Fall means football, and the NFL season started off in full force last Saturday. Like any well-invested football fan, I've been following every piece of gossip and analysis in a futile attempt to predict outcomes and will the Pittsburgh Steelers to victory.
Interestingly, the most intriguing analysis of the year to date has come from a pair of economists, which includes Steve Levitt of Freakonomics fame. They write:
Game theory makes strong predictions about how individuals should behave in two player, zero sum games. When players follow a mixed strategy, equilibrium payoffs should be equalized across actions, and choices should be serially uncorrelated. Laboratory experiments have generated large and systematic deviations from the minimax predictions. Data gleaned from real-world settings have been more consistent with minimax, but these latter studies have often been based on small samples with low power to reject. In this paper, we explore minimax play in two high stakes, real world settings that are data rich: choice of pitch type in Major League Baseball and whether to run or pass in the National Football League. We observe more than three million pitches in baseball and 125,000 play choices for football. We find systematic deviations from minimax play in both data sets. Pitchers appear to throw too many fastballs; football teams pass less than they should. In both sports, there is negative serial correlation in play calling. Back of the envelope calculations suggest that correcting these decision making errors could be worth as many as two additional victories a year to a Major League Baseball franchise, and more than a half win per season for a professional football team.
Interesting stuff. I wonder if this article will garner as much controversy as a piece written a few years back by economist David Romer, whose analysis suggested that NFL teams play a risk-averse, sub-optimal strategy when punting the football outside of their own red zone.
1 comment:
This is a fascinating study. But the magnitude of their estimates seems tiny to me. I was swamped last week but will call tomorrow about the industry project and that other, secret, project.
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