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In professional sports the more crucial metric is the number of butts in the bleachers and watching on the tube. Winning more games sure helps with that. But in

In professional sports the more crucial metric is the number of butts in the bleachers and watching on the tube. Winning more games sure helps with that. But in baseball there's a tension between winning more games and playing more exciting games with more action. With those things going in the opposite direction, the whole business model is threatened. Politics have been blamed for the ratings drop, but a lot could be just that games have gotten progressively more boring. I wonder what rule change in baseball could fix this, along the lines of the basketball shot clock. From a business perspective, the leagues as a whole should be refining that instead. Up to a point, anyway, given that gladiatorial combat to the death would probably be a huge draw. "Next on ESPN, The Hunger Games XXIII. Stay tuned!" Maybe we're already evolving in that direction with the popularity of competitions like "Alone" and the battle royales on Twitch.

e67f70028a46fba 5y ago
Sabermetrics has absolutely ruined baseball.
Buldak 5y ago
The article suggests that the original Olympic athletes aimed at some ineffable ideal of human form, not just winning. By contrast, athletes now optimize for winning with results that the author finds unappealing. Did baseball players in the 70s really have some more holistic ethos of the game, though? Or were they doing their best to win, just as players do now, but with more imperfect knowledge of how to do it? As for your suggestion that we ought to optimize the rules themselves (i.e. so that players and teams end up playing in the way that we want), I'm skeptical of this. I have a feeling that, whatever rules we adopt, optimization of the sort in question is liable to produce the same sorts of distortions.
marcosdumay 5y ago
Refinements already killed the most easily refined sports, like anything involving a car or a horse. Team sports are next. I don't know about baseball, but volley and soccer are moving quite fast on that direction. Basketball is already gone. Games are all the same nowadays. Individual sports should be more resilient to refinements, because more capable athletes can do a larger diversity of moves. But that also won't last forever, at some point people will get enough flexibility that they are able to do the optimal performance for each modality, and then all competitions will be the same there too. (Muscle based modalities are mostly there already.)

e67f70028a46fba 5y ago

Sabermetrics has absolutely ruined baseball.

Buldak 5y ago

The article suggests that the original Olympic athletes aimed at some ineffable ideal of human form, not just winning. By contrast, athletes now optimize for winning with results that the author finds unappealing. Did baseball players in the 70s really have some more holistic ethos of the game, though? Or were they doing their best to win, just as players do now, but with more imperfect knowledge of how to do it? As for your suggestion that we ought to optimize the rules themselves (i.e. so that players and teams end up playing in the way that we want), I'm skeptical of this. I have a feeling that, whatever rules we adopt, optimization of the sort in question is liable to produce the same sorts of distortions.

marcosdumay 5y ago

Refinements already killed the most easily refined sports, like anything involving a car or a horse. Team sports are next. I don't know about baseball, but volley and soccer are moving quite fast on that direction. Basketball is already gone. Games are all the same nowadays. Individual sports should be more resilient to refinements, because more capable athletes can do a larger diversity of moves. But that also won't last forever, at some point people will get enough flexibility that they are able to do the optimal performance for each modality, and then all competitions will be the same there too. (Muscle based modalities are mostly there already.)