Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Major Lessons From the Minor Leagues

May 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Dayton Dragons

We know—especially after viewing this graphic in Pacific Standard—what a lousy deal capturing a sports team can be for the municipal purse, especially if building a new stadium is part of the bait. What about a notch down, in the minors? Does having a team or a new stadium repay the rosy visions of small-town boosters seeking government subsidies to lure in a AAA franchise? According to a study by Nola Agha, an assistant professor of sports management at the University of San Francisco, they just may. Unlike their MLB uncles, having a minor league club in town may bring measurable ... Read More

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In 2013, MLB Races May Go Down to the Wire

March 31, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: JUSTASC/SHUTTERSTOCK)

The 2013 Major League Baseball season promises to be close and exciting, with highly competitive races in five out of the six divisions. That’s the prediction of mathematician Bruce Bukiet, who uses a complex formula to project how many regular-season games each team will win. An associate dean at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Bukiet has done quite well with his predictions over the past decade (although last year, he largely whiffed). For this season, he predicts only one blowout race: The American League Central Division will be dominated by the Detroit Tigers. He predicts ... Read More

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What Major League Baseball Is Doing To Keep Bats Inside the Diamond

October 24, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

“FORE!!!,” the classic warning that a golf ball is speeding in the direction of  your noggin, is not heard on baseball diamonds, but in 2008 it should have been. That was the year Major League Baseball recognized that with more and more bats breaking—2,232 in the last three months of the season—balls weren’t the only thing flying into territory fair and foul.  Ask fan Susan Rhodes, who was knocked into the operating room by a bit of broken bat at a Dodgers game that year. MLB’s four-year effort to solve the problem has resulted in reducing the number of splintered cudgels by ... Read More

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Numbers Point to a Tigers World Series Victory

October 23, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Mathematician Bruce Bukiet has good news and bad news for San Francisco Giants fans. The bad news: The New Jersey Institute of Technology professor, who uses a sophisticated mathematical model to predict baseball victories, says the Detroit Tigers “have a solid advantage” over the Giants in the 2012 World Series The good news: He gives the Tigers a 58 percent chance of beating the Giants in the best-of-seven series. Earlier, he gave the St. Louis Cardinals a 68 percent chance of beating the Giants to become National League champions. If this never-say-die team can beat those ... Read More

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Mathematician Predicted Yankees’ Success

October 8, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Before we get too deep into the playoffs, it's time to see how our favorite baseball guru, mathematician Bruce Bukiet, did with his season predictions. Since they're based on a sophisticated mathematical formula rooted in past performance, they're a good measure of whether a given team played above or below expectations. In the American League, Bukiet was pretty close. He predicted the New York Yankees would win the Eastern Division with 97 wins (they had 95), Detroit would win the Central Division with 96 wins (they had only 88, but still came in first), and Texas would win the Western ... Read More

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Hit By a Pitch: Vicarious Punishment in the Batter’s Box

April 4, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

The notion of “collective punishment” feels like it belongs to a different time, or at least a different culture. Unless you’re a soccer hooligan or caught up in some ancient religious and/or family feud, attacking someone to get revenge against the group he belongs to is generally considered off-limits. But a newly published study notes this dynamic is alive and well on the playing fields of the great American pastime. Researchers report “beaning” a member of the opposing team — deliberately hitting him with a pitch — is divorced in fans’ minds from the notion of moral ... Read More

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MLB Prediction: Cardinals to Lead NL in Wins

March 28, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Another Cardinals-Rangers World Series? It’s entirely possible, according to mathematician Bruce Bukiet. St. Louis fans may not have particularly high hopes for the 2012 Major League Baseball season, given the fact they’ve lost manager Tony La Russa to retirement and all-star Albert Pujols to free agency. But they have reasons for optimism, according to Bukiet, who has just announced his projections for the 2012 season. Bukiet’s model suggests the Cardinals should win 94 games — the most in the National League. He further predicts the Philadelphia Phillies and Arizona ... Read More

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In Baseball, Younger Siblings Steal More Bases

May 5, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Younger siblings are more prone to taking risks. That is a long-standing theory of University of California, Berkeley, evolutionary psychologist Frank Sulloway, who argues this behavior is a reaction to their relative lack of parental attention. The look-at-me hypothesis makes intuitive sense, and evidence for it was presented in a study of economic behavior last year. But proving its validity to skeptics would require finding a controlled setting where personality traits are exposed in clearly measurable ways — like a baseball diamond. In a paper just published in the journal ... Read More

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Professor Predicts Baseball’s Best Teams for 2010

April 5, 2010 • By • 2 Comments

The Yankees lost Sunday night’s season-opening game to the Red Sox, but Bronx baseball fans can nevertheless look forward to a very satisfying season. At least, that’s the projection of New Jersey Institute of Technology mathematician Bruce Bukiet, who has used his number-crunching abilities to predict MLB division winners for the past decade. Bukiet’s revised predictions for the 2010 season, posted on his Web site just before opening day, suggest the Yankees, winner of last season’s World Series, will again dominate the sport. According to his calculations (prepared with Kevin ... Read More

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Baseball’s Best Teams Are … 2009 Edition

April 1, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

Baseball fans on the East Coast have an exciting season to look forward to, with division championship races going down to the wire. That's the prediction of mathematician and Mets fan Bruce Bukiet, who has just released his forecast for the 2009 Major League Baseball season. If Bukiet’s model proves accurate, the Western Division races should be far less interesting, with the two Southern California teams — the Angels and Dodgers — easily winning in their respective leagues. The National League Central Division also looks uncompetitive, with the Chicago Cubs finishing far ahead of ... Read More

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