7 ms·

How the relentless drive for optimization made baseball impossible to watch

62 points by emptybits 3y ago

rainytuesday 3y ago
Profit optimization is working against them as well, as a cord-cutter I have a real hard time watching baseball. Besides normal ads, every other sentence during the game seemed to be an ad, "This segment brought to you by Menards: save big money at Menards"
phemartin 3y ago
[flagged]
A_Duck 3y ago
Very well written article in that even for someone with zero knowledge of baseball I could follow along and be interested
- moate 3y ago
  As someone who is extremely tuned into the sport and is also very familiar with the discussions around “why isn’t baseball fun to watch” this makes a lot of assumptions (namely what will or won’t cause humans from the world population to become either interested or disinterested in the sport) that might not be true. It could be that “the type of baseball being played now isn’t as popular” it could be “the sport of baseball isn’t as popular with today’s demographics” or simply “other sports have eaten baseball’s lunch” but as the stat nerds love to say, we have no idea if there is correlation or causation between team play optimization and decreased viewership/attendance across the league. Lots of sloppy, but visually interesting play may or may not bring in more fans than three true outcome optimization but there’s no way to isolate that factor from all the other noise of general cultural interest. Maybe there was nothing MLB could do, and humans today just don’t like baseball as much, the same way American kids today are more inclined to play a video game than with a hoop and stick.
  - Gordonjcp 3y ago
    I've no idea about baseball - it doesn't exist outside the US - but the article seems to boil down to "minmaxing all your character stats makes for hella OP players and boring as fuck gameplay". Does that pretty much narrow it down?
    - didgeoridoo 3y ago
      > it doesn't exist outside the US It is utterly massive in Japan, South Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. It is literally the national sport of Taiwan, and is so popular they put it on their currency. In terms of percentage of population that cares about baseball, the US is barely middle of the pack.
      - Pigalowda 3y ago
        You forgot Canada (23 active MLB players) and the Jays! Also there’s plenty of Mexican (33) born MLB players and a professional Mexican league. Anyways I don’t know why that guy was so dismissive of baseball, I don’t care about baseball at all but this stuff is pretty common knowledge. Sounds like he plays a lot of video games.
        Gordonjcp 3y ago
        Zero interest in video games. Sounds like baseball is a thing in the US, and countries that the US had a large military presence in, then?
        didgeoridoo 3y ago
        Exactly, hence the famous German, Afghan, and Iraqi baseball teams.
        dghlsakjg 3y ago
        Don't forget the famous US occupation of Manitoba, Alberta and BC.
bigbacaloa 3y ago
Baseball's baseline was already boring. Before moneyball games took three dull hours.
- nobody9999 3y ago
  >Baseball's baseline was already boring. Before moneyball games took three dull hours. That's not actually the case, friend. Moneyball[1] was published in 2003 and as you'll see if you bother to look at actual average game lengths[0], you're way off. [0] https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/misc.shtml https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/misc.shtml [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  Baseball isn't boring if you understand the subtleties, its a lot like soccer in that way. Unfortunately, the announcers and TV analysts utterly suck at explaining the subtleties. If you want a better understanding of what is happening on the field, I recommend checking out some of the youtube analysts. Jomboy Media, and Baseball doesn't Exist are really good at explaining what is going on.
joelthelion 3y ago
Would it be possible to make the ball slightly softer and bigger to reduce the likelihood of strikeouts and home runs?
- moate 3y ago
  The term is to “deaden the ball” and yes it can and does happen, just like the opposite, “juiced balls” has happened.
- plastic3169 3y ago
  I know very little of baseball, but there is a finnish variation of the game[1] where hitting the ball too far is ”illegal”. Also the ball is pitched differently which makes hitting it easier and more tactical. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesäpallo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesäpallo
  - sbierwagen 3y ago
    >One of the most important differences between pesäpallo and baseball is that the ball is pitched vertically, which makes hitting the ball, as well as controlling the power and direction of the hit, much easier. I was wondering how that worked, and it looks kind of like two-player teeball: https://youtu.be/Pz19WhYxaxA?t=13 https://youtu.be/Pz19WhYxaxA?t=13
  - 1123581321 3y ago
    Neat. There are or were minor baseball leagues in the US that only allow each team so many outside the wall per game. That makes the ability to hit doubles and triples valuable, and those are exciting plays.
- eep_social 3y ago
  We could do that and name it softball!
Eji1700 3y ago
Have to say competitive optimization existed long before AI and it kinda feels like the parallels are drawn just because that’s the current buzzword. Real life sports are slightly more resistant to it because of a couple of factors, but video games have been dealing with competitive optimization to the point of destroying the game since people put money on them. Since the games were not easily patched early on there was a “do what you can to win” mindset/game theory outcome with rare community added rules for tournaments. Plenty of games just died because they aren’t fun to play seriously due to major imbalance or some hard to police technique. In short it’s just the nature of putting a monetary prize on something. You have to design and adjust your system in such a way to handle the idea of people taking every edge they can get
- hinkley 3y ago
  I mean, motor racing, modulo the clever cheating on engine designs.
- llamaLord 3y ago
  I think the difference today though is the developers do have the ability to tweak every single tiny little detail of the game in order to tackle these kinds of things, whereas in a physical sport there's really a limit to what you can change to "fix" issues that don't fundamentally change the entire game. Games like DOTA are great examples. There are countless times where the devs have done something like "moved single tree 0.25 in game metres to the left" (noting that there's probably >1000 trees on the map) to address ridiculously tiny optimisation "exploits". You just can't control the environment in physical sports the same way, so finding real "balance" that optimises for skill rather than just stats optimisation is going to be nearly impossible.
  - Eji1700 3y ago
    I've been a huge fan of dota since 04/05 and yeah it's a great example, but on the real life side another reason things don't change as fast is just the huge barrier to entry, and to some extent the entertainment value. The cost, time, and physical demands to be in the top 10-20% of many real life sports is just a huge gate, and so you get a lot of people who become complacent. It often is the lower rungs that are trying to innovate, but it's hard to see that flow all the way to the top because you don't know if your strategy is actually viable vs the best of the best. Vs something like a video game where playing near the top level is much more achievable. There's also still an aspect of "entertainment". I'm not certain on this but to memory there's decent evidence that the best way to shoot a freethrow is an underhanded granny shot, but VERY few NBA players ever even attempt it.
okwhateverdude 3y ago
Pretty sure anything but the last two innings of a baseball game (if it is close in score) was already boring. Pacing is already generally slow. So slow that it is super common to have all sorts of audience distractions (kiss cams, celebrity look-a-like cams, etc). If they wanted to make is more exciting to watch, they need to take a page from the american football clones (shortened field, reduced players, easier scoring). Imagine if the game was shortened to 4 innings, no more home runs (hang a driving range golf net), no more foul balls (every hit counts, plus that big golf net goes all around the field). It would be a much more fast paced game, and rotund powerhouse smasher types replaced with more athletic, speedy types. Still need hits to get on base, but running the bases becomes much more important with the always force that happens with every-hit-is-a-hit.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  Is that the right move though? We can make any event exciting. Implementation is rarely the hard part. (funny how closely this parallels a chat I had with one of my engineers this week) I like Baseball because it’s relaxed and it’s on for 3 hours and I can have it in the background, looking over on occasion whenever I hear something exciting. If I wanted a sport of non-stop action that demands my full attention, I’d watch hockey. MLB is walking a tightrope right now of evolving to be better at what it wants to be, and to keep people engaged (it’s a business after all), but not to transform into something entirely different. The customers likely wouldn’t be happy if they all got what they wanted.
  - davidjones332 3y ago
    Agree , good post
  - LeanderK 3y ago
    > it’s a business after all is it? I thought those sports organisations are not businesses but associations of the clubs. Is it different in the US?
    - Waterluvian 3y ago
AniseAbyss 3y ago
[dead]
lordnacho 3y ago
Baseball's optimization problem is that it lends itself too readily for it. I guess the inventors hadn't counted on statistical science to come get them, but the problem is that it's just too break-down-able: - There's only one team that can score at a time. - The action is start-stop. You have a clear outcome for every single pitch. - Success is a funnel. Get guy to next base, then the next, etc. Defense is the opposite. - Players tend to have one job, whose effectiveness is harder to dispute than most other sports. - Large number of games, high scores. The law of large numbers drags the results towards the mean. Compare this to soccer. There's huge interest in using stats to optimize soccer, but it's hard because: - Attackers are defenders and defenders are attackers. What's Ronaldo's weakness? He doesn't defend well, in contrast to what most modern strikers are required to do. - You can have the ball a lot or a little, it doesn't mean you will win. - It's not even obvious who is attacking and who is defending, there's no fixed phases. Gegenpressung for instance, are you really attacking when you have the ball but it's in your own third and the other team's strikers are bothering you? - Low scores, fewer games. You can optimize, but you can't make the dice fall in your favor without enough rolls.
- ramraj07 3y ago
  Soccer and baseball are weird to compare. Do cricket!
  - lordnacho 3y ago
    Cricket at least had the insight to add a format where you aren't playing for five freaking days. But aside from that it looks a lot like baseball: - One team is batting, two guys on the pitch - There's a load of data about what kind of bowl to do - Lots of separate events with measurable data - Your main issue is risk (trying to stay in), but risk will be better and better understood: dropping the ball gives away a lot of runs, as does taking batting risks. Not gonna end well once the data people come for it.
    - denton-scratch 3y ago
      I regret the coming of short-format cricket. Cricket's not supposed to be a super-exciting riot of entertainment; i like that you can drop in for one day of a 5-day Test, and sit there catching some rays and reading a newspaper. In general, I don't care much for the influence of TV on team sports. I played Rugby Union at school; Rugby League was invented to make the game more exciting for spectators, by eliminating loose rucks. For me, all these games are participant sports, and the spectators are incidental (I don't watch sports on TV). Football (i.e. soccer) is a thug's game, played by gentlemen. Cricket is a gentlemen's game, played by thugs. Rugby is a game played by men with peculiar balls.
nateburke 3y ago
Baseball is the most fun to play and watch when it feels like 'tag' and not like 'golf'. Ball in play, run-downs, throwing, catching, errors. Find a way to align with that, and I will become a fan again, and so will my children.
- nateburke 3y ago
  Eg what if there was a second pitcher, ball, and batter?
christophilus 3y ago
The Savannah Bananas are watchable. One league down from MLB, and the owners can focus on the real point of professional sports, which is entertainment. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_Bananas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_Bananas
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  The Bananas are a fun side show, but they aren't playing baseball (literally, they have different rules), and they certainly aren't 'one league down' from MLB. Last I checked they were in a summer collegiate league, but I don't think they even do that anymore. They are more like the Harlem Globe Trotters than any sort of serious sports team. Great fun, great entertainment, but there is no actual sports contest being played.
  - christophilus 3y ago
    Ah. I thought they were a seed team, but that would be ridiculous, eh? The Globe Trotters is an apt comparison, and like the Bananas, I prefer them to the NBA. MLB and the NBA have the same problem. There are so many games that it seems as if chance and luck are too diminished, making the sports too predictable and dull for my taste.
elif 3y ago
I think an obvious solution would be a simple AI-based solution. Increase the reward for the behavior you desire. Award 0.1 points for getting on base. Less intentional walks, more strategy, more value for non-superstar hitters, more value for good fielders, etc. Personally, every time I see an intentional walk, my gut reaction is "this game is broken fundamentally"
- Spivak 3y ago
  Intentional walks are actually one of the good things about baseball because they let teams actually have strategy. Without this kind of stuff baseball would just be about athleticism which is really really boring to watch. It's what makes football and soccer so much more interesting because athleticism helps but they're both fundamentally a dance about adjusting to one another and taking advantage of the other team's missteps.
havblue 3y ago
The designated hitter rule was consistently deemed preferable by the fans for years and ultimately adopted by the NL. Certainly, pitchers tend to have far lower batting averages, and the drama with a pitcher at the plate frequently just comes down to seeing if the can land a bunt to get a run in. So the rule won out. Unless your last name is Ohtani, you don't have to hit anymore. And I'm a little confused as to whether this is really what people wanted. Instead of 8 relatively good hitters and one who might be good or bad, and might be substituted midgame, there are just 9 good hitters, one who doesn't have to field. Frankly, I think it just makes the game more optimized and less dramatic. But, hey, the fans, the league and the players union have spoken...
- jimnotgym 3y ago
  That is one big difference to cricket, since cricket is mentioned as a comparison in other comments. In cricket you have 11 players. They bat in pairs. To get a side out you have to get 10 of them out. This means all 11 may have to bat. Therefore picking a side is a tradeoff between batters and bowlers. You will need at least 4 specialist bowlers, but that is risky. Some batters can bowl a bit, but world class all-rounders are extremely rare. This means a highly critical compromise must be struck.
- nobody9999 3y ago
  >The designated hitter rule was consistently deemed preferable by the fans for years and ultimately adopted by the NL. Certainly, pitchers tend to have far lower batting averages, and the drama with a pitcher at the plate frequently just comes down to seeing if the can land a bunt to get a run in. You speak for yourself, not me. I hate the designated hitter with a passion. It significantly reduces the amount of strategy employed, gets more bench players in the game, and creates moments like these[0][1]. And I just picked one pitcher as an example. Granted, he was much more amusing than most pitchers, but the fans (me included) love it! But I'm probably wrong. Look how much the fans hate Shohei Ohtani[2] /s But the team owners in the NL wanted the DH -- their calculation being more hitting = more viewers = more money. And the player's union wanted the DH as it brings more players (hitters) up to the big leagues. Another consideration was that pitchers (well, players generally), especially the elite ones are paid quite handsomely and batting/running the bases increases the risk of injury. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVFsq9FQBlc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVFsq9FQBlc [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfvCKA9RdH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfvCKA9RdH4 [2] https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/ohtansh01.shtml https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/ohtansh01.shtml
bradleyjg 3y ago
I stopped watching Jeopardy when all contestants started jumping all over the board. Sure, it’s a better strategy but it’s not as much fun for the viewers. At the end of the day all these things are in the entertainment business.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
In starcraft, blizzard regularly adjusts the rules to keep the game exciting. I think that's going to become necessary for most games now.
- hinkley 3y ago
  I wonder if you could make a workable StarCraft league where the exact rules aren’t known to the players until the match starts, or maybe just minutes before the match.
pgwhalen 3y ago
While this article is more about style of play than game length, it’s worth pointing out something that probably a lot of commenters in this thread don’t realize: as a result of the pitch clock (new this year), baseball games are now considerably shorter, like 2.5 hours instead of 3.
- TigeriusKirk 3y ago
  And now the ratio of ad time to game time is way out of whack. I can't stand to listen to radio broadcasts this season. It's a shame, but the ads just annoy me too much.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
4ninesfine 3y ago
I think this is my problem with formula 1. It's all too optimized and professional. Then you switch to f2 or f3 and they're all young guys having a great time and taking risks and overtaking when they shouldn't but it's great to watch.

62 points by emptybits 3y ago

Profit optimization is working against them as well, as a cord-cutter I have a real hard time watching baseball. Besides normal ads, every other sentence during the game seemed to be an ad, "This segment brought to you by Menards: save big money at Menards"

phemartin 3y ago

[flagged]

A_Duck 3y ago

Very well written article in that even for someone with zero knowledge of baseball I could follow along and be interested

moate 3y ago
As someone who is extremely tuned into the sport and is also very familiar with the discussions around “why isn’t baseball fun to watch” this makes a lot of assumptions (namely what will or won’t cause humans from the world population to become either interested or disinterested in the sport) that might not be true. It could be that “the type of baseball being played now isn’t as popular” it could be “the sport of baseball isn’t as popular with today’s demographics” or simply “other sports have eaten baseball’s lunch” but as the stat nerds love to say, we have no idea if there is correlation or causation between team play optimization and decreased viewership/attendance across the league. Lots of sloppy, but visually interesting play may or may not bring in more fans than three true outcome optimization but there’s no way to isolate that factor from all the other noise of general cultural interest. Maybe there was nothing MLB could do, and humans today just don’t like baseball as much, the same way American kids today are more inclined to play a video game than with a hoop and stick.
- Gordonjcp 3y ago
  I've no idea about baseball - it doesn't exist outside the US - but the article seems to boil down to "minmaxing all your character stats makes for hella OP players and boring as fuck gameplay". Does that pretty much narrow it down?
  - didgeoridoo 3y ago
    > it doesn't exist outside the US It is utterly massive in Japan, South Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. It is literally the national sport of Taiwan, and is so popular they put it on their currency. In terms of percentage of population that cares about baseball, the US is barely middle of the pack.
    - Pigalowda 3y ago
      You forgot Canada (23 active MLB players) and the Jays! Also there’s plenty of Mexican (33) born MLB players and a professional Mexican league. Anyways I don’t know why that guy was so dismissive of baseball, I don’t care about baseball at all but this stuff is pretty common knowledge. Sounds like he plays a lot of video games.
      - Gordonjcp 3y ago
        Zero interest in video games. Sounds like baseball is a thing in the US, and countries that the US had a large military presence in, then?
        didgeoridoo 3y ago
        Exactly, hence the famous German, Afghan, and Iraqi baseball teams.
        dghlsakjg 3y ago
        Don't forget the famous US occupation of Manitoba, Alberta and BC.

bigbacaloa 3y ago

Baseball's baseline was already boring. Before moneyball games took three dull hours.

nobody9999 3y ago
>Baseball's baseline was already boring. Before moneyball games took three dull hours. That's not actually the case, friend. Moneyball[1] was published in 2003 and as you'll see if you bother to look at actual average game lengths[0], you're way off. [0] https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/misc.shtml https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/misc.shtml [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball
dghlsakjg 3y ago
Baseball isn't boring if you understand the subtleties, its a lot like soccer in that way. Unfortunately, the announcers and TV analysts utterly suck at explaining the subtleties. If you want a better understanding of what is happening on the field, I recommend checking out some of the youtube analysts. Jomboy Media, and Baseball doesn't Exist are really good at explaining what is going on.

joelthelion 3y ago

Would it be possible to make the ball slightly softer and bigger to reduce the likelihood of strikeouts and home runs?

moate 3y ago
The term is to “deaden the ball” and yes it can and does happen, just like the opposite, “juiced balls” has happened.
plastic3169 3y ago
I know very little of baseball, but there is a finnish variation of the game[1] where hitting the ball too far is ”illegal”. Also the ball is pitched differently which makes hitting it easier and more tactical. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesäpallo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesäpallo
- sbierwagen 3y ago
  >One of the most important differences between pesäpallo and baseball is that the ball is pitched vertically, which makes hitting the ball, as well as controlling the power and direction of the hit, much easier. I was wondering how that worked, and it looks kind of like two-player teeball: https://youtu.be/Pz19WhYxaxA?t=13 https://youtu.be/Pz19WhYxaxA?t=13
- 1123581321 3y ago
  Neat. There are or were minor baseball leagues in the US that only allow each team so many outside the wall per game. That makes the ability to hit doubles and triples valuable, and those are exciting plays.
eep_social 3y ago
We could do that and name it softball!

Eji1700 3y ago

Have to say competitive optimization existed long before AI and it kinda feels like the parallels are drawn just because that’s the current buzzword. Real life sports are slightly more resistant to it because of a couple of factors, but video games have been dealing with competitive optimization to the point of destroying the game since people put money on them. Since the games were not easily patched early on there was a “do what you can to win” mindset/game theory outcome with rare community added rules for tournaments. Plenty of games just died because they aren’t fun to play seriously due to major imbalance or some hard to police technique. In short it’s just the nature of putting a monetary prize on something. You have to design and adjust your system in such a way to handle the idea of people taking every edge they can get

hinkley 3y ago
I mean, motor racing, modulo the clever cheating on engine designs.
llamaLord 3y ago
I think the difference today though is the developers do have the ability to tweak every single tiny little detail of the game in order to tackle these kinds of things, whereas in a physical sport there's really a limit to what you can change to "fix" issues that don't fundamentally change the entire game. Games like DOTA are great examples. There are countless times where the devs have done something like "moved single tree 0.25 in game metres to the left" (noting that there's probably >1000 trees on the map) to address ridiculously tiny optimisation "exploits". You just can't control the environment in physical sports the same way, so finding real "balance" that optimises for skill rather than just stats optimisation is going to be nearly impossible.
- Eji1700 3y ago
  I've been a huge fan of dota since 04/05 and yeah it's a great example, but on the real life side another reason things don't change as fast is just the huge barrier to entry, and to some extent the entertainment value. The cost, time, and physical demands to be in the top 10-20% of many real life sports is just a huge gate, and so you get a lot of people who become complacent. It often is the lower rungs that are trying to innovate, but it's hard to see that flow all the way to the top because you don't know if your strategy is actually viable vs the best of the best. Vs something like a video game where playing near the top level is much more achievable. There's also still an aspect of "entertainment". I'm not certain on this but to memory there's decent evidence that the best way to shoot a freethrow is an underhanded granny shot, but VERY few NBA players ever even attempt it.

okwhateverdude 3y ago

Pretty sure anything but the last two innings of a baseball game (if it is close in score) was already boring. Pacing is already generally slow. So slow that it is super common to have all sorts of audience distractions (kiss cams, celebrity look-a-like cams, etc). If they wanted to make is more exciting to watch, they need to take a page from the american football clones (shortened field, reduced players, easier scoring). Imagine if the game was shortened to 4 innings, no more home runs (hang a driving range golf net), no more foul balls (every hit counts, plus that big golf net goes all around the field). It would be a much more fast paced game, and rotund powerhouse smasher types replaced with more athletic, speedy types. Still need hits to get on base, but running the bases becomes much more important with the always force that happens with every-hit-is-a-hit.

Waterluvian 3y ago
Is that the right move though? We can make any event exciting. Implementation is rarely the hard part. (funny how closely this parallels a chat I had with one of my engineers this week) I like Baseball because it’s relaxed and it’s on for 3 hours and I can have it in the background, looking over on occasion whenever I hear something exciting. If I wanted a sport of non-stop action that demands my full attention, I’d watch hockey. MLB is walking a tightrope right now of evolving to be better at what it wants to be, and to keep people engaged (it’s a business after all), but not to transform into something entirely different. The customers likely wouldn’t be happy if they all got what they wanted.
- davidjones332 3y ago
  Agree , good post
- LeanderK 3y ago
  > it’s a business after all is it? I thought those sports organisations are not businesses but associations of the clubs. Is it different in the US?
  - Waterluvian 3y ago

AniseAbyss 3y ago

[dead]

lordnacho 3y ago

Baseball's optimization problem is that it lends itself too readily for it. I guess the inventors hadn't counted on statistical science to come get them, but the problem is that it's just too break-down-able: - There's only one team that can score at a time. - The action is start-stop. You have a clear outcome for every single pitch. - Success is a funnel. Get guy to next base, then the next, etc. Defense is the opposite. - Players tend to have one job, whose effectiveness is harder to dispute than most other sports. - Large number of games, high scores. The law of large numbers drags the results towards the mean. Compare this to soccer. There's huge interest in using stats to optimize soccer, but it's hard because: - Attackers are defenders and defenders are attackers. What's Ronaldo's weakness? He doesn't defend well, in contrast to what most modern strikers are required to do. - You can have the ball a lot or a little, it doesn't mean you will win. - It's not even obvious who is attacking and who is defending, there's no fixed phases. Gegenpressung for instance, are you really attacking when you have the ball but it's in your own third and the other team's strikers are bothering you? - Low scores, fewer games. You can optimize, but you can't make the dice fall in your favor without enough rolls.

ramraj07 3y ago
Soccer and baseball are weird to compare. Do cricket!
- lordnacho 3y ago
  Cricket at least had the insight to add a format where you aren't playing for five freaking days. But aside from that it looks a lot like baseball: - One team is batting, two guys on the pitch - There's a load of data about what kind of bowl to do - Lots of separate events with measurable data - Your main issue is risk (trying to stay in), but risk will be better and better understood: dropping the ball gives away a lot of runs, as does taking batting risks. Not gonna end well once the data people come for it.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    I regret the coming of short-format cricket. Cricket's not supposed to be a super-exciting riot of entertainment; i like that you can drop in for one day of a 5-day Test, and sit there catching some rays and reading a newspaper. In general, I don't care much for the influence of TV on team sports. I played Rugby Union at school; Rugby League was invented to make the game more exciting for spectators, by eliminating loose rucks. For me, all these games are participant sports, and the spectators are incidental (I don't watch sports on TV). Football (i.e. soccer) is a thug's game, played by gentlemen. Cricket is a gentlemen's game, played by thugs. Rugby is a game played by men with peculiar balls.

nateburke 3y ago

Baseball is the most fun to play and watch when it feels like 'tag' and not like 'golf'. Ball in play, run-downs, throwing, catching, errors. Find a way to align with that, and I will become a fan again, and so will my children.

nateburke 3y ago
Eg what if there was a second pitcher, ball, and batter?

christophilus 3y ago

The Savannah Bananas are watchable. One league down from MLB, and the owners can focus on the real point of professional sports, which is entertainment. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_Bananas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_Bananas

dghlsakjg 3y ago
The Bananas are a fun side show, but they aren't playing baseball (literally, they have different rules), and they certainly aren't 'one league down' from MLB. Last I checked they were in a summer collegiate league, but I don't think they even do that anymore. They are more like the Harlem Globe Trotters than any sort of serious sports team. Great fun, great entertainment, but there is no actual sports contest being played.
- christophilus 3y ago
  Ah. I thought they were a seed team, but that would be ridiculous, eh? The Globe Trotters is an apt comparison, and like the Bananas, I prefer them to the NBA. MLB and the NBA have the same problem. There are so many games that it seems as if chance and luck are too diminished, making the sports too predictable and dull for my taste.

elif 3y ago

I think an obvious solution would be a simple AI-based solution. Increase the reward for the behavior you desire. Award 0.1 points for getting on base. Less intentional walks, more strategy, more value for non-superstar hitters, more value for good fielders, etc. Personally, every time I see an intentional walk, my gut reaction is "this game is broken fundamentally"

Spivak 3y ago
Intentional walks are actually one of the good things about baseball because they let teams actually have strategy. Without this kind of stuff baseball would just be about athleticism which is really really boring to watch. It's what makes football and soccer so much more interesting because athleticism helps but they're both fundamentally a dance about adjusting to one another and taking advantage of the other team's missteps.

havblue 3y ago

The designated hitter rule was consistently deemed preferable by the fans for years and ultimately adopted by the NL. Certainly, pitchers tend to have far lower batting averages, and the drama with a pitcher at the plate frequently just comes down to seeing if the can land a bunt to get a run in. So the rule won out. Unless your last name is Ohtani, you don't have to hit anymore. And I'm a little confused as to whether this is really what people wanted. Instead of 8 relatively good hitters and one who might be good or bad, and might be substituted midgame, there are just 9 good hitters, one who doesn't have to field. Frankly, I think it just makes the game more optimized and less dramatic. But, hey, the fans, the league and the players union have spoken...

jimnotgym 3y ago
That is one big difference to cricket, since cricket is mentioned as a comparison in other comments. In cricket you have 11 players. They bat in pairs. To get a side out you have to get 10 of them out. This means all 11 may have to bat. Therefore picking a side is a tradeoff between batters and bowlers. You will need at least 4 specialist bowlers, but that is risky. Some batters can bowl a bit, but world class all-rounders are extremely rare. This means a highly critical compromise must be struck.
nobody9999 3y ago
>The designated hitter rule was consistently deemed preferable by the fans for years and ultimately adopted by the NL. Certainly, pitchers tend to have far lower batting averages, and the drama with a pitcher at the plate frequently just comes down to seeing if the can land a bunt to get a run in. You speak for yourself, not me. I hate the designated hitter with a passion. It significantly reduces the amount of strategy employed, gets more bench players in the game, and creates moments like these[0][1]. And I just picked one pitcher as an example. Granted, he was much more amusing than most pitchers, but the fans (me included) love it! But I'm probably wrong. Look how much the fans hate Shohei Ohtani[2] /s But the team owners in the NL wanted the DH -- their calculation being more hitting = more viewers = more money. And the player's union wanted the DH as it brings more players (hitters) up to the big leagues. Another consideration was that pitchers (well, players generally), especially the elite ones are paid quite handsomely and batting/running the bases increases the risk of injury. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVFsq9FQBlc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVFsq9FQBlc [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfvCKA9RdH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfvCKA9RdH4 [2] https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/ohtansh01.shtml https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/ohtansh01.shtml

bradleyjg 3y ago

I stopped watching Jeopardy when all contestants started jumping all over the board. Sure, it’s a better strategy but it’s not as much fun for the viewers. At the end of the day all these things are in the entertainment business.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

In starcraft, blizzard regularly adjusts the rules to keep the game exciting. I think that's going to become necessary for most games now.

hinkley 3y ago
I wonder if you could make a workable StarCraft league where the exact rules aren’t known to the players until the match starts, or maybe just minutes before the match.

pgwhalen 3y ago

While this article is more about style of play than game length, it’s worth pointing out something that probably a lot of commenters in this thread don’t realize: as a result of the pitch clock (new this year), baseball games are now considerably shorter, like 2.5 hours instead of 3.

TigeriusKirk 3y ago
And now the ratio of ad time to game time is way out of whack. I can't stand to listen to radio broadcasts this season. It's a shame, but the ads just annoy me too much.

deleted 3y ago

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4ninesfine 3y ago

I think this is my problem with formula 1. It's all too optimized and professional. Then you switch to f2 or f3 and they're all young guys having a great time and taking risks and overtaking when they shouldn't but it's great to watch.