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Jeffro's Gaming Blog: Car Wars, Star Fleet Battles, Ogre, Battletech, and more!
Revenge of the Losers
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Strange things are afoot in the realms of major league baseball.
Billy Beane has decided to play the game by the numbers. Instead sinking all of his money into good looking "super star" types, he's invested in a hodpodge of losers that collectively can win games.
Sabermetricians (baseball stat geeks) have long known that there are traits that are undervalued in major league baseball. It turns out that having the ability to steal bases, having a high batting average and looking good isn't statistically worth all that much when compared to the ability to just make it onto base. Beyond just acting on this sort of information, Beane ignored players that didn't yet have enough of a record to predict their future potential.
Beane was scorned by his peers, but his record surpasses teams that have bigger budgets. Unwanted players purchased for peanuts joined his team and years later were sold as "super-stars." Losing these players to the other (richer) teams did not hurt Beane because he could take the use the money to buy more "losers" that were collectively more valuable than the guy he lost! Meanwile other teams that had made less careful decisions were finding that many of their "super-stars" weren't living up to expectations-- yet they were saddled with huge long-term contracts with these guys!
When I heard a story on the radio about this, I couldn't help but think... "That's Car Wars!" Somehow building the perfect baseball team is not so different than coming up with the ultimate Car Wars design. But Beane goes beyond the ability to carefully balance tradeoffs. What he's done is the equivalent of a Division 20 car taking second place against a half-dozen opponents driving $30,000 vehicles!
If you're interested in more on this, The book is Moneyball. Check it out:
http://www.failuremag.com/business_content.html
(Watch out for the blank pop-up screen that obscures the article!)
Strange things are afoot in the realms of major league baseball.
Billy Beane has decided to play the game by the numbers. Instead sinking all of his money into good looking "super star" types, he's invested in a hodpodge of losers that collectively can win games.
Sabermetricians (baseball stat geeks) have long known that there are traits that are undervalued in major league baseball. It turns out that having the ability to steal bases, having a high batting average and looking good isn't statistically worth all that much when compared to the ability to just make it onto base. Beyond just acting on this sort of information, Beane ignored players that didn't yet have enough of a record to predict their future potential.
Beane was scorned by his peers, but his record surpasses teams that have bigger budgets. Unwanted players purchased for peanuts joined his team and years later were sold as "super-stars." Losing these players to the other (richer) teams did not hurt Beane because he could take the use the money to buy more "losers" that were collectively more valuable than the guy he lost! Meanwile other teams that had made less careful decisions were finding that many of their "super-stars" weren't living up to expectations-- yet they were saddled with huge long-term contracts with these guys!
When I heard a story on the radio about this, I couldn't help but think... "That's Car Wars!" Somehow building the perfect baseball team is not so different than coming up with the ultimate Car Wars design. But Beane goes beyond the ability to carefully balance tradeoffs. What he's done is the equivalent of a Division 20 car taking second place against a half-dozen opponents driving $30,000 vehicles!
If you're interested in more on this, The book is Moneyball. Check it out:
http://www.failuremag.com/business_content.html
(Watch out for the blank pop-up screen that obscures the article!)
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