I'm a big baseball fan but I must admit the game can be a bit boring to watch on TV. My main enjoyment has always been using baseball as a foundation for other experiences - the energy of the...
I'm a big baseball fan but I must admit the game can be a bit boring to watch on TV. My main enjoyment has always been using baseball as a foundation for other experiences - the energy of the ballpark when you're at a game, the pleasure of listening on the radio while sitting out with friends on a hot summer day, the smell of your glove when playing, the history and lore of the sport, etc etc. Not all of this is unique to baseball of course, but yes without those things baseball is quite boring and getting more so. Still can't wait to get to a game when it's feasible.
Man, that was the best. The Reno Aces are a good little team on a silly little field, seats and drinks are cheap and crowds come and go so you can get the kind of crowd you want. Premium baseball...
Man, that was the best. The Reno Aces are a good little team on a silly little field, seats and drinks are cheap and crowds come and go so you can get the kind of crowd you want. Premium baseball vibe experience
This would be the perfect time for baseball (and cricket, oh god especially cricket) to have it's rugby sevens moment. Rugby usually has 15 players per team on field for 80 minutes of playing...
This would be the perfect time for baseball (and cricket, oh god especially cricket) to have it's rugby sevens moment.
Rugby usually has 15 players per team on field for 80 minutes of playing time.
Rugby sevens has 7 players per team on a field for 14 minutes of playing time.
The last rugby sevens world cup, with 24 countries competing, took all of two days to finish in San Francisco, soup to nuts. The crowd was amazing.
Cricket already has the Twenty20 format which I believe is rising in popularity. It reduces the maxium overs to 20 which typically result in an innings being only 90 minutes.
Cricket already has the Twenty20 format which I believe is rising in popularity. It reduces the maxium overs to 20 which typically result in an innings being only 90 minutes.
I think it would help if the league unjuiced the baseballs. Home runs are way, way up from even five years ago because of it, and some of those home runs would have been doubles or triples. The...
I think it would help if the league unjuiced the baseballs. Home runs are way, way up from even five years ago because of it, and some of those home runs would have been doubles or triples. The pace-of-play changes that Manfred has put in (like the intentional walk rule) don't do as much as if some rule was put in place about the batter not being able to step out of the batter's box after every pitch.
That might help. The fixation on home runs definitely hasn't healthy. Nor the fact that fielders are strong and precise enough to whip the ball anywhere they want. It's damned impressive that they...
That might help. The fixation on home runs definitely hasn't healthy. Nor the fact that fielders are strong and precise enough to whip the ball anywhere they want. It's damned impressive that they can do it, but when everyone is that good the game ends up losing a lot of the opportunities for mistakes or recoveries that make watching sports dramatic or fun.
I've often though that tennis should ban modern materials and go back to wooden rackets for similar reasons. Yes, these blazing 150mph+ serves are impressive to see. But they also set up the whole round to revolve around power shots from the baseline instead of the long, back-and-forth rallies that people like to see. And also, the game being so fast takes a toll on the players. In tennis and in baseball it seems like anyone with a long career ends up with life-long rotator cuff problems, knee problems, hip problems, etc.
I've never been much of a baseball fan, but this kind of gets to my frustration with a lot of sports. We seem to have gotten so good at figuring out the scientifically optimal way to do everything...
I've never been much of a baseball fan, but this kind of gets to my frustration with a lot of sports. We seem to have gotten so good at figuring out the scientifically optimal way to do everything that its drained a lot of the accessibility and fun out of it for viewers. In a lot of cases it seems like the only people who can even play some of these sports at a high level are sort of genetic freaks. Basketball, especially, has this problem where you have to be insanely tall to even qualify for a competitive high school varsity team.
I find the womens' leagues more interesting because these things aren't quite "solved" yet with the differences in anatomy factored in.
As someone who works in the sports analytics field (mostly baseball), from my perspective at least things are not all solved yet. There is plenty of innovation happening all the time, led by...
As someone who works in the sports analytics field (mostly baseball), from my perspective at least things are not all solved yet. There is plenty of innovation happening all the time, led by companies like Driveline and emboldened players hungry for an edge. A lot of the most advanced metrics were not even being collected as little as several years ago and the now agreed upon methods of improvement were practically shunned then too. What will be the best way to raise your fastball velocity in the next few years that is unheard of now?
Edit: also wanted to point out the first team to fully take advantage of these then "experimental" techniques like crazy powerful cameras to measure new things was the Astros, who turned their sorry organization into one of the league's powerhouses in very quick fashion. They weren't afraid to try anything new and won a world series, in a way establishing credibility to the latest innovations. And as people know, they didn't stop there. Ruthless!
The issue isn't that new things aren't happening. It's that everyone plays the same. Even if things evolve, the evolution is happening on the population level. So how do you even decide who to...
There is plenty of innovation happening all the time, led by companies like Driveline and emboldened players hungry for an edge. A lot of the most advanced metrics were not even being collected as little as several years ago and the now agreed upon methods of improvement were practically shunned then too. What will be the best way to raise your fastball velocity in the next few years that is unheard of now? Also something to watch for in the near future is leveraging of sophisticated health data.
The issue isn't that new things aren't happening. It's that everyone plays the same. Even if things evolve, the evolution is happening on the population level. So how do you even decide who to root for? Like, we can root for Rocky because he has heart. We have trouble rooting for Drago because he seems more like the product of a bunch of scientists and engineers than a sportsman.
A similar thing happened to tennis. There used to be lots of different styles of play. You had serve-and-volley players, you had road runners, you had power baseliners, and so on. But as rackets got better and people got more athletic, the power-baseline type of players just outdo everyone else. Nobody has the stamina to run down balls that go this fast forever, and nobody has the reaction speed to volley with the necessary precision either. So the game gets less exciting to watch since it's hyper-optimized around a single style of play.
And what's worse is that this single style of play is inaccessible to regular players. So amateurs playing tennis still have a variety of different styles, but they no longer see many shades of themselves in the pros. They're basically playing different games at this point and this ends up being bad for sports in general. Kids like to watch sports and imagine themselves in their heroes' shoes. But if they can never actually do what you see on TV in their wildest dreams, they're not going to stay interested.
Sometimes this is the player's fault though. With some sports, there really is only one way to do things, but take chess. Modern chess uses positional tactics, which is beyond me, but makes the...
Sometimes this is the player's fault though. With some sports, there really is only one way to do things, but take chess.
Modern chess uses positional tactics, which is beyond me, but makes the games slow and boring. Zoom to a couple years ago, and you have Alpha-zero nuking Stockfish with romantic tactics. Turns out the players were wrong about the best way to play, there just wasn't enough experimentation at the top levels.
I'm a big baseball fan but I must admit the game can be a bit boring to watch on TV. My main enjoyment has always been using baseball as a foundation for other experiences - the energy of the ballpark when you're at a game, the pleasure of listening on the radio while sitting out with friends on a hot summer day, the smell of your glove when playing, the history and lore of the sport, etc etc. Not all of this is unique to baseball of course, but yes without those things baseball is quite boring and getting more so. Still can't wait to get to a game when it's feasible.
Man, that was the best. The Reno Aces are a good little team on a silly little field, seats and drinks are cheap and crowds come and go so you can get the kind of crowd you want. Premium baseball vibe experience
Minor league is often better for this type of thing, but I haven’t been to a minor league game in ages. I should go next year.
This would be the perfect time for baseball (and cricket, oh god especially cricket) to have it's rugby sevens moment.
Rugby usually has 15 players per team on field for 80 minutes of playing time.
Rugby sevens has 7 players per team on a field for 14 minutes of playing time.
The last rugby sevens world cup, with 24 countries competing, took all of two days to finish in San Francisco, soup to nuts. The crowd was amazing.
Cricket already has the Twenty20 format which I believe is rising in popularity. It reduces the maxium overs to 20 which typically result in an innings being only 90 minutes.
:-<>
I think it would help if the league unjuiced the baseballs. Home runs are way, way up from even five years ago because of it, and some of those home runs would have been doubles or triples. The pace-of-play changes that Manfred has put in (like the intentional walk rule) don't do as much as if some rule was put in place about the batter not being able to step out of the batter's box after every pitch.
That might help. The fixation on home runs definitely hasn't healthy. Nor the fact that fielders are strong and precise enough to whip the ball anywhere they want. It's damned impressive that they can do it, but when everyone is that good the game ends up losing a lot of the opportunities for mistakes or recoveries that make watching sports dramatic or fun.
I've often though that tennis should ban modern materials and go back to wooden rackets for similar reasons. Yes, these blazing 150mph+ serves are impressive to see. But they also set up the whole round to revolve around power shots from the baseline instead of the long, back-and-forth rallies that people like to see. And also, the game being so fast takes a toll on the players. In tennis and in baseball it seems like anyone with a long career ends up with life-long rotator cuff problems, knee problems, hip problems, etc.
I've never been much of a baseball fan, but this kind of gets to my frustration with a lot of sports. We seem to have gotten so good at figuring out the scientifically optimal way to do everything that its drained a lot of the accessibility and fun out of it for viewers. In a lot of cases it seems like the only people who can even play some of these sports at a high level are sort of genetic freaks. Basketball, especially, has this problem where you have to be insanely tall to even qualify for a competitive high school varsity team.
I find the womens' leagues more interesting because these things aren't quite "solved" yet with the differences in anatomy factored in.
As someone who works in the sports analytics field (mostly baseball), from my perspective at least things are not all solved yet. There is plenty of innovation happening all the time, led by companies like Driveline and emboldened players hungry for an edge. A lot of the most advanced metrics were not even being collected as little as several years ago and the now agreed upon methods of improvement were practically shunned then too. What will be the best way to raise your fastball velocity in the next few years that is unheard of now?
Edit: also wanted to point out the first team to fully take advantage of these then "experimental" techniques like crazy powerful cameras to measure new things was the Astros, who turned their sorry organization into one of the league's powerhouses in very quick fashion. They weren't afraid to try anything new and won a world series, in a way establishing credibility to the latest innovations. And as people know, they didn't stop there. Ruthless!
The issue isn't that new things aren't happening. It's that everyone plays the same. Even if things evolve, the evolution is happening on the population level. So how do you even decide who to root for? Like, we can root for Rocky because he has heart. We have trouble rooting for Drago because he seems more like the product of a bunch of scientists and engineers than a sportsman.
A similar thing happened to tennis. There used to be lots of different styles of play. You had serve-and-volley players, you had road runners, you had power baseliners, and so on. But as rackets got better and people got more athletic, the power-baseline type of players just outdo everyone else. Nobody has the stamina to run down balls that go this fast forever, and nobody has the reaction speed to volley with the necessary precision either. So the game gets less exciting to watch since it's hyper-optimized around a single style of play.
And what's worse is that this single style of play is inaccessible to regular players. So amateurs playing tennis still have a variety of different styles, but they no longer see many shades of themselves in the pros. They're basically playing different games at this point and this ends up being bad for sports in general. Kids like to watch sports and imagine themselves in their heroes' shoes. But if they can never actually do what you see on TV in their wildest dreams, they're not going to stay interested.
Sometimes this is the player's fault though. With some sports, there really is only one way to do things, but take chess.
Modern chess uses positional tactics, which is beyond me, but makes the games slow and boring. Zoom to a couple years ago, and you have Alpha-zero nuking Stockfish with romantic tactics. Turns out the players were wrong about the best way to play, there just wasn't enough experimentation at the top levels.