Month: August 2020

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 62-64: Alone in Second Place

Coming into this series with $24 and Some Change, Jack Bauer Squared had a chance to move into 2nd place in the National League West with a sweep. A tall order, sure, but we’ve started seeing results more in line with expectations. Sights are set on getting to .500 and contending for the playoffs.

The opener featured perhaps our best pitching performance of the season, as Burt Hooton allowed a single hit over 8 innings. The sixth-inning triple by Pete Rose (he did get a lot of hits, after all) broke up the no-hitter. Carlos Delgado hit his 10th homer and drove in three runs in a 4-1 victory.

Game 62

As in our previous post where we looked at the start breakdowns of two other members of the rotation, let’s look at how Hooton has fared. His record of 4-6 belies how effective he’s been, posting a 3.42 ERA in 15 starts.

  • 0 runs: 1 time
  • 1 run: 6 times
  • 2 runs: 2 times
  • 3 runs: 1 time
  • 4 runs: 2 times
  • 5 runs: 1 time
  • 6 runs: 0 times
  • 7 runs: 1 time
  • 8 runs: 1 time

What jumps out is giving up 1 run or fewer in almost half his starts, and he’s keeping us in nearly every game he pitches. Coupled with Bert Blyleven in what is supposed to be the back half of the rotation, these two have been closer to our aces.

Nothing is truly contagious in a sim, but we’ll take any explanation for a good start by Mike Cuellar. Buoyed by a grand slam in the 1st inning by Garry Maddox and a two-run shot by Gene Tenace, Cuellar allowed just 1 run on 2 hits in 7 innings. 

That’s only the second time Cuellar gave up 1 run or fewer, so we can only hope it’s the start of a trend. Maddox finished with 5 RBI, and we sailed to a 7-1 victory. That puts us in a tie for 2nd place with $24, so this final game of the series will put someone there by themselves.

Game 63

Despite falling behind 2-0 in the 1st inning, JBS battled back to score in each of the first four innings. Kal Daniels and Tenace homered to back Blyleven, who gave up 3 runs in 7 innings.

Bob Woodward came on to pitch the 9th and recorded his 15th save in 15 tries and kept his ERA at 0.00. It’s unusual to see a pitcher not give up a run this deep into the season, even if he has only pitched 14 ⅓ innings. (Psst, forum jinx, you didn’t hear me say that.)

Game 64

The three-game sweep did indeed put us alone in second place at 30-34, 6 games out of 1st but only 3 behind the current wild-card leader. Each league’s three division winners make the playoffs, plus the second-place team with the best record as the wild card. Since no one else is running away with this, we’re right in the thick of it now.

It’s also worth noting that our expected winning percentage continues to climb and is now at .520, and only the three division leaders are that high. That means we “should” be 33-31, which is exactly the record of the wild-card leader. We can easily point at a 7-12 record in one-run games and 1-5 in extra innings as the culprits. Those may even out yet.

Next up is a single quick interleague series against Throw the Spitball, Gaylord, starting off with our one visit to Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field to kick it off. Let’s keep it going, lads!

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Jewish spirituality Reality and Consciousness Sim Baseball

Going Deep into the Nature of Reality

Let’s take a serious right turn for a few minutes (or hours). I promised tangents and detours, so here comes one.

Fundamental to the concept of playing a simulated game is the understanding that there is a real game of baseball that is and has been played by real people in real places, and the statistics gathered from those events generate these outcomes I’ve been recreating (or reshaping, perhaps).

Lately, however, I started watching some videos and reading articles about the nature of reality. And what consciousness actually is. It’s quite a rabbit hole that science can take us down, and once these ideas get into your head you start to examine this human experience differently. Thanks to the YouTube algorithm, I’ve gone from curiosity about outer space to the question of whether space and time even exist.

I have long understood that our minds are incapable of grasping all the levels of what we experience as reality. We get glimpses of a different level sometimes, and we might label these as spiritual or intuitive or transcendental, because we need words somehow even when they do not suffice. I’ve known people who see auras or ghosts, for instance, and who am I to suggest they’re not? Maybe they can just tune into wavelengths I can’t.

Research has led Donald Hoffman, a professor of cognitive psychology at UC Irvine, to doubt our strongest held beliefs about what reality and consciousness are. I find his discoveries mind-bending but still compatible with my sense that we know only the tiniest fraction of reality anyway. Check out his TED Talk,  “Do we see reality as it is?” and see if you can appreciate where he’s headed with this:

Intrigued by that talk, I let YouTube guide me to a conversation with Hoffman and Deepak Chopra. In my 20s, I read a couple of Chopra’s books and found they made a profound impact on my perception of reality and spirituality. My own exploration of spiritual teaching through a Jewish framework has led to this fundamental concept: We are spiritual beings having a human experience. I believe this can mesh with what Hoffman’s trying to prove with science, too.

The discussion with Chopra gave me added insight into Hoffman’s research and deepened my fascination. He’s arguing, essentially, that the way we believe we experience the world is no more the actual reality than double-clicking an icon on your computer desktop reflects the actual reality of how that file exists. He uses this interface model to show that what we experience and perceive is nothing more than a representation that conscious agents use as icons that mask reality. He doesn’t get into religion, but that rather jibes with spiritual beings having a human experience to me.

If reading a short interview will help grasp this better, check out “The Case Against Reality,” an interview in The Atlantic from 2016. He’s also written a book with that title since, and I suspect I’ll be ordering it shortly.

All that emboldened me to watch a 2 hour, 24 minute one-on-one interview Hoffman did called This Scientist Explains Why Our Reality Is False, because I wanted to get even greater insight into this way of thinking. I confess that I’m beginning to be rather persuaded that he might just be right, which then leads me to wonder what that means for us. 

At a Jewish spirituality retreat a couple years ago, I made this note in my notepad: “If God is a spiritual being, and we are created in God’s image, then we are not physical beings at all.” That notion predates pretty much all of what we know in modern science and psychology. I’m amazed that here I am seeing that on a clearer level after listening to a scientist explain how he’s proven mathematically that our reality is false. And people think science and religion are incompatible?

Yet, whatever we believe or perceive as reality, we do still experience reality in this way. I just ate a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, and it was as delicious as ever, even if it’s possible to prove that there’s no such thing as taste or peanut butter or chocolate or my own senses. I might eat another one just to be sure, though.

If you’re intrepid, feel free to give this one a watch, too. I see several more out there on YouTube that will soon enough be recommended to me. I’ll no doubt revisit this rabbit hole, because it’s pretty mind-blowing to think there is not only no computer that I’m typing this on, there is also no one out there reading any of this, nor do any of the people I think I’m playing sim games against exist, nor does the game of baseball, nor the servers that are out there recreating games.

Of course, it’s possible all that is wrong, too, so just in case I’d better set my lineups and rotations for my next set of games. And even if I’m only a conscious agent living a simulated existence playing simulated games, I might as well try to win.

See you after the next series. Whatever that is.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 59-61: A Tale of Two Pitchers

Jack Bauer Squared needed a rebound after the sweep in Dodger Stadium, and though you wouldn’t generally think a trip to Yankee Stadium is a way to make things better … well, in this case it worked out well enough.

The opener saw Mike Cuellar do typical Mike Cuellar things for us. He gave up 5 runs in 6.2 innings. In his 16 starts now, here is a breakdown of runs allowed (earned and unearned combined): 

  • 0 runs: 1 time
  • 1 run: 0 times
  • 2 runs: 1 time
  • 3 runs: 2 times
  • 4 runs: 3 times
  • 5 runs: 4 times
  • 6 runs: 3 times
  • 7 runs: 2 times

That’s pretty much how you end up with a 5.35 ERA and ongoing scorn in these posts. When 75% of the time you give up at least 4 runs, you are not helping your team win games. The underlying code that represents our maligned Mr. Cuellar is better than that, otherwise I wouldn’t have drafted him in the second round. He’s doing worse than pitchers who aren’t as good, so he’s suffering some bad luck. In theory, the law of averages should catch up and he should fill the top half of that list up as the season progresses. In theory anyway. The reverse jinxes aren’t helping any, clearly.

As it happens we pulled out the series opener anyway with a couple runs in the top of the 9th on Kal Daniels’ RBI double and a wild pitch. That gave us a 7-5 win and the end of the little three-game losing streak.

Game 59

The second game featured an excellent start from Bert Blyleven, who despite being drafted as a fourth starter has performed the best so far. He pitched 7 shutout innings to improve to 8-4 with a 3.21 ERA. We won 5-0 to take the first two games of the series.

Seems like a good time to compare Blyleven’s 15 starts to Cuellar’s:

  • 0 runs: 3 times
  • 1 run: 3 times
  • 2 runs: 2 times
  • 3 runs: 1 time
  • 4 runs: 2 times
  • 5 runs: 3 times
  • 6 runs: 1 times
  • 7 runs: 0 times

In contrast to Cuellar’s only yielding 3 or fewer runs in 25% of his starts, Blyleven has done in 9 out of 15 times, or 60%. I think my inner geek is showing a bit here, so let’s move on.

Game 60

The final game of the series started with each team scoring twice in the 1st inning and then zeroes until A Rod broke through with two more in the 7th. We squandered scoring opportunities in the 6th, 7th, and 8th and couldn’t get a run home. So the 4-2 loss ended the road trip and left us at 27-34, 8 games out of 1st place but only 5 games out of the wild card.

Game 61

Next up: Another divisional battle against $24 and Some Change, who sit just above us at 29-32. A good showing here could put us a step closer to contention. At this point, the first goal is to get to .500 on the season, hopefully by the halfway point in 20 games. We’d have to go 14-6 to do that, but that’s possible to be sure.

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Baseball Sim Baseball Sim Dynasty

About that SimD World Series

Dear Reader, I left you hanging with my preview post about my World Series matchup on Sim Dynasty earlier in the week. Alas, it was not yet Brooklyn’s time to rise to the top.

We were matched up against the three-time defending champion Cleveland Badgers, who won 124 games in the regular season to our 106. While we had to battle through a five-team race to get into the playoffs, the Badgers cruised and clinched in August.

In Game 1, Cleveland sent ace Gary Weaver to the mound and he didn’t disappoint. The Badgers cruised to a 6-3 opening victory.

Game 2 was scoreless through 7 innings, giving hope we might pull off the road split if we could just squeeze across a run somehow. Cleveland struck first with a run in the 8th and sent closer Kid Edmondson to the mound to seal it. The Bats rallied to tie, however, and sent it to extra innings. 

In the top of the 10th, we stranded runners on 2nd and 3rd, our best chance to pull off the win. In the bottom of the 11th, the Badgers got a walkoff homer from Pete Ripple to win 3-1.

That sent the series to Brooklyn’s E-Bats Field for Game 3, where Ripple immediately did damage with a first-inning, three-run homer in a 5-run inning. The Bats rallied with a pair of homers in the 2nd and got 4 runs back. But no one scored again until Cleveland tacked on one in the 8th and held on to win, 6-4.

Disheartened, Brooklyn couldn’t summon any attempt to come back in the series. The Badgers put us out of our misery with a 6-0 win in Game 4 and a sweep.

That gave the Badgers four straight titles, and now they’ll try to become the first team to win five in a row. We will try to get back to the Series and thwart that effort if we can.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 56-58: Wrong Kind of Sweep

There is an absolutely proven to exist thing called a forum jinx. If you post anything good about your team or a player, the coding somehow reads it and causes bad things to happen to you. There is also a Sasquatch-like reverse jinx that some claim to have seen, where you can post about underachievement and get the luck to change.

I feel like I might have reverse jinxed Jack Bauer Squared into staying off the scrap heap of the season, but it also seems that whenever I write about a little success we are doomed to have a setback.

So it was for our four-game winning streak heading into a series with first-place Steroids Make You Fast, one into which we carried dreams of a legitimate run at the leaders. And the forum jinx laughed, and spat out a three-game losing streak instead, the wrong kind of sweep.

Things were looking good in the series opener at Dodger Stadium (the park I’ve seen the vast majority of my big-league games in), as JBS took a 3-1 lead on Bobby Murcer’s three-run homer and Bert Blyleven’s 7 innings of one-run ball. Then we gave up a homer in the bottom of the 8th to cut our lead to 3-2, left the bases loaded in the top of the 9th, and then with two outs in the bottom of the 9th yielded a tying homer to Milt May.

That sent us to extra innings, and in the bottom of the 10th it was time for their third homer in late innings. Willie McCovey did the honors with a walkoff two-run shot and a 5-3 comeback win for Steroids.

Game 56

The second game of the series followed a parallel script. We took a 3-0 lead in the top of the 1st and ran the advantage to 5-1 in the 6th. That held until the 8th inning, when Steroids pushed across the tying runs on a three-run homer by Tony Gwynn.

We went to extra innings again, and once again McCovey came up with a chance to end it … and did. His two-run homer in the 11th gave Steroids a 7-5 victory, both now on extra-inning walkoff shots by McCovey.

Game 57

The series finale required no dramatics. Steroids busted out to a 4-0 lead in the 4th inning, opened it up to 7-0 in the 7th and sailed to a 4-2 win and a three-game sweep.

Game 58

So that put us 8 games behind in the division and erased all the gains from the previous series. Next up: a three-game set in Yankee Stadium against A Rod, some Wood and a Big Unit, the only team trailing us in the National League West.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 53-55: Another Winning Streak

I know it’s difficult to look at a team with a 25-30 record and feel optimistic, but when that team was recently 16-28 it’s quite exciting to see the progress. Jack Bauer Squared could have been buried before we got through a third of the season, but we’ve flashed potential and have a legitimate chance to be in the hunt now.

We opened our three-game series with 24 Hours at Wrigley with a tight game that required a four-run rally in the 7th to pull out. Bobby Murcer’s two-run double keyed the inning, and we managed to win one of those elusive one-run games, 7-6.

Game 53

Reaching the one-third mark of the season with style, in Game 54 JBS recorded its fourth shutout in the past 10 games. This time it was Burt Hooton going 8 innings for the win, 3-0. Each of our four starting pitchers has been at the fore of one of the shutouts in this stretch, so that’s good to see.

Game 54

Trying for the sweep, we found ourselves in a pitchers’ duel with Mike Cuellar acquitting himself well for a rare treat. Cuellar went 6 innings and allowed 2 runs. 

The game was tied 2-2 into the 9th inning, and JBS put together three consecutive singles in the bottom of the inning. Carlos Delgado delivered the walkoff hit for a 3-2 victory and a fourth consecutive triumph.

Game 55

This four-game winning streak puts us only 5 games out of first place and with a pair of one-run wins now have a 7-12 record in those decisions. Things are starting to even out, and with that our standing is improving.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 49-52: A Pair of Splits

We are closing in on the one-third mark of the season, and thanks to a five-game winning streak Jack Bauer Squared is at least moving in the right direction. We split two interleague two-game series to leave our record at 22-30, 7 games out of first place. 

We have now scored exactly as many runs as we’ve allowed, 236, which usually would indicate we should have a record closer to 26-26. The continuing culprit preventing that is the one-run losses, as we are just 5-12 in those decisions.

In our previous report we had wrapped up a three-game sweep and had won four straight, looking to sustain the momentum (not that code knows such a thing, of course) against 576. (That’s 24 times 24, in case you missed it.)

We were scoreless into the 6th inning of the opener at Olympic Stadium until Carlos Delgado belted a two-run homer, his 8th. Then after giving the lead away, JBS responded in the 8th inning with a two-run homer by Kal Daniels and a grand slam by Garry Maddox.

That was plenty to secure an 8-3 victory, our fifth straight. We headed next to Boston’s historic Fenway Park for our only visit.

Game 49

JBS belted two homers in the top of the 1st, by Daniels and Bobby Murcer, to take the lead. Delgado homered in the 3rd to retake the team lead from Daniels, 9 to 8, and we later broke a 3-3 tie with Daniels doubling in a run and later scoring in the 7th. 

The bullpen couldn’t hold the lead, however. This time it was Todd Burns yielding four runs in the bottom of the 8th, and our winning streak ended at five with a 7-5 defeat.

Game 50

From there JBS packed bags for the single trip to Seattle’s Kingdome, where we’d square off with 24×24 Kingdome Krushers, run by the league’s commissioner, footballmm11. Turns out he knows baseball darn well, too!

The Kingdome didn’t disappoint for Krushing, as each team had a three-run homer in the second inning (ours from Gene Tenace), and the game remained tight into the 7th inning. The Krushers worked over our bullpen to tack on 3 more runs and pulled away to a 9-5 win.

Game 51

That sent us back to Olympic Stadium, where Bert Blyleven joined the club as we recorded our third shutout in eight games after none in the first 44. Blyleven allowed 2 hits in 7 innings to improve to 7-4, and Rafael Ramirez drove in both runs in a 2-0 win.

Game 52

Next up: a three-game home series against 24 Hours at Wrigley. This is the part of the schedule where we start facing teams for the second time this season, and we lost 2 of 3 to these guys the first time around. If we’re going to make that march toward .500 stick, we’ll need to flip that around.

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Baseball Sim Baseball Sim Dynasty

A Sim Dynasty World Series

Meanwhile over on Sim Dynasty, we have something exciting going on. To recap, Sim Dynasty owners guide their teams through drafts and trades and follow players’ careers season by season, trying to build a great team. The players aren’t real, but they perform statistically quite realistically.

I’ve been in the Tony Conigliaro League since it was founded, starting in the 1950 season. We have reached the 2196 World Series, to be played Wednesday. My team, the Brooklyn Blind Bats, is making its first trip to one since 2184. We lost that one attempting our first four-peat, but we reached five WS in six years. 

It’s a long road back in a rebuild sometimes, and this one has not gone quickly for me. I haven’t paid as much attention to my SimD teams lately as I used to. They more or less go on autopilot all season except when injuries occur and for drafts and such. But I don’t trade as much as I used to or follow the storylines like I once did, in part because I do spend much more time micromanaging my WIS teams. 

My Bats have won 33 titles in 62 WS appearances, the most of any owner. There are actually about 6 or 7 of us who have been around since the outset, which is about 15 real-life years by now. The TCL plays nine games per day, so we cycle through about 15-16 seasons in a calendar year, hence our league date being far in the future by now.

My opponent tomorrow is also an original owner, though he took a brief break at one point before rejoining, so the career stats are split in half. The Cleveland Badgers have 27 titles in 228 seasons, and they are three-time defending champions right now. Twice the Badgers have pulled off a four-peat, and no team has managed to win five straight in our 246 years.

It will all be over in one day, a best-of-seven series. Either it’s my turn to climb back to the pinnacle, or Cleveland makes history again with a title. 

Categories
Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 46-48: OMG, a Winning Streak!

Dear Faithful Reader, perhaps there is finally a reward for sticking with the exploits of Jack Bauer Squared. Possibly even something good could yet come of the season. Because, yes, we actually have a winning streak going!

Fresh off our series win against Tigers of the Ontario Peninsula, we headed to Candlestick Park for three games against Todd Helton??? looking to sustain momentum. And, astonishingly, for the first time all season, we did.

We jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the top of the 1st inning, finding The Stick very much to our liking. Bobby Bonilla’s two-run triple started the scoring, and we went on to a 5-2 victory behind a strong start from Burt Hooton, who earned just his second win.

Game 46

The second game featured more unlikely feats based on how the season had gone so far. Mike Cuellar finally pitched like an ace, going 8 innings for our second shutout in three games after none all season before that. He improved to 4-5 and dropped his ERA to 5.40, still a long way from where it needs to be.

Bonilla continued to be a major lifter on offense with a two-run homer, his sixth, as we cruised to a 5-0 victory.

Game 47

In the final game, we again jumped out to an early lead with a four-run 3rd inning keyed by Garry Maddox’s two-run triple. Ryne Sandberg had a pair of triples and a double as we cruised to a 10-4 victory.

Game 48

The three-game sweep ran our winning streak to four games and gave us five wins in six games. A 20-28 record looks a lot more promising than 16-28 did, and if we can sustain this push we still have a chance to get into the race soon.

Next up: two more interleague series. Hopefully this trend continues.

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Baseball MLB

Two Baseball Treasures

Over the years I have managed to pick up a few items at yard sales, swap meets, and the like that became some of my favorite treasures. Two of them feature famous baseball players and sit on my bookshelves.

One is from 1946 and I believe is a page from Life magazine. I found it in one of those bins filled with old magazine pages, and only recently did it take on an added baseball significance. 

The page shows a “BASEBALL SHIFT” in which the Cleveland Indians employed a novel defensive alignment against Ted Williams, with the subhead, “Indians try to stop Ted Williams by placing six men in right field.”

The page describes how Williams tormented the Indians in the opener of a July 14, 1946, doubleheader, so they went to the extreme shift in the second game. Amazingly, thanks to Baseball Reference, we actually have these full box scores online, and they confirm the facts of the magazine.

Fans of today’s MLB will no doubt recall that such defensive shifts were virtually unknown until just a few years ago, but today they are extremely common. Pull hitters like Williams would face them virtually every time up today, but it was not a normal strategy in 1946 in the least.

Take a look at that photo and note that Williams still managed to hit a double to right anyway! 

The second baseball treasure is from The Sporting News and dates to 1933, when an 18-year-old phenom showed up for the old San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. His name was Joe DiMaggio.

Not that The Sporting News got that right. Their “Minors Worth Watching” feature correctly identified the hitting prowess of the 18-year-old outfielder who set a record for the longest hitting streak in PCL history, 61 games. DiMaggio, of course, would later embark on what remains by far the greatest such streak in major-league history, 56 games in 1941. TSN certainly foreshadowed the skills that would make DiMaggio a Hall of Famer for the Yankees in years to come.

But they didn’t quite get his name right, just a little detail that leaped out at this longtime copy editor. They called him “Joe De Maggio.” 

Some good history in this article from MiLB.com on DiMaggio’s amazing minor-league career. Give it a read.