With the long brutal winter now starting to pass us (knock on wood) and a date set for our preseason meeting, the IT Nerd wanted to drop some knowledge on you. Things to rattle around in your head during those dull times at work. Given by Joey Donegan’s email frequency, he has plenty of spare time…
As part of this preseason meeting, we’d talk tweaks to the current system to improve it. I highlighted a few ideas at the end of last year. After a winter off from staring at statistics, its time to put the nerd glasses back on, stare at the screen for hours and evaluate the ideas.
- A Quota “Floor” or minimum: The thought behind this is so that those with low quotas don’t meet or exceed their quota with one hole or one lucky shot.
- Minimum of 5 – Only five guys had a quota at 5 or lower, accounting for roughly 6% of all rounds. Bill Kirkby had a quota below 5 the entire year. Ironically, all five guys who had a quota below 5 ALL AVERAGED at least 5 pts. Bobby Z averaged 5.1 pts, Bill Kirkby averaged 5.7 pts, Bobby Mo averaged 5.8 pts, Artie averaged 6.1 pts and Jim Morgan Averaged 7.1 pts. Therefore, a quota floor of 5 wouldn’t really challenge anyone.
- Minimum of 6 – The goal should be to stike a balance between hitting a Quota and not hitting a Quota. With the Quota of 6, you would at least challenge the bottom few golfers. Take Bill Kirkby for example. If he had a Quota floor of 6, he would have hit or surpassed it ~43% of the time. With no Quota floor, he hit or surpassed his Quota 93% of the time. Compare that with the top Golfer (Devin Carrigan) who hit or surpassed his Quota 72% of the time. Needless to say, Quota Floor of 6 is one change the IT Nerds recommends.
- Minus 1 point for triple bogey or worse: Similar to the previous, this would discourage “sandbagging” by offering an incentive for not blowing up on a hole. It would also pull some of the lower quota players scores down.
- Minus 1 for Triple Bogey – This would have too much impact across the league. Would bring scores for a large majority of the league by at least half-a-point, with half the league being impacted severly.
- Minus 1 for Double Par – Has moderate impacts through Flight 2’s and upper Flight 3’s and a pretty sizeable impact on lower Flight 3’s. However, even with a -1 pt for double par, only four players would average BELOW 6 pts per week (Bobby Z 4.2, Bill Kirkby 4.4, Bobby Mo 5.2, Artie 5.7). Minus 1 for Double Par is a change the IT Nerd recommends.
- Modification of Quota Scoring Formula Starting Point – This would just raise Quotas across the entire league and wouldn’t really solve the inequities between high and low Quotas. IT Nerd does not recommend this change.
- Modification of Quota Scoring Formula to look at last 4, 5 or six rounds, not entire season – Long story short, Quota’s get locked in too early in the season and it becomes extremely difficult to change them over the last half of the season. Read below if you want more details. This is a remedy to the CONSTANT questioning I get: “How I am still an ‘X’ Quota when I just shot ‘Y’?”
- Obviously, Quotas can’t move until after 2 rounds have been played. Under the old Scoring Formula, what you find is that Quotas fluctuate freely the first 4-5 weeks because scores fluctuate. The next 4-5 weeks sees Quota movement drop off sharply (almost 50% drop in Quota movement). The final 6-8 weeks, forget about having your Quota to move, its damn near impossible. Only about 3-4 guys per week in the final 4 weeks have a Quota move. The problem with this system? Scores across all Flights trend downward throughout the year, thus not allowing Quota adjustments for mid or late year improvements. Therefore, what you see is that scores keep decreasing, but Quotas are too slow to react and never able to catch back up to actual play
- I looked at what using the last 4 rounds played would look like. Over the first 4 weeks, it exactly mirrors what the current system is. The key benefit to this change? The pace and direction of the Quota change is roughly equal to that of the actual scores…which is the goal isn’t it? Using the last four rounds played as the Quota Scoring Formula base is a change the IT Nerd recommends.
- Removal of the “Max +/- 1 Quota movement per week – Concept is to allow Quota to move with the Player’s actual scores. The Max Movement is instituted to prevent wild fluctuations.
- If you removed it completely, there are times when Quotas can move 3 or 4 pts in one week. This is mostly in the Week 2 and 3 as there is a lack of Player Scores. That’s too much fluctuation for one week
- If this rule was to be modified, it should be moved to a Max +/- 2 Quota movement per week. The IT Nerd is neither for or against this change.
See you bitches at Swallows…
IT Nerd
