It sounds a bit pointless … well, it is, I guess … and it’s not clear at first exactly what your votes “mean.” But the design of the damn thing is pretty much perfect for creating a time-wasting addiction. You get two players, you vote for one or the other, and a new pairing appears. You think “oh, just one more,” you vote, new pairing, one of the players is a favorite of yours, you vote, new pairing, you think “oh, just one more,” and the next thing you know, you’ve wasted an hour.That's all from me. I'm gonna go play. In case you missed it, that's baseball-reference's EloRater page. I have to do Wes Helms vs. Aaron Miles right now. See you later.
And that’s why you’re going to hate me, at least if you are a baseball fan. Because one day, maybe not now, but one day, you’re going to go to the EloRater page, you’ll vote once or twice to see how it works, and an hour later you’ll wonder why you’ve wasted all that time.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Friday Baseball Post
Don't hate me: hate Steven Rubio, from whose (excellent) blog I'm stealing this item. Or blame Sean Forman. Either way, you're going to hate someone, because...well, I'll let Steven explain what's about to happen to you:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
That's really cool. I can definitely see the potential for addiction. That site and pro-football-reference.com are great sites
ReplyDeleteOh, man, what a potential time sink. Fortunately, something happened in the first 5 match-ups I got to make me ask myself a couple of questions and then go away. The questions:
ReplyDelete1. (A multi-part question) What do we mean by "better"? For two active players (e.g., Adrian Gonzales and Joey Votto, one pairing I got), better at this point in their careers? Again for active players, better going forward? For any two players, better once both have completed their careers? If we can't answer that, then we can't even begin to make decisions.
2. What do you do when you get a pairing like this one--Mark Buerhle and Trevor Hoffman? Isn't that like asking who's better, a mid-career thoracic surgeon and a retired orthopedic surgeon? Aren't they really doing different, almost incommesurable jobs? And so isn't the answer, what job do we need done right now?
So I shut it down and went to sleep.