Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Base on Bonds will be going away for awhile. This is partly because the Red Sox are awful at the moment, partly because basketball is non-existent, but mostly because I am back at college writing a thesis and trying to find a job for next year. Hopefully there will still be occasional updates with "interesting" thoughts about sports and video games, and I will eventually write Part 3 (and 4?) of Barry Bonds and the Hall of Fame, but none of that will be coming quickly. Which is too bad.

-- Corey

Verlander and the MVP

Justin Verlander has been exceptional this year. He’s probably the AL Cy Young, and while I’ve expressed earlier why I do not think he’s the MVP this year, he’s (rightly) in the conversation, and that’s something, considering that pitchers don’t get into the conversation much.[1] In any case, most of the people who have dismissed other cases dismiss WAR as not being able to account for all the intricacies of the game (which it, of course, does not), and say that those intricacies are why Verlander (or Granderson, or someone else not names Jose Bautista) should win. I’ve also previously mocked said intricacies, but I think it might be worth some time to point out—in light of the little things—why Verlander might not be the MVP this year.

Positions and Patterns

It has occurred to me, in the recent discussions of the weakness of this year’s group of third basemen, that we actually have three of the top ten third basemen ever playing right now, even if they are all in decline (I’m counting A-Rod, assuming that he will soon have more games a 3B than SS). Which seems a little odd. So I made a list, as I am want to do. After long amounts of consideration, I chose years based on peak and service time, since I feel that those are more indicative than my feeling out when we “knew” that they were one of the greatest ever. As always, numbers are from Fangraphs and list is organized by WAR.

2011 MVP

It’s the time of year when we start talking about the baseball MVPs. In the last week, approximately everyone and their mother has written an article debating whether Verlander should win the AL MVP. All this follows on the heal of whether Adrian Gonzalez should win it, and then Pedroia had the monster July, and then there was talk of Granderson/Ellsbury… long story short, everyone suspects that Bautista is doping and / or cheating and is really wary of giving it to him. That, or they think that MVP candidates should win based on whether their team does. Also, no one has been inspired by the NL.

Deus Ex and the illusion of choice

Deus Ex: Human Revolutions is a great game.

Stealth and straight-forward violence are both viable options throughout the vast majority of the game, with good tradeoffs for both strategies; the levels are well-designed, at times intuitive and occasionally very difficult. Patience and planning are rewarded, the inventory and skill systems work well, with none of the skills feeling overpowered or—except perhaps for hacking—totally necessary. The atmosphere is good, the characters both realistic and consistent, and the environments can be quite beautiful. The only thing anyone seems to have a problem with are the boss fights.

Defense and the concept of diminishing returns

In basketball, though it isn’t discussed particularly often (or wasn’t until talents were taken to south beach) there are diminishing returns on offense skill. There are a limited number of minutes and shots per team, and while more good offensive players will tend to increase the general efficiency of their teammates, there is a theoretical limit to how much each additional offensive upgrade will make the team better.[1]

The same is true in hockey and football, though probably to a lesser extent in the hockey than in basketball. In baseball, nine players have to hit (whereas in the extreme basketball case, a Wilt/AI/Kobe/Carmelo can shoot the ball 90% of time while his team watches for a quarter or more), so, while you will see some diminishing returns if you hit an amazing hitter ninth in the order, the fact that the ninth player is generating fewer outs will actually improve the total offensive output (a team with nine .400 OBP guys will get 2-3 more baserunners and trips to the plate per game than a team with nine .300 OBP hitters, which gives them a better chance to score more runs).[2] In hockey, I would assume it would take much longer to see diminishing returns since so there are so many more players involved. If you have three A+ centers, while the other team has only one, you will have a distinct advantage because every team has to play at least three centers in every game.

A quick thought: parallels between esports and physical ones

I’ve watched a lot of esports in the last week or so, mostly focusing on the Gamescom League of Legends tournament (in which CLG beat out TSM in the finals match). Like any sport, the matches are streamed live with commentary, and (unlike most sports) the full replays can be found online after the fact.[1] The matches that I’ve watched—especially in comparison the baseball that dominates my current sports-watching time—left me with some interesting conclusions, mostly about technology.

First, camera angles, instant replay/slow-motion, and HD are really the greatest things ever. You cannot stress enough how much of a difference there is between an HD hockey game and one that is poorly broadcast. In the same vein, I’ve generally been opting for non-HD streaming (due to a mediocre internet connection) which generally works fine. Problems generally arise, however, in situations when there’s a lot of “clutter”—think about a pile of bodies in the corner in hockey—in which details, especially with the fast pace of the game, become nearly impossible for me (or, frequently, the announcers) to make out. HD would probably help for those moments, and slow-motion replays of team fights would be incredible.

As you camera angles, watching League is somewhat like watching a football game where you have one overhead camera that moves; it doesn’t matter how good the cameraperson is (and I found that the ones at Gamescom were generally very good), you’re going to end up missing a fair amount of the action regardless. I suppose a better analogy would be a soccer game in which there were three balls for the first half of the game: as long as you can only focus on one ball, you’re going to miss some incredible action in other parts of the field. Again, an instant replay feature would be great, especially if there was a slow-motion aspect, though doing that in a game like League—which doesn’t pause until it ends—would be difficult.

Second, announcers can add to the game or they can be distracting and misleading. I would say that this is a major problem in baseball—though that is just an opinion—and stems mostly from the fact that there is so much time between pitches, and so many strikeouts, and so many walks, that play-by-play has really been replaced by color commenting, which is generally much less interesting. At Gamescom, the announcers were interesting and injected information about strategy while the game was going on, like a good pair of hockey play-by-play callers. Watching with the sound off would taken away from the experience.

Third, and I think this is true across the board in sports, watching League is simply not going to be interesting without a background knowledge of what is going on. The finals match at Gamescom included some truly excellent uses of flash, a nice turret dive or two, a couple very good ganks, interesting banning strategy, and exemplary last-hitting and dragon coordination. Of course, if you don’t know what any of that means, you’re going to find the game much less interesting, in part because you won’t appreciate the level of difficulty involved (for this reason, I found watching a Rumble much less interesting than watching a Nidalee or Cho’Gath. I have never played Rumble, have no idea what his abilities do, and wasn’t really entranced by his positioning strategies). This is why I don’t particularly enjoy football: I simply don’t understand pro offensive packages or defensive strategies, and so while I can enjoy a nice pass or a particularly inspiring run, most of the game is much less interesting.[2]

And finally, tournament League, like most other professional sports, appears to be played and watched primarily by men. I think there’s a point here, but I don’t really know what it is.

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[1] Actually, like many sports, tournament-style League has a five or ten or twenty second delay, depending on who you talk to. This is to prevent “ghosting”—basically, you don’t want a guy in the audience to shout “lookout, he’s behind the door” and actually prevent the person from going through the door.

[2] I’m also the only person I know who gets excited about good defensive positioning on hockey plays.