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“If you charge slightly less when Kyle Lohse is pitching, they will come.”

In 2011 the Cardinals will become the newest team to experiment with dynamic ticket pricing software. Teams already price tickets differently based on day of week and opponent, but last season the Astros and Giants started using a software program that raises and lowers unsold ticket prices every day based on factors like weather forecast, number of available seats, and pitching matchups(!).

From my perspective, which is that of someone who likes to read books about scientists, this is awesome. Granted, it wouldn’t make much difference to teams that sell out almost all of their games far in advance. But it’s just cool technology, and for most Major League teams dynamic, daily-adjusted pricing could create value for both fans and the franchise. There’s never a good reason for a seat to be empty when someone outside would like to see the game. Of course, the flipside is that people who can’t pay a lot may be stuck attending lower-quality games, at least if they wait until the last minute to buy tickets.

I know purchase prediction models are used in many industries, but I’m really curious about the baseball manifestation. Is the model in Houston significantly different than the model in San Francisco? The interplay between weather, traffic, ticket price, throwback uni day, competing entertainment options, etc., and ballgame attendance must be different in different cities. I also wonder how something like NERD score would do at projecting demand for baseball tickets.

However, taking the perspective of that famously cynical breed, Cardinals fans, I’d have to say this sounds suspiciously like… well, Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III said it for me:

“It’s something that people are familiar with in other industries, such as the airline industry, where prices are floating based on factors that change over time.”

Modest recommendation for Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III’s press officer: When next your leader is rolling out a new service model to fans, it may not be optimal to volunteer an analogy between that initiative and the airline industry.

Sometimes teenage prospects turn into Pedro Martinez, but not usually.

In October, Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times wrote two articles about Major League Baseball’s increased efforts to regulate the signing of prospects in the Dominican Republic (here and here). He also suggested that 2010’s new regulations are why Dominican prospects are signing more slowly and for smaller bonuses than they did in 2009. Yesterday, Schmidt published a piece about one group of people that is still bullish on the Dominican prospect market: private American investors.

These investors, unaffiliated with established sports agencies or Major League teams, are working with Dominican trainers or setting up their own baseball academies in the Dominican Republic. In exchange, they get percentages of the signing bonuses of any financed players who sign with Major League teams. Schmidt’s article on this interesting phenomenon is worth checking out. Sports Illustrated also reported on one of these academies this April, and Time Magazine had a broader piece about the Dominican baseball economy this July.

There are obvious ethical questions around Major League Baseball’s relationship with the Latin American prospect market, where teenagers are trading school for steroids and a small chance at life-changing wealth. By putting more money into that marketplace, private American investors may be encouraging more kids to leave school for a dream that will never come true. You could alternatively argue that more American money means more money going to those same kids, but I wonder how much of it makes it to them.

Thanks to commenter Bryz, who posted a link to these jerseys in the comments section of a previous post.

This is one of three player jerseys under the “Men’s Fashion Jerseys” section of the Twins store on MLB.com’s shop. There’s a jersey for Nick Punto (above), Kevin Slowey, and Justin Morneau, and each incorporates parts of the player’s personality in making the jersey. For example, the Justin Morneau jersey includes references to his home country of Canada as well as his (super predictable) favorite sport of hockey. Punto’s jersey is red, white, and green to accentuate his Italian heritage and shows his grit in picture form. Kevin Slowey’s is black and yellow in the spirit of his hometown of Pittsburgh.

It’s an interesting concept, but I just can’t imagine anybody (who isn’t a family member) blowing the $95 that it costs to own one of these. The concept of these as “fashion” is interesting to me as well, as I can’t see anybody coming down a runway wearing one of these nor being taken too seriously in any public setting. Some of the designs – particularly on the patches, as well as the number design on Morneau’s jersey – are pretty cool, but for that kind of cash, I’ll stick with the real team colors.

If there’s one thing that men aged 18-34* like to do, it’s champion glorious facial hair. Like, if instead of Republican or Democrat, a candidate ran as a member of the Sweet Mustache party, that candidate would almost definitely dominate the aforementioned demographic. That’s just good, common-sense thinking.

*That is, the demographic we’re attempting to indoctrinate here at NotGraphs.

Anyway, on account of this true truth, you can imagine the sort of outcry that cried out when a Fanshot very similar to the following appeared at Brew Crew Ball yesternight:

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Coors Field humidor room: “These aren’t the super-dry baseballs you’re looking for.”

I’m not attending the Orlando Winter Meetings, but personally I would be sorely tempted to skip out and catch a show or two at Disney World. For the benefit of any GMs that might be reading this, perhaps our NotGraphs readers can help prioritize between “Fantasmic” and “Philharmagic?” Pat Gillick and Ed Wade will be watching the comments section and thank you in advance.

In the meantime, our heroes are hard at work discussing issues like the Rockies’ baseball humidification process. Background: this September, the Giants (and apparently at least one other team) complained to Major League Baseball about the level of independent oversight surrounding the Coors Field humidor. The Giants were bothered by the fact that, since a batboy periodically brings balls out to the umpires during games, the Rockies could theoretically be providing humidor balls when visiting teams were batting and then carrying out non-humidified baseballs when the Rockies were up.

The Rockies responded by letting umpires personally collect the entire stock of game balls from the humidor, but it looks like this issue isn’t dead yet. It’s tempting to chalk it all up to gamesmanship on the Giants’ part; they were just starting an important September series against the Rockies when they made the complaints which initiated the change. Of course, lots of people had that reaction when the Patriots Spygate allegations first came out, and that stuff kind of turned out to be semi-true.

Larry Granillo at Wezen-ball.com has quite the imagination. He followed up his odes to the World Series teams with this gem, a graphical representation of the current Hall of Fame members set to the tune of the periodic table. You’ll want to click here to see the full table in its resplendent glory.

Highlights of the table include the fact that he managed to group the 500-home-run, 3,000-hit, and 300-win clubs by color code, and the fact that the top-tier Hall of Famers are mostly in the top three rows of the chart. He also grouped the relievers and the defense-first HoFers, which serves to show how rare they are. In general, the best players trend towards the top and the right in most groups, too.

There’s plenty of smaller choices to bicker about, but one major choice – fundamental to the layout of the chart – concerns the baseball equivalent of ‘radioactive.’ Granillo goes with temperament, and that works to an extent. The ‘highly radioactive’ group consists of notable hothead Reggie Jackson, tough-as-nails Rogers Hornsby, and twitter superstar Old Hoss Radbourn.

But it’s a little strange to see the relievers right next to the ‘radiocative’ crew, and their placement on the left does not provide for a graded move from nice to nasty when moving to your left. In fact, that wouldn’t even be possible. And thinking about the chart in this way makes you wonder if the definition for radioactive may have come from a different place that could have served the chart better.

One of the most explosive conversations two fans of different teams can have is whether or not a player that once belonged to one of their teams belongs in the Hall of Fame. This only becomes more true when the player is borderline. Wasn’t the candidacy of Jim Rice one of the most talked-about and intense candidacies of modern times?

What if ‘radioactive’ was instead defined by the energy expended around a player’s inclusion in the Hall of Fame, and perhaps how borderline their candidacy was? Then we wouldn’t have to make decisions about the personalities of the players involved. Then we might be able to grade the chart from the most deserving on the right to those less deserving on the left. Then it would also suddenly make sense that the relievers were on the left, too.

Then again, this may be a little too much thinking about a moment meant for fun. At the very least, it’s certainly a chuckle-worthy chart.

Norifumi Nishimura leads his team in pregame calisthenics.

Yesterday it was announced that Norifumi Nishimura, manager of the Japan Series-winning Chiba Lotte Marines, had won the 2010 Shoriki Award. Nishimura may not have been entirely shocked to receive the call¹ though, because apparently since 2001 the Series-winning manager has received the Shoriki Award every year, with the one exception being Trey Hillman in 2006. Presumably Japan foresaw the mustache.

This Shoriki Award is given to the person who made the most outstanding contribution to Japanese baseball in the last year. It is named for Matsutaro Shoriki, a very interesting fellow who founded one of Japan’s largest newspapers and one of its first television stations and last but not least for our purposes its greatest baseball franchise, the Yomiuri Giants. In 1935, a politically charged time in Japan, Shoriki arranged for Babe Ruth and some other Americans to play an exhibition game in Tokyo, and for his trouble somebody tried to assassinate him with a sword.²  As far as I know, this exact thing never happened to Connie Mack.

Returning to the Shoriki Award, I haven’t been able to identify a comparable “outstanding contribution to baseball” prize in the United States. Considering the diverse spectrum of interpretations that American baseball writers and fans manage to project onto comparably well-defined awards such as most valuable player and best fielder, I can’t begin to imagine the ensuing discord if we did have something like the Shoriki Award (assuming people cared about it). How would you approach the question of who made the most outstanding “contribution” to American baseball in 2010? Maybe Roy Halladay — playoff no-hitters get people talking — or Josh Hamilton, with his great story. But probably I’m not thinking about this in broad enough terms.

¹ I always imagine people being informed that they won prizes by means of 5 AM phone calls like American Nobel laureates get because of the time difference with Sweden. Surely that’s not always how it works. I will win a prize and confirm — stay tuned.

² This article was originally printed in a 1935 issue of Time Magazine, so please excuse its regrettable language.

In the immortal words of Danny Trejo in Anchorman, “Ladies can do stuff now, and you’re going to learn to deal with it.”

Included in the stuff that the ladies can do is become fans of baseball. In fact, various sources estimate that the percentage of sports fans of the female persuasion is around 45%, a very significant portion of the baseball consuming public, and therefore, the baseball apparel consuming public.

You don’t often see women shopping in the Men’s department of a department store. One would think, then, that there would be a substantial potential market in making women’s apparel. However, much of the apparel available to women is similar to that of the lady in the above picture: pink. Other than that, women are either forced to buy the super-expensive Alyssa Milano-brand items or wear the same shirts and jerseys as the men.

Who cares about what I have to say about this? I barely even know what a hem is. Instead, we’ll venture somewhere FanGraphs has never gone before: into the brain of a real, live woman. I asked Royals fan and blogger Minda Haas of the aptly named www.mindahaas.net about her feelings on the state of MLB apparel for women and pink apparel in particular. Follow the jump to see what she has to say.

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Dubya and the Mick watch Jeter winning the 2006 Gold Glove.

Topps wants your vote to determine their 60 greatest cards of all time. No write-ins, though — they’ve preselected a field of 100 candidates.

There will probably be controversy/grumbling about the cards up for consideration. What makes a baseball card “great” is pretty personal. Market price might be one objective index of greatness, and I imagine many of the highest-priced vintage Topps cards are among the finalists here.

However, knowing basically nothing about baseball cards, I’m just going with my gut. Some notes in preparing my ballot:

1. 1985 Roger Clemens: Imagine Roger Clemens isn’t wearing his cap in this photo, and that instead of his jersey he’s wearing a jacket and tie. Freeze that in your mind. That insincere half-smile, with the hands-on-hips pose, is what I look like in all photos taken of me at weddings.

2. Topps used the same headshots for Roberto Clemente in 1955 and 1956 (also Ted Williams), but Sandy Koufax got a fresh picture in ’56. What gives?

3. 1961 Roger Maris: Roger Maris, the man, has a shirt collar sticking out from underneath his jersey on one side only, and he’s wearing a facial expression that is sinister, but in the same moment, kind of sleepy, and his head is bursting out of a newspaper article, and that article is about Roger Maris, public icon. An evasive portrait of two different men, joining paths at an historical and personal crossroads.

That’s just what I thought when I looked at that one.

4. Baseball card collectors really enjoy collecting Mickey Mantle baseball cards. He’s the protagonist of a whopping 16 of the 100 cards.

5. Extending the above thought: This baseball card pantheon seems to honor players that captured fans’ imaginations, and it probably does so more accurately and honestly (or at least differently) than lists of statistical leaders or Hall of Fame inductees. Who are the players with the highest deltas between fan inspiration and on-field accomplishment? Jose Canseco, Bo Jackson, and Fisk/Munson come to mind.

H/T: ESPN Page 2’s Chris Olds.

Living in North Carolina, I see a lot of Tar Heel blue, I hear a lot of UNC talk, and I am confronted with a lot of articles about Chapel Hill’s basketball team in the local papers. This season preview, though, is a bit different.

The first game of the 2010-2011 season for North Carolina basketball will be in Chapel Hill on November 12 against Lipscomb. Expectations are high that this year’s Tar Heels team is an improvement on last year’s. They’ll be bringing back a group that played 43% of last season’s minutes and adding the efforts of 3 Top 100 recruits, including #1 Harrison Barnes. North Carolina has the largest deficiency in rebounding where they lost 64.3% of their output. Equally as concerning is three point shooting, where they also lost a big 63% of last year’s output.

The AP gives the Tar Heels a #8 ranking in their preseason AP Top 25 poll. They weren’t ranked in last year’s final poll. North Carolina closed out the last season with an overall record of 20-17, placing 9th in the ACC with their 5-11 conference record. The Tar Heels lost to Georgia Tech 62-58 in the ACC tournament. They then went to the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) as a #4 seed, losing in the Championship game to Dayton, 79-68.

It’s pretty standard preview information, just without a whole lot of extra flare. In fact, you could safely say that the writer of this piece has no personality, because the entire article was “written” by an algorithm. This was computer generated content from start to finish, with the only human involvement being in the coding of the formula that created the story.

TechCrunch has a write-up on the compnay today, explaining the basic idea behind the concept. They are a data collector who has decided to turn their warehouse of numbers into content by using formulas to mine through the interesting information about a specific college basketball team and write season previews or game recaps, among other things.

While the piece isn’t overly interesting, I expect that this will become something of a trend in the future. Using play-by-play data and a decent algorithm, you could come up with a pretty solid recap of any sporting event. It won’t have any player quotes, of course, but as the world moves away from paper and towards digital content, it would not be hard to imagine a shift away from reporters getting quotes and transcribing them into a story, as providers instead just embedded full audio or video of a press conference next to the automated recap.

If I was a beat writer, this would scare me to death. I don’t know if this is the future of journalism, as good writing will always find an audience, but this is almost certainly part of the future of sports coverage.