World Baseball Classic Discussion Thread

[World Baseball Classic]

As per this post, World Baseball Classic 53 will be hosted by Banija. Congratiulations!

[Banija]

The IC thread is up for WBC 53!

It was posted yesterday. The OP has just been updated with the calendar. Important dates

#1 The draw is tomorrow, at 3 PM EST, live on Discord.

#2 Matchday 1 is Sunday, December 5th.

#3 This tournament does indeed have cutoffs on 8 consecutive days to start the tournament. Not ideal, of course, but I needed to have both the 13th and the 15th as days off, so the rest of the schedule was made so we could have as clean of a break around the Christmas holiday, as well as the New Year's holiday, as possible.

[Banija]

Also, to survey the participants-

My host bid included the following tiebreakers for two teams with equal records.

Group Tiebreakers
1) H-2-H Wins
2) H-2-H Run Differential
3) Overall Run Differential
4) Overall Runs For
5) Coin Toss

However, upon further thought, I think that if there is a 2 way tie between teams for second place in the same group(so it's to decide who advances and who doesn't), there should be a one game playoff.

Precedent, of course, is that is exactly how MLB does it(although they don't have any tiebreakers at all if it's to miss/make the playoffs- they just go straight to the one game playoff). So what I want to do, is if there is a two-way tie for second place in a group, this is how the tiebreakers would look.

Group Tiebreakers
1) H-2-H Wins
2) H-2-H Run Differential
3) Overall Run Differential
4) One Game Playoff

This, of course, would only happen if it was a tie between two teams for 2nd and third place. A one game playoff would not apply if it's for seeding purposes(aka two teams tie for first place but both are advancing), nor would it apply for seeding for teams in different groups.

If there are no objections, that is what I will do just in case we face the scenario where two teams are tied for second and third place, and they are deadlocked on head to head wins, head to head run differential, and overall run differential(highly unlikely but you never know).

[Quintessence of Dust]

We should not be using MLB as precedent. That's a domestic league.

That said, basically the same precedent exists in what we should be following, the actual World Baseball Classic, which had a tiebreaker game provision in its last edition.

Given that, I have no objection, and OOCly the extra game is also more fun than a pure coin flip.

[Sarzonia]

I have no objection to using a one-match playoff in that scenario.

[Nova Anglicana]

Playoff games are far more fun and also were the standard for a hot minute some time ago, so no objections from me.

[Quebec and Shingoryeo]

One-game play-off definitely sounds like a good idea.

[Soldera]

I'll be working on my roster over the next day or so. Right now, I've got everyone but reserve outfielders and my pitching staff.

I don't know how much RPing I'll do with Soldera, but we'll see.

[Banija]

Just in case anyone wants these for any reason, here are the groups in Pot order.

Group A
Banija(5)
Bardney(17)
Drawkland(26)
Ranoria(31)
Eshialand(41)
Ardengard(UR)

Group B
Kohnhead(7)
Tikariot(14)
HUElavia(25)
Quebec and Shingoryeo(28)
Alzavola(UR)
StrayaRoos(UR)

Group C
Sarzonia(4)
Cassadaigua(12)
South Americanastan(20)
Hannasea(29)
Aji No Moto(79)
Soldera(UR)

Group D
Quintessence of Dust(7)
Nova Anglicana(11)
The Greater Nordics(22)
Delaclava(32)
Sangti(117)
United Adaikes(UR)

Group E
Zwangzug(2)
Super-Llamaland(13)
Le Choix(24)
The 189(30)
Atheara(55)
Behetij(UR)

Group F
Chromatika(1)
The Sherpa Empire(9)
Equestrian States(21)
Abanhfleft(27)
Sevendia(40)
Brookstation(UR)

Group G
TJUN-ia(3)
Liventia(15)
Kriegiersien(18)
Milchama(39)
Mylderm(UR)
Muralos(UR)

Group H
South Newlandia(6)
Ko-oren(16)
Daskel(19)
Ethane(33)
Barnettsville(48)
Caleon(UR)

[Banija]

I am going to make a schedule change for the group stages.

Wednesday, December 15th, will no longer be an off day. I no longer need that day off. So we're going to break this up a little better and keep some balance.

Thursday, December 9th, will be an off-day instead. The OP is updated with the new schedule. Group stages will still end the same day, so no harm no foul.

[Banija]

Host Announcement

I, unfortunately, have messed this up this AM.

When trying to quote the second cutoff for formatting purposes for this third cutoff, I have accidentally edited over the line scores and tables for the second cutoff.

Fortunately, I still have the scores and the line scores for everybody's Matchday 6, but lack the line scores for Matchdays 4 & 5. Furious use of trying to go through my browser history could not retrieve them, and I was advised by a board moderator on Discord that I cannot retrieve previous edits via the boards.

So unless anybody saved all those line scores(if you did please send them over!), then those line scores are lost to history. For that, I sincerely apologize.

Since I still have the Matchday 6 set of line scores, I am going to post those, and then just post the regular scores for Matchdays 4-5(since those all still remain). I will still scorinate shortly. The rest of the schedule remains.

To give a little extra time for RP since this will all take me much longer than usual, tomorrow's cutoff will be at the very latest end of the window- 10 AM EST. I apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate everybody bearing with me.

The order I will do everything in is as follows(expect posts and edits to be updated).

#1 Post Matchday 6 Line Scores and MD 4-6 Tables
#2 Post & Scorinate Matchdays 7-9 Line Scores(to allow RPing to begin)
#3 Post Matchdays 4-5 Regular Scores (since I Have the final scores for all these games still)
#4 Edit in Matchday 7-9 tables.

My guess is that this will all take me probably take me around 2 hours

[Sarzonia]

I know how challenging editing and quoting can be from running tournaments like the JRC and the NS World Cup of Masters. Those first tables are always a PITA for me!

Thanks for being so forthright about what's happening. I and I'm sure a lot of us all appreciate the honesty and candor.

[Hannasea]

^ What he said.

[Banija]

Thank you guys!

I've just been informed that Super Llama-land has the line scores, and he has just sent them to me. So they will be edited into the Series 2 post.

Appreciate everybody's cooperation and understanding, and thank you Llama for reaching out to me!

[Sarzonia]

All's well that ends well then.

Wondering if the Sarzonia-Soldera series will start a rivalry since the Soldera manager's already throwing shade!

[StrayaRoos]

Um,Banija are you sure that the Prompts Don't Make You overpowered as I Beat Kohnhead No.7 in the world Even though i'm unranked and lost to Another Unranked team can you please explain more to me i kinda got confused about this

[Hapilopper]

Man, whatever the hell kind of offering you made to the random number god sure was a good one. That's all I can think of.

[Soldera]

I say we invade StrayaRoos and steal all their rubber chickens they've been sacrificing to Margaret!

[South Americanastan]

I say we invade StrayaRoos and steal all their rubber chickens they've been sacrificing to Margaret!

With Maggie on their side, are you sure you’d win?

[South Newlandia]

I have written a new formula for xkoranate to scorinate baseball. I’m calling it the “Snelweg Formula”.

Below, I will try to answer most of the questions you probably have or will have. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to ask them wherever you feel appropriate, such as here or via some form of direct message.

1) Why did you write a new formula to scorinate baseball?

Long ago (also long before I ever arrived), baseball used to be scorinated with a single-round robin. The reason why is the fact that the baseball community, at large, likes to have their scorinator produce line scores, but the already “built-in NSFS formula” proved to be way too random. The WBC community moved to the “Adjusted Formula”, which, as far as I’m aware, was developed by FFR. Correct me if I’m wrong. Despite the less random “Adjusted Formula”, today, we use 30-game group stages, scorinating three-game series.

This, however, can be an issue. Scorinating in this way is extremely challenging, [for reference, this has absolutely nothing to do with the MD2, this formula has been in the works for months] and time-consuming. Even for experienced, skilled hosts, the WBC is a real challenge, and the hosting pool seems to be quite limited at this time. The table-based tables, in particular, are extremely challenging, and have led to mistakes (for example when I scorinated) in the past. This makes the WBC one of the toughest events to host.

A recent bid to change this by moving back to the 10-game group stage, by Græntfjall and Ko-oren, failed, presumably because the “Adjusted Formula” was seen as too random. I want to make 10-game group stages at least a feasible possibility, to debate, and to bid with.


2) What does the formula do, and what does it not do?

I’m glad you asked! Like the “Adjusted Formula” was a slight, well, adjustment, to the “built-in NSFS formula”, so is the new “Snelweg Formula”. What I did was to change the randomness of results, and also very slightly change scoring probabilities, to make them slightly closer to the MLB averages. This second part should not be noticeable in practical use, but the first part makes all the difference.

When I was looking for where to attempt to set the basic probability of a maximum-ranked team to beat a 0-ranked team, I looked to another sport that is frequently scorinated in single-game group stages and that always produces a winner – gridiron football.
Using the “post-World Bowl XXI formula” to scorinate gridiron games, the maximum ranked team has a roughly 86% (8574-1426 by my testing) chance to beat a 0-ranked team. That chance is what I roughly tried to emulate.

Here’s the winning-chances of differently ranked teams against differently ranked teams using the “Adjusted Formula”. Each of those interactions have a sample size of 500 games, which is fairly small, but should be good enough to identify a few general trends. To give an example on how to read it, assuming a max rank of 10, a team with a rank of 7 playing against a team with a rank of 4 has a 60.6% chance to win. This, of course, is not a fully accurate number due to the small sample size, but I would estimate it to be almost certainly accurate within an error of roughly 4%. Again, might seem like a lot, but should be enough to identify the broad trends, especially when we look at all the numbers at once.

Here’s those same winning chances using the “Snelweg Formula”. This time, the sample size is 2000 games each; slightly bigger but not perfect yet.

The differences may seem relatively small, but I have also crunched the numbers for the “built-in NSFS formula”, with a sample size of 500 games each. Here’s what those look like.

The differences between the “Adjusted Formula” and the “Snelweg Formula” are almost as pronounced as the differences between the “Adjusted Formula” and the “built-in NSFS formula”. The chance of a max-ranked team to beat a 0-ranked team are approximately 87.8% in the above sample, placing us relatively close to the “post-World Bowl 31 formula” I mentioned earlier. I also ran a 10,000 game simulation, which turned out 8801-1199, for 88%.

I’d like to briefly talk about what this new formula doesn’t fix. This is still basically the same formula as we’re used to, as such, triple-game series would not be easier to scorinate. This formula also still features the bug where the team batting second can score more than 4 runs compared to what they need to beat the team batting first.


3) That’s all well and good, but did you also test this with a real group scenario?

Yes and No. I did start to run some tests. Having access to the roleplay grades from WBC51, I used the “Snelweg Formula” to re-scorinate a group using real ranks and grades. That group featured

a team (A) that ranked quite high and roleplayed the majority of cut-offs,
a team (B) that was also ranked fairly highly and roleplayed only very rarely,
a team (C) that had a decent rank and roleplayed about half of all cut-offs,
a team (D) that had a smaller rank and roleplayed almost every cut-off,
a team (E) that was unranked and only rostered, and
a team (F) that was unranked and without a roster.

In 45 runs with the “Snelweg Formula”, which is think is too few but I occasionally like to do other stuff as well, team (A) won an average of 7.6 games, with a min of 5 and a max of 10, and finished top two 40/45 times, and third 4/45 times. Here’s some of those data broken down for all teams.

T                WinAVG   WinMAX   WinMIN   PlaceAVG   PlaceMAX  PlaceMIN  Top2%  Top3%
Team (A)           7.60   10 (2x)  5 (2x)       1.47     1 (31x)    5 (1x)   89%    98%
Team (B)           5.38    9 (2x)  3 (3x)       3.20     1  (5x)    6 (1x)   29%    56%
Team (C)           5.16    8 (4x)  1 (1x)       3.42     1  (6x)    6 (5x)   36%    53%
Team (D)           5.09    9 (1x)  3 (6x)       3.36     1  (2x)    6 (4x)   38%    58%
Team (E)           3.51    6 (1x)  0 (1x)       4.71     2  (2x)   6 (15x)    5%    16%
Team (F)           3.27    7 (1x)  0 (1x)       4.96     1  (1x)   6 (20x)    5%    16%

This is clearly still plagued by the small sample size, but it should be good enough for now. Whether you think this is a decent enough distribution is your own responsibility.


4) Why did you call this the Snelweg Formula?

Well, I would’ve called it the adjusted formula, but that name was very much taken. Calling it something like “Adjusted Adjusted Formula” would’ve been stupid and probably very confusing, so I opted for a brand name instead. “Snelweg” is dutch for highway, and the formula is a way to speed up and ease up baseball scorinating. The fact that the letters of my trigram appear at the front of the word has probably very little to do with it.


5) Where can I get this new formula, and how do I add it to xkoranate?

I do not seem to be smart enough to upload the formula to github, so for now, you can get it from below this spoiler.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sport version="0.3">
	<name>Snelweg Formula</name>
	<discipline>Baseball</discipline>
	<event>Snelweg formula</event>
	<scorinator />
	
	<paradigm>nsfs-baseball</paradigm>
	<paradigmOptions>
		<string type="resultStyle">periods</string>
		<int type="resultWidth">1</int>
		<double type="baseScoringProb">0.2869</double>
		<double type="baseScoringCoeff">0.12</double>
		<double type="extraScoringProb">0.4269</double>
		<double type="extraScoringCoeff">0.12</double>
		<list type="tiebreakers">
			<string>extratime</string>
		</list>
		<list type="tiebreakerNames">
			<string></string>
		</list>
		<int type="forceTieBreak">1</int>
		<int type="quietTieBreak">1</int>
		<int type="periods">9</int>
		<string type="tableHeaderGoalsFor">RF</string>
		<string type="tableHeaderGoalsAgainst">RA</string>
		<string type="tableHeaderGoalDifference">RD</string>
	</paradigmOptions>
</sport>

Here’s instructions for how to add it.

[Quebec and Shingoryeo]

Thanks to Banija for his clear-cut honesty regarding the said unusual situation. I remember hearing about it from the moment it exploded over personal messages, and I'm glad he's been able to find ways to resolve it since then. Additional thanks to Super-Llamaland for the line-scores of course.

As for the Snelweg modifier, this is an interesting formula, especially as the modifier focuses on making the scores seem more realistic than not.

Each sport has modifiers generated for different reasons - usually it's to allow higher scoring in a sport. There have been multiple modifiers in rugby, SQIS in hockey, NWK-modifiers on basketball, etc (though with hockey part of the original demand was to allow non-SO options that would go into unspecified number of OTs ala. Stanley Cup Playoffs), but those have generally been about bringing scores up to RL-level in 2010s and 2020s, not to reduce randomness.

But with baseball, it's different because you need to think about two different breeds - domestic and international - which people have already covered.

I do think that this is a lovely option for us to have in future WBCs, especially considering that there is and will always be plenty of options for us to trial them beforehand. Whether it be on an IBS or a domestic season doesn't really matter, but it's a good thing we have this available. So thanks to SN for it.

I'll probably try use it at some point when scorinating my long-overdue QBO season in January or February. Once again, schedule-permitting, as I do expect a trip to Midwest and another to Kingston in immediate weeks after coming back to Canada mid-January....

[StrayaRoos]

I say we invade StrayaRoos and steal all their rubber chickens they've been sacrificing to Margaret!

we only sacrificed Our secret Emus hidden under Our baseball stadium

[Banija]

Um,Banija are you sure that the Prompts Don't Make You overpowered as I Beat Kohnhead No.7 in the world Even though i'm unranked and lost to Another Unranked team can you please explain more to me i kinda got confused about this

As for this, all I can say is the emphasis of the three Rs that determine scores in xkoronate- RP bonus, rank, and random. Never forget that third R.

A couple of things.

#1 Yes i have the MDs 4-6 Line scores thanks to Super-Llamaland. I have not had a chance to edit them in yet, unfortunately. I will do so before the next cutoff. Which leads me to...

#2 Remember the schedule change. There is no cutoff tomorrow- next cutoff is in approximately 44-46 hours from this post.

[Soldera]

I have no idea how a news desk works lmao

I used to be a newspaper editor for almost two and a half years. Plus, I worked on newspapers in college. Just thought you should know.

[Banija]

Housekeeping:

#1 I said this in the cutoff, but tomorrow's cutoff will be early window, and it'll be hard, as I have somewhere to be by 10 AM EST. So keep that in mind!

#2 Starting with the penultimate series(so Wednesday's cutoff), I will give tables after every matchday, not just after 3. So those last two cutoff days- you'll get lots of tables. Which means those final cutoffs will take more time than usual, so you'll have to bear with me.

#3 The line scores have finally been edited into the post for Matchdays 4-6. Thank you @Super-Llamaland for recovering those scores for us!

#4 The roster links are finally up to date.

Some killer RPs and RP series so far in this tournament amigos. Keep it up!