Why analytics/moneyball leads to more success but worse entertainment

[Professor Emeritus]

What Moneyball-for-Everything Has Done to American Culture

You can make a thing so perfect that it’s ruined.

www.theatlantic.com

Describes in detail how following algorithms and pursuing analytical strategies DOES lead to success but makes it boring as fukk in the process. Basically, you're "solving" the sport so that everyone knows the same optimal strategy and every team looks somewhat the same, rather than the intrigue of different teams with lots of different players trying different things.


Baseball is reduced to home runs, walks, and strikeouts.

Basketball is reduced to three-pointers and shots at the rim.

Blockbuster movies are reduced to the same formulaic remakes, sequels, and superhero flicks.

Hit music is reduced to regurgitating the same genres and artists that produce the same reliable popularity.



All of those are "good decisions" when it comes to winning games or making money, but in the long term they're fukking up whole industries because the actual public is becoming more and more disengaged with the homogenity.

 

[Hersh]

and u can't fix it unless u completely change what you trying to "solve for"

 

[Professor Emeritus]

and u can't fix it unless u completely change what you trying to "solve for"

Yeah, it's a fukked-up situation because either you have to encourage teams to prioritize entertainment at the expense of winning, or you have to start putting in place all sorts of convoluted new rules to encourage diversity....but no matter what rules you put in, the solution will be somewhat the same for every team and they'll start looking the same again.


The real problem is that sports are more interesting when teams/coaches don't really know what they're doing so everyone is trying different shyt.

 

[Sccit]

AND LASTLY, POSTERS LIKE @Rhakim WHO WIN POSTER OF THE YEAR BY STICKING TO A SUCCESSFUL FORMULA OF ECHOING POPULAR GROUP THINK TALKING POINTS WITHOUT HAVING AN ACTUAL THOUGHT OF HIS OWN

 

[Pressure]

AND LASTLY, POSTERS LIKE @Rhakim WHO WIN POSTER OF THE YEAR BY STICKING TO A SUCCESSFUL FORMULA OF ECHOING POPULAR GROUP THINK TALKING POINTS WITHOUT HAVING AN ACTUAL THOUGHT OF HIS OWN

He won POTY in HL by changing hi name and doing a good amount of historical beef series.

Most people know he's a strange guy

 

[Professor Emeritus]

My haters got me first thing on their mind at 2am. They'd rather talk about me than talk about sports.

 

[Sccit]

My haters got me first thing on their mind at 2am. They'd rather talk about me than talk about sports.

SEE WHAT IM SAYING .. THIS IS THE MOST GENERIC, SOULLESS RESPONSE A PERSON CAN COME UP WIT


THIS THREAD ISNT ABOUT SPORTS, ITS ABOUT ANALYTICS AND HOW THE MECHANICAL ASPECT OF EVERYTHING IN EXISTENCE TENDS TO EVENTUALLY TAKE OVER AND DIMINISH THE JOY WE FIND IN DOING THINGS THE ORGANIC WAY


YOU ARE THE POSTING EXAMPLE OF THAT… CONGRATS.

 

[Avisible Man]

The real problem is that sports are more interesting when teams/coaches don't really know what they're doing so everyone is trying different shy

Sports, particularly football and baseball, were more interesting and entertaining when there used to be Head Coaches and Managers. I don't know how many CEO head coaches are left in the NFL. I get to watch Bill Belichick but there's so many bozos who bury their heads in the play sheet like it's the dinner menu and neglect the other side of the ball. They have a team of nerds feeding them analytics from the booth, and those morons, intelligent tho they may be, have no feel for the game. They're starting to ruin the game with going for it on 4th down instead of attempting field goals. Then the idiot head coaches, who are mostly glorified coordinators, can say, "the data said that we'd have a 2.7% better chance of winning if we went for it."

In baseball, you used to have managers filling out the lineup and making calls from the dugout. Now, the analytics do it for them. The Red Sox have an AI called Carmine, who feeds them all the nerd data they could ever need. Their head nerd in charge, Chiam Bloom, is a Yale guy who never played baseball, like a lot of baseball GM's. He and his analytics, give Alex Cora, who actually played the game, the lineup. All these players have positional cards that they keep in their hats that provide exact locations for them to stand in the field against a certain player in a specific count. It's amazing how right that shyt ends up being when you see a ball hit directly to these fielders. It works but it robs the game of spontaneity.

I can't wait for next year's new rules in baseball. No more shifting. A pitch clock. These changes will put more pressure on the pitchers and fielders that just hasn't been there. We may actually get to see lefties get groundball base hits. shyt, even line drives to right. We could actually see singles up the middle. We could also see great defensive plays that require actual athleticism and not preordained positional placement. Pitchers should lose a little juice off their fastballs with the pitch clock, leading to more hittable pitches and balls in play.

Moneyball is terrible for sports, from an entertainment perspective. I get it when you have a small market team. But even when it leads to regular season success, it still can't get you over the hump in the playoffs. Ask the A's. All that moneyball ain't win not one World Series.

 

[Gil Scott-Heroin]

I don't think sports have become less entertaining through the similitude practice of doing what's best for winning.

It's more the fact that we find reasons on why something doesn't measure up to the era we grew up in because of rosy retrospection.

In general, nothing is ever going to match those same experiences you have as a child/teenager, as that's when we are at our most malleable. Because the truth is, someone's best experience is not someone else's. Basketball has always had folks contesting how good the product is in every era and comparing to the past; for someone who grew up around the 70s/80s, they're generally not going to look at the 90s/00s too fondly, and someone who grew up around the 90s/00s (and all the generations before them), they're generally not going to look at today's game too fondly.

Even if analytics/moneyball didn't exist, folks would only come up with another reason(s) for why today's sports aren't as entertaining as they once were.

This is before we even take into account that sports was once upon a time, one of the very few sources of entertainment, whereas now, the pastimes that we have are infinite. There are simply more options to occupy our free-time than ever before, and that affects our interest in sport.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Sports, particularly football and baseball, were more interesting and entertaining when they're used to be Head Coaches and Managers. I don't know how many CEO head coaches are left in the NFL. I get to watch Bill Belichick but there's so many bozos who bury their heads in the play sheet like it's the dinner menu and neglect the other side of the ball. They have a team of nerds feeding them analytics from the booth, and those morons, intelligent tho they may be, have no feel for the game. They're starting to ruin the game with going for it on 4th down instead of attempting field goals. Then the idiot head coaches, who are mostly glorified coordinators, can say, "the data said that we'd have a 2.7% better chance of winning if we went for it."

You used to have managers filling out the lineup and making calls from the dugout. Now, the analytics do it for them. The Red Sox have an AI called Carmine, who feeds them all the nerd data they could ever need. Their head nerd in charge, Chiam Bloom, is a Yale guy who never played baseball, like a lot of baseball GM's. He and his analytics, give Alex Cora, who actually played the game, the lineup. All these players have positional cards that they keep in their hats that provide exact locations for them to stand in the field against a certain player in a specific count. It's amazing how right that shyt ends up being when you see a ball got directly to these fielders. It works but it robs the game of spontaneity.

Like you say, it works. Everyone demands wins and they do it cause it wins. If it didn't work, then other teams would ignore the nerds and dominate the league.

I can't wait for next year's new rules in baseball. No more shifting. A pitch clock. These changes will put more pressure on the pitchers and fielders that just hasn't been there. We may actually get to see lefties get groundball base hits. shyt, even line drives to right. We could actually see singles up the middle. We could also see great defensive plays that require actual athleticism and not preordained positional placement. Pitchers should lose a little juice off their fastballs with the pitch clock , leading to more hittable pitches and balls in play.

Yeah, pitch clock has been a necessary idea for a long ass time, just to keep the game moving but like you say it'll probably help decrease strikeouts too. Need to reduce batter stepouts too. I was against taking away the shift because it seemed like just good strategy, but in this context I understand it more.

In the NBA one thing that could help would be extending the 3pt line to be the same everywhere, thus making the corner 3pt a lot tougher. I wonder if a similar idea in baseball (pushing back the fence on the corners) could also help?

 

[Gil Scott-Heroin]

Following on from my previous post, this is a piece from 2000 talking about the deterioration of entertainment/viewership in sport -

Suggestions for making NBA games less crushingly boring

"Curling is electrifying in comparison"

www.salon.com

The deterioration of play in the NBA and the NHL has the same causes though -- a watering down of the overall talent level due to overexpansion, and the refusal of the league to enforce the damn rules. Last time I checked, palming the ball, moving picks and lowering your shoulder and knocking your opponent down on your way to the basket were all still violations, but you'd never know it by watching this years NBA Finals.

The wonder is not that the NBA is losing viewership, the wonder is that so many have been willing to sit through such uninteresting, predictable and unsportmanlike tedium for so long.

I couldn't agree more that the NBA has become a totally unwatchable, meaningless sport.

Get rid of the three-point line and do not reward teams for taking low-percentage shots; revoke the ban on zone defenses and let teams try to out-think dominant offensive players; extend the 24-second rule to at least 45 seconds and let teams set up plays beyond dribble-pass-shoot.

Give the fans a game between two well-coached teams stocked with players adept in all aspects of basketball (not just scoring) and I believe that they will come back.

How true that the endless stoppages and free throws at the conclusion of basketball games drain the matches of all their visceral excitement. Unfortunately, a reduced playoff scheme is troublesome, too. Yes, basketball playoffs as a whole should be shorter and have fewer games per series. But the truth is, basketball fans need to feel that their team -- as bad as it may be -- has at least a remote shot at a playoff spot. Otherwise, they'll simply tune out long before the regular season ends, leaving the NBA with even worse ratings than Major League Baseball.

 

[2legit]

Following on from my previous post, this is a piece from 2000 talking about the deterioration of entertainment/viewership in sport -

Suggestions for making NBA games less crushingly boring

"Curling is electrifying in comparison"

www.salon.com

Their suggestion for making the NBA better is to turn into the 1980's college basketball? Might as well advocate for no shot clock and bringing back the 4 corners offense while you are at it. All of their suggestions literally reduce the entertainment of basketball.

The real reason why all of them hated the NBA in 2000 was because it was becoming a Black league. That was the start of the Allen Iverson era and you can tell how much older White fans resented that era of the NBA becoming more of a Black league.

 

[froggle]

I've stopped watching the NBA as intensely, as I have stuff to do, but every time I logon, it's the same thing. Dribble, dribble 3. The analytics say do x, but it really makes the game so predictable and boring

 

[Gil Scott-Heroin]

All of their suggestions literally reduce the entertainment of basketball.

Except that's your opinion.

One man's entertainment ain't another's.

You'll find that folks complain about every era and want it more to be like the era they knew. Players are also guilty of this. The 80s were frowned upon because it was perceived it diluted real hoops and made the game into a sideshow.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Their suggestion for making the NBA better is to turn into the 1980's college basketball? Might as well advocate for no shot clock and bringing back the 4 corners offense while you are at it. All of their suggestions literally reduce the entertainment of basketball.

The real reason why all of them hated the NBA in 2000 was because it was becoming a Black league. That was the start of the Allen Iverson era and you can tell how much older White fans resented that era of the NBA becoming more of a Black league.

There were actual problems with the league in 2000, but they were based on talent dilution from too much expansion recently (which was going to work its way out in time without needing to do anything about it), and too much iso play on offense (which was worked out by introducing the zone). Those issues were pretty easy to fix and the league fixed them, with the 2004-2016 run of the league being wildly entertaining.


I think the current issues of too many teams relying on analytics are tougher to fix. Because no matter what rule changes you make, everyone is still relying on analytics so they're still going to all react the same way. There will be individual differences based on the talent available on your roster, but I don't think we're ever going to have the same diversity of playing styles that we had 20-30 years ago.