The Wall Street Journal - 04.04.2020 - 05.04.2020

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Saturday/Sunday, April 4 - 5, 2020 |A

ing year’s class.

It’s especially problematic

because of changes to the re-

cruiting calendar the NCAA

introduced in recent years. In

2017, it introduced an “early

signing period” that allows

top prospects to sign with a

school in December rather

than February.

But this year, a new NCAA

rule intended to depressurize

the recruiting calendar turned

February into a “dead period”

during which coaches were

barred from visiting or initi-

ating contact with recruits.

When the NCAA canceled

sports on March 13, it im-

posed another dead period

until April 15.

On Wednesday, the NCAA

extended the restrictions to

May 31 and left open the pos-

sibility of further extensions.

Recruiting for the Class of

2021 is on indefinite hiatus.

“This should not be a time

when people are focused on

competitive advantage and

one-upmanship,” said Pac-

commissioner Larry Scott in

an interview with The Wall

Street Journal on Monday.

The delay means that foot-

ball staffs have effectively

lost more than three months

of time to forge in-person re-

lationships with recruits.

At Ohio State, former head

coach Urban Meyer signed 21

players in December in 2017,

his final year of coaching in

Columbus.

In 2018, despite being

named head coach just 15

days earlier, Ryan Day signed

15. Last December he inked 24
    players, saying “that’s a full
    class right there.” Only one
    more player joined the roster
    on National Signing Day on
    Feb. 5, 2020.
    That trend was expected to
    accelerate across college foot-
    ball until the NCAA’s corona-
    virus-related cancellations
    materialized.

Short Season Gives Underdogs a Shot

WSJ Sports simulated the MLB season to figure out how radically a shortened year could change the playoff picture

SPORTS

Georgia football’s practice field sits empty in Athens, Ga.

JOSHUA L. JONES/ASSOCIATED PRESS

THE FIRST GAME OF THE

2020 college football season

is still five months away, but

the sport is already reeling

from the NCAA’s decision to

cancel athletics for the

2019-20 academic year.

Springtime gridiron tradi-

tions have ground to a halt

and the regular hum of the

recruiting cycle has fallen si-

lent. These disruptions could

change where and when pro-

spective athletes choose to

sign, potentially remaking the

balance of power in the sport

foryearstocome.

“There’s so much uncer-

tainty still,” said Dave Emer-

ick, Mississippi State’s senior

associate athletic director for

football. “We’re kind of taking

it one day at a time.”

Typically, the spring

months are a crucial evalua-

tion period in football. Pro-

grams hold practices and

stage intrasquad games to

preview their depth charts.

Freshmen who enrolled

early—a practice that is

strongly encouraged at pow-

erhouse programs—can get

up to speed with the play-

book far ahead of the season.

But a bigger problem may

be preparing for 2021 and be-

yond. College football coaches

who are paid to be good in a

recruit’s living room are in-

definitely barred from living

rooms thanks to the pan-

demic. They can’t fan out

across the country to coax

verbal commitments out of

elite prospects for the follow-

Gridiron Traditions Are Halted

Weather

Shown are today’s noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day.

City Hi LoW Hi LoW City Hi LoW Hi LoW

Today Tomorrow Today Tomorrow

City Hi LoW Hi LoW

Anchorage 41 35 c 41 26 sf

Atlanta 77 57 pc 79 58 pc

Austin 59 53 r 68 63 sh

Baltimore 62 46 pc 67 49 c

Boise 57 40 c 59 42 c

Boston 44 36 c 50 39 c

Burlington 53 40 pc 56 33 c

Charlotte 75 48 s 76 53 pc

Chicago 51 36 sh 53 39 s

Cleveland 58 43 pc 50 33 pc

Dallas 54 48 t 63 56 c

Denver 59 36 s 69 41 pc

Detroit 58 40 pc 55 33 pc

Honolulu 82 69 sh 81 70 sh

Houston 66 58 r 73 66 pc

Indianapolis 64 41 c 58 46 pc

Kansas City 50 35 s 62 54 pc

Las Vegas 77 56 s 76 54 pc

Little Rock 65 52 t 71 57 c

Los Angeles 70 58 s 63 55 r

Miami 85 69 s 84 71 pc

Milwaukee 48 33 sh 47 36 s

Minneapolis 47 30 pc 57 44 pc

Nashville 76 52 pc 76 53 pc

New Orleans 81 65 c 81 67 c

New York City 56 45 pc 58 46 c

Oklahoma City 54 40 s 65 54 c

Omaha 50 31 s 59 51 pc

Orlando 88 65 s 81 64 pc

Philadelphia 57 45 pc 64 48 c

Phoenix 85 59 s 85 57 s

Pittsburgh 62 45 pc 58 38 c

Portland, Maine 49 36 pc 48 37 c

Portland, Ore. 53 43 r 60 42 c

Sacramento 58 50 r 56 42 r

St. Louis 54 44 t 64 53 pc

Salt Lake City 64 46 pc 63 52 c

San Francisco 59 50 r 57 45 r

Santa Fe 65 39 s 68 40 s

Seattle 52 41 c 54 40 c

Sioux Falls 48 29 s 59 45 pc

Wash., D.C. 63 48 pc 68 51 c

Amsterdam 56 42 pc 67 49 pc

Athens 61 54 r 60 50 r

Baghdad 84 57 pc 87 65 c

Bangkok 99 83 pc 98 82 pc

Beijing 65 37 s 69 43 pc

Berlin 52 35 pc 60 43 s

Brussels 58 40 s 69 49 pc

Buenos Aires 76 64 s 76 59 pc

Dubai 93 75 s 91 71 s

Dublin 53 45 pc 58 41 sh

Edinburgh 53 42 pc 63 48 pc

Frankfurt 59 39 s 68 42 s

Geneva 60 39 s 65 40 pc

Havana 88 65 s 88 66 s

Hong Kong 75 66 t 72 65 c

Istanbul 53 48 r 51 46 sh

Jakarta 89 77 t 90 77 t

Jerusalem 76 65 s 77 52 pc

Johannesburg 61 50 sh 71 52 pc

London 59 45 pc 66 51 pc

Madrid 66 49 pc 63 53 sh

Manila 96 77 s 96 78 s

Melbourne 58 47 sh 60 49 sh

Mexico City 77 55 t 80 55 pc

Milan 66 42 s 66 43 s

Moscow 47 29 pc 40 25 pc

Mumbai 92 80 pc 92 79 pc

Paris 63 43 pc 70 48 pc

Rio de Janeiro 80 71 s 79 71 pc

Riyadh 91 67 pc 92 73 s

Rome 66 43 s 66 44 s

San Juan 86 74 pc 83 74 sh

Seoul 56 32 s 58 32 s

Shanghai 69 46 pc 59 48 pc

Singapore 89 80 sh 89 79 t

Sydney 80 56 s 75 56 s

Taipei City 68 61 r 68 61 r

Tokyo 67 52 s 54 46 c

Toronto 51 38 c 55 31 pc

Vancouver 48 37 c 51 37 pc

Warsaw 5130pc 5635s

Zurich 59 32 s 65 35 pc

Today Tomorrow

U.S. Forecasts

International

City Hi LoW Hi LoW

s...sunny; pc... partly cloudy; c...cloudy; sh...showers;

t...t’storms; r...rain; sf...snow flurries; sn...snow; i...ice

Today Tomorrow

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Memphis

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Kansas

City

El Paso Dallas

Billings

Portland

Miami

San Francisco

Sacramento

Orlando

Atlanta

HoustonNew Orleans

San Diego Phoenix

Los Angeles

Las

Vegas

Seattle

Boise

Denver

Mpls./St. Paul

St. Louis

Chicago

Washington D.C.

Boston

Charleston

Milwaukee Hartford

Wichita

Indianapolis

Cleveland

Buffalo

Austin

Helena Bismarck

Albuquerque

Omaha

Oklahoma City

San Antonio

Des Moines

Sioux Falls

JacksonBirmingham

Cheyenne Philadelphia

Reno

Santa Fe

Colorado

Springs

Pierre

Richmond

Raleigh

Tucson

Albany

Topeka

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Augusta

Ft. Worth

Eugene

Springfield

Mobile

Toronto

Ottawa Montreal

Winnipeg

Vancouver Calgary

Edmonton

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M

ajor League

Baseball’s

season was

supposed to

start last

week. Fans should already

be stuffed with $8 hot

dogs, $12 beers and jokes

about the New York Mets.

But Opening Day was post-

poned because of the coro-

navirus pandemic, and it

isn’t clear when the season

will begin—if it ever does.

Still, one thing is certain:

with every day that passes,

the 2020 season gets

shorter and shorter. And

while it may be impossible

to know exactly what MLB’s

season will look like, it’s

possible to answer a

slightly different question:

How would a shortened

season affect every team’s

chances of making the play-

offs?

The Wall Street Journal

ran a program to quantify

precisely this. From various

starting dates—beginning

on March 26, when Opening

Day should have been, and

then every two weeks after

that all the way until Au-

gust—we simulated the sea-

son 10,000 times for each

start date.

Tens of thousands of

simulations showed that, as

the season shrinks, the best

teams like the Los Angeles

Dodgers and New York Yan-

kees see their chances

plummet. Wild-card con-

tenders like the St. Louis

Cardinals and Tampa Bay

Rays see their chances

slide. Meanwhile, teams

that really have no business

playing playoff baseball in

a 162-game campaign—such

as the Chicago White Sox

and San Diego Padres—sud-

denly have a chance.

For example: In 10,

simulations of a full season,

the Los Angeles Dodgers

made the playoffs in 94% of

them, more than any other

team in baseball. But if the

season didn’t begin until

the end of July, the Dodg-

ers still made the playoffs

the most often, but only

70% of the time. By con-

trast, the Toronto Blue Jays

made the playoffs in only

2% of the full-season simu-

lations, but that number

leapt to 15% in a season be-

ginning late July.

There are a couple of

ways of understanding why

this is true. The first is

simply by looking at last

year. If the season lasted

only two months, it would

have looked radically differ-

ent. At the end of May, the

Washington Nationals were

24-33. That was the third

worstrecordintheNa-

tional League. But fortu-

nately for the Nationals,

the season didn’t end then.

They had the best record in

the NL over the rest of the

season, made the playoffs

and then buzzed past the

Houston Astros to win the

World Series.

The second way is to

take the idea of small sam-

ple sizes to an extreme. The

New York Yankees are one

of the best teams in base-

ball. The Baltimore Orioles

are one of the worst teams

in baseball. The idea of the

Orioles finishing the year

with a better record than

the Yankees is even more

ridiculous than an orange-

speckled blackbird grinning

and wearing a baseball cap.

But in any individual

game, or series, pretty

much anything can happen.

The Orioles can even beat

the Yankees. In fact, Balti-

more began last season by

taking two-of-three games

against New York. Over the

course of the rest of the

season, though, the Yan-

kees won the next 17 games

between these two teams

and won 104 games. The

Orioles won just 53.

Small sample sizes breed

randomness. Large ones

help eliminate just that.

And this simulation shows

how significant the effect

could be if and when MLB

picks back up again.

In the simulation, the

strength of each team was

determined by metrics on

FanGraphs, the popular

baseball data website. The

probability for each game

was determined by the pro-

portion of total team

strength between the two

teams, and the schedule

was determined by taking

the expected number of

games in a shortened sea-

son and randomly sampling

that many games from a

full season. Then each sea-

son was simulated 10,

times, each simulation be-

ginning two weeks after the

next, and voilà. We could

see how often every team

made the playoffs.

The simulation’s results

over the 162-game season

fell in line with popular

predictions. And as the sea-

son got shorter and shorter,

the results got wackier and

wackier.

After two weeks, the

Dodgers’ playoff chances

fell just a smidge from 94%

to 92%. Two weeks after

that, they were down to

91%. By the middle of May,

their chances slipped near

85% for the first time and

they continued to tumble

after that. With the season

starting in the middle of

August, they had fallen to

66%.

On the other end of the

spectrum, the helpless and

hapless received glimmers

of hope. The Seattle Mari-

ners made the playoffs 0%

of the time in the 162-game

simulation. But if the sea-

son began as late as Au-

gust? Well, then they’d at

least have a 5% shot.

No team gained as much

ground as the Texas Rang-

ers, who saw their playoff

chances rise 18 percentage

points to 23%. The Angels

were also big gainers, going

from 22% to 37%, and this

doesn’t even take into ac-

count the boost they could

get later in the season with

Shohei Ohtani’s return to

the mound.

Importantly, though, the

original favorites—teams

like the Dodgers, Yankees,

Astros and Twins—re-

mained the favorites. The

difference is that they be-

came less prohibitive favor-

ites. The top teams slunk

down while the bottom

teams crept up. Everyone

moved toward the middle.

Only one thing stayed in

each and every iteration:

The Detroit Tigers still had

a 0% of making it.

BYCONRADDEPEUTER

ANDANDREWBEATON

MATT YORK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Chicago White Sox and

San Diego Padres are unlikely

playoff contenders, but have a

better chance to make a run in

a shortened season.

BYLAINEHIGGINS

Source: WSJ modelling of Fangraphs data

EveryMLBteam’splayoffchancesbasedonlengthoftheMLBseason

NewYorkYankees

LosAngelesAngels

TheLosAngelesDodgers’chances

ofmakingtheplayoffsgofrom

93.5%iftheseasonbeganonthe

originalopeningdaydownto66%

withanAug.13startdate.

HoustonAstros

AshorterseasonbenefitstheTexasRangers

morethananyotherteam,increasingtheir

oddsby18pct.pts.

TorontoBlueJays

SIMULATED OPENING DAY

CHANCE OF MAKING THE PLAYOFF

100

0

20

40

60

80

%

April May June July Aug.