I want to remember the games I go to with the ticket stubs. I understand the reason for moving towards the ballpark app, but I wish some stadiums would allow you to get a printed ticket. I would be happy with it being only after you enter the ballpark with the app and need to go to the ticket office after to get the printed ticket. Just something physical that said I went to xyz game would be awesome.

I've heard diehard baseball fans don't love their sport being compared to cricket, so I'm sorry for this, but I need a bit of help. This post may sound ridiculous, but it's as the title is - could someone please try to explain baseball to me in cricket terms?

My friend is a huge baseball fans and he really wants me to be interested in the sport, but I can't seem to understand it properly, and he isn't the best explainer. On the other side, I'm a pretty big cricket fan (understand every rule, know all the terms and even the damn 30+ fielding positions), and I've heard some people say baseball and cricket are a bit similar. Admittedly, I don't see any similarities myself, but maybe there are some fans of both cricket and baseball here who do?

A confusing question I'm sure, but I would really appreciate it if someone could help me out! Cheers.

This year I made up a couple metrics that used only Win Probability as an input. One is called “Excitement Score,” which is a cumulative sum of squares of WPA throughout a game. The other one is “Tension Score,” which measures the average distance the entire game is from 50% Win Probability. I posted these metrics in the daily “Around the Horn” thread. Eventually the mods reached out and asked me if I’d be interested in making it a daily post instead. I was happy to do so, and in May I started a daily post with these metrics on every game. Here are a couple of example posts with longer explanations (Example 1, Example 2).

The primary purpose of this was to give information to folks who weren’t able to watch games the day prior, and to inform them if the game was worth watching. I never posted the actual outcome of the game so as to not spoil anything.

While my daily posts were not heavily trafficked, I had fun doing this project. I received mixed but mostly positive feedback. Now that the season is over I want to share a website I’ve built out where you can filter excitement/tension scores by team, year (since 1969), and other things.

###You can visit the website here.

Since the majority of games from 2009-2018 are on Youtube in their entirety, there is a link for those games to attempt to find the game on Youtube. Perhaps you can find some exciting games to watch during the offseason to hold you over until Spring Training.

Let me know if you find any bugs or data problems. If you have any feature requests, you can comment and I’ll consider it.

Also, if you’re interested in all the raw data since 1969, shoot me a PM and I can give you a link.

###What I’ve learned

The top thing I’ve learned with this project was that “Excitement Score” was not a good name. The word “Excitement” is subjective, and trying to apply an objective metric to something and calling it “Excitement” is not fair for those who have a different viewpoint on what makes a game exciting. The daily post made some people think I was the arbiter of excitement, which was not my intention. For example, I got some negative comments on why the no-hitters this year scored low. I’m interested in other names for the metric if others have ideas, as it may need a rebranding.

Some folks also seemed to have taken issue with longer games, in terms of innings, correlating with higher Excitement Scores. I could instead report a metric normalized on a per-inning basis, but I don’t think that would necessarily go further in achieving my goal of helping folks find out what games to watch. So I haven’t done anything about that.

I’ll continue to make posts to the subreddit next year if there is enough interest and if the mods think it’s a good idea, but, regardless, I had fun with the project and hope I helped at least some folks make a good decision on whether they should invest time in watching a game that happened the prior day. For those who found this interesting, thanks for inviting me into your electronic device.

###Tech details

For the tech nerds out there, the daily post was posted daily via a nodejs script written in Typescript. It sources data from the WPA column in the play-by-play data on Baseball Reference game pages and posts using the Reddit API. I run it as a cloud function on GCP with a daily pub/sub message. The website is a React app, also written in Typescript, using Material UI. I just dumped the build files in a bucket because I was too lazy to buy a domain and set it up. It uses another Typescript GCP nodejs cloud function as its backend. The data is stored in Firestore. As long as costs are reasonable I'm happy to host it indefinitely.

Wouldn't this be something they just do instantly or is there a reason they have to wait?

so shohei was the unanimous AL MVP in 2023, but what if aaron judge had his record breaking 2022 season one year later? Do you think shohei with his combined hitting and pitching still takes home the MVP or does Judge and his AL record 62 homers win it?

OHTANI '23:

Batting: .304/.412/.654, 44 HR 95 RBI, 20 SB, 9.9 WAR

Pitching: 10-5, 3.14 ERA, 167 K' s

JUDGE '22:

Batting: .311/.425/.686, 62 HR 131 RBI, 16 SB 10.5 WAR

I was rooting for the Padres and I hated that it ended in 5.

Best Baseball Games 2024

What do you think were the best regular season baseball games of 2024? Edit: please add a date if possible. Thanks .🙏🏻

I understand the desire to stay on the West Coast being from Japan, but anyone know why he went to the Angels? When he was originally deciding on teams I remember being surprised he went to the Angels. Why did he choose them over the Dodgers/Giants/Padres? The franchise hasn’t had as much success as these in recent history. Was playing with Mike Trout the draw for him?