Stats class should have focused more on baseball than the economy.

Baseball is such an awesome sport.  The statistical analysis is best part.  Don't deny it.

From Jim Caple @ ESPN:

My "I Hate Closers'' Note Of The Week: After Mariano Rivera's possible career-ending injury, Sports Illustrated and other media outlets pointed out how many closers other teams had gone through during Mo's 1997-2011 run, many in double digits. And there is no denying Rivera's longevity, which is what truly sets him apart from closers not named Trevor Hoffman. But there is another, possibly more important way of looking at it: How much did those teams pay for their saves? Fortunately, the excellent baseball writer Masa Niwa did the research. And he found that the Yankees paid an average of $241,000 per Mariano save. The other teams paid $97,000 per save by their "designated'' closers. (The Athletics paid just $59,000.)

And as Sweet Science's Dave Schoenfield found, the ninth inning lead protection success rate was not significantly different between the Yankees from 1997-2011 (97 percent) and the worst team in baseball during the same span, the Pirates (95 percent). The lesson is this. Mo has been durable and successful, but he has also been costly. That's no big deal for the Yankees, who can easily afford a closer who makes only a one- or two-win difference per year. But other teams are better off investing their money in less expensive relievers who will protect ninth inning leads nearly as well, allowing the team to beef up the rest of the roster so it will have more ninth inning leads to protect.