We use "lollipop" to mean a pitch that's easy to hit. It's like a piece of sweet candy held up on the end of a stick. Why pitch one? Consider the following two reasons.
All Factors Covered
If your defense has an Ace, Two, Five, and two Tens, why not pitch a ten? Ironically, the best option for the batter in this situation is to take a strike, since any card they try to bat on the Ten is an automatic out. But unless the batter is clairvoyant, he's probably going to follow the advice presented elsewhere in this blog and swing whatever he's got. That makes a sucker out of him!
Baserunner Covered
If your defense is holding a card that matches a runner on base, getting a card into play will let you take out the runner. For example, with a Five on third after tripling off a Ten, and a Five in the outfield ... throw a lollipop, especially on the third out. Putting anything in play lets you play your five for an easy out.
Caveat: if there's any chance you can't stop a home run, keep the lollipops in your hand. In the above example, pitching a lollipop Queen with no Ace to protect it is tempting fate! Who knew that sharing candy could have such dire metaphysical consequences ...
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Not Exactly Moneyball
The recent movie Moneyball illustrates the potential of "playing the numbers" to create a winning season of baseball by putting together a team of players whose individual performance records would predict their likelihood of producing hits and runs. Moreover, the managers were able to establish a dollar cost for every run they needed, according the salaries of the players they hired.
Strikes One and Two
First, there's no money in Kardball (unless you have figured out a way to gamble on it).
Second, no standard notion of individual Kardball player talent has yet been established. For a game that's less than two years old, the value of experience is even hard to recognize ... so far.
Inside Ball
Fortunately, the cards themselves have their own natural tendencies. In any given Kardball scenario, those tendencies should be able to predict, with some statistical regularity, the possible outcomes for each card that a player could choose to pitch or to bat. The managers in Moneyball used a similar logic in creating their starting lineup for each game.
150 Years From Now
For the time being, all we really have are some rough-and-ready theoretical values for pitch strength and hit strength. What we really need is a thorough analysis of decades of Kardball records, as was done by baseball scholar Bill James whose work was referenced in Moneyball. Or in the short term, we could use a doctoral thesis in mathematics to examine the validity of our Kardball intuitions and truisms like "anything can hit a Queen."
Strikes One and Two
First, there's no money in Kardball (unless you have figured out a way to gamble on it).
Second, no standard notion of individual Kardball player talent has yet been established. For a game that's less than two years old, the value of experience is even hard to recognize ... so far.
Inside Ball
Fortunately, the cards themselves have their own natural tendencies. In any given Kardball scenario, those tendencies should be able to predict, with some statistical regularity, the possible outcomes for each card that a player could choose to pitch or to bat. The managers in Moneyball used a similar logic in creating their starting lineup for each game.
150 Years From Now
For the time being, all we really have are some rough-and-ready theoretical values for pitch strength and hit strength. What we really need is a thorough analysis of decades of Kardball records, as was done by baseball scholar Bill James whose work was referenced in Moneyball. Or in the short term, we could use a doctoral thesis in mathematics to examine the validity of our Kardball intuitions and truisms like "anything can hit a Queen."
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