5 ms·
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 th
by lordnacho 4y 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 4y agoSoccer and baseball are weird to compare. Do cricket!
- lordnacho 4y agoCricket 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 4y agoI 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.
- thatguymike 4y agoFunny, I’d heard that football is a gentleman’s game played by thugs and rugby is the thug’s game played by gentlemen.
- denton-scratch 4y agoCould have got it wrong; but I'm sure about the "peculiar balls" bit.
- EdwardDiego 4y agoIn NZ, I heard it in the context of talking about the UK, and it was phrased. as "football is played by gentlemen and watched by thugs, rugby (union) is played by thugs and watched by gentlemen" as rugby union tends to be closely associated with public (that is, private) schools, who would often give rather large yet dumb students scholarships if they thought they'd help the First Fifteen beat their rival school.
- watwut 4y agoI don't understand how soccer ayers qualify as gentlemen. Like not at all. It is fairly ... rude environment at minimum.