score multiplied by the roughly 50 percent chance that the team will win in overtime.

    So far, the professors acknowledge, their work has had little impact. But they have been heartened by the willingness of a few teams, including the Red Sox, the Oakland A's and the Dallas Mavericks, to use statistical analysis in new ways.

    "It has to be the case that sound knowledge will win out eventually," Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell, said. "But the path is tortuous and slow."

    One big reason is the consequence that can greet a risk gone bad, even a sensible one.

    In the spring, after Thaler stopped the videotape on the 1980 Yankees game, his students argued overwhelmingly in favor of sending home the runner, Willie Randolph. Thaler agreed. There were two outs, and the Kansas City Royals' fielders would have to make two excellent throws to get Randolph out at the plate.

    Many Yankees fans know how the story ends, however. Mike Ferraro, the third-base coach, waved Randolph home. Willie Wilson of the Royals played the carom in left field cleanly and threw to third baseman George Brett, who relayed the ball perfectly to catcher Darrell Porter.

    Randolph was out. The Yankees lost. George Steinbrenner made sure that Ferraro was no longer coaching third base the next season.
     
  2. LSUstudent

    LSUstudent Founding Member

    Joined:
    Nov 7, 2002
    Messages:
    852
    Likes Received:
    3
    nice article, thanks for the link
     
  3. Ole War Skule

    Ole War Skule Founding Member

    Joined:
    Sep 10, 2002
    Messages:
    92
    Likes Received:
    1
    4 foul bb player taken out...

    This subject was briefly mentioned in the article, but not discussed and is something I've never understood.

    You've got your top player with 3-4 fouls early or mid through 2nd half of game. The coach sits him on the bench 'saving' him for later as he may foul out.

    1. By sitting him down, you have effectively fouled him out yourself for at least the time you sit him down. He may still foul out when he returns.
    2. By keeping him in the game, he at least has some chance to finish a complete game, by taking him out you insure he doesn't.
    3. Seems there is some premise that points late in the game are worth more than earlier.

    I'm sure I'm missing something here. Why not leave him in and let him play out the best he can, he may last, he may not, but by benching him you INSURE he doesn't.
     

Share This Page