How the relentless drive for optimization made baseball impossible to watch
vox.com
vox.com
- 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.
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.
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.
Perhaps that’s not what the creators of the game imagined. But it’s how society has progressed. Cricket should be what the masses want it to be.
I feel like I'm missing the point, then. If your intention is to catch some rays and read a newspaper, can't you do that anywhere? What does a seemingly-ignored cricket match contribute to that recreation?
5 day matches where a solution to that problem.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
is it? I thought those sports organisations are not businesses but associations of the clubs. Is it different in the US?
The article makes a good point about misalignment here. Teams want to win (winning helps sell merch), but the league wants to sell ads (ads need worthwhile content). If these incentives were better aligned, maybe we'd end up with a less boring game that doesn't end up as background noise.
That's a serious oversimplification of MLB teams' business models. Yes, ticket sales, marketing deals, food, beer and merchandise do make some money. However, the bulk of the money made by the teams (MLB is, as others have mentioned, a trade association which has been given special exemptions from anti-trust law) is from media deals with the major networks and "Regional Sports Networks" (RSN) which handle all the ads and broadcast details.
A few of the teams have their own RSNs, but most rely on third parties for that. In fact, one of the biggest (with rights to broadcast 14 of the 30 MLB teams) just went bankrupt.
For more information about that, and some really good "inside baseball" (see what I did there?) read this article[0] from The Athletic, published just yesterday.
[0] https://theathletic.com/4409306/2023/04/14/mlb-streaming-tv-...
Wow!
For any HN readers, go look up this ridiculous practice. It will impress the number cruncher types, and it will impress you how much the TV companies practically cover it up so people think the game is still fair.
Ask, and ye shall receive[0].
[0] https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-2023-rule-changes-pitch-timer-l...
As a "real" fan myself, I think it's great! Watching a batter step out of the box, spit, adjust their batting gloves and/or their athletic supporter, take a couple of shadow swings and then step back in after every pitch doesn't make the game better. Nor does a pitcher who stalks around the mound for half a minute, then shakes off the catcher six or seven times (it's almost always going to be a fastball when that happens anyway), sets, then steps off the rubber and goes through the whole rigamarole again. Yuck!
The larger bases and limits on throws to bases are fine, and banning the "shift" is wonderful!
It used to be (in fact, the "shift"[9] was first deployed against CY Williams[10] in the 1920s, but was much, much more famously used against Ted Williams[8], as he refused to do as Wee Willie Keeler[0] counseled and "hit 'em where they ain't.") that hitters would change their approach, i.e. "situational hitting"[1], but with the rise of analytics and focus on "three true outcomes"[2] and "launch angle"[3], using the shift became ever more effective because most hitters started just swinging for the fences every. single. time.
Which, combined with the "shift" makes watching the game much less enjoyable, even if it does provide some statistical[4] advantage.
Sure, I'd love to see my team win more games, make deep post-season runs and, hopefully even win the World Series.
That said, my team doesn't mail me a check when they win a game or the World Series. As such, I'd much rather see dynamic play (these guys really are amazing athletes) without the focus on the "three true outcomes."
There are two rule changes (not implemented this year, but during the pandemic and since retained) that really chap my ass: the designated hitter[5] in the National League and the "ghost runner"[6] on second base during extra innings[7].
So, no. It doesn't upset real fans (in fact, most of the response has been really positive so far -- not least because games are ~30 minutes shorter than last year) who really appreciate the game, IMNSHO.
[0] https://www.baseball-almanac.com/quotes/quokeel.shtml
[1] https://baseball.tools/baseball-situational-hitting/
[2] https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-growth-of-three-true-ou...
[3] https://www.mlb.com/glossary/statcast/launch-angle
[4] If the game itself is the "meat and potatoes," statistics is the "gravy" everything is steeped in. Many, many decisions are made both in-game and to evaluate players based on statistics; and player greatness (e.g. Hall of Fame inductions), it permeates almost every aspect of the game.
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designated_hitter
[6] https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-ghost-runner-rule-lea...
[7] https://www.baseballbible.net/what-are-extra-innings/
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Williams
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infield_shift#History_in_Major...
I get why they did this, but this was the one change that I hated. I like letting the math nerds find optimal strategies to winning games.
Edit: Should say I also liked the addition of the DH, although I didn't really care either way. As an AL fan I prefer the DH, but enjoyed the quirkiness of seeing pitchers bat now and then. The ghost runners I *thought* I'd hate and initially did, but came to enjoy it as time went on.
>I get why they did this, but this was the one change that I hated. I like letting the math nerds find optimal strategies to winning games.
A fair point. Although isn't that what Fantasy Baseball is for?
>Edit: Should say I also liked the addition of the DH, although I didn't really care either way. As an AL fan I prefer the DH, but enjoyed the quirkiness of seeing pitchers bat now and then. The ghost runners I thought I'd hate and initially did, but came to enjoy it as time went on.
I get it. As a lifelong fan of an NL team (I'd also note that the DH wasn't adopted in the AL until the early 1970s), I always found games with the DH to be less interesting because, since most pitchers are poor hitters, there's a good deal of tactical and strategic thinking that has to go into whether to bat for a pitcher or let him come to the plate.
If your ace is rolling, but he's coming up with men on base and two outs -- what are you going to do? Remove him from the game and burning a bench player as a pinch hitter?
What happens when you run out of bench players because you burned them all (except, presumably, the backup catcher) hitting in the pitcher's spot?
Do you make a double switch, putting a position player in the pitcher's spot in the order to stave off having to take out a reliever who couldn't hit a tee-ball?
There's all kinds of wonderful complexity and nuance there that the DH just destroys.
As for the "ghost runner," my objection is less well founded. I just don't like that there's a base runner who didn't earn their way on.
All that said, I dig your point of view. That's one of the wonderful things about baseball: we can argue about the finer points, but still enjoy the beauty of the game.
Just call them fouls, like any other ball hit out of the field.
— Edward Abbey
It has been suggested to me that the best way to enjoy baseball is on the radio, and I think I have to agree. All the crap you've listed largely doesn't happen across the radio.
That said, as a Guardians fan who lives well outside the broadcast range of WTAM, it's been a while since I could enjoy a game on the radio. Perhaps they've managed to bring it down to the level of the TV broadcast now.
Not a bad thing per se, but not baseball.
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"
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.
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.
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.
Does that pretty much narrow it down?
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.
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.
Sounds like baseball is a thing in the US, and countries that the US had a large military presence in, then?
A 0-0 soccer game that goes to penalties can be very interesting if you know what you are watching in the same way that any baseball game can be interesting.
I think the problem is that most sports announcers, and especially baseball talk on the level of the superfans that understand all of the subtlety, instead of explaining what is going on to the casual viewer.
Please disclose your lack of knowledge or interest in the topic at the start so that people can avoid taking your opinion in good faith.
When you comment on something, it's important to read all the words. If you find that difficult, get someone to help you with the tricky ones.
Given that more than 40,000,000 people attended an MLB game in person[0] last season and millions more attended minor league[1] games (not to mention the independent leagues), I think reports of baseball's imminent doom are greatly exaggerated.
It is true that TV viewership of MLB games has dropped significantly[2], but that's more a function of cord cutting rather than lack of interest, IMHO.
And there are big problems[3] with broadcasting/streaming MLB games.
There is MLB.tv, but most teams force MLB.tv to black out games played by area, (e.g. NY Yankee games are unavailable on that streaming service in the NY Metro area, etc.), as they get most of their revenue from media deals and that cuts into the teams' profits.
In fact, I've resisted cutting the cord (and it pisses me off to no end!) because I can't even pay to see my team on a streaming service. 130 (of 162 per season) of their games are only on local cable in my area.
I'd happily pay $200 a season to stream all my team's games -- and end up saving money by cutting the cord.
[0] https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/2022-misc....
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2021/08/06/mlb-seein...
[3] https://theathletic.com/4409306/2023/04/14/mlb-streaming-tv-...
Edit: Fixed prose to actually make sense.
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...
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.
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
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfvCKA9RdH4
[2] https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/ohtansh01.shtml
I was wondering how that worked, and it looks kind of like two-player teeball: https://youtu.be/Pz19WhYxaxA?t=13
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
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.