Morikawa, Angels, Bucks, and Tee Times
Collin Morikawa
Two weeks ago, I wrote about golfer Collin Morikawa. From that section:
Collin Morikawa is currently the best ball-striker in the world… So where should we expect Collin Morikawa to play his best relative to his competitors? We’d expect his best finishes at the golf courses that create the most separation in scoring from tee to green. These are golf courses where there is a significant difference in scoring between a good shot and a bad shot.
At the Open Championship this past weekend, the golf course provided separation in scoring from tee to green. Partially due to the green contouring and penal green side bunkers, precise iron shots resulted in strong chances for birdies; errant approach shots led to challenging par saves.
Following the conclusion of his round on Sunday, Justin Thomas tweeted the following:
Justin is highlighting the concept described above: Royal St. George’s rewards good shots and penalizes bad shots. The course creates separation in scoring from tee to green.
Anyway, Collin Morikawa won the tournament:
Angels
In the 2018 NFL draft, the Cleveland Browns selected quarterback Baker Mayfield with the first overall pick. The Browns also had the fourth overall pick and selected cornerback Denzel Ward. They had two of the top four picks! That’s a lot of draft capital.
After Cleveland drafted these two players, a smart buddy of mine texted me that Cleveland’s strategy was sub-optimal. He thought the Browns should draft two quarterbacks, Baker Mayfield and Josh Allen. Initially that sounds crazy, but here’s his argument.
Indisputably, quarterback is the most important position in football: The ten highest paid players in the NFL are all quarterbacks. Without a good quarterback, a team cannot have long-term success. Since quarterbacks are valuable, they are scarce in the trade market and in the free agency market. So your best route for acquiring a quarterback is the NFL draft.
There is a high degree of uncertainty when drafting a player in the NFL. Less than half of quarterbacks drafted in the first round become Pro Bowlers. So what if, instead of taking the conventional approach of drafting one quarterback, a team drafted multiple quarterbacks? “Maximize our chances of finding a good quarterback, and then we’ll worry about the less valuable positions.”
Leading into the 2018 draft, if we gave Baker Mayfield a 55% chance of becoming a good long-term quarterback and Josh Allen a 50% chance, drafting both of these players would give us a 77.5% (1- 0.45*0.50) chance of at least one of these two players turning into a solid quarterback. Then, the most valuable position on our team is locked down for the next two decades!
It would have been unprecedented, but the Browns could have drafted two quarterbacks. Instead, the Browns selected a cornerback with the fourth pick. It was a mistake! After all, if you put all of your eggs into one basket/quarterback and ultimately he disappoints (which is possible!), do you really care about having a good cornerback? You still need to fill the most important position on the field. And you’re not winning!
That is the argument. And to be clear, this argument is not based on an assessment of Baker Mayfield or Josh Allen or any other prospect. It is a high-level way of thinking about draft strategy. Let’s term it a High Volume Approach. Disproportionately draft the most important position, which increases the likelihood that one of these draft selections will pan out.
Perhaps the High Volume Approach is viable in the NFL, but it does come with issues: How do you evaluate two quarterbacks simultaneously? Do you play a quarterback for one possession and substitute in the other quarterback on the next possession? Does alternating possessions disrupt the rhythm of each player and/or your team as a whole? Can you evaluate either quarterback properly under these conditions? It’s a tricky proposition because the opportunity set is limited.
What if the opportunity set were not limited? What if there were a sport where the most important position on a team did not play every day? Does that sound like baseball?
Pitchers are the most important players in baseball. Seven of the ten highest paid players in Major League Baseball are pitchers. Teams have five starting pitchers, each of whom throws once every five games, and teams roster an additional 7-8 pitchers who can enter the game in relief of the starter. Teams have an abundance of opportunities for pitchers within the minor league system as well. From the top level to the bottom level, an organization can offer opportunities to dozens of pitchers.
Similar to the NFL, MLB draft selections bust at a very high rate. Maybe you see where I am going with this… Conceptually, the High Volume Approach begins to make a lot of sense for drafting in baseball. “Let’s draft a bunch of pitchers. We’ll have plenty of opportunities to evaluate each player, and we only need a few of them to pan out.”
It happened. Last week, the MLB Draft took place. The Los Angeles Angels drafted 20 pitchers with their 20 draft picks:
This was the first time in Major League Baseball history that a team drafted a pitcher in all 20 rounds. The team had a need at the most important position. Rather than throw a few darts at the board, the Angels are throwing 20 darts and hoping a few hit the bullseye. I like it!
Bucks
A couple weeks ago, I’d written about the relationship between shot selection and offensive rebounding in the NBA. I made the point that in evaluating the benefits of shooting three-pointers versus a mid-range two-pointer, it is incomplete to reference just the expected points of each shot. The data show that three-pointers lead to more offensive rebounds than two-pointers do, which increases the value of a three-pointer.
Well, here’s a corollary to that idea. During the Playoffs in particular, teams are deliberate about creating mismatches through pick-and-rolls. For instance, Milwaukee Bucks player Brook Lopez is a 7-footer who is slow and defends poorly. On nearly every possession with Lopez on the court, the Phoenix Suns hunt him down. The Suns run pick-and-rolls until Lopez is forced to switch onto covering a guard like Chris Paul or Devin Booker, and then the Suns guard goes to work on Lopez.
The explicit benefit: when a guard isolates a big (like Lopez), he will often create a high-quality shot for himself. The additional benefit: when he takes his shot, the opposing big is distant from the basket and unavailable to rebound, which increases the probability of an offensive rebound.
This is even more evident on the opposing end when the Bucks are on offense. Phoenix is small. Besides Deandre Ayton, generally the Suns tallest player on the floor is 6’6-6’7. When the Bucks create a mismatch or force a defensive rotation to bring Ayton away from the hoop, they have a ripe opportunity for an offensive rebound, especially if Giannis is near the basket. Here’s a clip from Game 5 on Saturday:
Milwaukee has a lethal combination of three-point shooting and height. On almost all Bucks shot attempts, someone is well-positioned for an offensive rebound. Tough team to beat.
Tee Times
Leading into the Open Championship last week, golfers’ tee times became the subject of social media drama. Leaving the drama aside, the uproar presents an opportunity to discuss what I believe to be a legitimate issue in golf.
For context, at nearly every professional golf tournament on the PGA Tour, a player starts his tournament in either the morning or the afternoon for the first round and the opposite time for the second round. So his assigned tee times could be “Thursday morning - Friday afternoon” or “Thursday afternoon – Friday morning.” By the time players begin their rounds in the afternoon, golfers from the morning have already completed their rounds.
What if the wind blows at 5 miles per hour all week except for Thursday afternoon, at which point the wind blows at 15 miles per hour? The golfers who started their tournament on Thursday afternoon experience a distinct disadvantage.
Every week, I look at scoring data by tee time. Most weeks, the difference in scoring between the two tee time groups is negligible. Some weeks, however, the difference is significant. At the Wells Fargo Championship in May, players from the “Thursday afternoon – Friday morning” tee time group outperformed the “Thursday morning – Friday afternoon” tee time group by an average of more than two strokes due to weather conditions. An impactful difference! Of the players who finished in the Top 25 in the tournament, 18 teed off in the advantaged group, including Rory McIlroy who won the tournament.
All of this is to say, weather can be unpredictable. But tee times are not randomized! The golf governing bodies select tee times for players. The governing bodies tend to release tee times two days before the tournament commences. Imagine that 48 hours before a prestigious tournament starts, the forecast calls for heavy winds on Thursday afternoon. A few hours later, the tee times are released, and you find out that you will be teeing off on Thursday afternoon, while half of your competitors avoid the heavy winds because their rounds will conclude before the wind arrives.
If tee times were randomized, I could stomach being in a disadvantaged tee time group. But tee times are not randomized. This should change. The stakes are too high to leave career-altering decisions to someone in a back room with a pen. For a sport that prides itself on being equitable and rooted in honor, golf has a few blind spots.
Next Week
For next week’s edition of Finding the Edge, I plan to devote the entire newsletter to a discussion of the Ryder Cup. The Ryder Cup is a team competition in golf between the United States and Europe. Ryder Cups draw casual fan engagement, which is great. Ryder Cups also draw ill-informed takes from people within the golf world, which is not great.
I will address some fun strategy-related elements of the Ryder Cup like how players should be partnered in the event. If you have any questions you would like me to address, email me and I will do my best to address your question in next week’s edition.
Contact/Feedback
Email: Joseph.LaMagnaGolf@gmail.com
Twitter: @JosephLaMagna
Other Content from This Past Week
Giannis Antetokounmpo on his mindset:
Following a bad opening round at the Open Championship, Bryson DeChambeau blamed his equipment. He said that his Cobra “driver sucks”. In light of Bryson’s immature comments, a Twitter user made the following fake advertisement for Cobra:
