fivethirthyeight--2020-10-15--What Amy Coney Barrett’s Confirmation Could Mean For Roe v. Wade

When pressed about her views on abortion during the confirmation hearings , Judge Amy Coney Barrett dodged .
“ If I express a view on a precedent one way or another , whether I say I love it or I hate it , it signals to litigants that I might tilt one way or another on a pending case , ” Barrett said , in response to a question from Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein about Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey , two key precedents on abortion rights .
It ’ s not at all unusual , of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ try to avoid answering questions about how they ’ d vote on hot-button issues like abortion .
But Barrett , unlike other recent Supreme Court nominees , has a fairly clear perspective on abortion , having previously joined groups and signed public statements opposing it .
That stance appears to fall significantly to the right of where most Americans are on the issue , and her unwillingness to answer questions about these precedents is a reminder of just how dangerous the topic could be for both the Supreme Court and the Republicans .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ when in a pregnancy abortions can be performed , but the public ’ s views on abortion are complex , according to recent polling data we looked at .
And overall , a majority of the public does not want Roe , the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to an abortion , to be overturned , though liberals and conservatives alike think that might happen with Barrett on the court .
Here ’ s an overview of how Americans feel about abortion ( spoiler : It ’ s complicated ! )
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the court could lead to rulings on abortion that are more conservative than what most Americans want .
Not all abortion restrictions are unpopular Over the past 10 years , states have passed hundreds of laws making it harder to get an abortion , and though a number were blocked by the courts , these regulations still resulted in significantly reduced abortion access in large swathes of the country .
However , these restrictions aren ’ t uniformly unpopular .
Public opinion differs quite a bit on when an abortion should be legal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 that 60 percent of Americans think abortion should generally be legal in the first three months of a pregnancy , while support fell to 28 percent in the second trimester and just 13 percent in the third trimester .
Similarly , Americans were much more likely to support abortion if the pregnant person ’ s life was in danger or the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest than they were if an abortion was being considered for other reasons , like fetal abnormalities or simply not wanting to carry the pregnancy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reason that many of the abortion restrictions passed in the past decade have aimed to chip away at the edges of the Supreme Court ’ s precedents on abortion rights rather than attack them directly .
During Barrett ’ s hearing , for instance , Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham mentioned an incremental bill he ’ s been pushing unsuccessfully in Congress for several years , which would prohibit abortion after 20 weeks post-fertilization , several weeks before when medical professionals generally agree that a fetus is viable .
That ’ s important because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has now largely superseded Roe , states are mostly free to regulate abortion after the point of fetal viability ; before that , restrictions can ’ t impose an “ undue burden ” on the person seeking an abortion .
Laws like Graham ’ s — which are in effect in 17 states , according to the Guttmacher Institute — therefore don ’ t necessarily challenge the constitutional right to abortion directly ; instead , they could be used to argue for a different standard under which states are allowed to restrict abortion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Graham ’ s approach might be more in line with public opinion — and might eventually have a better chance of success with a Supreme Court justice like John Roberts , who seems cautious about moving too quickly to the right on hot-button issues .
“ The status quo with more restrictions wouldn ’ t be that unpopular , especially if the restrictions are focused later in pregnancy , ” said Mary Ziegler , a law professor at Florida State University who studies the history and politics of abortion law .
If Barrett @ @ @ @ @ @ @ though , all of this could change , and there would likely be more pressure from the conservative bloc to consider cases that could take restrictions on abortion rights well outside many Americans ’ comfort zone .
Barrett could push the Supreme Court outside the mainstream Barrett might have demurred on direct questions about Roe in the hearings this week , but she admitted that she does not view Roe as a “ super-precedent ” — a ruling so ensconced in American law that no one is making any serious efforts to get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dame law professor in 2006 , she signed an ad condemning the “ barbaric legacy ” of Roe .
This signals that she might be open to more dramatic changes in abortion law than the Supreme Court has recently been willing to consider , and she ’ s potentially joining the court at a moment when anti-abortion advocates are taking increasingly bold swings at the legal foundation of abortion rights .
In the past few years , some anti-abortion advocates have grown fed up with the incrementalist approach and have successfully pushed for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or restrict it to be allowed only very early in a pregnancy .
Seven states , for example , have passed laws prohibiting abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be detected , which effectively bans abortion after six or seven weeks of pregnancy .
Those laws directly challenge the right to abortion in the early months of pregnancy that was established in Roe and reaffirmed in Casey , and in many cases , they make abortion illegal even in circumstances when most Americans would prefer the procedure was permitted , like when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or incest .
And they are also much less likely to be popular with the public — according to polling by Gallup , even many people who identify as “ pro-life ” want abortion to be available in at least a few circumstances .
Americans are also much more divided over early abortion bans than they are over restrictions later in pregnancy , because as we noted earlier , support for abortion in the second trimester is actually quite low .
But according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted in 2019 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should be prohibited when a fetal heartbeat can be detected ( 49 percent are in favor , and 50 percent are opposed ) .
And support for that restriction fell to 38 percent when respondents were told that a fetal heartbeat could be detected as early as six weeks into a pregnancy , before many women even know they ’ re pregnant .
It ’ s possible that even if she ’ s confirmed , Barrett won ’ t be the crucial swing vote on an abortion case — it ’ s hard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be .
But because four of the nine justices must agree on whether the court will take a case , the presence of an additional conservative could mean the justices are more likely to agree to hear a far-reaching abortion case , putting the court in the crosshairs of public opinion .
Ziegler noted that over the past few years , Justice Clarence Thomas — who used to be the most zealous anti-abortion advocate among the justices — has been joined in many opinions by Justice Samuel Alito , and she said that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to dramatic changes to abortion law , based on his dissent in an abortion rights case from earlier this summer .
“ [ Americans ] don ’ t like the idea of outright [ abortion ] bans , they don ’ t like the idea of criminalization , and they don ’ t like the idea of overturning Roe , ” Ziegler said .
But with a six-justice conservative majority on the court , advocates of the anti-abortion movement may ramp up their efforts to push more dramatic restrictions — and more justices @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their efforts .

When pressed about her views on abortion during the confirmation hearings, Judge Amy Coney Barrett dodged. “If I express a view on a precedent one way or another, whether I say I love it or I hate it, it signals to litigants that I might tilt one way or another on a pending case,” Barrett said, in response to a question from Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein about Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, two key precedents on abortion rights.
It’s not at all unusual, of course, for Supreme Court nominees to try to avoid answering questions about how they’d vote on hot-button issues like abortion. But Barrett, unlike other recent Supreme Court nominees, has a fairly clear perspective on abortion, having previously joined groups and signed public statements opposing it. That stance appears to fall significantly to the right of where most Americans are on the issue, and her unwillingness to answer questions about these precedents is a reminder of just how dangerous the topic could be for both the Supreme Court and the Republicans.
Many Americans do support some limitations on when in a pregnancy abortions can be performed, but the public’s views on abortion are complex, according to recent polling data we looked at. And overall, a majority of the public does not want Roe, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to an abortion, to be overturned, though liberals and conservatives alike think that might happen with Barrett on the court.
Here’s an overview of how Americans feel about abortion (spoiler: It’s complicated!) and how Barrett’s presence on the court could lead to rulings on abortion that are more conservative than what most Americans want.
Not all abortion restrictions are unpopular
Over the past 10 years, states have passed hundreds of laws making it harder to get an abortion, and though a number were blocked by the courts, these regulations still resulted in significantly reduced abortion access in large swathes of the country. However, these restrictions aren’t uniformly unpopular.
Public opinion differs quite a bit on when an abortion should be legal. For instance, Gallup found in 2018 that 60 percent of Americans think abortion should generally be legal in the first three months of a pregnancy, while support fell to 28 percent in the second trimester and just 13 percent in the third trimester. Similarly, Americans were much more likely to support abortion if the pregnant person’s life was in danger or the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest than they were if an abortion was being considered for other reasons, like fetal abnormalities or simply not wanting to carry the pregnancy to term.
That may be one reason that many of the abortion restrictions passed in the past decade have aimed to chip away at the edges of the Supreme Court’s precedents on abortion rights rather than attack them directly. During Barrett’s hearing, for instance, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham mentioned an incremental bill he’s been pushing unsuccessfully in Congress for several years, which would prohibit abortion after 20 weeks post-fertilization, several weeks before when medical professionals generally agree that a fetus is viable. That’s important because under Casey, the 1992 case that has now largely superseded Roe, states are mostly free to regulate abortion after the point of fetal viability; before that, restrictions can’t impose an “undue burden” on the person seeking an abortion. Laws like Graham’s — which are in effect in 17 states, according to the Guttmacher Institute — therefore don’t necessarily challenge the constitutional right to abortion directly; instead, they could be used to argue for a different standard under which states are allowed to restrict abortion.
Compared to overturning Roe directly, Graham’s approach might be more in line with public opinion — and might eventually have a better chance of success with a Supreme Court justice like John Roberts, who seems cautious about moving too quickly to the right on hot-button issues. “The status quo with more restrictions wouldn’t be that unpopular, especially if the restrictions are focused later in pregnancy,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University who studies the history and politics of abortion law.
If Barrett is confirmed to the Supreme Court, though, all of this could change, and there would likely be more pressure from the conservative bloc to consider cases that could take restrictions on abortion rights well outside many Americans’ comfort zone.
Barrett could push the Supreme Court outside the mainstream
Barrett might have demurred on direct questions about Roe in the hearings this week, but she admitted that she does not view Roe as a “super-precedent” — a ruling so ensconced in American law that no one is making any serious efforts to get it overturned — and as a Notre Dame law professor in 2006, she signed an ad condemning the “barbaric legacy” of Roe. This signals that she might be open to more dramatic changes in abortion law than the Supreme Court has recently been willing to consider, and she’s potentially joining the court at a moment when anti-abortion advocates are taking increasingly bold swings at the legal foundation of abortion rights.
In the past few years, some anti-abortion advocates have grown fed up with the incrementalist approach and have successfully pushed for state laws that either ban abortion entirely, or restrict it to be allowed only very early in a pregnancy. Seven states, for example, have passed laws prohibiting abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be detected, which effectively bans abortion after six or seven weeks of pregnancy.
Those laws directly challenge the right to abortion in the early months of pregnancy that was established in Roe and reaffirmed in Casey, and in many cases, they make abortion illegal even in circumstances when most Americans would prefer the procedure was permitted, like when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. And they are also much less likely to be popular with the public — according to polling by Gallup, even many people who identify as “pro-life” want abortion to be available in at least a few circumstances.
Pro-choice and pro-life labels obscure nuance in views Share of self-described “pro-choice” or “pro-life” Americans by when they think abortion should be legal SELF-IDENTIFY AS … Legality of Abortion Pro-choice Pro-life Overall Legal under any circumstances 55% 3% 29% Legal in most circumstances 23 4 13 Legal in only a few circumstances 18 53 35 Illegal in all circumstances 3 38 20 Gallup survey conducted May 1-13, 2020. Respondents who answered “no opinion” or who said abortion should be legal under some circumstances but didn’t say if it should be under “most” or “only a few” circumstances are not shown. Source: GALLUP
Americans are also much more divided over early abortion bans than they are over restrictions later in pregnancy, because as we noted earlier, support for abortion in the second trimester is actually quite low. But according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted in 2019, Americans are basically split on whether abortions should be prohibited when a fetal heartbeat can be detected (49 percent are in favor, and 50 percent are opposed). And support for that restriction fell to 38 percent when respondents were told that a fetal heartbeat could be detected as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, before many women even know they’re pregnant.
It’s possible that even if she’s confirmed, Barrett won’t be the crucial swing vote on an abortion case — it’s hard to predict exactly what her ideology will be. But because four of the nine justices must agree on whether the court will take a case, the presence of an additional conservative could mean the justices are more likely to agree to hear a far-reaching abortion case, putting the court in the crosshairs of public opinion. Ziegler noted that over the past few years, Justice Clarence Thomas — who used to be the most zealous anti-abortion advocate among the justices — has been joined in many opinions by Justice Samuel Alito, and she said that even Justice Neil Gorsuch might be open to dramatic changes to abortion law, based on his dissent in an abortion rights case from earlier this summer.
“[Americans] don’t like the idea of outright [abortion] bans, they don’t like the idea of criminalization, and they don’t like the idea of overturning Roe,” Ziegler said. But with a six-justice conservative majority on the court, advocates of the anti-abortion movement may ramp up their efforts to push more dramatic restrictions — and more justices on the court could be open to their efforts.


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-15--Politics Podcast: What We Learned From The Amy Coney Barrett Hearings

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is on track for confirmation , as judiciary committee hearings wrapped up on Thursday @ @ @ @ @ the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast , Perry Bacon Jr. and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux discuss the Republican and @ @ @ @ @ the hearings and how Barrett ’ s addition to the court will shape its decisions @ @ @ @ @ .
You can listen to the episode by clicking the “ play ” button in @ @ @ @ @ by downloading it in iTunes , the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform .
@ @ @ @ @ podcasts , learn how to listen .
The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and @ @ @ @ @ discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes .
Have a @ @ @ @ @ for “ good polling vs. bad polling ” ?
Get in touch by email , @ @ @ @ @ comments .

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is on track for confirmation, as judiciary committee hearings wrapped up on Thursday. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Perry Bacon Jr. and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux discuss the Republican and Democratic tactics on display during the hearings and how Barrett’s addition to the court will shape its decisions in the years to come.
You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.
The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-15--Despite A Sexting Scandal, Democrat Cal Cunningham Is Favored In North Carolina’s Senate Race

When the polls don ’ t change after a scandal happens , what do we make of it ?
That ’ s the question we ’ re asking after news broke on Friday , Oct. 2 , that North Carolina Democratic Senate nominee Cal Cunningham had been sexting a woman who wasn ’ t his wife .
This development seemingly presented an opening for embattled Republican Sen. Thom Tillis , who has trailed Cunningham in most polls in one of the most important Senate contests on the ballot this November .
But despite concentrated Republican attacks over Cunningham ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evidence that the trajectory of the race has changed — at least so far .
On Oct. 2 , Cunningham had a 67 in 100 shot of winning ; today , Cunningham has a 67 in 100 chance , according to the Deluxe version of FiveThirtyEight ’ s Senate forecast .
In other words , he was a slight favorite to win before the scandal broke and remains so today .
FiveThirtyEight ’ s Senate forecast currently gives Democrats a 73 in 100 chance of winning control of the Senate , and Cunningham @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pivotal to that .
If Democrats can capture GOP-held seats in Arizona and Colorado , where they have better odds , along with more competitive races in Maine and North Carolina , that would give them the bare minimum of 50 seats they need to have a shot at control ( assuming they lose control of Alabama ’ s seat but retain Michigan ’ s ) .
And as long as Joe Biden wins — no certainty , but he is favored — that would hand Sen. Kamala Harris the vice presidency and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Cunningham ’ s odds haven ’ t budged because the polls haven ’ t shifted .
Four pollsters who have surveyed the race since the scandal broke had also polled in late August or September , and as you can see in the table below , none of them found that much of a change from their previous polls .
Of course , this doesn ’ t mean the scandal helped Cunningham — polls do show his reputation has taken a hit .
The New York Times/Siena College ’ s surveys found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of him fell from 46 percent to 40 percent , and the share with a negative impression of him increased from 29 percent to 42 percent .
Monmouth University ’ s poll had more voters who had no opinion of Cunningham , but Cunningham ’ s favorables still fell from 34 percent to 25 percent , while his unfavorable numbers rose from 22 percent to 33 percent .
So while this downtick in public perception hasn ’ t hurt Cunningham ’ s horse-race numbers , we can ’ t rule out the possibility @ @ @ @ @ @ @ once votes are counted .
Our past research has found that new scandals in the middle of a campaign can be a drag on a candidate ’ s vote share , especially in more competitive races .
That ’ s why our Senate forecast includes a scandal variable , and Cunningham ’ s chances of winning did fall slightly after we added his scandal to our model — but this hasn ’ t shown up in the polls , at least not yet .
In theory , though , Americans are harsh critics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in May , for instance , that 89 percent of Americans said married men and women having affairs was immoral — and it ’ s hard to get 9 in 10 Americans to agree on much of anything these days .
So we can ’ t rule out further revelations that keep the story in the news , like when more messages sent by Cunningham became public a few days after the initial scandal broke .
But it will be challenging for the GOP to fully capitalize on Cunningham ’ s scandal .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to say infidelity is immoral , sex scandals involving politicians are nothing new for voters .
So in some ways , as long as the details of this one don ’ t get any more lurid or troubling , it may not hurt Cunningham that much .
That ’ s especially so when you consider that partisanship and the overall national electoral environment probably mitigate much of the damage for Cunningham .
Few Democrats are likely to abandon Cunningham over the scandal , and considering Tillis ’ s favorability ratings are also mediocre @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely to flock to him .
Moreover , the scandal has largely been overshadowed by the presidential race , as Trump ’ s poorly received debate performance and COVID-19 diagnosis blunted some of the impact of the Cunningham news .
This race ’ s trajectory isn ’ t locked in , by any means , but it ’ s good news for Democrats , who almost certainly need to win the North Carolina seat to gain a majority in the Senate .

When the polls don’t change after a scandal happens, what do we make of it? That’s the question we’re asking after news broke on Friday, Oct. 2, that North Carolina Democratic Senate nominee Cal Cunningham had been sexting a woman who wasn’t his wife. This development seemingly presented an opening for embattled Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who has trailed Cunningham in most polls in one of the most important Senate contests on the ballot this November.
But despite concentrated Republican attacks over Cunningham’s extramarital affair, there’s little evidence that the trajectory of the race has changed — at least so far. On Oct. 2, Cunningham had a 67 in 100 shot of winning; today, Cunningham has a 67 in 100 chance, according to the Deluxe version of FiveThirtyEight’s Senate forecast.
In other words, he was a slight favorite to win before the scandal broke and remains so today.
FiveThirtyEight’s Senate forecast currently gives Democrats a 73 in 100 chance of winning control of the Senate, and Cunningham’s fortunes in North Carolina are pivotal to that. If Democrats can capture GOP-held seats in Arizona and Colorado, where they have better odds, along with more competitive races in Maine and North Carolina, that would give them the bare minimum of 50 seats they need to have a shot at control (assuming they lose control of Alabama’s seat but retain Michigan’s). And as long as Joe Biden wins — no certainty, but he is favored — that would hand Sen. Kamala Harris the vice presidency and the Senate tiebreaker.
On the whole, Cunningham’s odds haven’t budged because the polls haven’t shifted. Four pollsters who have surveyed the race since the scandal broke had also polled in late August or September, and as you can see in the table below, none of them found that much of a change from their previous polls.
Cunningham’s scandal hasn’t really moved the polls Change in Cunningham’s margin in polls conducted before and after news of his sexting scandal broke late on Oct. 2 pollster Before Scandal After Scandal Change Siena College/NYT Upshot +5 +4 -1 Ipsos +4 +4 0 Monmouth University* +1 +3 +2 SurveyUSA +7 +10 +3 Average +4 +5 +1 *Monmouth University’s polls are averages of two likely voter turnout figures. Includes only pollsters that conducted surveys entirely before and after the scandal became public, with the “before” poll conducted in August or September. Source: polls
Of course, this doesn’t mean the scandal helped Cunningham — polls do show his reputation has taken a hit. The New York Times/Siena College’s surveys found that the share with a positive impression of him fell from 46 percent to 40 percent, and the share with a negative impression of him increased from 29 percent to 42 percent. Monmouth University’s poll had more voters who had no opinion of Cunningham, but Cunningham’s favorables still fell from 34 percent to 25 percent, while his unfavorable numbers rose from 22 percent to 33 percent.
So while this downtick in public perception hasn’t hurt Cunningham’s horse-race numbers, we can’t rule out the possibility that it will have a negative effect once votes are counted. Our past research has found that new scandals in the middle of a campaign can be a drag on a candidate’s vote share, especially in more competitive races. That’s why our Senate forecast includes a scandal variable, and Cunningham’s chances of winning did fall slightly after we added his scandal to our model — but this hasn’t shown up in the polls, at least not yet. In theory, though, Americans are harsh critics of marital infidelity. Gallup found back in May, for instance, that 89 percent of Americans said married men and women having affairs was immoral — and it’s hard to get 9 in 10 Americans to agree on much of anything these days. So we can’t rule out further revelations that keep the story in the news, like when more messages sent by Cunningham became public a few days after the initial scandal broke.
But it will be challenging for the GOP to fully capitalize on Cunningham’s scandal. First, even though Americans are quick to say infidelity is immoral, sex scandals involving politicians are nothing new for voters. So in some ways, as long as the details of this one don’t get any more lurid or troubling, it may not hurt Cunningham that much. That’s especially so when you consider that partisanship and the overall national electoral environment probably mitigate much of the damage for Cunningham. Few Democrats are likely to abandon Cunningham over the scandal, and considering Tillis’s favorability ratings are also mediocre, independents aren’t any more likely to flock to him. Moreover, the scandal has largely been overshadowed by the presidential race, as Trump’s poorly received debate performance and COVID-19 diagnosis blunted some of the impact of the Cunningham news.
This race’s trajectory isn’t locked in, by any means, but it’s good news for Democrats, who almost certainly need to win the North Carolina seat to gain a majority in the Senate.


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-15--QAnon’s Obsession With #SaveTheChildren Is Making It Harder To Save Kids From Traffickers

It ’ s hard to argue against a phrase like “ save the children.
” Which , presumably , is why QAnon uses it as a hashtag .
The growing online conspiracy cult has co-opted the phrase to push falsehoods about pedophiles who run the world .
But in promoting its radical worldview , QAnon has made life difficult for the organizations actually trying to save children .
And the results could be putting kids at risk .
QAnon is a baseless conspiracy regardless of how deep you go , but its fixation on pedophilia is particularly unmoored .
Devoted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of detail — that there is a secret cabal of powerful elites who run an underground pedophilia ring , and that President Trump is currently working to bring these evildoers to justice .
If you go all the way down the rabbit hole you ’ ll find theories about Bill Gates injecting tracking devices into every citizen , blood libel , devil worship and draining kids of a chemical compound called adrenochrome to become immortal .
But the underlying connective tissue of QAnon is that bad people , mainly Democrats , are trafficking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who can stop them .
Over the summer , Q followers began using # savethechildren to spread the conspiracy theory , and it worked .
From Aug. 9 through Aug. 15 , more than 12,000 public Facebook posts used the hashtag , according to the social media tracking tool CrowdTangle .
The rest of the year , the hashtag tended to garner fewer than 200 posts per week .
But most of the content shared using # savethechildren was based on a Q-fueled and completely warped picture of what child trafficking looks like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made life difficult for the people who actually do anti-trafficking work .
“ It ’ s extraordinarily frustrating , ” said Lisa Goldblatt Grace , co-founder and executive director of My Life My Choice , an anti-trafficking nonprofit .
“ We ’ ve worked so hard for the last 18 years to shift the narrative and have people understand this is happening in our communities .
QAnon instead gives folks this incredibly sensationalized ‘ other ’ to fear and be angry about.
” In reality , child trafficking in the U.S. doesn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and D.C. elites performing satanic rituals on children they stole from suburban playgrounds .
Instead , kids who are sexually exploited are often poor , children of color , immigrants , or some combination of the three , and they ’ ve often been in the child welfare system or run away from home .
In 2018 , 1 in 7 kids who were reported as runaways to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were likely victims of child sex trafficking , according to UNICEF .
“ We see minors who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ ve run away from home , maybe they ’ ve been kicked out of their home — and then engage in sex acts for money in order to have food to eat and a place to stay , ” said Jean Bruggeman , executive director of Freedom Network USA , an anti-trafficking group .
“ Almost never is there any kind of abduction or solely a use of physical force or locking people away .
It ’ s generally much more subtle coercion.
” The spectre of pedophilia and child sex @ @ @ @ @ @ @ QAnon lore since the very beginning .
Q , the anonymous poster who feeds the conspiracy by claiming to “ drop ” highly classified government information on image boards known for attracting white supremacists and violent misogynists , has been alluding to underground child trafficking rings in his messages for years .
“ Perhaps [ Trump ] could not stomach the thought of children being kidnapped , drugged , and raped while leaders/law enforcement of the world turn a blind eye , ” reads one message from November 2017 .
“ Some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Clintons do to children , what the deep state does to children , satanic trafficking and sacrifices , ” said Mike Rothschild , a conspiracy theory researcher currently working on a book about QAnon .
The # savethechildren hashtag , however , didn ’ t come onto the QAnon radar until this year .
The hashtag had been used before ( notably to promote the charity Save The Children , which has been around for a century and is unaffiliated with QAnon ) , but in July and August , the number of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ major portion of those posts were Q-affiliated .
This was likely due in part to the pandemic , Rothschild said : With more people stuck indoors , out of work and feeling hopeless , it ’ s easy to get sucked into an online world that claims to have all the answers .
But it also coincided with a crackdown from Twitter to remove Q-related content .
Suddenly , Q followers couldn ’ t spread their message as openly as they had before , so it ’ s possible that ’ s why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wholesome , social media sites couldn ’ t possibly ban it .
It was more of an organic growth than any kind of coordinated campaign , said Annie Kelly , a PhD candidate at the University of East Anglia who studies far-right political movements and digital culture .
“ It ’ s incorrect to frame it as some kind of mastermind pulling the strings , ” Kelly said .
“ The # savethechildren evolution wasn ’ t a coordinated effort to hide QAnon ’ s agenda , but it had the effect of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s QAnon.
” To some extent , this growing population of people concerned about child trafficking has translated into a genuine support for organizations that work to end it .
I spoke to representatives from six anti-trafficking groups and four told me they have seen a recent increase in donations .
Freedom Network USA , for example , received 102 donations totalling $ 23,200 from April to September this year , more than 50 times the amount it received in the same period last year , when it got five donations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to give specific figures but said they had seen an increase in donations this year , particularly over the summer .
That said , it ’ s really hard to say for sure how many , if any , of those donations were from Q followers .
“ Nobody was sending in donations with a note saying ‘ In Q we trust , ’ you know ?
” Goldblatt Grace said .
And the increased attention has come with plenty of drawbacks .
Polaris , the charity that operates the National Human Trafficking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ discouraging people from reporting that children were not being sold inside expensive cabinets online because callers were flooding its phones with a Q-adjacent conspiracy .
The inundated hotline is one example of a problem each of the anti-trafficking representatives I spoke to raised : Even if QAnon is bringing people ’ s attention to child trafficking in general , it ’ s focusing that attention specifically on a sensationalized , largely inaccurate picture of what trafficking looks like .
And that can pull focus and resources away from the actual problem .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ misunderstanding of the issue , but also a wrong response , ” said Borislav Gerasimov , the program coordinator for communications and advocacy at the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women .
As an example , Gerasimov cited the gunman who fired inside a pizza shop in 2016 because he wrongly believed it was the location of an underground pedophile ring , a conspiracy theory called Pizzagate that is a precursor to QAnon .
“ If you portray human trafficking as something that a secret cabal is doing , the solution becomes guns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the solution to trafficking.
” The solutions that anti-trafficking groups advocate for aren ’ t about raiding pizza shops or decoding Justin Bieber ’ s headwear choices , they ’ re about improving social programs so kids don ’ t fall through the cracks and end up in situations that leave them vulnerable to exploitation .
That ’ s not as easy of a sell to the QAnon crowd .
“ I don ’ t find that I ’ m able to translate the kind of fervor and excitement and investment people get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ focus and excitement in caring for the most marginalized among us , ” said Goldblatt Grace .
Each of the nonprofit representatives I spoke to said they ’ re grateful for any donation and are hopeful the increased attention can create opportunities for outreach and education .
But for that to happen , Q followers would have to give up on some of their most cherished beliefs and admit that the real problem , while no less concerning , looks less like the action movie playing in their head and more like the @ @ @ @ @ @ @

It’s hard to argue against a phrase like “save the children.” Which, presumably, is why QAnon uses it as a hashtag. The growing online conspiracy cult has co-opted the phrase to push falsehoods about pedophiles who run the world. But in promoting its radical worldview, QAnon has made life difficult for the organizations actually trying to save children. And the results could be putting kids at risk.
QAnon is a baseless conspiracy regardless of how deep you go, but its fixation on pedophilia is particularly unmoored. Devoted QAnon followers believe — to varying levels of detail — that there is a secret cabal of powerful elites who run an underground pedophilia ring, and that President Trump is currently working to bring these evildoers to justice. If you go all the way down the rabbit hole you’ll find theories about Bill Gates injecting tracking devices into every citizen, blood libel, devil worship and draining kids of a chemical compound called adrenochrome to become immortal. But the underlying connective tissue of QAnon is that bad people, mainly Democrats, are trafficking children and Trump is the only one who can stop them.
Over the summer, Q followers began using #savethechildren to spread the conspiracy theory, and it worked. From Aug. 9 through Aug. 15, more than 12,000 public Facebook posts used the hashtag, according to the social media tracking tool CrowdTangle. The rest of the year, the hashtag tended to garner fewer than 200 posts per week.
But most of the content shared using #savethechildren was based on a Q-fueled and completely warped picture of what child trafficking looks like in this country. And that has made life difficult for the people who actually do anti-trafficking work.
“It’s extraordinarily frustrating,” said Lisa Goldblatt Grace, co-founder and executive director of My Life My Choice, an anti-trafficking nonprofit. “We’ve worked so hard for the last 18 years to shift the narrative and have people understand this is happening in our communities. QAnon instead gives folks this incredibly sensationalized ‘other’ to fear and be angry about.”
In reality, child trafficking in the U.S. doesn’t look like a bunch of Hollywood and D.C. elites performing satanic rituals on children they stole from suburban playgrounds. Instead, kids who are sexually exploited are often poor, children of color, immigrants, or some combination of the three, and they’ve often been in the child welfare system or run away from home. In 2018, 1 in 7 kids who were reported as runaways to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were likely victims of child sex trafficking, according to UNICEF.
“We see minors who are in a vulnerable position — maybe they’ve run away from home, maybe they’ve been kicked out of their home — and then engage in sex acts for money in order to have food to eat and a place to stay,” said Jean Bruggeman, executive director of Freedom Network USA, an anti-trafficking group. “Almost never is there any kind of abduction or solely a use of physical force or locking people away. It’s generally much more subtle coercion.”
The spectre of pedophilia and child sex trafficking has been a part of the QAnon lore since the very beginning. Q, the anonymous poster who feeds the conspiracy by claiming to “drop” highly classified government information on image boards known for attracting white supremacists and violent misogynists, has been alluding to underground child trafficking rings in his messages for years. “Perhaps [Trump] could not stomach the thought of children being kidnapped, drugged, and raped while leaders/law enforcement of the world turn a blind eye,” reads one message from November 2017.
“Some of the earliest drops are about what the Clintons do to children, what the deep state does to children, satanic trafficking and sacrifices,” said Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy theory researcher currently working on a book about QAnon.
The #savethechildren hashtag, however, didn’t come onto the QAnon radar until this year. The hashtag had been used before (notably to promote the charity Save The Children, which has been around for a century and is unaffiliated with QAnon), but in July and August, the number of posts using it surged, and a major portion of those posts were Q-affiliated. This was likely due in part to the pandemic, Rothschild said: With more people stuck indoors, out of work and feeling hopeless, it’s easy to get sucked into an online world that claims to have all the answers. But it also coincided with a crackdown from Twitter to remove Q-related content. Suddenly, Q followers couldn’t spread their message as openly as they had before, so it’s possible that’s why they adopted a hashtag that was so wholesome, social media sites couldn’t possibly ban it. It was more of an organic growth than any kind of coordinated campaign, said Annie Kelly, a PhD candidate at the University of East Anglia who studies far-right political movements and digital culture.
“It’s incorrect to frame it as some kind of mastermind pulling the strings,” Kelly said. “The #savethechildren evolution wasn’t a coordinated effort to hide QAnon’s agenda, but it had the effect of drawing in people to QAnon without realizing it’s QAnon.”
To some extent, this growing population of people concerned about child trafficking has translated into a genuine support for organizations that work to end it. I spoke to representatives from six anti-trafficking groups and four told me they have seen a recent increase in donations. Freedom Network USA, for example, received 102 donations totalling $23,200 from April to September this year, more than 50 times the amount it received in the same period last year, when it got five donations totalling $428. Other organizations declined to give specific figures but said they had seen an increase in donations this year, particularly over the summer.
That said, it’s really hard to say for sure how many, if any, of those donations were from Q followers. “Nobody was sending in donations with a note saying ‘In Q we trust,’ you know?” Goldblatt Grace said. And the increased attention has come with plenty of drawbacks. Polaris, the charity that operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline, had to issue a statement discouraging people from reporting that children were being sold inside expensive cabinets online because callers were flooding its phones with a Q-adjacent conspiracy.
The inundated hotline is one example of a problem each of the anti-trafficking representatives I spoke to raised: Even if QAnon is bringing people’s attention to child trafficking in general, it’s focusing that attention specifically on a sensationalized, largely inaccurate picture of what trafficking looks like. And that can pull focus and resources away from the actual problem.
“It can lead to not only a misunderstanding of the issue, but also a wrong response,” said Borislav Gerasimov, the program coordinator for communications and advocacy at the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women.
As an example, Gerasimov cited the gunman who fired inside a pizza shop in 2016 because he wrongly believed it was the location of an underground pedophile ring, a conspiracy theory called Pizzagate that is a precursor to QAnon. “If you portray human trafficking as something that a secret cabal is doing, the solution becomes guns and surveillance. This is totally not the solution to trafficking.”
The solutions that anti-trafficking groups advocate for aren’t about raiding pizza shops or decoding Justin Bieber’s headwear choices, they’re about improving social programs so kids don’t fall through the cracks and end up in situations that leave them vulnerable to exploitation. That’s not as easy of a sell to the QAnon crowd.
“I don’t find that I’m able to translate the kind of fervor and excitement and investment people get for #savethechildren into an investment and focus and excitement in caring for the most marginalized among us,” said Goldblatt Grace.
Each of the nonprofit representatives I spoke to said they’re grateful for any donation and are hopeful the increased attention can create opportunities for outreach and education. But for that to happen, Q followers would have to give up on some of their most cherished beliefs and admit that the real problem, while no less concerning, looks less like the action movie playing in their head and more like the rest of America’s problems.


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-15--The NFC East Is Historically Bad. How Much Worse Can It Get?

The most tragic injury of the NFL season — so far — had to be the one Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott suffered Sunday against the New York Giants .
Prescott , who leads the league in passing yards , fractured and dislocated his right ankle scrambling past cornerback Logan Ryan and is expected to miss the rest of the season , according to Dallas head coach Mike McCarthy .
Although the Cowboys won the game , the loss of Prescott is a major setback for Dallas ’ s chances to make something out of their 2020 season .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going for them : They play in the NFC East .
Dallas still has a 35 percent chance of making the playoffs , even after losing its franchise QB , because the rest of the division is maybe the worst in modern history .
This is no hyperbole : Since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger , only one division — the 1984 AFC Central — had a worse record ( 4-16-0 ) through the first five games of each team ’ s season than the 2020 NFC East ’ s current 4-15-1 mark , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a lower average Elo rating through five games : And that low Elo rating is understating the depths of the NFC East ’ s current plight , since it doesn ’ t reflect the drop-off between Prescott and Cowboys backup Andy Dalton looking ahead to the rest of the season .
Dallas hadn ’ t played well even with Prescott putting up huge numbers , ranking 25th in schedule-adjusted expected points added ( EPA ) per game due in large part to the league ’ s third-worst defense .
Meanwhile , the Philadelphia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Football Team all rank among the NFL ’ s bottom five clubs in adjusted EPA per game , ahead of only the Jacksonville Jaguars and New York Jets .
Based on what we ’ ve seen so far , it is fair to say this division exclusively contains not just mediocre teams , but outright bad ones .
Someone has to win it , though .
Right now , we give the Eagles the edge after adjusting for Prescott ’ s injury , setting Philadelphia ’ s odds of winning at 46 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ followed by Washington at 15 percent and New York at 5 percent .
But Philly is on track to go 6-9-1 this season , according to our model , which would be the worst record for any division winner since 1970 .
( The 2010 Seattle Seahawks won the NFC West with a 7-9 record ; no word on whether the Eagles ’ Miles Sanders is capable of a run like this , though . )
And that ’ s just scratching the surface of how bad things could potentially get .
For @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 50,000 simulations of the remaining schedule , which create all manner of possibilities for how the rest of the season might go .
I dug into them to find the worst division-winning scenario for each NFC East team — no matter how mind-boggling .
According to our simulations , the Cowboys could win the division with a 5-11 record .
In fact , it happened in 98 of their 16,833 total division-winning scenarios , making that the most likely of all these doomsday scenarios .
( Don ’ t worry , that still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chance of happening even if the Cowboys win the division . )
It would essentially require the Eagles to do the worst of any division rival over the rest of the schedule — winning 2.8 of their remaining 11 games , on average — and for the currently winless Giants to do the best , with the Cowboys going 3-8 down the stretch .
But each NFC East team does face non-division foes in six of their remaining 11 games , which gives them plenty of chances to lose outside the division while @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Because of their tie in Week 3 against the Cincinnati Bengals , the Eagles could do the Cowboys one better — winning the division with a lowly 4-11-1 record .
As in Dallas ’ s scenario , they would need to go 3-8 down the stretch ; they would also need the Giants to go on a “ tear ” and finish around 4-7 in their remaining games , while the Cowboys would need to win about two of their last 11 .
The odds of this happening are lower simply because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with an Elo of 1480 , while the Cowboys with Dalton have an effective Elo of 1391 — making it less likely that Philadelphia would be quite so bad over the rest of the season ( even if the Cowboys do play the league ’ s second-easiest remaining schedule in terms of opponents ’ Elo ratings ) .
Here ’ s a scenario that happened only once in 50,000 simulations : the Giants winning the division with a 4-12 record .
To make it happen , the Eagles and Cowboys would need to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , while the Giants go 4-7 and Football Team goes 3-8 .
The Giants and Football Team would then finish the season tied with identical 4-12 records , and they would have split the season series as well , but New York wins the division on the intra-divisional record tiebreaker with its three other wins coming against the Eagles ( Weeks 7 and 10 ) and Cowboys ( Week 17 ) .
It ’ s exceptionally unlikely , but as a subset of all the Giants ’ division-winning simulations — only 2,608 in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s actually more probable than our final doomsday scenario .
Washington winning at 4-12 also happens only once in 50,000 simulations , though Football Team does have 7,506 other paths to the division title ( compared with New York ’ s mere 2,607 division-winning simulations in which it doesn ’ t go 4-12 ) .
This one is pretty identical to the Giants ’ 4-12 division-title bid , with Washington winning this time on a tiebreaker because one of the Giants ’ wins came outside the division ( gasp ! )
instead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this weekend .
Of course , the single most likely ( slash boring ) NFC East scenario is that the Eagles win it with an 8-7-1 record , which happened 6,127 times in our 50,000 simulations .
That would mean the 2010 Seahawks could rest easy , and we wouldn ’ t see a new Worst Division Winner Ever in 2020 .
But where ’ s the fun in that ?
I ’ m rooting for the doomsday scenarios .
Looking ahead : There are a few good matchups to watch in Week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Steelers-Browns .
But the one we ’ ve got our eye on is Kansas City at Buffalo on Monday night .
Both teams are coming off of losses — K.C .
was stunned at home by the Raiders , while the Bills were shellacked at Tennessee on Monday .
Still , these are two of the nine best teams in the league , according to our Elo ratings , with a couple of electrifying QBs in Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen .
Buffalo has huge defensive problems , ranking 28th in the league @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this season , which is music to Mahomes ’ s ears after his mediocre performance against Vegas .
Allen might find K.C.
’ s defense ( No .
6 in EPA ) a tougher puzzle to solve , though he ’ s been passing the ball very well and the game is at home .
We give Kansas City a 60 percent chance here , but it would be a great opportunity for Buffalo to reassert itself as a legitimate contender after being embarrassed by the Titans .
Elo ’ s spread : @ @ @

The most tragic injury of the NFL season — so far — had to be the one Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott suffered Sunday against the New York Giants. Prescott, who leads the league in passing yards, fractured and dislocated his right ankle scrambling past cornerback Logan Ryan and is expected to miss the rest of the season, according to Dallas head coach Mike McCarthy. Although the Cowboys won the game, the loss of Prescott is a major setback for Dallas’s chances to make something out of their 2020 season.
But the Cowboys do have one important thing going for them: They play in the NFC East. Dallas still has a 35 percent chance of making the playoffs, even after losing its franchise QB, because the rest of the division is maybe the worst in modern history. This is no hyperbole: Since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger, only one division — the 1984 AFC Central — had a worse record (4-16-0) through the first five games of each team’s season than the 2020 NFC East’s current 4-15-1 mark, and no division in history has had a lower average Elo rating through five games:
More like NFC Least, amirite? (I’ll show myself out.) Lowest average Elo rating for the teams in an NFL division through five games, 1970-2020 Record Season Division No. of Tms Wins Losses Ties W% Avg. Elo Rating 2020 NFC East 4 4 15 1 .225 1409.4 2015 AFC South 4 6 14 0 .300 1409.9 2005 NFC West 4 7 13 0 .350 1416.5 1984 AFC Central 4 4 16 0 .200 1419.3 2011 NFC West 4 7 13 0 .350 1422.5 2010 NFC West 4 8 12 0 .400 1425.3 2008 NFC West 4 7 13 0 .350 1426.8 2014 AFC South 4 7 13 0 .350 1427.9 1976 NFC West 5 10 14 1 .420 1430.3 2016 AFC South 4 9 11 0 .450 1430.5 1970 AFC Central 4 8 12 0 .400 1432.7 1971 AFC Central 4 7 12 1 .375 1433.0 2002 AFC South 4 9 11 0 .450 1435.8 1977 NFC Central 5 10 15 0 .400 1437.9 1999 AFC Central 6 13 17 0 .433 1439.5 1976 AFC West 5 11 14 0 .440 1439.5 1995 AFC Central 5 11 14 0 .440 1439.9 2009 NFC West 4 8 12 0 .400 1441.0 2009 AFC West 4 8 12 0 .400 1441.5 1998 NFC East 5 7 18 0 .280 1444.7 Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com
And that low Elo rating is understating the depths of the NFC East’s current plight, since it doesn’t reflect the drop-off between Prescott and Cowboys backup Andy Dalton looking ahead to the rest of the season. Dallas hadn’t played well even with Prescott putting up huge numbers, ranking 25th in schedule-adjusted expected points added (EPA) per game due in large part to the league’s third-worst defense. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Eagles, the Giants and the Washington Football Team all rank among the NFL’s bottom five clubs in adjusted EPA per game, ahead of only the Jacksonville Jaguars and New York Jets. Based on what we’ve seen so far, it is fair to say this division exclusively contains not just mediocre teams, but outright bad ones.
Someone has to win it, though. Right now, we give the Eagles the edge after adjusting for Prescott’s injury, setting Philadelphia’s odds of winning at 46 percent; Dallas sits at 34 percent, followed by Washington at 15 percent and New York at 5 percent. But Philly is on track to go 6-9-1 this season, according to our model, which would be the worst record for any division winner since 1970. (The 2010 Seattle Seahawks won the NFC West with a 7-9 record; no word on whether the Eagles’ Miles Sanders is capable of a run like this, though.)
And that’s just scratching the surface of how bad things could potentially get. For our NFL prediction model, we generate 50,000 simulations of the remaining schedule, which create all manner of possibilities for how the rest of the season might go. I dug into them to find the worst division-winning scenario for each NFC East team — no matter how mind-boggling.
Doomsday scenario No. 1: Dallas wins at 5-11 Average outcomes in the 98 (out of 50,000) simulations in which the Dallas Cowboys win the NFC East with a 5-11 record Simulated Seasons Team Current Wins* remaining total Dallas Cowboys 2.0 3.0 5.0 Philadelphia Eagles 1.5 2.8 4.3 Washington Football Team 1.0 3.1 4.1 New York Giants 0.0 3.9 3.9 *Ties are counted as half-wins.
According to our simulations, the Cowboys could win the division with a 5-11 record. In fact, it happened in 98 of their 16,833 total division-winning scenarios, making that the most likely of all these doomsday scenarios. (Don’t worry, that still means it has just a 0.58 percent chance of happening even if the Cowboys win the division.) It would essentially require the Eagles to do the worst of any division rival over the rest of the schedule — winning 2.8 of their remaining 11 games, on average — and for the currently winless Giants to do the best, with the Cowboys going 3-8 down the stretch. But each NFC East team does face non-division foes in six of their remaining 11 games, which gives them plenty of chances to lose outside the division while cannibalizing wins among themselves inside of it.
Doomsday scenario No. 2: Philly wins at 4-11-1 Average outcomes in the 10 (out of 50,000) simulations in which the Philadelphia Eagles win the NFC East with a 4-11-1 record Simulated Seasons Team Current Wins* remaining total Philadelphia Eagles 1.5 3.0 4.5 Dallas Cowboys 2.0 1.8 3.8 Washington Football Team 1.0 2.8 3.8 New York Giants 0.0 3.7 3.7 *Ties are counted as half-wins.
Because of their tie in Week 3 against the Cincinnati Bengals, the Eagles could do the Cowboys one better — winning the division with a lowly 4-11-1 record. As in Dallas’s scenario, they would need to go 3-8 down the stretch; they would also need the Giants to go on a “tear” and finish around 4-7 in their remaining games, while the Cowboys would need to win about two of their last 11. The odds of this happening are lower simply because the Eagles with Carson Wentz are rated with an Elo of 1480, while the Cowboys with Dalton have an effective Elo of 1391 — making it less likely that Philadelphia would be quite so bad over the rest of the season (even if the Cowboys do play the league’s second-easiest remaining schedule in terms of opponents’ Elo ratings).
Doomsday scenario No. 3: New York wins at 4-12 Average outcomes in the 1 (out of 50,000) simulations in which the New York Giants win the NFC East with a 4-12 record Simulated Seasons Team Current Wins* remaining total New York Giants 0.0 4.0 4.0 Washington Football Team 1.0 3.0 4.0 Philadelphia Eagles 1.5 2.0 3.5 Dallas Cowboys 2.0 1.0 3.0 *Ties are counted as half-wins.
Here’s a scenario that happened only once in 50,000 simulations: the Giants winning the division with a 4-12 record. To make it happen, the Eagles and Cowboys would need to go a combined 3-19 down the stretch, while the Giants go 4-7 and Football Team goes 3-8. The Giants and Football Team would then finish the season tied with identical 4-12 records, and they would have split the season series as well, but New York wins the division on the intra-divisional record tiebreaker with its three other wins coming against the Eagles (Weeks 7 and 10) and Cowboys (Week 17). It’s exceptionally unlikely, but as a subset of all the Giants’ division-winning simulations — only 2,608 in total, out of 50,000 — it’s actually more probable than our final doomsday scenario.
Doomsday scenario No. 4: Washington wins at 4-12 Average outcomes in the 1 (out of 50,000) simulations in which the Washington Football Team wins the NFC East with a 4-12 record Simulated Seasons Team Current Wins* remaining total Washington Football Team 1.0 3.0 4.0 New York Giants 0.0 4.0 4.0 Dallas Cowboys 2.0 2.0 4.0 Philadelphia Eagles 1.5 2.0 3.5 *Ties are counted as half-wins.
Washington winning at 4-12 also happens only once in 50,000 simulations, though Football Team does have 7,506 other paths to the division title (compared with New York’s mere 2,607 division-winning simulations in which it doesn’t go 4-12). This one is pretty identical to the Giants’ 4-12 division-title bid, with Washington winning this time on a tiebreaker because one of the Giants’ wins came outside the division (gasp!) instead of against Football Team in their game this weekend.
Of course, the single most likely (slash boring) NFC East scenario is that the Eagles win it with an 8-7-1 record, which happened 6,127 times in our 50,000 simulations. That would mean the 2010 Seahawks could rest easy, and we wouldn’t see a new Worst Division Winner Ever in 2020. But where’s the fun in that? I’m rooting for the doomsday scenarios.
FiveThirtyEight’s NFL Elo ratings How each team ranks through Week 5 of the 2020 season, according to our quarterback-adjusted predictions Chance To … Rk Team Starting QB QB Rk* Elo Rating Proj. Record Make Playoffs Win Division Win SB 1 Chiefs Mahomes 1 1688 12-4 94% 78% 15% 2 Packers Rodgers 4 1655 12-4 95 76 14 3 Ravens Jackson 6 1649 11-5 87 42 9 4 Seahawks Wilson 3 1640 12-4 95 64 11 5 Titans Tannehill 9 1622 12-4 89 78 8 6 Steelers Roethlisberger 7 1619 12-4 85 39 7 7 Rams Goff 12 1603 10-6 79 27 6 8 Saints Brees 2 1591 10-6 71 49 4 9 Bills Allen 10 1583 10-6 75 59 4 10 Buccaneers Brady 15 1570 9-7 62 35 4 11 Browns Mayfield 24 1563 11-5 73 19 3 12 Bears Foles 22 1551 10-6 72 22 3 13 Colts Rivers 20 1541 9-7 41 19 2 14 Raiders Carr 5 1540 9-7 50 17 1 15 49ers Garoppolo✚ 30 1523 7-9 20 2 <1 16 Patriots Newton✚ 17 1516 9-7 56 35 3 17 Cardinals Murray 8 1509 8-8 36 6 1 18 Dolphins Fitzpatrick 11 1502 7-9 21 7 <1 19 Vikings Cousins 25 1494 7-9 18 2 <1 20 Panthers Bridgewater 14 1484 8-8 37 15 <1 21 Eagles Wentz 23 1480 6-9-1 47 46 <1 22 Broncos Lock✚ 29 1480 6-10 12 3 <1 23 Texans Watson 13 1459 5-11 6 2 <1 24 Chargers Herbert 19 1450 6-10 8 1 <1 25 Lions Stafford 16 1421 6-10 10 <1 <1 26 Falcons Ryan 18 1416 4-12 2 <1 <1 27 Cowboys Dalton 26 1391 6-10 35 34 <1 28 Bengals Burrow 28 1382 5-10-1 3 <1 <1 29 Washington Allen 32 1348 5-11 16 15 <1 30 Jaguars Minshew 21 1347 4-12 <1 <1 <1 31 Giants Jones 27 1344 4-12 5 5 <1 32 Jets Flacco 31 1327 3-13 <1 <1 <1 *Ranking among Week 6 starters, according to our QB Elo ratings. ✚ Starter is currently injured and may not play. Simulations as of Oct. 14, 2020. Source: ESPN
Looking ahead: There are a few good matchups to watch in Week 6, including Rams-49ers, Packers-Bucs and Steelers-Browns. But the one we’ve got our eye on is Kansas City at Buffalo on Monday night. Both teams are coming off of losses — K.C. was stunned at home by the Raiders, while the Bills were shellacked at Tennessee on Monday. Still, these are two of the nine best teams in the league, according to our Elo ratings, with a couple of electrifying QBs in Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen. Buffalo has huge defensive problems, ranking 28th in the league in adjusted EPA per game so far this season, which is music to Mahomes’s ears after his mediocre performance against Vegas. Allen might find K.C.’s defense (No. 6 in EPA) a tougher puzzle to solve, though he’s been passing the ball very well and the game is at home. We give Kansas City a 60 percent chance here, but it would be a great opportunity for Buffalo to reassert itself as a legitimate contender after being embarrassed by the Titans. Elo’s spread: Kansas City -2½
Check out our latest NFL predictions.


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-15--Why Has Premier League Scoring Skyrocketed?

Other than the empty stadiums and a 21-year-old American suddenly looking like one of the best players in England , the Premier League ’ s “ Project Restart ” last season seemed a lot like the soccer that came before the coronavirus pandemic brought everything to a halt .
The lack of fans and the addition of two extra substitutions were supposed to upend the traditional dynamics of the game .
Instead , managers across England and the rest of Europe mainly refused to take advantage of their new tactical options .
And although referees gave out fewer cards to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a typical season , the performance of home and away teams didn ’ t change at all without supporters present .
In fact , it ’ s almost eerie how little things shifted .
Before the pause in play , the average Premier League match featured 2.72 goals .
After the pause in play ?
Still 2.72 goals .
The game of soccer seemed immune to the upheaval going on around it — and then the current season started .
To put it in technical terms , the Premier League has lost its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s 12th-place team , sits alone in first place and is perfect through four matches .
Aston Villa , which finished last season one spot clear of the relegation zone , beat defending champions Liverpool 7-2 on Oct. 4 .
( Yes , you read that right . )
Manchester City , winners of two of the last three titles , is currently in 14th place .
Manchester United , the richest club in England , is all the way down in 16th .
The chaos has been powered by a never-before-seen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of offensive output we ’ ve seen in the NBA and the NFL .
What ’ s causing the sudden shift ?
And should we expect it to last ?
The average Premier League game this season has featured 3.79 goals per game .
Per data from Stats Perform , that would shatter the previous record for a full season : The 3.79 goals per game is also a record for the first four weeks of any season , with the next-highest mark through four weeks being the 2.82 goals scored per game @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , this year ’ s scoring average is the most goals scored per game in any random four-week stretch in any Premier League season : So … what the hell is going on ?
An obvious culprit is the increase in penalties awarded .
Last season , the International Football Association Board introduced new , more clear-cut , much stricter handball rules .
While Premier League referees essentially didn ’ t enforce the new regulations last year , FIFA has taken over the league ’ s application of Video Assisted Referee ( VAR @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under an instant-replay microscope , the rate of penalties awarded has skyrocketed : It ’ s 0.66 per match this season , up from 0.24 last season and 0.27 the season before .
More and more of those penalties have come from handballs , too .
According to data from the soccer consulting firm 21st Club , 24 percent of penalties this season were for handballs — up from 21 percent last year , 14 percent the year before that and 8 percent in 2017-18 .
The new rules and their sudden enforcement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they approach the game when they ’ re inside their own penalty area .
“ We need to adapt to these rules , ” Loran Vrielink , a private tactical coach for a number of top players across Europe , told FiveThirtyEight .
He pointed to Inter Milan defender Stefan de Vrij .
“ Inside the penalty area , he ’ s always putting both hands behind his back .
You need to do that .
Otherwise it ’ s too easy to give up a penalty.
” It ’ s not just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , non-penalty goals per 90 minutes have also risen by 25 percent this season when compared with the average of the past four seasons — to 3.11 from 2.48 .
Vrielink suggests that the lack of a typical offseason , combined with a muted in-stadium atmosphere , has made it harder for players to maintain their typical energy levels and mental focus for a full game .
He thinks that ’ s led to more goals because a defensive lapse is much more easily punished than an attacking error .
“ With a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s a goal , and you played a bad game , ” he said .
“ That ’ s the cruel thing about football .
You could not see a winger for a whole game , he ’ ll score a goal , and people will say he ’ s the best player on the field.
” The data lends some support to this theory .
According to 21st Club , the number of fouls per 90 minutes this season ( 23.7 ) is up by two compared with last season and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Thanks to the delayed finish to last season , there were also only 48 days between the end of the 2019-20 campaign and the start of the current one .
To put that in perspective , the previous two offseasons lasted for an average of 89 days .
It ’ s even worse for the players whose teams played in competitions that lasted beyond the end of the domestic season : About one-fifth — 21 percent — of the players who have appeared in the Premier League this season had 40 or fewer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ none of that explains the main driver of all the goals : Premier League attackers are as hot as they ’ ve ever been .
The number of shots per game has actually declined by about a shot from last season to the current one , but a much higher-percentage of attempts are finding the back of the net : 12 percent of shots have turned into goals so far , compared to an average of about 9 percent for the previous four seasons .
Teams are seeking out better shots — the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ value of 0.16 , compared with an average of 0.14 from the previous four seasons — but even that discrepancy doesn ’ t come close to accounting for all the extra goals .
Despite all of these changing variables , the number of expected goals created over the first four weeks of a season has remained remarkably stable over the past five years .
In fact , teams have created significantly worse open-play goal-scoring opportunities this season than in recent years past .
This year , they just haven ’ t missed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ shenanigans we ’ re unaware of or some global manufacturing malfunction for goalkeeper gloves , there ’ s no real feasible explanation for Premier League players suddenly outpacing a relatively accurate goal-scoring model by nearly 40 goals through just four weeks .
Perhaps player fatigue is confusing the model , since this is the first global pandemic of the expected goals era , but not by this much .
Instead , it ’ s likely that this is just a historic hot streak .
On top of that , the Premier League has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interpreting the handball rule more subjectively .
With regression to the mean likely for the leaguewide conversion percentage and with referees soon to stop calling so many handballs , the Premier League ’ s goal-fest might be over soon — if it isn ’ t already .

Other than the empty stadiums and a 21-year-old American suddenly looking like one of the best players in England, the Premier League’s “Project Restart” last season seemed a lot like the soccer that came before the coronavirus pandemic brought everything to a halt. The lack of fans and the addition of two extra substitutions were supposed to upend the traditional dynamics of the game. Instead, managers across England and the rest of Europe mainly refused to take advantage of their new tactical options. And although referees gave out fewer cards to away teams relative to home teams in a typical season, the performance of home and away teams didn’t change at all without supporters present.
In fact, it’s almost eerie how little things shifted. Before the pause in play, the average Premier League match featured 2.72 goals. After the pause in play? Still 2.72 goals.
The game of soccer seemed immune to the upheaval going on around it — and then the current season started. To put it in technical terms, the Premier League has lost its freaking mind. Everton, last season’s 12th-place team, sits alone in first place and is perfect through four matches. Aston Villa, which finished last season one spot clear of the relegation zone, beat defending champions Liverpool 7-2 on Oct. 4. (Yes, you read that right.) Manchester City, winners of two of the last three titles, is currently in 14th place. Manchester United, the richest club in England, is all the way down in 16th.
The chaos has been powered by a never-before-seen explosion of goals, mirroring the rise of offensive output we’ve seen in the NBA and the NFL. What’s causing the sudden shift? And should we expect it to last?
The average Premier League game this season has featured 3.79 goals per game. Per data from Stats Perform, that would shatter the previous record for a full season:
The 3.79 goals per game is also a record for the first four weeks of any season, with the next-highest mark through four weeks being the 2.82 goals scored per game two seasons ago. Not only that, this year’s scoring average is the most goals scored per game in any random four-week stretch in any Premier League season:
No four-week offensive output matches this one Four-week spans in Premier League history with the highest average in goals per game (GPG) SEASON From … To Games GOALS GPG 2020-21 Sept. 12 Oct. 9, 2020 38 144 3.79 2015-16 Sept. 26 Oct. 23, 2015 30 105 3.50 2009-10 Sept. 12 Oct. 9, 2009 40 140 3.50 2011-12 Oct. 2 Oct. 29, 2011 32 111 3.47 2009-10 Sept. 19 Oct. 16, 2009 30 104 3.47 2011-12 Oct. 23 Nov. 19, 2011 33 114 3.45 Four-week spans could overlap but must have been completed by the end of the season. Source: Stats Perform
So … what the hell is going on? An obvious culprit is the increase in penalties awarded. Last season, the International Football Association Board introduced new, more clear-cut, much stricter handball rules. While Premier League referees essentially didn’t enforce the new regulations last year, FIFA has taken over the league’s application of Video Assisted Referee (VAR). With every potential offense now under an instant-replay microscope, the rate of penalties awarded has skyrocketed: It’s 0.66 per match this season, up from 0.24 last season and 0.27 the season before.
More and more of those penalties have come from handballs, too. According to data from the soccer consulting firm 21st Club, 24 percent of penalties this season were for handballs — up from 21 percent last year, 14 percent the year before that and 8 percent in 2017-18. The new rules and their sudden enforcement have required defenders to change the way they approach the game when they’re inside their own penalty area.
“We need to adapt to these rules,” Loran Vrielink, a private tactical coach for a number of top players across Europe, told FiveThirtyEight. He pointed to Inter Milan defender Stefan de Vrij. “Inside the penalty area, he’s always putting both hands behind his back. You need to do that. Otherwise it’s too easy to give up a penalty.”
It’s not just penalties, though. Per 21st Club, non-penalty goals per 90 minutes have also risen by 25 percent this season when compared with the average of the past four seasons — to 3.11 from 2.48.
Vrielink suggests that the lack of a typical offseason, combined with a muted in-stadium atmosphere, has made it harder for players to maintain their typical energy levels and mental focus for a full game. He thinks that’s led to more goals because a defensive lapse is much more easily punished than an attacking error.
“With a defender, one mistake, and it’s a goal, and you played a bad game,” he said. “That’s the cruel thing about football. You could not see a winger for a whole game, he’ll score a goal, and people will say he’s the best player on the field.”
The data lends some support to this theory. According to 21st Club, the number of fouls per 90 minutes this season (23.7) is up by two compared with last season and is at its highest since 2016-17. Thanks to the delayed finish to last season, there were also only 48 days between the end of the 2019-20 campaign and the start of the current one. To put that in perspective, the previous two offseasons lasted for an average of 89 days. It’s even worse for the players whose teams played in competitions that lasted beyond the end of the domestic season: About one-fifth — 21 percent — of the players who have appeared in the Premier League this season had 40 or fewer days between their two seasons.
But none of that explains the main driver of all the goals: Premier League attackers are as hot as they’ve ever been. The number of shots per game has actually declined by about a shot from last season to the current one, but a much higher-percentage of attempts are finding the back of the net: 12 percent of shots have turned into goals so far, compared to an average of about 9 percent for the previous four seasons. Teams are seeking out better shots — the average attempt in 2020-21 has an expected-goal value of 0.16, compared with an average of 0.14 from the previous four seasons — but even that discrepancy doesn’t come close to accounting for all the extra goals.
Despite all of these changing variables, the number of expected goals created over the first four weeks of a season has remained remarkably stable over the past five years. In fact, teams have created significantly worse open-play goal-scoring opportunities this season than in recent years past. This year, they just haven’t missed.
Players are well outperforming their expected goals Expected goals (xG) vs. actual goals scored, for all goals and non-penalty goals through Week 4 of each Premier League season since 2016-17 All goals Non-penalty goals Season xG goals xG Goals 2020-21 107.10 144 87.39 121 2019-20 110.80 113 103.70 106 2018-19 107.74 116 96.70 107 2017-18 99.54 101 95.60 97 2016-17 103.05 106 91.23 95 Source: Stats Perform
Unless there’s some MLB-esque ball-juicing shenanigans we’re unaware of or some global manufacturing malfunction for goalkeeper gloves, there’s no real feasible explanation for Premier League players suddenly outpacing a relatively accurate goal-scoring model by nearly 40 goals through just four weeks. Perhaps player fatigue is confusing the model, since this is the first global pandemic of the expected goals era, but not by this much. Instead, it’s likely that this is just a historic hot streak.
On top of that, the Premier League has asked the IFAB for permission to start interpreting the handball rule more subjectively. With regression to the mean likely for the leaguewide conversion percentage and with referees soon to stop calling so many handballs, the Premier League’s goal-fest might be over soon — if it isn’t already.
Check out our latest soccer predictions.


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-15--If Billy Beane Is Done With Baseball, He’s Left An Indelible Mark

On Monday , the Wall Street Journal reported that Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane will soon have a stake in the Boston Red Sox through his company RedBall Acquisition Corp .
Since you can ’ t be involved in running two MLB teams at once , it appears Beane will instead leave baseball entirely — joining Red Sox owner John Henry ’ s business efforts across other sports ( most notably soccer — Henry owns the Liverpool club ) .
If this is how the Athletics ’ Moneyball era ends , what do we make of it ?
Under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Oakland ’ s GM came in 1998 , the A ’ s have won seven division titles and produced the sixth-most wins in baseball , all while spending the second-fewest dollars per wins above replacement of any club ( trailing only — no surprise — the Tampa Bay Rays ) .
So in that sense , the main thesis of Michael Lewis ’ s book on Oakland ’ s process held true throughout Beane ’ s tenure : Using sabermetric principles to hunt for inefficiencies , Beane consistently found success on a shoestring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ success , Beane ’ s analytical approach eventually transcended the small-market A ’ s and reshaped the way every team crafts a roster , for better and for worse .
But at the same time he was changing the game , Beane could never quite build the right team for October .
In their 11 playoff appearances under his watch , stretching back to 2000 , the A ’ s went 18-29 and won only two series in 13 tries — including their recent ALDS loss to the Houston Astros .
“ My @ @ @ @ @ @ @ playoffs , ” Beane famously told Lewis in “ Moneyball.
” “ My job is to get us to the playoffs .
What happens after that is fucking luck.
” Perhaps so , but Oakland ’ s postseason struggles are also part of the Moneyball story , an unavoidable aspect of Beane ’ s legacy with the A ’ s .
Still , it is difficult to overstate how much of a mark Beane will leave on the game of baseball .
As detailed in “ Moneyball , ” he quickly transitioned from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ role and eventually a front-office apprenticeship under then-GM Sandy Alderson — another nonconformist and an early adopter of analytics in his own team-building philosophy .
The A ’ s roster Beane inherited in 1998 was the third-cheapest in baseball , a far cry from the star-laden team that had made three consecutive World Series from 1988 to 1990 .
If he wanted to win , Beane knew he ’ d have no choice but to find underappreciated talent .
Analytics happened to be a mostly unexplored avenue for those seeking to do just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one who read “ Moneyball , ” Beane ’ s early A ’ s teams improved quickly in on-base percentage after he took over as GM , rising from ninth in the American League in 1998 to third by 2000 and 2001 .
The 2000 team , which boasted five starters with an OBP of .349 or higher — led by Jason Giambi ’ s .476 mark — had the second-best offense in the AL with 5.88 runs per game .
That represented the peak of what we might think of as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who loaded up on high-OBP hitters that other teams had overlooked .
But despite the team ’ s reputation for getting on base , Oakland never ranked so highly in its signature stat ever again .
For instance , in 2003 — a season after the one Lewis focused on in his book — the A ’ s ranked 10th out of 14 AL teams in OBP .
Though they bounced back some the next season , Oakland has had an average AL ranking of 8.4 in OBP since Moneyball was written @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over that span : Oakland ’ s batters have fared slightly better when we consider their overall performance , with an average ranking of 8.1 in position-player WAR since 2003 thanks to fielding and base-running .
( Defense was actually detailed as a source of inefficiency Beane chased immediately after “ Moneyball , ” since the market had caught up on OBP . )
Athletics batters finished No .
1 in the AL in WAR in 2018 , thanks to an exceptionally deep stable of well-rounded players who were talented both at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ personified by modern A ’ s stars Matt Chapman and Marcus Semien .
The idea of Beane ’ s lineups sacrificing speed and glovework on the altar of on-base percentage may have been true at first , but it wasn ’ t really the case for the majority of his tenure as Oakland GM .
Likewise , the OBP-centric narrative of “ Moneyball ” obscured just how great Beane was at drafting , developing or otherwise uncovering great pitchers .
Early on , the A ’ s were far more driven by high-quality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reading Lewis ’ s book : From 2000 to 2003 , Oakland had the third-most pitching WAR in MLB ( compared with the ninth-most WAR from its position players ) .
Those A ’ s were led by three of the 13 best pitchers in baseball according to WAR — Tim Hudson ( fifth ) , Barry Zito ( ninth ) and Mark Mulder ( 13th ) — a trio of aces who were mentioned a grand total of 32 times in “ Moneyball.
” ( For comparison ’ s sake , Scott @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent as many WAR as the Zito-Hudson-Mulder trio , was mentioned 121 times . )
Though later playoff-bound A ’ s teams featured more hitting star power — led by the likes of Semien , Chapman , Matt Olson , Josh Donaldson and Josh Reddick — Beane still managed to cobble together MLB ’ s sixth-best pitching staff by WAR from 2012 to 2020 ( compared with its eighth-best corps of position players ) .
That so few A ’ s hurlers were big names during this period , with the possible exception @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s knack for constantly cycling through pitching talent before it became too expensive for Oakland to retain .
Weighted by WAR , the average ex-A ’ s pitcher since 1998 spent just 4.3 seasons with the club , easily the fewest for any team ’ s pitchers over that span : The constant churn included trading Rich Harden and Gio Gonzalez when they were 26 ; Mulder , Gray , Dan Haren , Joe Blanton and Andrew Bailey when they were 27 , and Hudson when he was 29 .
Those deals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ members of future A ’ s squads , in addition to planting the seeds for even more wheeling and dealing down the line .
According to MLB.com ’ s Andrew Simon , Beane ’ s A ’ s have made more total trades than any other club since 1998 — a tally of nearly 300 going into the 2020 season .
Not all of them made Beane look like a visionary genius .
Most infamously , he shipped Donaldson to the Toronto Blue Jays for Brett Lawrie and Kendall Graveman ; Donaldson went @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Graveman proved to merely be a serviceable ( yet oft-injured ) pitcher , and Lawrie was out of baseball within three years .
But the frequent trades mostly helped Beane achieve his goal of keeping the A ’ s competitive despite bargain-priced rosters .
As my colleague Ben Morris wrote years ago , the advantage Beane ’ s shrewd deal-making brought to Oakland year after year was worth far more than any one star player could have provided the franchise .
And yet , postseason success eluded Beane and the A ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each team ’ s pre-playoff Elo ratings ( including 2020 ) , we would have expected Oakland to win 1.4 World Series since 1998 in their 11 playoff appearances .
Instead , it won zero — a shortfall that ranks as the worst in baseball during Beane ’ s time as GM : But why did it happen ?
There ’ s plenty of blame to go around .
Compared with their regular-season stats , A ’ s postseason pitchers put up an ERA 21 percent higher ( 3.98 versus 3.30 ) than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fielding-independent pitching 13 percent higher ( 4.16 versus 3.67 ) and a WHIP 8 percent higher .
At the plate , Oakland ’ s OPS was 8 percent lower ( .711 versus .775 ) than we would expect from regular-season statistics , with a batting average 9 percent lower ( .237 versus .259 ) .
And ironically , the largest percent decline for A ’ s hitters came in the category of on-base percentage , in which they dipped by 11 percent ( .305 versus .341 ) in the playoffs .
So Oakland @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when October rolled around — though it ’ s important to note that we still don ’ t really know what the right formula actually is for postseason success ( relative to the regular season ) .
All we can say is this : Whatever does cause teams to outperform expectations in the playoffs , Beane was never able to discover it , for all of his trying over more than two decades in Oakland .
However , the Athletics ’ inability to win in the playoffs is but a small part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ game .
Other teams that followed his lead did find success in the playoffs — most notably the Red Sox , Chicago Cubs , Houston Astros , St. Louis Cardinals … and maybe even the Rays this season .
And because of Beane ’ s influence , the entire way the game is played has changed over the past 20 years .
To that point , Beane has acknowledged it was becoming more and more difficult to find an edge through analytics with the passing of time .
“ Teams are valuing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Washington Post in 2018 .
“ The big teams are run very wisely now .
… There are really smart guys who have capital .
There ’ s no soft spots .
They ’ re smart guys , and they ’ re surrounded by smart guys .
It ’ s a very intelligent industry right now.
” Maybe that realization played a role in Beane ’ s impending career change .
After spending decades chasing inefficiencies , there are fewer to be found than ever before .
But whatever the reason for it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A ’ s marks the end of an era that drastically transformed baseball — and sports in general — forever .

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane will soon have a stake in the Boston Red Sox through his company RedBall Acquisition Corp. Since you can’t be involved in running two MLB teams at once, it appears Beane will instead leave baseball entirely — joining Red Sox owner John Henry’s business efforts across other sports (most notably soccer — Henry owns the Liverpool club).
If this is how the Athletics’ Moneyball era ends, what do we make of it? Under Beane, whose first full season as Oakland’s GM came in 1998, the A’s have won seven division titles and produced the sixth-most wins in baseball, all while spending the second-fewest dollars per wins above replacement of any club (trailing only — no surprise — the Tampa Bay Rays). So in that sense, the main thesis of Michael Lewis’s book on Oakland’s process held true throughout Beane’s tenure: Using sabermetric principles to hunt for inefficiencies, Beane consistently found success on a shoestring budget.
In the wake of that success, Beane’s analytical approach eventually transcended the small-market A’s and reshaped the way every team crafts a roster, for better and for worse. But at the same time he was changing the game, Beane could never quite build the right team for October. In their 11 playoff appearances under his watch, stretching back to 2000, the A’s went 18-29 and won only two series in 13 tries — including their recent ALDS loss to the Houston Astros. “My shit doesn’t work in the playoffs,” Beane famously told Lewis in “Moneyball.” “My job is to get us to the playoffs. What happens after that is fucking luck.” Perhaps so, but Oakland’s postseason struggles are also part of the Moneyball story, an unavoidable aspect of Beane’s legacy with the A’s.
Still, it is difficult to overstate how much of a mark Beane will leave on the game of baseball. As detailed in “Moneyball,” he quickly transitioned from a mediocre playing career to a scouting role and eventually a front-office apprenticeship under then-GM Sandy Alderson — another nonconformist and an early adopter of analytics in his own team-building philosophy. The A’s roster Beane inherited in 1998 was the third-cheapest in baseball, a far cry from the star-laden team that had made three consecutive World Series from 1988 to 1990. If he wanted to win, Beane knew he’d have no choice but to find underappreciated talent. Analytics happened to be a mostly unexplored avenue for those seeking to do just that.
To the surprise of no one who read “Moneyball,” Beane’s early A’s teams improved quickly in on-base percentage after he took over as GM, rising from ninth in the American League in 1998 to third by 2000 and 2001. The 2000 team, which boasted five starters with an OBP of .349 or higher — led by Jason Giambi’s .476 mark — had the second-best offense in the AL with 5.88 runs per game. That represented the peak of what we might think of as the “Classic Moneyball” A’s, who loaded up on high-OBP hitters that other teams had overlooked. But despite the team’s reputation for getting on base, Oakland never ranked so highly in its signature stat ever again. For instance, in 2003 — a season after the one Lewis focused on in his book — the A’s ranked 10th out of 14 AL teams in OBP. Though they bounced back some the next season, Oakland has had an average AL ranking of 8.4 in OBP since Moneyball was written, never finishing any better than fifth over that span:
Oakland’s batters have fared slightly better when we consider their overall performance, with an average ranking of 8.1 in position-player WAR since 2003 thanks to fielding and base-running. (Defense was actually detailed as a source of inefficiency Beane chased immediately after “Moneyball,” since the market had caught up on OBP.) Athletics batters finished No. 1 in the AL in WAR in 2018, thanks to an exceptionally deep stable of well-rounded players who were talented both at the plate and in the field — as personified by modern A’s stars Matt Chapman and Marcus Semien. The idea of Beane’s lineups sacrificing speed and glovework on the altar of on-base percentage may have been true at first, but it wasn’t really the case for the majority of his tenure as Oakland GM.
Likewise, the OBP-centric narrative of “Moneyball” obscured just how great Beane was at drafting, developing or otherwise uncovering great pitchers. Early on, the A’s were far more driven by high-quality pitching than you might have known from reading Lewis’s book: From 2000 to 2003, Oakland had the third-most pitching WAR in MLB (compared with the ninth-most WAR from its position players). Those A’s were led by three of the 13 best pitchers in baseball according to WAR — Tim Hudson (fifth), Barry Zito (ninth) and Mark Mulder (13th) — a trio of aces who were mentioned a grand total of 32 times in “Moneyball.” (For comparison’s sake, Scott Hatteberg, who was worth only 7 percent as many WAR as the Zito-Hudson-Mulder trio, was mentioned 121 times.) Though later playoff-bound A’s teams featured more hitting star power — led by the likes of Semien, Chapman, Matt Olson, Josh Donaldson and Josh Reddick — Beane still managed to cobble together MLB’s sixth-best pitching staff by WAR from 2012 to 2020 (compared with its eighth-best corps of position players).
That so few A’s hurlers were big names during this period, with the possible exception of Sonny Gray, speaks to Beane’s knack for constantly cycling through pitching talent before it became too expensive for Oakland to retain. Weighted by WAR, the average ex-A’s pitcher since 1998 spent just 4.3 seasons with the club, easily the fewest for any team’s pitchers over that span:
Nobody cycled through pitchers like Billy Beane For all players who departed a franchise, average length of tenure with the club and age in season of departure, weighted by wins above replacement (WAR) with the club, 1998-2020 Departed Batters Departed Pitchers Team Avg. Tenure Avg. Age at Departure Team Avg. Tenure Avg. Age at Departure Padres 4.7 31.1 Athletics 4.3 30.1 Rays 5.6 30.2 Royals 4.7 29.9 Brewers 5.7 30.8 Pirates 4.7 29.5 Dodgers 5.7 31.9 Rays 4.8 28.9 Tigers 5.8 31.4 Mets 4.9 33.2 D-backs 5.8 31.6 Brewers 5.0 30.5 Athletics 5.9 31.3 Marlins 5.0 28.6 Marlins 5.9 28.4 Dodgers 5.0 32.4 Cubs 6.3 32.5 D-backs 5.2 33.5 Cardinals 6.3 31.6 Cardinals 5.2 31.8 Blue Jays 6.5 31.5 Rockies 5.4 30.7 Reds 6.7 30.9 Rangers 5.5 31.3 Rangers 7.0 32.8 Nationals 5.6 30.0 Royals 7.0 30.7 Phillies 5.8 31.8 Mets 7.1 32.7 Padres 6.0 32.1 Pirates 7.2 31.0 Orioles 6.0 30.4 White Sox 7.2 31.9 Astros 6.0 31.9 Indians 7.4 32.1 Blue Jays 6.1 31.2 Mariners 7.4 34.4 Reds 6.1 31.3 Angels 7.6 31.5 Cubs 6.2 32.0 Orioles 7.6 32.8 Red Sox 6.2 32.8 Nationals 7.8 30.2 Indians 6.4 30.5 Red Sox 7.8 32.9 White Sox 6.5 30.7 Giants 7.8 35.0 Angels 6.6 31.4 Twins 8.3 32.0 Tigers 6.7 31.1 Astros 8.4 32.9 Twins 7.0 31.3 Braves 8.8 32.4 Giants 7.1 31.4 Phillies 9.2 33.2 Mariners 7.2 32.5 Yankees 9.7 35.7 Braves 7.7 33.0 Rockies 9.8 34.3 Yankees 8.0 36.2 Sources: Baseball-Reference.com, FanGraphs
The constant churn included trading Rich Harden and Gio Gonzalez when they were 26; Mulder, Gray, Dan Haren, Joe Blanton and Andrew Bailey when they were 27, and Hudson when he was 29. Those deals yielded Donaldson, Reddick and other important members of future A’s squads, in addition to planting the seeds for even more wheeling and dealing down the line. According to MLB.com’s Andrew Simon, Beane’s A’s have made more total trades than any other club since 1998 — a tally of nearly 300 going into the 2020 season.
Not all of them made Beane look like a visionary genius. Most infamously, he shipped Donaldson to the Toronto Blue Jays for Brett Lawrie and Kendall Graveman; Donaldson went on to win an MVP, while Graveman proved to merely be a serviceable (yet oft-injured) pitcher, and Lawrie was out of baseball within three years. But the frequent trades mostly helped Beane achieve his goal of keeping the A’s competitive despite bargain-priced rosters. As my colleague Ben Morris wrote years ago, the advantage Beane’s shrewd deal-making brought to Oakland year after year was worth far more than any one star player could have provided the franchise.
And yet, postseason success eluded Beane and the A’s. Based on a logistic regression using each team’s pre-playoff Elo ratings (including 2020), we would have expected Oakland to win 1.4 World Series since 1998 in their 11 playoff appearances. Instead, it won zero — a shortfall that ranks as the worst in baseball during Beane’s time as GM:
Beane’s A’s always fell short in the playoffs Differential between actual championships and expected (based on pre-playoff Elo ratings) for MLB teams, 1998-2020 Championships Team Playoff Appearances Expected Actual* Diff. Athletics 11 1.42 0.00 -1.42 Braves 14 1.60 0.28 -1.32 Dodgers 12 1.32 0.28 -1.04 Indians 9 0.93 0.00 -0.93 Twins 9 0.86 0.00 -0.86 Rangers 7 0.70 0.00 -0.70 Mets 5 0.55 0.00 -0.55 Tigers 5 0.49 0.00 -0.49 Brewers 5 0.38 0.00 -0.38 Rockies 4 0.35 0.00 -0.35 Reds 4 0.31 0.00 -0.31 Mariners 2 0.31 0.00 -0.31 Pirates 3 0.30 0.00 -0.30 Padres 4 0.30 0.00 -0.30 Orioles 3 0.30 0.00 -0.30 Blue Jays 3 0.28 0.00 -0.28 Rays 6 0.67 0.42 -0.25 Astros 10 1.21 1.02 -0.19 Angels 7 0.92 1.00 +0.08 Cubs 9 0.88 1.00 +0.12 Phillies 5 0.66 1.00 +0.34 Diamondbacks 6 0.60 1.00 +0.40 Nationals 5 0.52 1.00 +0.48 Cardinals 14 1.51 2.00 +0.49 White Sox 4 0.37 1.00 +0.63 Royals 2 0.18 1.00 +0.82 Marlins 2 0.13 1.00 +0.87 Yankees 19 2.51 4.00 +1.49 Giants 7 0.82 3.00 +2.18 Red Sox 12 1.62 4.00 +2.38 *Includes 2020, using FiveThirtyEight’s current World Series odds to measure championships for active teams. Source: Retrosheet
But why did it happen? There’s plenty of blame to go around. Compared with their regular-season stats, A’s postseason pitchers put up an ERA 21 percent higher (3.98 versus 3.30) than we’d expect, with a fielding-independent pitching 13 percent higher (4.16 versus 3.67) and a WHIP 8 percent higher. At the plate, Oakland’s OPS was 8 percent lower (.711 versus .775) than we would expect from regular-season statistics, with a batting average 9 percent lower (.237 versus .259). And ironically, the largest percent decline for A’s hitters came in the category of on-base percentage, in which they dipped by 11 percent (.305 versus .341) in the playoffs. So Oakland’s core formula tended to fail when October rolled around — though it’s important to note that we still don’t really know what the right formula actually is for postseason success (relative to the regular season). All we can say is this: Whatever does cause teams to outperform expectations in the playoffs, Beane was never able to discover it, for all of his trying over more than two decades in Oakland.
However, the Athletics’ inability to win in the playoffs is but a small part of Beane’s overall legacy within the game. Other teams that followed his lead did find success in the playoffs — most notably the Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, Houston Astros, St. Louis Cardinals … and maybe even the Rays this season. And because of Beane’s influence, the entire way the game is played has changed over the past 20 years. To that point, Beane has acknowledged it was becoming more and more difficult to find an edge through analytics with the passing of time. “Teams are valuing the same things,” he told The Washington Post in 2018. “The big teams are run very wisely now. … There are really smart guys who have capital. There’s no soft spots. They’re smart guys, and they’re surrounded by smart guys. It’s a very intelligent industry right now.”
Maybe that realization played a role in Beane’s impending career change. After spending decades chasing inefficiencies, there are fewer to be found than ever before. But whatever the reason for it, Beane’s departure from the A’s marks the end of an era that drastically transformed baseball — and sports in general — forever.