04/20/24
September 03, 2014
SportsFilter: The Wednesday Huddle:
A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.
I'm always impressed that any article even tangentially critical of Russia gets its fair share of Kremlin paid astroturf commenters going off on it hyperbolically.
posted by ursus_comiter at 12:57 PM on September 03, 2014
I was in a CBS fantasy draft last night for a long-term league. Computer problems turned the thing into utter chaos and the draft was suspended and some picks reversed multiple times.
It gave me time to think.
Does anyone else think it would be cool to play a fantasy league where you must let a robot pick for you? You'd have better control over your picks than just to rank players in a queue, and perhaps could even write scripts to make even more fine-grained decisions.
A lot of times when I play online games I wish I could write code to make all the decisions. The game would be won by the best coding.
posted by rcade at 02:04 PM on September 03, 2014
A lot of times when I play online games I wish I could write code to make all the decisions. The game would be one by the best coding.
Story time:
I'm in a long-time baseball fantasy league with protection lists (12 players + rookies/prospects).
Every spring, we draft around 20 players, and then we have two more drafts of 5 rounds each (one in late May, one in mid-July).
Not everyone can make the smaller drafts (our owner list is spread out over the GTA and beyond), so people will send their lists to other people who are attending the draft. Usually, those lists are about 20-25 players long. Even though there are 50 players drafted (ten owners * 5 players), not everyone has the same need for the same players.
One year, I knew I couldn't make one of the smaller drafts as I was out of town. The week before the draft, I sent my list to the commissioner to draft for me.
I had written out a list of 40 players, broken down into four groups of 10 (A, B, C, D). With that list, at the bottom was an algorithm on how to draft from these lists. It was (roughly):
- Default rule for every round - Draft highest remaining player in Group A. Otherwise follow the rule for that specific round.
- Round 1 - Use default.
- Round 2 - Draft highest remaining position player in group C if I drafted a pitcher in Round 1, or the highest remaining pitcher if I drafted a position player in Round 1.
- Round 3 - Draft highest remaining pitcher in group B. If none available, draft highest remaining player in group D.
- Round 4 - If I drafted a pitcher in round 3, draft highest remaining position player from group B (first) or group D (second). If I drafted a position player in round 3, draft highest remaining pitcher from group D. If none available, draft highest remaining player in any group.
- Round 5 - Draft highest remaining player by group (B first, then C, then D), regardless of position. If none are available, put pick up for auction to highest bidder.
When I got home that day, there was an email from the commish with my picks that said "That's the last time we're doing that for you."
I heard later that while everyone else thought it was a fun exercise of figuring out my mindset for the rules, the commish wasn't quite so enthused.
posted by grum@work at 02:39 PM on September 03, 2014
I'm always impressed that any article even tangentially critical of Russia gets its fair share of Kremlin paid astroturf commenters going off on it hyperbolically.
Their information operations section is terrifyingly awesome.
posted by Bonkers at 04:11 PM on September 03, 2014
Are we talking about Hard Knocks? Because after this season, I'm pretty pissed the Patriots employed Brooklyn hipster vegan gluten-free 120 minute IPA Thomas Dimitroff long enough for him to afford those blue-framed eyeglasses. Unless he picked them out of the Lions' Club barrel at the Walpole Shop'n'Stop.
Seriously, fuck that guy with a free-trade bamboo shoot.
posted by yerfatma at 07:50 PM on September 03, 2014
We aren't talking about Hard Knocks...but we can be.
I finished the last episode tonight. I was not impressed overall, but mostly because that's the Falcons. They're the vanilla ice cream/pepperoni pizza of NFL teams-nothing to fancy, just solid and reliable, and bland. The person with the most personality of anyone on the team seemed to be Bryan Cox. Is that a problem? I don't know, but it would have been nice to have seen some character and some reflection of the team. Unless of course, there is none.
I get the impression from the year that the Falcons may win the NFC South, but that's about as far as they are going to go.
posted by Bonkers at 10:32 PM on September 03, 2014
Some people really do need a computer to help them with their picks:
posted by grum@work at 11:21 PM on September 03, 2014
Doesn't that also suggest ESPN needs to work on their player lists?
posted by yerfatma at 09:02 AM on September 04, 2014
Maybe the likes of Tebow are there to improve the gene pool?
posted by billsaysthis at 10:28 AM on September 04, 2014
I'd like to see how many of those were auto-picked. I mean, it's not likely, but I was in a 20-team league in 2006 where the auto-draft gave someone (not me, I swear) Jerome Bettis in the last round.
posted by Etrigan at 02:18 PM on September 04, 2014
The Economist on Alex Ovechkin, Russia and the US.