What is the value of the bye? That is the question of utmost importance heading into the 2017 U.S. Open, which is this coming weekend LIVE on Flo.

We're examining just how likely it is to win the world team trials and then wrestle in the world championships after also winning the U.S. Open. We only examined Men's Freestyle, since this weekend is also WTT for Women and Greco, and none of their athletes have byes to the finals.

The time period we're looking at is 2009-16, so two full Olympic cycles worth of data. For some of the stats, we'll be including the four byes into the Olympic Trials finals. On to the data.

Weight-By-Weight Preview: 57kg | 61kg | 65kg | 70kg | 74kg

U.S. Open Winners

Excluding the two Olympic years when this option wasn't available, there have been 43 byes to the finals won at the U.S. Open, although some of them could have chosen not to wrestle because they won a world or Olympic medal the year before. An additional five were earned via the medal route, so 48 total byes have been earned since 2009.

*It must be noted that, while Dom Bradley won the Open in 2013, he was forced to withdraw from that year's trials.*

Of those 43, the overall record for best-of-three wrestle-offs is 30-13 across a six year time frame. So 70% of the time, the winner of the Open goes on to win the WTT. Beyond that, 24 of those winners swept their wrestle-offs by winning the first two matches. Which means 56% of the time, a wrestler who gets the bye from the Open backs it up by sweeping his opponent in the WTT.

On the flip side, eight of those 13 losses were sweeps by the challenge tournament winner. This includes James Green's win over Nick Marable in 2015, which is notable because Marable was given an extension by USA Wrestling for it to be held at Fargo. That eliminated the inherent advantage of the bye, which is that one wrestler has wrestled several matches the same day they have to wrestle in the finals.

Wrestling At Worlds

There are two asterisks that occurred in 2013, when Obe Blanc had to withdraw from worlds, and the above mentioned Bradley, when Tervel Dlagnev instead got the bye to the finals. Both won their wrestle-offs 2-0.

Another caveat came in 2015, when Dlagnev won the Open, won 2-1 in the Trials finals, but then could not wrestle at the world championships. So those three all count as Open winners not wrestling on Team USA, but there were extenuating circumstances.

Overall, 63% of the U.S. Open winners wound up competing at that year's world championships. Including the five medal byes, that number jumps to a full two thirds that wrestled in either that year's worlds or Olympics.

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Which Way Is The Bye Trending?

Recent trends have pointed to the bye becoming more valuable. In 2009, Open winners went 3-4 in their wrestle-offs at WTT. All three wins were sweeps, two of the losses went three matches, and two more losses were sweeps. The following year, four of the seven Open winners won the trials: two sweeps and two that went the distance, while the challenge tourney winners had two sweeps and a three match win.

Moving up to 2011, the all important year before an Olympic Games, Open winners achieved a 5-2 record at the trials. One winner got swept and another lost a three match set. This trend only continues into the quad for Rio. Those who received a bye from the Open went 18-4 over the course of the three most recent years worth of WTT.

Looking at all the matches and not just the series result, 2013 Open winners were 10-2 at the trials in Stillwater. Winners of the 2014 Open went 13-3 at the trials in Madison/Fargo. Lastly, 2015 Open champions accumulated a 12-3 record at the WTT, which does not include David Taylor, since Jordan Burroughs had the bye, but does include Marable, who as mentioned above had a delayed wrestle-off with Green.

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What's At Stake This Weekend?

Five byes are up for grabs, as Olympic gold medalist Kyle Snyder has the 97kg bye, Olympic bronze medalist J'Den Cox has the 86kg bye and world champ Logan Stieber has the 61kg bye. That still leaves automatic berths in the trials finals available at 57kg, 65kg, 70kg, 74kg, and 125kg.

Tony Ramos has the most experience at 57kg, having had to go through the challenge tourney in 2014 and then winning the bye in 2015 (in dramatic fashion). Then last year, he and Dan Dennis met in the OTT finals when both also went through a tournament that same day.

At 65kg, Kellen Russell won a bye in 2013, but lost in those finals to Brent Metcalf. Jimmy Kennedy won the challenge tourney that year at 60kg, but lost to Reece Humphrey in the WTT finals. The next year, Kennedy won the bye at 61kg and swept Coleman Scott in the trials finals. Jordan Oliver has won a challenge tournament three times, and each time has been swept by the wrestler holding the bye.

James Green won the challenge tourney in 2014 only to lose in the trials finals, then won the 70kg spot each of the past two years holding a bye in the finals.

Jordan Burroughs has had five straight byes to trials finals, and has swept all five of those series. He beat Andrew Howe in 2012 and 2016, Kyle Dake in 2013 and 2015, and David Taylor in 2014.

None of the 125kg athletes have had the experience of sitting in the WTT finals. Zach Rey lost 2-1 in the 2015 finals after winning the challenge tourney and lost 2-0 the year before that.

Conclusions

No one can conclusively proof exactly how valuable the automatic berth in the finals is, because of that stubborn statistical axiom that correlation does not mean causation. There is also the fairly obvious notion that the winner of the Open (or the world medalist) is a superior wrestler to all others in the field, and so they should win an overwhelming majority of best-of-three finals series. Sitting in the finals of trials also grants you even more time to recover from weigh-ins.

Any wrestler who has to go through the challenge tournament will face at least two matches, and sometimes as many as three or four before facing the rested wrestler in the finals. There are arguments to both sides, one of which is that having a "warm up" of actual matches is better than going in "cold."

One final bit of data. For the 13 times a wrestler won the Trials after facing someone with a bye, they wrestled for a medal four times, winning two bronzes. This isn't a super large sample size, and is also contingent upon things like overall quality of competition at worlds and where they fell in the random draw. But there is precedent to overcome this "disadvantage" and win a world medal.

Over the past eight years, 48 times a wrestler has sit in the finals of a trials. Those wrestlers went 35-13, which comes out to a 73% success rate. Any industry that suggest a success rate approaching three out of every four tries is one in which I personally would like to invest. We'll update this again after this year's trials in Lincoln, Nebraska on June 9th and 10th, but for now, let's just get ready for what promises to be an absolutely incredible 2017 U.S. Open.