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Articles by Phil Birnbaum
Nothing against sourdough, but it’s the bagel’s turn to rise again
By Phil BirnbaumSpecial to The Star Thu., Feb. 25, 2021timer5 min. read Growing up, when I visited family in New York, it was more important to score a bagel sandwich from Russ & Daughters in the Lower East Side than it was to take a boat ride along the Hudson. These nice, hefty bagels were as uniquely New York as the Statue of Liberty. But honestly, I never understood why a bagel battle has raged on between Montrealers, Torontonians and New Yorkers.
The Southpaw Advantage
Editor’s Note: An abridged version of this study appeared at FiveThirtyEight on August 17, 2020 under the title “What Really Gives Left-Handed Pitchers Their Edge?” Left-handed pitching has long been one of the most prized commodities in professional baseball. Teams strive to obtain lefty pitchers, and those pitchers recognize their competitive edge.
What Really Gives Left-Handed Pitchers Their Edge?
Editor’s note: Read the full study, “The Southpaw Advantage,” at FanGraphs. Left-handed pitching has long been one of the most prized commodities in professional baseball. Teams strive to obtain lefty pitchers, and southpaws recognize their competitive edge.
Has the hot hand effect finally been proven?
A popular belief among sportswriters and broadcasters says that a team that's been successful, should be expected to continue that way. It’s known as the ‘hot hand’ (aka ‘momentum’ or ‘streakiness’) and the effect is popularly accepted as being real. But almost every study that has looked for such an effect has failed to find one. As a result, the expression ‘hot hand fallacy’ was coined - the belief that a momentum effect exists when it doesn’t.
Should we all wear bicycle helmets? Maybe, but not on this evidence
It's actually a pretty big fail on Consumer Reports' part. Because, I'm sure, helmets do save lives, and it should be pretty easy to come up with data that illustrate that competently. Instead... well, it's almost like they don't take the question seriously enough to care about what the numbers actually mean (The article isn't online, but here's a web page from their site that's similar but less ardent.) '... the answer is a resounding yes, you *should* wear a helmet.
Do soccer players choke? Assessing the research on penalty kicks and pressure.
While Spain is a modest favorite over the Netherlands to win Sunday's World Cup final, the matchup is not lopsided by any means. That means there's a reasonably good chance that, after 120 minutes of play between two fairly even teams, the game will come down to penalty kicks. Whether you greet that prospect with a casual fan's delight or a purist's horror, there is no question that a penalty shootout is dramatic and stressful.
Does WAR Undervalue Injured Superstars?
In an article last month, "Ain't Gonna Study WAR No More" (subscription required), Bill James points out a flaw in WAR (Wins Above Replacement), when used as a one-dimensional measure of player value. Bill gives an example of two hypothetical players with equal WAR, but not equal value to their teams. One team has Player A, an everyday starter who created 2.0 WAR over 162 games.
Do Baseball Salaries Have "Precious Little" To Do With Ability?
This post originally ran on Phil Birnaum's sabermetric blog. It is reprinted here with permission. Could MLB player salaries be almost completely unrelated to performance? That's the claim of social-science researcher Mike Cassidy, in a recent post at the online magazine US News and World Report.
Clutch Hitting and the Cramer Test
This article was written by Phil Birnbaum This article was published in 2008 Baseball Research Journal Bill James recently asserted that Dick Cramer’s famous 1977 clutch-hitting study, which purportedly demonstrated that clutch talent is a myth, was fatally flawed. James argued that the study’s finding that year-to-year clutch hitting looks random was not enough to show nonexistence. Here, the author uses statistical methods to try to determine whether James’s argument is indeed correct.
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