Why Watching Sports Together Can Build Stronger Friendships

Welcome, welcome to Wharton Money Ball. Welcome to a full hour of sports analytics here on the Wharton Podcast Network. This is Cade Massey hosting with two thirds of my usual collaborators. Shane Jensen and Eric Bradlow are both here, both in Philadelphia. Audie Weiner, we are expecting. He will slide in here sometime in the next hour, we believe. We're gonna run our usual program. We're gonna have a guest in the first half hour, open lines in the second half hour. This is being recorded on Tuesday afternoon as it usually is. We'll go up sometime on Wednesday.

We are three fourths, possibly three fourths of the way through the World Series. It could be a quick one. We'll talk about that in the second half of the show. First half of the show, Todd Rogers. First time guest, Todd Rogers. Todd is a faculty member, senior faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School. He's in my behavioral science community. I've known Todd all the way back to when he was a grad student. He is one of these academics who has a foot in the real world and a foot in academic research. He's been involved with increasing, things like increasing voter engagement and basically upping the participation and

decision-making around civic engagement in general. We have him on today to talk about an interesting recent project he has on sports and fandom and relationships. So this is one of our shows where it's a little bit adjacent to sports analytics. We're gonna be adjacent to sports and adjacent to analytics. Todd, welcome to the show. Thanks. Great to be here, Cade. Nice to meet you, Eric and Shane. Todd, a little background on you. You are a Philly guy. You've got some Philly Eagle love. You might have the most Philly Eagles love of anybody next to, maybe your tops. Maybe your tops of the, all of us,

I think. That is just, what an honor. I'm grateful. I'm from Philly and my kids only recently learned that they were not from Philly themselves, that they were born in Arlington, Virginia and Boston, Massachusetts, but they used to tell people they were from Philly until they learned that wasn't true. Well, you must have raised them intensely if that's where they thought they were from. So that's a good, that speaks well of your raising, Todd. Todd said in the pre-show that taking his children to the Super Bowl parade, I'm assuming that was the first Super Bowl parade,

was the best day of his life. With the kids, with the kids. Yes. I actually, one of the other high points was we went to, I go to game every year with my kids, my high school friends from Philly and their kids. And last year I called into WIP while waiting outside of Delisandros for a cheesesteak. And while talking on the Go Bird show, my son yells in the background, we're playing the Rams in the game that we went to last year. And my son yells in the background, Dallas sucks. And like, are you relevant to the game? And the host says, Todd, I just met

you, but it's obvious you're an amazing dad. And that was really, yeah. That sounds right. That sounds right. Okay. So we had Todd on because in the last year or two, he's begun this initiative, which Todd's described as being really focused on building relationships, building social connection, but it goes through sports. So that is an interesting idea. Todd, can you give us a background on it? Sure, yeah. I came at this honestly. I am a lifelong Eagles and Phillies fan, but every five or 10 years, I shift over to a new problem. And two years ago, I decided I wanted

to work on how to help people make, maintain, and strengthen relationships. And the goal in my lab is we'll come up with interventions that have a path to scale. Sometimes that's starting companies, sometimes it's policies. And so I read this book called, Fans Have More Friends by these guys at NFL Sports. I'm sorry, Fox Sports. And I was just totally moved by it. I was like, there's an infrastructure that we can harness to help people connect. And so despite, I'm not at this, at least I tell my school and my colleagues, I am at this not as a fan of sports, but because it's the best infrastructure for developing interventions to help people connect.

And so before passing it back, the motivation for why we should care about connection is we are in this connection recession that people have a hard time getting their heads around. All of your friends have friends. Just like the math of it works, that you don't, you're not friends with people who have no friends. But by some measures, we've gone from 3 % of people having no friends to almost 20% having no friends. And just this radical reduction in social interaction. And the idea is that sports fandom can be a powerful infrastructure for increasing social connection. Todd, say a bit more about how confident

you are that this is such a good mechanism. I believe y'all did some early research on other possibilities and this emerged as the single most effective way. Yeah, I mean, I thought about things like dog parks. Like I wanna know an infrastructure where people are and they can interact more and they can connect more. And dog parks or like youth sports sidelines. And those are all great. There's just not a consolidated vehicle for scaling those kinds of interventions that we could develop. Let me give an example of one. National Football League, every week, something between 90

and 100 million views. Half of those are by themselves. So about half of NFL viewers watch by themselves. In Major League Baseball, about 59% watch by themselves. So what we did was we did these experiments where we recruit people to watch, who plan to watch by themselves. And then we're like, hey, why don't you invite someone to watch with you? And then we do a little like, who would you invite? And just like very light touch. And we have incredible compliance. The control group, people who said they were gonna watch alone, when we re-interview them the next week, 20% watch with others.

Because you know, someone came over, you incidentally watch with someone else. The treatment group, 64 percentage points. Like more than triples the percent of people who watch with others. And in the treatment group, they feel more connected to others. They spend a lot more time in the company interacting with others. They enjoy it more than they expect. And then we watch it, and then we re-interview them weeks later. And the treatment group is still more likely than the control group to be watching games with others. The idea is it like catalyzes a chain of social interaction. And it's this infrastructure.

50 million people are watching football by themselves every week. And so we replicated this with Major League Baseball too. Where you get people who are gonna watch by themselves, and they end up watching with others. Okay, we got some questions. Eric, wanna get in first and then Shane. Yes, Todd, before we get into, let's call it fandom. I was just wondering, since you also study political parties and political engagement, I'm just wondering if the same principles that apply to connecting with sports teams also is part of your goal to get people to get out and vote and be more engaged in politics. Is it, are they basically just isomorphic problems

with different labels or what's unique about them? See, I think of them as very different in that like the way we get people to vote, we have a bunch of interventions we've developed that we think combined triple the effectiveness of get out the vote efforts. Little, we have some background noise. Sorry, with voting, we can like get people to make a voting plan. We can emphasize that lots of people are doing it. We can hold accountability. We're all sorts of like tactics, but what's special about fandom, and there are four engines of why fandom is great for connection.

It's an excuse to gather, right? To spend time in the company of others. That was that study described. Two, it's repeated ritualized seasonal gatherings. So we should be so lucky as to have another Taylor Swift tour in our lifetime. That was an awesome event, but we get another Eagles game like it or not next week. Probably dislike it. Wish it was over. I was at last night's game and I did not like it. Oh my God, please, can we end the season? But so it's excuse to gather. Repeated gatherings. The third is it's easy conversation in every

dimension from like staying in touch with your friends, like deescalating conversations, talking to strangers. We have a paper that showing that there's nothing more powerful for depolarizing Republicans and Dems than learning that they share fandom. Literally as powerful as shared religion, more powerful than shared race, shared hometown, shared education. Reason to gather, repeated ritualized, easy conversation. And the fourth is super powerful shared identity. Like it's just like it's two thirds of 75% of Americans say they are fans of one of the big three leagues, a team within it.

And two thirds of them say it's important to who they are, right? Like that's why I have, you know, this simulation of a Superbowl ring that we won, that we earned at my desk. Like it's ridiculous. It is objectively ridiculous, except that I show it to everyone who enters. Shame. Well, I guess when you're talking about social gathering, like I just wanted to kind of clarify, maybe it's obvious, but maybe it's not. I don't know. Like, are you mostly, like we're talking about like actually gathering in person with somebody else, right? Like what we're doing today is not really

social gathering, even though we kind of like, it's what we do to do the show. But like, you know, like you're defining this kind of the old school way of defining connecting and gathering, which is in person with other people. Is that right? I mean, I care about people feeling connected to others and being connected to others. And when I talk about fandom, I think that the four engines are actually IRL gathering, repeated ritualized seasonal gatherings, conversation and identity. But honestly, this would pass. It's not that normal. Although I think I would love to see it become more normal to Zoom or FaceTime

with people while watching games. We text with them. I think that's not as powerful for connecting as being visual and conversational, but it's better than nothing, which is like one of the powers of it. Like, I'm sure you all stay in touch with your high school friends and your family with, you know, and when the Knicks won, you have friends you hadn't been in touch with that you reached out and were like, you know, God clearly wanted you guys to win. That game four was ridiculous. You know, so like the idea is like, they all count.

I just, I mean, I just care about helping people feel more connected. Todd, can I just ask, maybe it's a moderator as a question. I would think with sports, like if I get together with people to watch sports, like I'm, for me, like I typically care about the sporting event. And so to me, maybe connecting with others is a secondary thing because I'm really interested. Is there some sort of optimality where it would be good to get people together where in some sense the event is an excuse to get together and people can spend more time socializing? How does that play into your work? Yeah, I mean, we're sorting this out.

I mean, you're exactly right. I think the cover story helps a lot. We ran the study for isolating men. I should say that the effects on social viewing, like watching with others, equal for men and women. It just turns out men watch alone more, but like conditional on watching alone, you get these giant effects for men and women. But we did this study on men where we were like, hey, imagine you meet a man, you like him. He's same age, you wanna hang out again. Would you send this message? And in one condition, it's nice meeting you. Let's hang out again. We should watch a game, one condition.

We should go for a walk, another condition. We should get dinner, another condition. And basically, as you would not be surprised, watching a game is totally normal and men are like 95% likely to send it if they're fans. Getting dinner and going for a walk, not cool. And moderated pretty deeply, pretty deeply by subscribing to masculine norms. There's like, you know, like there's a scale of masculine norms. And the more strongly subscribed, the more you're like, hell no, going for a walk? That's not something I would ever ask a guy to do.

Going to dinner, no way. And we actually even have these open, coming from other people's literature. There is research on this like idea of something being too gay. It turns out going for a walk is like seen by these really highly identified masculine men as super gay. And I had no idea. I go for it, that's my default. Eric, when I come to town, I'm probably gonna come stop by and ask you if you wanna go for a walk. Matter of fact, well, Todd, let me just say, by the way, to all the people out there, I do that all the time. When people come to meet with me, I say, why don't we go for a walk

instead? I think it's healthier and it actually is nicer. But I was just gonna ask you, it seems like there would be like, again, we go back to my example, suppose Adi and I were gonna get together to watch a Yankees game, right? And so because it's the Yankees, as opposed to we're getting together to watch the Sixers, let's say, we probably do a huge amount more talking in the Sixer game than we would in the Yankee game, unless we were talking about what was going on on the field. So do you find like in some sense, let's tie fandom now to getting together.

As you go to the extreme of the distribution of fandom, do people not in some sense like, I wanna be together, but I really don't actually wanna talk to you that much during the event? Yeah, I mean, so one, I wanna go back, that too gay is actually like, there's sociology literature, I'm not like describing it, people describe it that way. Two, yes, I learned this the hard way. One, I just want excuses for people to spend time together and especially men who are isolated, but everyone who doesn't interact with people. And two, different sports have different cadences that actually lend themselves to this.

Like I had no idea, I had no idea. Football, I host the party every Eagles game, even last night at that terrible game you were at. I host the party every Eagles game of every Eagles fan that I know, including randos I meet in the street. So if any of you come visit, and it's between two and 20 people with my kids. But the football and baseball are really well cadenced for conversation. And it's kind of, what I think is so interesting about it is it's three hours and people think it's like easy to watch, to do with people because there's a third

object we can focus on. And if I don't wanna continue talking to you, we can be like, that was awesome. Or we can just go back to watching the game. But it also has breaks. I hosted a party for the World Cup final. And I'm not a big soccer guy. I'm open to it. We chose to become Tottenham fans, which was dumb. And so we're becoming, we're like, I'm choosing. I actually just recently chose to be a Notre Dame college football fan. And it turned out that's awesome. Nice to see you, Todd. Nice to see you, Todd. Yeah. Where's soccer on the masculinity scale? I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know, but I'm gonna say very. I mean, these guys are incredible athletes. So, but I hosted a game and Eric, I think this is what you're getting at. Like I hosted a party for World Cup and I'm not a soccer guy. So I assumed we were just gonna be there. And we had 30 people and I'm wandering around chit-chatting, cooking. And there are six out of the 30 who were basically with their eyes and body language saying shut the hell up and let me watch the game. Yep. Yeah, I mean, I feel like for something like the Superbowl, especially if you have a rooting interest, you don't wanna be at one

of those parties where people are there to watch the commercials or to like, you know, like having to explain like, you know, like how football works to your aunt or whatever type of thing. Like, I think there's certain events where, you know, maybe you're not, you're in a certain kind of emotional zone where socializing is the last thing you want. So Todd, let me ask you a related question to that. How worried are you? I'll put on my vice dean of AI and analytics hat. How worried are you in a world of AI where jobs are gonna go potentially down in certain circles, where the amount of human

communication, a lot more people working from home, how much are you as a social scientist worried about the lack of connection and in some sense, you know, forget lack of purpose potentially without a job, but how about lack of connection? Profoundly, so much so that I've decided I'm devoting my entire research program to it. Like, we have this connection recession. We only say it's a recession because we have some benchmarks from the past, but either way, there are a lot of people who feel disconnected and there are consequences to disconnection,

which are political, their economic productivity, their health, physical health or mental health. So like, it's easy to call it a precursor to every important problem. And there's no structural reason to think it's getting better. And your AI concerns are one reason to think that it's not. What's cool about fandom is I'm in the process of trying to get in touch with the Pope because the Pope is a huge White Sox fan and I know he's unwell right now, but hopefully he will recover. And I put out to my newsletter and I have like, I'm interviewing a close friend, a high school friend of his next week, where like, I just wanna show no one is a fan alone.

Like, the reason these things are meaningful is because we talk about them with people and because people we care about, we associate with them. We grew up with them. And so like, it is an intrinsically social thing, even if you're watching alone. And so I just sort of like, I think that it's a little, as a business, it's a little protective. Let me just ask you one more question related to sports and analytics. Has any, like, if I were a team, whether it's an NFL, NBA, et cetera, is there any data that has suggested that players that are more connected or more social actually perform better? Like, should there be interventions for sports athletes

to not be isolated, let's say, off the court? I mean, there's nothing I know directly about athletes themselves, but there's tons of research showing that feeling connected and being connected increases your mental health and your productivity, things like that. But not that I know of narrowly of team performance. One of the things that I was mentioning to Cade in the origins of this discussion, a lot of the people, like I am a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles and I'm a fan of the Phillies. I'm also now a Notre Dame fan. And I care as a fan about the team and team operations and team performance and

winning. But actually this is sort of like an interesting, I didn't realize until going a year into this, I actually am not talking about team operations. I'm talking about basically what would be within the building considered business operations. It's fan engagement and fan cultivation. And it's sort of like interesting, which is like I as a fan only care about team operations. And so since I came about this, like I said, honestly, like I really, from the perspective of connection, I'm thinking how do teams, leagues and fans get more value, social connection value out of their fandom. Todd, give us an example or two of

your ideas in that space. At Wharton, we obviously have lifetime customer value. We have lots of optimization around revenue and lots of tools for those guys to use. But this is a different margin you're working on. You're talking about maximizing fan community and engaging with each other, not just more merch. What are your ideas? I know you talked to some clubs here and there. What's on your short list of best ideas for a club to use to do that, to build community? So I'll do two real quickly. And we have like a list of 15 or 20.

And the life, the next seven years, we're doing research over the next two or three years. Fox Sports sponsors my lab and so does Major League Baseball. And then, and I work with teams in all the leagues. But the research, I've got a book coming out in 18 or 24 months on like, from the fan perspective of how we get, like how fandom is an engine for connection. And then three to seven years out, the goal is I want teams in the leagues to come to think that in addition to selling entertainment and winning, they're also selling connection and belonging.

And that is that they often use that language. But when you talk with them, like the way they think the metaphor is a hub and spoke, it's connection to us, connection to our players. And it's actually, rather than that, it's actually a web connecting fans to each other. And it increases fan attachment. How else could there be Jets fans, right? Like it can... What, what? I don't think that, I don't think you picked the most socially connect. I mean, that's, in terms of social connectivity, I feel like that's gotta be an outlaw

here. Oh, they share a hatred of the Jets to explain an embarrassment. They share a lot of common feelings. But I say that only as that, like the meaning is social. So one example would be this, people should watch with others. One, it's in the interest of the teams at least, because actually half the people people invite to watch with them, we're not going to watch otherwise. So it actually, like, it increases attachment to the team, it increases viewership. There's things in the stadium, one of the things the White Sox did that I love, which brought me on the Pope, is they did Pope Night, where they had Father Tom Hurley, who's a friend of the Pope's, lead

a sign of peace thing that they do in the Catholic Church, where they, during one of the breaks between innings, they had fans as an activity, stadium-wide, meet the fans near them and shake hands. And by all measures, it was a huge success. Now the White Sox, I've talked to them about it, you know, they would love to make it a ritual in a respectful way that doesn't seem like they're, you know, somehow diminishing. And so they're working on how we make it a regular thing, because fans have asked for it. But regardless, like, things like that in the stadium. Outside the stadium, I think it's a funny

thing, the way we think about merch. Like we think about merch as an incredibly profitable item that we sell. But I have yet to meet a team that actually takes seriously that we want our fans to be wearing the merch out in the world so they can connect with each other. And like, oh, you're a Spurs fan too? You know, like, the Spurs, I take as an example, because they're like, among all the NBA teams, they've been dominated with global players. Like, you got to think that there's no team more popular in France than the Spurs. And like, you could imagine, like, it helps

people connect. If I'm wearing a hat, it's like wearing a sign that says, talk to me about the Spurs. It literally is like wearing a sign saying, talk to me about it. It invites the social world to interact with me. And so I don't know, there's like two categories, but we have a whole bunch of them. We want to test them all. And we're working to test them. Adi wants to jump in here. Yeah, I just read a book called Homestand recently. Have you read the book or seen it? The book is called Homestand. It's about a minor league baseball team in Batavia, New York.

And it's really about the people who go to it. And what's striking about this book, it's actually a town that used to have a minor league baseball team, and now they have a collegiate program, which they invited because the minor league system, the major leagues cut the minor leagues so drastically. And a lot of these small towns lost their major league baseball team. But they would sell out 2,000 games, 2,000 people to about 30 games a summer. And the people who came to it, I got a feeling after reading the book, don't even like baseball. They just like going to the game. And it's this remarkable book that talks about

how the stadium and the minor league part, which is not even affiliated minor league part, creates these connections between disparate people. There's two women who come from Buffalo, it's about an hour drive, to watch every game. And they don't even like sports, yet they're extraordinarily dedicated to the community and the team. I mean, they root for the team, clearly. But it's a remarkable... I read the book, and I thought I was reading a baseball book, but it turned out to be a book about communities and connections. And what it taught me was the importance

of the sports team to the small town, particularly in the vast America where people have a hard time connecting with each other and the role that the sporting environment played, but the live sporting environment, not the television. If I look at my friends here, I don't think we've ever watched a game on TV. We've gone to many games, football and certainly a lot of baseball, together, but we've never watched them. But I think that going to the game is where we see the connection. I do watch the Eagles with a lot of friends, typically, and that's because it's only

eight times a year. It's easier. Well, it's even more than that if you watch it every week. But I don't do it to every game. It's just sort of manageable. With baseball, I almost never do, because I kind of watch most games, and it's just too hard to work that in. Would you be actually imagining that we should try that? I mean, I actually would. Try what? Try to actually reach out to people to watch baseball games together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you should. I hear that, guys. And so here's the flip of it is you'll feel a little more connected. It's also a public service. It's a welfare-improving thing to increase people's

connection with each other. But speaking of minor league, my lab ran a ton of experiments this summer in the Worcester Red Sox, the Woo Sox. And initially, all of our experiments—the best job any RA has ever had is to spend the summer at the Woo Sox running randomized experiments for us. And the first bunch were basically useless, because we tried to improve the experience in the stadium. And the problem was 80-plus percent were already at seven out of seven enjoyment. Like people, it is just this. And they are getting 4,000, 10,000 people five times a week in Worcester, Massachusetts.

And it is just overflowing with joy, because it's an excuse for people to get together. I'm sure many of them love the team. I'm sure many of them just come love hanging out with their friends. But the one thing that we did get to work was when we gave up on improving the experience. And we're like, OK, so it turns out most people are texting other people outside of the game about them being at the game, pictures or whatever. And we're like, OK, why don't you pull in a new person that you haven't been texting with and send them a picture or say you wish you were here or whatever.

And for every 10 people we suggested that to, treatment versus control, we had eight new outsiders brought into the game. And you can see how this is both an excuse for them to connect outward, but also brings attention to the team and is probably good for the marketing of the team. But the case I would love to make is that it is in the business interest of these teams to think about how do we help fans connect with each other in addition to connecting with us, but connecting with each other about us, because it helps them connect. It also increases their lifetime fan value.

Well, why don't we wrap it there, Todd? We know you have a meeting to run off to, and that's a great note. It takes us all the way back to your political science work before grad school and during grad school where you've got a cause, but you're actually running experiments to figure out the best way to advance it. So you've got a cause here, but again, you're running experiments to figure out which is the best way. Todd is professor at the Kennedy School at Harvard. He has a new initiative up there on fandom and sports, and we very much appreciate you making some time for us, Todd.

Thank you, guys. Great talking to you. Absolutely. Todd Rogers, that has been the first half of Wharton Moneyball. We still have a half to go. Come back and join us after the break. Welcome back. Welcome back to Wharton Moneyball. Welcome to the second half of this week's show, last show of October. Whole crew in here. Adi slid in, top of that first half, visiting with Todd Rogers, behavioral scientist, Harvard Kennedy professor, longtime friend of, in my community, my research community. I'm doing some cool stuff. Fan analytics, but really about social connection, different

kind of fan analytics. It's going to be interesting to see what happens with that over the next few years. Guys, Brewers, what, eight, two runouts last night in a row, eight, two runouts all off of singles and doubles, something like that. Was that just complete craziness? 3-0 lead, 3-0 lead for the Brewers. How are you feeling about it? Yeah, it's, go ahead, Adi. No, I watched, you know, I watched some of the first, the second two games, yesterday's beginning of the blowout, it competed with the Eagles. And actually I had people over who didn't want to watch the Brewers. It was kind of tough.

I was wanting to flip back and forth, but the Eagles were, I guess, the bigger draw for the normal folks. And I watched Saturday night's game. The thing about the Brewers is that they just, it's just, it's not with homers. It's not with the, the way that I've been watching baseball team score runs by watching the Yankees and the Phillies. That's how they do it. Certainly the Yankees do it. So it is almost a shocking experience. And I'm, I'm deeply wondering, like, how did they do it? Right. I mean, and I was, I was actually, I was working out this morning and there's

someone in the gym I know who's a big baseball fan and he was raving about the Brewers. And I said, let me ask you a question. Before the season, did you know the names of any of the Brewers players? I mean, there's Christian Yellich. All right. All right. And he said, well, I'm really into fantasy baseball, so I guess. But I'm not really exceptional. But bottom line was, who are these people? You know, it's not the megastars that are contributing this. And how did they pull it off? And is this the start of a new direction, a new money ball-like direction in

baseball that, that has adapted because everyone else went another place and they've decided that there's value here? I mean, I think it is a natural direction to kind of, I mean, so many of the big teams, you know, like the expensive way to invest is signing the guys that hit a ton of home runs and strike out a bunch and all the big boppers or whatever. So I think there's a natural direction running, you know, perpendicular to that or whatever, which is focusing on people who still get on base and kind of grinding out at bats and stuff like that.

And, you know, kind of playing defensive baseball. So, yes, I think some of these small, you know, I mean, the Raisin Brewers, I think actually have a very similar style of team to each other in that same way. Whether it's like, kind of like, you know, whether this is going to now sweep the major leagues and teams are going to swing more towards this direction, or whether this is going to be kind of continue to be the low budget direction of kind of, you know, keeping up with the high team, big spenders. So, Adi, let me just add a couple, a little bit of data to what you said.

So apparently there's a statistic. I've never heard of it, but now I have called the O-swing percentage. It's percentage of swings outside the strike zone. The Milwaukee Brewers are number one in MLB in terms of swing at the least number of pitches outside the strike zone. I asked large language models. Are Yankees like Red Sox 32 and 31 in that? I'll look into this stuff and right now it's only listing the top five and I'm going to tell you the Yankees and Red Sox ain't in there. Let's focus on good teams. But it's correlation with scoring is 0.4. That's not bad.

That's not, I mean, it's not 0.4. It's not bad as a single statistic. That's not so bad. So again, I just thought maybe to your point, what I was always thinking was that there's no quote unquote easy ouch from the Brewers because they're just not swinging at bad pitches. Remember when we had Petriello on a couple of weeks ago, we asked him about that exact issue. It came up and I asked him about how do you get that? It seems like how much better can a player get over time? And his answer was mostly it's individual traits and the Brewers have identified those people and

brought them on board. So that's an interesting, that was interesting insight to me that is more fixed than it is trainable. I'm sure. I think you can just, I mean, I assume, I'm sure you've looked at this too. I mean, people's batting average, you know, if they're pitters, not let's just get just outside the strike zone. If their hitters are able to better identify the zone in which pitches are coming through, then that's got to give them a huge advantage. Like, I don't even know, I'll look this up while we're talking. Maybe their batting average on balls in play is higher too.

I don't know. I mean, another thing where the Brewers have really stood out in their excellence. And again, I don't know if this is something that they were, I mean, how much you can intentionally build towards this versus just catching lightning in the bottle, but they're like relief pitch. Their bullpen has been absolutely dominant. And I think again, we're seeing like, I kind of hearken, I think about like, you know, their kind of style of baseball is like, have we cycled through this before? Do you remember those Royals teams like a decade ago that all I can remember from

them is they had amazing relief pitching and they grinded out at bats and like, they didn't have any stars. Um, yeah, I mean like maybe in retrospect, Salvador Perez counts, whatever. But like, you know, I, I, I think, I wonder if this is kind of like, this is like going to kind of be this constant, like under team kind of trope or what, like, you know, like not, you know, undervalued trope that you can kind of win this way by constructing teams cheaply. Just two quick things. One, I was right again, the Brewers are number one in BABIP.

They are the number one team in the major leagues on batting average on balls in play at a 316 bat. So they don't swing at bad pitches. They have the highest batting average of balls in play. And yeah, but by the way, let me just comment the top, you know, teams, the Brewers, the Pirates, the Marlins. So this is what you're talking about, Shane, which is, you know, if you can't afford all the big home run guys, you better have plan B don't swing at bad pitches. Get balls in play, play good defense, you know. So let me make the, you jumped to balls in play percentage with the logic that

it's probably more likely to be successful if you get contact, if the ball was a strike than if it wasn't a strike. Yes, yes. And if your players are, and if their players are better able to identify the zone in which a pitch is, then both outside the stroke shown and within, like if Adi knows he's good at hitting pitches on the inside half of the plate, then he's going to swing at more of those. You're saying zone within, within the strike zone, the area within the strike zone. And I think it's also like, it seems like every Brewers hitter that goes up, they

have like a plan for the at bat. They're not just swinging away. I mean, and I'm not going to slam the Yankees too much. I know the Yankees are like this too, but the Red Sox too. It's just like swing for the fences every pitch. There's no like two out, two strike like plan, like strategic within at bat, like kind of elements to their hitting game that just like, I think the teams that have the big boppers and just swing for the fences ignore. But related to that, I was curious, Adi, you're such a traditionalist and you're talking about

how different the experience is watching the Brewers play than your typical Yankees. Is it more appealing? Do you like it better? I absolutely like it better. I like it a lot better. And actually reminds me a lot more of what baseball in the, you know, in the seventies and eighties used to look like, where it wasn't so many home runs. There were lots and lots of singles, doubles. Batting averages were much higher then. And I don't know what the, I don't, I mean, Eric, you can look up what the Brewers actual batting average is, but one of the things that the Brewers are doing, obviously they're striking out less. The batting average on ball and play is,

is a lot higher or they're the highest average probably because they're on the ground and they, and they don't have slow guys, right? So ground balls turn into, and if you have fast guys on the ground, especially turn into hits at higher rate without a doubt. And because remember batting average in ball plays excludes homers. So if you're a team that hits a lot of fly balls, they go out, they don't count in your batting average on balls and play. So that's probably why they have a batting average in ball and play that's high because

they're hitting them on the ground, which is actually exactly the opposite of what the tradition, you know, this new wave of hitting approach, because it was just sitting on an upswing and get to lift the ball and pull the ball. And because you get more power that way, more, all this is all likely to hit home runs and they're doing exactly the opposite. And the game is certainly a lot better. Although there is something for the Yankee side of it. There is something magical to know that there's a guy who can tie it up with

one swing and just about everyone who comes up and that the home run is still the most exciting single batting event in baseball. And, and they do have a lot more weight individually. So I hate to see no home runs, but certainly. Remember we had even the brewers in the, in this post season have had unbelievable legendary home runs, right? I mean, I'll agree with the Audi, but put a slight, a slight, a footnote on it is that the home run is still the single most exciting event, but unfortunately it is negatively like it, like it, it come the type of player that hits that a lot also strike out a lot, which is

the one with the least exciting. It's kind of like, you know, kind of comes players that are kind of all or none in general. Guys. I want to, I want to, I want to know that, you know, these guys didn't come out of nowhere, not by a long shot, right? So one, they've invested heavily in analytics. They have one of the biggest staffs in all of major league baseball, despite being a small market team. And then two, they have been over-performing pre-season expectations for 10 years. In the last 10 years, they are the single most over-performing team. It has been built up.

And so this is organizationally, we have to keep in mind, these things take a long time to build and they're making decisions. Hold on, Eric. They're making decisions now that you would never have made had they not built up these capabilities for eight years. Had they not built up decision-making processes, certain philosophies, it's a, it's a cumulative long -term process that put them here. Yeah. I was just going to add that if you, and so maybe obviously this will tie this up. If you look at a bivariate scatter of batting average on the X-axis, home runs on the Y-axis, not shockingly, the team

that's kind of outside the Pareto frontier or the frontier is Los Angeles Dodgers. They have both a very high batting average and a large number of home runs. And so that's, of course, you know, in some sense, when you can spend $400 million a year, whatever the number is, you get the best of both worlds. And when you don't have $400 million to spend, maybe as Shane said, you go for more walks, you go for better on base percentage, you go for, you know, players that have, and by the way, we have no idea, this is something we could look at, whether that's a consistent individual level trade over

seasons. Like, do people just have a good eye and does that persist across seasons? Oh, I think they do. I think that's something that they've studied, that has been studied, that in fact, that's one of the things that, that the knock on some of these free swingers is they just don't have a good sense of the strike zone. And that leads them to swing on a lot of bad pitches. And the question mark would be, can you train them to be different? And I like what you said earlier, Cade, that this is something Petriello had pointed out, this might be an individual trait and meaning that it's this ability to know the strike

zone obviously can change a little bit, but it's kind of who you are. And maybe the brewers were smart and saw people earlier on and undervalued, didn't have that high ELO exit VELO that you might be looking for and yet had a great sense of the plate and went after those people because they were affordable and turned them into better versions of themselves. Marty, I can answer it. So according to fan graphs, here are the five highest statistics that have a cross-year correlation. So contact percentage, strikeout rate, the third, which you predicted, O-swing percentage is 83, 0 .83 cross-years. Power, they define it a certain way.

Then on-base percentage, as an example, is 0.6. So the third highest statistic that has a highest correlation year T to year T plus one is the O-swing percentage. As a matter of fact, it even says here, it's stickier than power. We're probably a little early in burying the rays. Following Shane's model, they have what, a six and a quarter chance or something or six and an eighth chance to get through yet. Did y'all see some stats that Tom Tango put around on X just a few hours ago? He said a 43 best of seven series where one team started three and 0.

In game four, that team won what percentage? All but one, I think. I don't want to talk about that one. No, no, the one the next game. He's talking about the final. He's not talking about just one. We're not talking about coming back to the whole series. All right, game four. I think most of them, maybe 33 or something, I guess, or three quarters. It's three quarters, which is no coin flip. But then interestingly, if it does go to games five and six, I mean, to games five through seven, the team that started three and O, what do you think they win? In games five through seven, if it makes it there, the team that started three and

O, what fraction of the remainder? That's a funny game, because if it's longer than the other pointing team has one more. Size bias there. Okay, so that helps explain the reversal, because it's 448. It's less than half. It's less than half. So you're conditioning. Adi is saying that's not reverse momentum. That's conditioning on having reached game six and seven. Your point is really clever, but it could be that most of those end in game five, which would give, which would. It's not. Well, you know, the weights go that way. The weights have to go. Anytime they don't, it would be more games,

because it would have to end. It would have to stop. Only one explanation. That's momentum. Go ahead. Momentum. But there is only one team who has ever lost being up three to O. We know. Yeah. Oh, yeah, we know. Some of us watch the highlights on YouTube every other day. Why don't you go take a walk, Shane, instead? Yeah, Shane, go for a walk by yourself. All right, guys, why don't we change gears and a couple other sports here. We are getting a little ripe on the college football season. Doesn't everybody beat everybody else in every game? I mean, didn't like BYU beat number one,

Notre Dame, and then just get. Yeah, they had to fly across the country and play Central Florida, and they lost, I believe, a double overtime, I think, against Central Florida. That's Bill C. Bill Connolly shared a few stats in one of his columns this week. He said that last week, we all know this, five of the top seven lost this week. Teams ranked two, eight, 11, 15, and 16 didn't just lose. They lost to unranked opponents. And we're left with only three unbeatens before Halloween for the first time in 23 years. So it is definitely, it feels very volatile. Fun, but volatile. It's the first committee rankings, playoff rankings come

out next week. So we're about a week away from seeing the first take on that. And we're ready for it's going to be an interesting season, these weekly updates. But I looked at the call sheet probability odds as just get a sense of things right now. And the conference breakdown is interesting, guys. I think even at this early stage, we can get a sense of where the controversy is going to be. Because some conferences are really clear and some conferences are really messy. So for example, G6 will only get one team, obviously. Independents will only get one team.

Obviously, that'd be Notre Dame. Those, Notre Dame is very likely. It's one of the most likely teams to make it, 81% by call sheet right now. ACC only really has one team, Miami, 94%. They're the most likely on call sheet to make the playoffs. And so G6, ACC, Independent is three of the 12 spots. That leaves nine spots between the two big conferences, Big 10 and ACC, and then the Big 12, which is always kind of clamoring for extra spots. It turns out Big 10 is pretty simple right now. Indiana and Ohio State are both highly likely to make the playoff. That means that they're good teams that barely lost and they have relatively light schedules going

forward. So very likely to make those two. But it also means, Cade, the historical year. I see Wisconsin lower on the list. But it also means there's no Michigan, there's no Penn State. So it's actually, the Big 10 from a number of teams perspective, you would know, it's considered, I would say it's down this year, which is going to lead more, it might be more SEC teams, I guess. That's right. So there's really only, I mean, unless Wisconsin makes a big push, UCLA is the third most likely in the Big 10. And it's more likely than not, which is

surprising. It's shocking preseason. You'd never expected UCLA at over half, 56 % chance at this point of the season. And one of the things they have going for them, they just have a super light schedule from here on. They're undefeated right now, one of three left. And they have a super light schedule going forward. So I think you could almost pencil in Ohio State, Indiana, and UCLA for the three Big 10 spots and nobody else. And that's where the tension comes. That means that six teams between the SEC and the Big 12. And there'll just be hell about debating, you're going to take five SEC teams in one

Big 12, or are you going to have a second Big 12 team knock out like a one loss Utah, knock out a three loss LSU? That's the kind of debate that we're headed towards. Good. It'll be interesting. There's like eight teams in the SEC that are probably good enough to make the play. Oh, so this will get a lot easier next year when they expand to 24 or whatever, right? Oh, what a mess. What a mess. I mean, already- We're going to have 64 and it's going to be an NCAA, you know, December or January madness. This is already- We'll still be playing in March so they can just like flow

right into the basketball. But literally, we already heard, I heard the guys on the Audible in their Sunday show say, all Texas has to do is just make the playoffs, just get to the playoffs. They were saying, look, we're sitting here at the end of October, three months away from the final. It's, you know, two months ago, we barely started the season. The final is still three months away. Just make the playoffs. The team's going to be different. Everything's going to be different. Then just get in there. They're saying that when it's a 12 team playoff. Imagine when it's 24, it's just even more

the case. It's like whatever you got to do, just sneak in and then a whole different season unfolds after that. Can Texas, I apologize, Texas has two losses right now? Yeah. So they could afford to lose to, for example, in your mind, Cade, if they beat Mississippi State, Missouri, Arkansas, A&M, but lose to LSU, they're going? Yeah, I think most people would put them in. People think that of all the three, if they get three losses, they'll have the best record of three losses, the best resume for three losses. People think that if they can make, if they can, if they can get by, I

mean, that was a lot of wins there. Missouri is utterly reasonable team. A&M is an utterly reasonable team and LSU is downright scary. So nine and three is going to be an accomplishment, frankly, between here and there. Okay. Yeah. The sense is that they will make that. And look, what I just said was six teams between the big 12 and SEC. And that means, I mean, there's no way the big 12 is going to put three teams in. So at the most, it would be two. That means that a minimum SEC is going to put in four. That's kind of where things are shaking out so far. But that's the tension.

It's going to be two big 12, four SEC or one big 12, five SEC. That second big 12 versus the fifth SEC, I'm predicting right now, five weeks, six weeks before, man, that that's going to be the debate. Second big 12 versus fifth SEC. All right. And it's going to be like a two loss gap between the one loss records. And that's why it's going to be an interesting debate. All right, guys. Let's take a look at the, well, let's say, what do we got coming up on this week? The big one, guys, the big week is next week with Notre Dame and Miami facing

off. It's Miami's only real game. But that's a week away. This next week, we've got some games, nothing terribly interesting. We have a bunch of interesting, like Rose Bowl, like the old Rose Bowl, where you had the Big Ten go out and play the Pac-12. So USC is hosting Ohio State. It's like a beautiful, amazing Rose Bowl. Also, Northwestern's going to Oregon. And Lincoln and Nebraska and Washington are playing. Nebraska-Washington will be a fantastic Rose Bowl. So we got these three Rose Bowl matchups this week, if you want to. Does the line of six and a half Ohio State-USC seem right to you?

Like, would Massey, Peabody, would it? I mean, that seems low. USC is better than you think they are. I guess that's where that's coming from. But no, more importantly, more importantly, Julian Sayan is out, the quarterback for the Ohio State. Oh, yeah, I saw him get injured. So until we see what kind of quality those... They always have high-rated guys, but they haven't played. And so that's... Ohio State's down. USC's dangerous. USC's dangerous. So we'll see. Why don't we talk about NFL? We're just through a bad loss by the Eagles last night. Great game, bad loss. Not two great teams, but now the Eagles

are sitting like two and five or something. Really sad, tough beginning of the season. What else around the NFL? Guys, I sat through the worst half of football I've sat through in many years. I went to the Baltimore-Cincinnati game. That was a two halves. You had a good half and a bad half. So happy after halftime. So happy. Good conversation. And then five straight touchdowns in the second half by Cincinnati. I still need to explain to me what can happen with a defense like that. That's just unbelievable. And that was... I was there. It was ugly. Yeah. The Sunday night game, I thought, was an

incredible, very impressive defensive display. It's the first time in the Chiefs-Mahomes era that they never made it to the red zone. Isn't that a crazy stat? Wow. The Chiefs didn't even make it into the red zone the entire game. Remember, that was the line that jumped out to me last week. I'm like, why is that line so short? Not even short. The Seahawks are a favorite. I was just having a hard time getting my head around that just because I'm not paying enough attention, I guess. And there we go. I think we're still at the part of the season where, depending on the schedule path

a team has taken thus far, the narratives can shift on them a lot. I mean, you looked at KC's record at 5-0, and you're like, oh, here's another March the Super Bowl. But they played the Dolphins, and I think it's these kind of games. We're finally starting to accumulate actual tests of games like this. Maybe Seattle certainly looked quite exposed against Seattle. We'll see how they do against Denver the second time around next week. Same thing like the Bears-Patriots game on last Thursday night. I mean, it was a tough loss for the Patriots, but at least these are the real games that actually test you as opposed

to some of the ugly ones. Shane, you know, in college football, they play a whole season, and they'll have very unbalanced strength of schedules. In pro, it is so closed. It's not completely closed, but it's more closed, and it's philosophically balanced. And so over the course of a season, it's not as disparate as you might—and people can't really whinge too badly about the record, about the difficulty. But midseason, they can be really unbalanced, like you're saying. That's where you see huge disparities, and so you're right. It really helps to keep an eye on that as you're trying to figure out whether the team is as good or as bad as they look.

The two things just quickly that caught my eye on the NFL, obviously, from last week were the Buccaneers' rout of the Panthers at Panthers. And Baker Mayfield came back, but they scored 43 points but only threw for 71 yards. Is that right? Yeah. They only threw 11 times. Didn't they have like a kick block for a touchdown or something? No, no, it was a kick block for a two. They blocked an extra point for a two. They ran one back, but I'm just saying their defense essentially scored 30 points in the game. So look, the difference between a two and

five team, like the Eagles are two and five and they're done, right? And they're playing Tanner McKee, the receivers, everybody's out. Well, I don't know. In that division, nobody's done. Well, I think... I guess which is maybe the argument you're going to make about the NFC South as well. Well, that's the argument I was going to make. I mean, the Buccaneers now have beaten the Panthers. That's the only division game they've played. They're now home to the Falcons this week, which now turns out to be a massive game. Well, yeah, but don't run past that. Falcons went and took care of 49ers. I mean, I understand, but if the Bucs

can win that game, they're three and five and they're back in the division. The other comment I would make is that this coaching job that John Harbaugh has done with the Giants is... I understand it's early in the season, but I'm going to tell you, he's turned that franchise around and I'm going to say something else. They have a quarterback controversy now because if J.J. McCarthy keeps performing and they have Jackson Dart, what are you going to do then at the end of the season? I mean, you wish you only have that problem, but I'm just commenting that... Shane, I know you're smiling. It's not that obvious to me that Jackson

Dart will start next season as quarterback number one if J.J. McCarthy leads them to winning that division. Yeah, I mean, let's see if he... Again, another team where if you looked at their schedule and who they've played thus far, it's like... If you beat the Texans on the road, it's not bad. Well, I mean, based on records, the Texans are not legit either. I want to kind of pump the brakes on the J.J. McCarthy revival a little bit, but I think even if it's legit and he leads them to a division win at 8-7-1, whatever's going to win in that division, I don't think it'll be a controversy at all next season.

Jackson Dart, I think, would be back in. I think J.J. McCarthy will have played himself into a starting spot. He's maybe on the Sam Darnold redemption tour type thing right now where he could play himself into a starting spot based on the rest of the season. Yeah, or it could be a trade, as Kate's pointed out many times, quote-unquote worst -case scenario for the Giants. They have an extraordinarily valuable trade asset that they traded. They got a fifth-round pick they traded for him, and now all of a sudden he's back to where he was drafted and they get a first-rounder for J.J.

McCarthy. That wouldn't be a bad position to be in. No, it wouldn't. Are y'all surprised that the Ravens-Bills line is only three and a half? Ravens at Buffalo, early game Sunday, three and a half. That must mean Lamar's back, right? It better be. I mean, it will change if we find out Lamar's not back. I think that line, yeah, that must be predicated on Lamar being back. I mean, the Ravens have to be feeling puckered at four and three going to Buffalo and, you know, the rest of the division, Browns outperforming everything anybody expected, five and two.

Are you kidding me? Five and two Browns? Is every one of those teams in that division above 500? I think so. I think so. It would be, I think, both the North, in both the North divisions, right? I think the NFC North as well. Every team's above. Yeah, that's right. I think they're well above. I don't know what Pittsburgh, since he's four and two. Pittsburgh's five and two. Pittsburgh's five. I mean, I feel like you'd send the whole, skip the NFC East and send the entire NFC North to the playoffs based on the season so far. Shane doesn't even want the division winner in

the NFC East going. No, I mean, well, eight, seven, and one, they're going to be like, you know, the Panthers sneaking in last year. Somebody had to go from the NFC South. Shane, don't be ridiculous. We play 17 games now. You mean eight, eight, and one. Yeah, that's right. I'm trying to account for the tie. Guys, real quick. I was a rule evolution in the NFL. It's fun to watch those kickoffs in person. First time I'd been to a stadium since the kickoff change. And that's such a thoughtful, nuanced rule change. There's a lot of degrees of freedom in how you execute that. It just strikes me as one of the

more nuanced evolutions in football since we've been watching it. And it made me wonder, the big innovations, because they're naturally big early, and then they get finer as things get whittled down. When was overtime? I should have looked this up. Eric, you're our RA for this show, apparently. When was overtime invent? I think when we first – Shane, this is going to outdate you. I think when me, Eric, and Adi were watching as kids, there may not have been overtime. Am I making that up? No. Certainly, there used to not be two-minute warnings. Instant replay was barely a thing.

Yeah, I mean, the Patriots-Falcons game was the first Super Bowl to go to overtime, I think. Yeah, but that was way after they invented it. I'm thinking, how improbable is it that there's not been another one? But I, again – 1974. Yeah, see, there you go. In our lifetime, they invented overtime. There used to be ties. Ties in the NFL when we first started watching. That's kind of the dawn of when we watched, the dawn of it. But that was the thing. That's how far back these innovations, fundamental things, they're still relatively new, overtime. Anyway, I was impressed with the – I still am impressed with the kickoff, and I'm

waiting for college football to do it. College football desperately needs to make that change. And I'm waiting for the NFL to adopt the college football playoff overtime rules. Oh, that's interesting. Really? That would be great. I love college football's overtime rules. Even though it's so artificial, no? You don't think so? It's more like, I don't know, it's like a penalty shot kind of – it's almost a penalty shot level OT. It kind of smelled like second base runner or whatever to me. Whatever, I like the rules. All right, why don't we wrap it there?

That has been a full hour of Wharton Analytics – I mean, not Wharton Analytics. We don't mind. Sports analytics, including some Wharton Analytics. Here on Wharton Moneyball, for the whole crew, Shane Jensen, Eric Bradlow, Adi Weiner, this has been Cade Massey, for Jacob Grodnik, and the Grod Squad, who produces Deep Patel, who make the trains run on time. Many thanks to all you guys. Many thanks to the listeners. Appreciate you being here. Come back and join us next time. Between now and then, enjoy your sports.