Early this year, I had a well-received article at The Hardball Times, a member of TechGraphs’ family of sports websites*. In it, I put together all-star teams of major league baseball players born in different countries from the United States, with speculation on which would be the strongest clubs if they faced each other.

(* If TechGraphs is a daughter site to FanGraphs, and FanGraphs is a sister site to The Hardball Times, it thus follows that TechGraphs is THT’s niece. So enjoy this visit from your Auntie Hardball.)

I wasn’t the only person who liked that speculation. I was contacted a while later by Brad Cook with Out of the Park Developments, the sports-sim folks. He suggested that I could use OOTP 16 (recently reviewed here by Bradley Woodrum) to pit those all-star teams against each other, and produce something more concrete than informed guesswork as to who would be best.

No spoiler tags necessary: I took him up on his idea. David Temple was himself kind enough to greenlight the idea of writing up the simulated season for TechGraphs, and here I am.

My series will be in three parts. Today I’m laying out the concept, the participating nations and players, and my handicapping of their chances. Later, I’ll play out a full season with the contending teams, seeing who totally confounds my predictions, and which players do best in this higher league. The final part will be the Rest-of-the-World Series, the top two finishers playing best-of-nine for the title.

For this project, I’ve chosen the eight countries I consider the best of the internationals to square off against each other. You may refer to my original article for how I chose them as the best. You’ll also need to refer to it for the team rosters, as space considerations don’t allow me to re-list all 200 players here.

But here’s a tiny peek at the Dominicans. Ignore the ampersands. There are a few corrections I must make to those rosters. For Mexico’s team, I listed closer Joakim Soria twice; the second pitcher should instead be Luis Ayala. I also listed Tony Gonzalez twice for the Cubans; my substitution for the clone is Yoenis Cespedes. Also for Cuba, I managed to misspell Pedro Ramos’s name as “Predo.”

Yes, sometimes I can’t tell the players apart even with a scorecard.

Now for the teams themselves. I’ll give the countries, my personally chosen nicknames for the teams, plus the number of major-league players each nation has produced through 2014. (Only players who have played in MLB were eligible for my teams. Stinks if you’re Sadaharu Oh or Martin Dihigo, but I needed to compare apples-to-apples performance when making my selections.) I’ll also give capsule estimates of their strengths and failings.

In increasing order of my estimate of their team strength, here are the Elite Eight.

Panama Engineers (53):
For a small player pool, Panama has a solid front line of position players led by Rod Carew, and when they get a lead, Mariano Rivera’s there to slam the door. But the rest of their pitching is thin at best. If their rotation gets overwhelmed, they could go into a death spiral fast.

Japan Suns (61):
Japan is the reverse of Panama. Impressive starting pitching is their key strength, with capable pieces backing in the pen. However, few of their position players have crossed the Pacific, and this leaves them quite vulnerable on the infield and at catcher.

Mexico Eagles (114):
Mexico has pitching, though not with Japan’s depth, and a stronger infield. They are very lacking in power, though — their outfield being particularly punchless.

Canada Beavers (244):
An ace starter in Fergie Jenkins and ace relievers in Eric Gagne and John Axford anchor Canada’s pitching. The position players have real strengths in Joey Votto, Larry Walker, and Russell Martin, plus some holes, including a double-play combo out of the 19th century.

Cuba Mariners (186):
A deep rotation matches Japan’s, with Aroldis Chapman putting the bullpen ahead. Position players range from good to somewhere short of all-time great, with catcher maybe the only true weakness. This is the first team that feels like it could be dominant if dropped into today’s majors.

Puerto Rico Sharks (246):
The rotation is a step behind Cuba’s, the bullpen half a step back. The left half of the infield is not the strongest, but the other positions compensate amply with three Hall of Famers in Cepeda, Alomar, and Clemente. The Ivan Rodriguez/Jorge Posada duo behind the dish is easily the best in the tournament.

Venezuela Oilers (321):
Johan Santana and Felix Hernandez are a superb one-two punch, with a good back of the rotation and K-Rod closing. The infield is outstanding: Cabrera, Concepcion (moved over to second), Aparicio (which is why), and Sandoval. Outfield and catcher settle for being sneaky-good rather than shock-and-awe, but it’s still a great team.

Dominican Saints (618):
The rotation is stacked, from Pedro Martinez and Juan Marichal down to fifth starter Bartolo Colon, while the bullpen has so many good arms there is no clear closer. Three members of the infield (Pujols, Cano, and Beltre) could be going to Cooperstown, and the outfield is so stacked that Vladimir Guerrero is a sub. Leveraging its deep talent pool well, The Dominican Republic looks like the team to beat.

The tournament’s season structure will follow the style of the pre-expansion majors: eight teams in a single league, playing 154 games. I also chose to set the tournament in the year 1980, with the statistical underpinnings of that era. That year was reasonably balanced between offense and defense, without, for example, the smothered batting of the 1960s, the inflated home run figures of the turn of the millennium, or the extreme strikeout totals of today.

This means we shouldn’t expect any records from our players, with the tendencies of the league not biased toward producing 70 homers or 400 strikeouts in a year. Of course, we also shouldn’t expect such outlying numbers because this is effectively a higher league, a level of competition above what most or all of these players ever faced in real life.

The rosters are frozen with the 25 players for each team: no promotions from non-existent minors, and obviously no trades. I turned off injuries, along with suspensions and PED discipline. (Several players wipe their virtual foreheads in relief.) I want this tournament decided as much as possible by the players, not by chance.

As for the players … which versions of them will be playing? Do I go by career totals? Or do I select a specific season for each one, and which one? Will my tournament be populated by 200 guys all having their career years?

I chose a moderate course. I ordered each player’s seasons by WAR, then tallied their plate appearances (for hitters) or innings pitched (for pitchers), best-WAR season on down. The year in which he reached one-third of his career total is what I selected as his representative season. This was intended to produce a good season for each player, without overly rewarding anyone who had one freak breakout year towering over a lower baseline. As I tried to choose players for career achievement rather than lone standout years, it fits with the roster construction.

Of course, there’s always some loophole to mess with your intentions. For me it was the strike year of 1981, artificially reducing WAR by the one-third of games not played. This pulled Fernando Valenzuela’s WAR for his tremendous rookie season down below that of other seasons, enough so that ’81 got chosen as his year.

I could have omnisciently chosen some other year for him, along with similar adjustments for the smaller anomalies along those lines. However, intervening consciously against the algorithm felt like more of a distortion than letting it stand*. So Mexico will gain the full benefit of Fernando-mania for its national squad.

*Besides which, what the heck? It’s just a game.

So that’s your International All-Star league. Join us tomorrow, when they play ball.

(Full disclosure: In order to conduct the simulation, I was given a complimentary copy of Out Of The Park 16. I gratefully acknowledge OOTP’s generosity. I even more gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Brad Cook, along with Lukas Berger and Chuck Hauser from OOTP for leading me through the nuances of some unusual roster creation. Had I been less boneheaded, you might have seen this series sooner, and I thank them for pulling me through.)

The 147th running of the Belmont Stakes, where American Pharoah will attempt to beat increasingly long odds and become the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978, airs this Saturday, June 6, at 6:50 p.m. The sport of kings still feels royally restrictive– no non-folding or folding furniture allowed on the premises?— in many respects, but, for mere spectators, a glimpse at history is increasingly accessible.

NBC is providing major-network television coverage of the race, primarily through its cable sports channel, NBCSN, beginning on Friday afternoon. For the main event, the action switches to NBC itself beginning at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday. In a new development, NBC also is offering live radio coverage of the race.

 For streamers, NBC’s television content will be available live through its NBC Sports Live Extra service. While there is no additional cost to use NBC Live Extra, it has a number of restrictions. Most critically, it is not available without a cable or satellite subscription, and it is not available outside the United States or its territories. If you’re still reading, there are free Apple and Android mobile apps, and the service is available for Roku and Apple TV, but all of these still require a cable or satellite subscription.

One sign that NBC may be loosening the reins, however slightly, on cable and satellite providers’ control of content was their decision to stream Wednesday’s draw, the event that determines the horses’ positions in the starting gate, live on Periscope. Comments by NBC Sports Group Chief Marketing Officer John Miller (not to be confused with NBC Sports Group President of Programming Jon Miller) suggest that NBC does not see the free, Twitter-based streaming technology as a part of the network’s core services going forward, however. Miller described the draw as “not an event that [ordinarily] would be covered” and the Periscope broadcast of it as “promotional.” Although Belmont Park allows fans to bring mobile telephones to the Belmont Stakes (after “screening”), Miller does not see potential unofficial Periscope streams of the race as a threat to NBC’s ratings or coverage.

As noted at this site last week, the comparatively low quality of streams on Periscope, and its cousin Meerkat, are likely to tamp down heavy usage for live sporting events. This seems particularly likely to be the case for events available on standard television broadcasts like the Belmont Stakes, and it supports Miller’s view that, at least for now, these services will be limited to a supporting role. Interestingly, though, a note on an article discussing last month’s Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, in which Periscope streams of the pay-per-view event gave HBO and Showtime headaches, discloses that NBC’s owner, Comcast, is a Meerkat investor.

Periscope et al. may yet leave their marks in the live sports space, but if you want to watch American Pharoah try this weekend to make sure we never forget his name, you’re going to need a cable or satellite subscription.

(Image via Donnie Ray Jones)

Game: Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP) 2016 (website)
Platform: PC, Mac, Linux, mobile
Release Date: 2015
Metascore: n/a
Techgraphs score: 4.3 or 86 B

General Reaction
OOTP is our most reviewed and highest reviewed game of all time. It takes all the high-level problem solving of a real baseball front office — salary management, roster management, owner expectations, and so on — and somehow condenses them all into a single game. The game is addictive. It’s fantastic.

That said, I’m trying to review this latest edition as critically as possible. And it’s hard to critique something you’re hooked on. But the game does have some flaws, and I will address those. But overall, it’s another excellent submission to the OOTP franchise.

Ratings

Graphics: 4.0 stars
Let’s face it; you’re not going to play OOTP for the graphics. The only 3D component of the game — an optional view for the in-game management — leaves a lot of a room for improvements. It’s not really a problem, per se — more of a “Where’d it go?” The old versions of OOTP had this realistic face generator. It was really impressive. But I can’t find it among the add-ons now. So we end up with this:

Concept & Game Modes: 4.5 stars
OOTP does a nice job of not stretching itself thin with game modes. The database and formulas that serve as the foundation for this game would not be at their best in a “Path to the Majors” or a work-your-way-to-the-top game mode. So having a single player GM/coach mode and a multiplayer GM/coach mode is probably sufficient to please 90% of fans.

It would be interesting, however, so see an arcade mode — hear me out! The latest changes to OOTP have created a system where the player (you, sir or madam) are given a salary and contract based upon your reputation and recent success. What if the game took a page from the NBA 2K video game series and made those salaries worth something? Perhaps players could spend their salary on negotiation classes, improving insight and success rates during trade or salary negotiations. Perhaps players could spend on charitable enterprises and improve their reputation — thereby unlocking more prestigious managers and executives. Or perhaps players could spend money on special camps that have a chance to boost a few players’ rating in special areas (“Send [these three players] to the Barry Bonds Hitter Clinic? Grants 10% chance for increase in either Power or Eye rating. Cost is $100K per player.”).

This kind of stuff actually incentivizes earner a higher income. And it’s just kind of fun.

Gameplay & Interface: 5.0 stars
The interface hasn’t changed much in OOTP 16, but there have been a few minor tweaks that I think show the developers’ really care about user feedback. Lots of tiny things like:

I’m giving gameplay and interface a perfect score, but a big part of me wishes I could experience it all over with rookie eyes. Of course the interface seems easy to me; I’ve been playing OOTP for a half decade.

Glitches: 3.0 stars
There’s a lot of little things that impede my enjoyment of the game — problems that didn’t exist before. Ratings filters don’t seem to work in the Find a Player section (a great new addition, if it actually worked for me…).

And more than that, the new owner goals feature had serious signs of inconsistency. Several times early in my franchise, the owner could not recognize the fact that I had completed an assigned task:

More troubling, though, is that there are numerous issues with player valuation. The AI does not seem to value pitchers correctly (a lot of trades that should go through, don’t), and seems to struggle to identify medium-quality talent. Either everyone is a five-star prospect or not a prospect at all. In general, scouts seem to have a bad grasp on pitcher value (a starting pitcher with three strong pitches and good makeup will still have a 21 potential on the 20-80 scale).

And then, after several years into my franchise, the talent pool disappeared. International free agents stopped being prospects all together (except for a few hidden gem pitchers who had great ratings everywhere except their potential ratings); the draft only had one or two premium prospects at most (normally the first round should land everyone a premium prospect); and since I had a world of difficulty convincing other GM that their pitchers had differentiating between a prospect and Quad-A filler, fair trades were hard to come by.

Say what I will about the relative simplicity of Baseball Mogul, at least the ratings are close (as close as a scouting system with variability should be).

Rosters: 5.0 stars
This is always the strength, nay, the stupid strength — so strong it’s dumb — of the OOTP franchise. You won’t find a more accurate system of minor league players and managers.

See Also:

98 A+ Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP) 2015 (PC)
98 A+ Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP) 2014 (PC)
97 A+ Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP) 2013 (PC)
96 A+ Baseball Mogul ’13 (PC)
96 A+ MLB ’12 The Show (PS3)
82 B- MVP Baseball 2003 (PC)
79 C+ MLB 2K12 (PS3, XBOX 360, Wii, PC, etc.)
74 C MLB Ballpark Empire (Facebook)

Facebook recently made headlines by announcing that they would start supporting the embedding of animated version of the Graphics Interchange Format, more widely known as the GIF. This was a big deal, apparently, because people still care about GIFs. But they shouldn’t — at least not in a way specific to the actual file format.

To me, the GIF has become something bigger than itself. Its name has become ubiquitous with the idea of a short video clip that people find entertaining. Just like how we refer to all facial tissues as Kleenex or all large trash bins as Dumpsters (yes, it’s a registered trademark), a GIF doesn’t really need to be a .gif file per se, it just needs to be a short and shareable video. The problem is, the actual GIF format is pretty outdated and inefficient when it comes to embedding video clips. It’s a dinosaur. It’s Windows 95. We don’t need it anymore. We can make GIFs better. We have the technology.

Back in the day, the main pull of the GIF format was that it was supported on all browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator). You didn’t need any special plugins or software to see a GIF on a web page because it was an image file, like a .PNG or .JPG. GIFs were special in that one could layer multiple images on top of one another to create an animation effect. As expected, this still lead to large files and long load times for web pages. But it’s all we had.

(Not so) long ago, creating GIFs was a pretty big pain. You had to finagle some software to record the video from your screen, then split up the video into frames with a program like Photoshop or GIMP. The results were rarely the same, and there was usually some sort of stuttering or ghosting or another weird issue that made the thing look off a bit. They were usable, but not always pretty.

Today, Flash is pretty much dead and every major browser supports the most common video codecs. HTML5 ushered in a new way to display video — a way that was baked in to the HTML standard. Long story short — if your computer (or mobile device) has any kind of modern browser installed, it can support HTML5 video. It’s leaner and loads quicker, and we all should be adopting it.

We here at TechGraphs have gotten requests to give a how-to on creating GIFs. But I’m not going to do that. Because, as Managing Editor, I’m making a statement on behalf of the site. We’ve pussyfooted around the issue before, but we’re making a stand. The GIF is dead. It’s time to put in on an ice flow floe and let it float on into the Great Beyond. It’s been supplanted by younger and stronger technology. No, I will not be showing you how to create a GIF. I will be showing you how to create short video clips that are easily shareable on Facebook, Twitter, your Tumblr page or your blog. We’ll be utilizing two different sites for this tutorial — Gfycat and something we’ve featured here before, Streamable.

To create these videos, we’ll first need, well, some video. There are a couple ways to go about this. Both Streamable and Gfycat allow you to simply input the URL of your video and let them do the converting. However, Gfycat only allows 15 seconds worth of upload. Streamable does allow larger uploads and the ability to trim time off, but long videos still lead to long upload and conversion times. It’s probably best to get the video on your computer and work with it from there. To do so, I’ve had good success with a Chrome Extension called Video Downloader Professional. This extension will search the code of the page you are on and will find the source file for any video used in that page. You just click the little green arrow next to your address bar and it will give you the option to download the video. A couple notes: you may have to start playing the video for the extension to pick it up. Also, if the video has an ad, it might show up in the list of available downloads. Just make sure you are grabbing the right video. The file sizes are displayed on this list. You almost always want the longer one.

So, let’s say I want to make a clip of Joey Gallo’s first career home run from last night. (I’m using an MLB clip here, but this will work in many sites, including YouTube). I use the extension to download the video into my Downloads folder. Now, it’s fairly long, so I probably should edit it down a little. How you do this depends on your OS. If you have a Mac, you can use the built-in Quicktime Player to quickly trim down a video. Windows users can download the free Windows Movie Maker and use that to edit the clip. Read the tutorials and get comfortable with the software. You’re not re-making Jaws here. You’re just cutting a single video clip. Remember, Gfycat only allows 15-second clips, so edit accordingly if you’re planning to use that service. Once the clip is edited, save it somewhere. It is now time to upload.

Uploading to Gfycat

Go to Gfycat and click the Upload button in the upper right. Click Browse and find the video on your computer. It will begin uploading and converting.

Click the newly-created link to go the clip page. Here, when you move your mouse to the right, you’ll see a couple buttons. One is to create an actual .gif file (IF YOU MUST), and the other is to grab links.

You can get a straight link, and some code to embed the clip in a webpage. Like this! You can tweak that embed link a little to change the height and width of the clip if your blog has certain size constraints. This creates your standard GIF-looking clip. This is good enough for most applications, but what if you want more an actual video experience? What if you want a little longer clip? What if you want sound? Sure you could use your phone to take a Vine of your computer screen, but we’re better than that. Let’s use Streamable to create a quality clip that’s still shareable.

Uploading to Streamable

Go to Streamable and click the Upload button right in the middle. Again, find your video and Streamable will start uploading and converting. Much like Gfycat, you get options to add a title and share the link.

If you click Share, you again get options to copy a regular link or an embed code. Streamable offers some options to change the height and width of the video as well as enabling autoplay and muting. Clicking both will give you a GIF-like experience, but leaving them off will make it feel more like a video. The choice is yours, but it’s certainly nice to have the choice.

These clips will load faster and won’t bog down the browser. They won’t take up space on your servers. They aren’t quite GIFs, but that’s OK. They’re better. You can have the best of both worlds. Short, shareable clips will be around for a long time, but not in the aging format we’ve been using. You now have the knowlege. The tools are free and easy to use. Be a part of the future.

(Header image via Eric Norris)

Few topics are so regularly discussed among my baseball circle of friends and colleagues as local blackout policies. While I am certainly biased in that I watch and talk baseball more than any other sport, I — among plenty of others — have found numerous flaws in MLB’s way of blocking local fans from their favorite teams. By no means is baseball’s governing body alone in limited television access for regional fans, as the NFL, NHL and MLS have a blackout policy of some sort in place, however given the sheer number of MLB games played each season, more baseball games are blacked out than the other sports combined.

To be fair, the NFL did lift local blackouts for the upcoming 2015 season, however as the linked article notes, zero games were blacked out in 2014. NFL games are only subject to local TV blackouts if the game isn’t sold out 72 hours before kickoff rather than the constantly blocked games in other sports. Professional hockey has seen its share of blackouts in TV, though a recent development for the Tampa Bay Lightning may be expanding the definition of “local blackout.”

Via CSN Chicago (warning: auto-playing video), Tampa is following in the footsteps of St. Louis and Nashville hockey teams in making it difficult for visiting (read: Chicago) fans to see the game in the stadium. The policy also affects actual Lightning fans living in other states. If fans have the time and the means to follow their favorite team from another state, tickets may not be available for them. A screenshot directly from the Lightning Ticketmaster describes the situation:

Building a home field advantage or looking for any competitive edge is all well and good, but at what point is a line drawn? How far will fans go to avoid the blackout issues, both on TV and in-person? Going back to baseball, there are massive numbers of people who can’t watch games based on their geographic location. One of my friends was recently accepted to graduate school at Iowa State University, located in Ames, Iowa. The sole downside for him thus far, other than the workload, has been being subjected to blackouts for his favorite team — the St. Louis Cardinals. According to Google Maps, Ames is nearly 370 miles away from Busch Stadium, yet he is still blocked off from their games. Running the Ames 50010 zip code through the MLB blackout finder, the Cardinals aren’t the only team subjected to broadcast issues. Both clubs in Chicago, the Twins, Brewers and Royals are blacked out for him. Even if he were a more broad baseball fan without ties to a specific team, his location alone blocks him off from 20 percent of MLB teams.

The lengths organized sports are going to block off fans from games has only been surpassed by those same fans looking for a way to circumvent the blackouts. Last week a free and popular virtual private network (VPN) came under criticism not from any league or association, but its own userbase. The Chrome and Firefox extension Hola! or Hola! Better Internet was denounced as a potential botnet to be used for malicious attacks on websites, to which they responded to Monday. Danger comes in the form of Hola! using other people’s idle bandwidth — and vice-versa — in order to circumvent geo-blocked content. By granting access to your Internet connection, it can be taken over and re-routed, potentially as part of a DDoS attack on a site or IP address. Be it accessing Canada’s or Australia’s Netflix or someone over there accessing the United States selection of TV and shows, Hola! provided a free and easy way to get around geographically-blocked content. Despite it no longer being available in the Chrome Store, the extension is still downloadable straight from the company’s site. I’d urge caution before a download of Hola! is considered, as the recent allegations have once again shown there is no such thing as a free lunch.

According to the Hola website over 47 million people have downloaded the extension to enhance their web browsing, despite the clear risks involved. That such a number of people would be willing to risk their idle connection in order to open the Internet for their browsing or entertainment needs shows the measure of their resolve. Whether companies like Netflix and HBO or leagues such as MLB or NHL open up their blackout restriction policies on their own accord may not matter. As long as people have a workaround — questionable or not — the market will find a way to access the desired content.

(Header image via BizOfBaseball)

Periscope, the live-streaming app developed by Twitter, has officially launched on Android devices. It comes several weeks behind Meerkat for Android, another mobile-based live-stream app and thus a comparison seems inevitable. Both are free and aimed specifically at being in the moment so neither offer a way to embed videos, though neither should be overlooked despite that particular detail. As simple as an app-to-app review could be, perhaps the greater issue at hand is what the apps offer: a way to potentially circumvent paid content and products.

As mentioned around these parts by Seth Keichline, the much ballyhooed Pacquiao/Mayweather fight promoters were actively and aggressively cracking down on illegal streams. As such, the question may not be what will people stream and watch, but rather will they? The demand for free streams isn’t surpassed by the desire for high definition, but if the content is shown in at least decent quality, the viewers may come. Shown below is a side by side of the two apps with Periscope on the left and Meerkat on the right.

Apologies for the shot of the Periscope app, as the screenshot function was noticeably lagged in comparison to Meerkat. The pictures are from the Wednesday afternoon game between the Tigers and A’s. My camera — or more accurately my phone — is the OnePlus One with a 13 megapixel Sony Exmor IMX214 capturing video and pictures from a 1080p Samsung television. Suffice to say, hardware shouldn’t be the issue in terms of questionable stream quality.

As much as I love baseball and other sports, I can’t see myself consistently watching a stream of this quality on my phone. Perhaps the rare event with something not shown on any available channels, a la a soccer tournament such as the Asian Cup or Cup of Nations, but not a baseball game. The issue at hand is that this exception brings us back to the original question regarding the boxing match: will people use these apps to pirate sports, concerts and other live events? I’ve skulked around enough dark corners of the Internet to realize people will look for any way possible to get around paying for something. From Napster to WinMX and Kazaa to torrent sites and mirrored links or VPNs to get around blackouts, the consumers will eventually get what they want, whether they pay for it or not. The ease of use for both apps have made providing and pirating content quite easy, however neither are perfect for said task.

Meerkat has the option to search for a specific user or stream, something that would appear to be a basic core element of a social networking app. It’s a shame Periscope decided against implementing it as very useful and seemingly easy to roll out. As more and more social apps gain the ability to monetize — Facebook and Tinder immediately come to mind — the possibility for someone willing to take the risk of selling digital tickets to a streamed sports event doesn’t sound too far fetched. Something named “Marlins vs Nationals” or “USA vs CAN” could easily gain viewers and traction, though perhaps it would be better to not so blatantly advertise something that violates terms of use for the apps and the broadcasted event.

Where both apps fall short is that neither has an option to duck the sound of a previous app. Listening to music either with Spotify, Pandora or Google Music was automatically muted or even ducked when watching a stream. It isn’t a deal breaker, but given that Meerkat does duck phone calls — whereas Periscope pauses the stream — it seems like an annoying issue that is bound to be fixed soon. Of course without a way to record the stream, after a pause it is resumed live, not from where it was paused.

Though there is no search option, Periscope has nailed down the location service side of things. Rather than simply naming the city or location where a stream is in the manner Meerkat approaches things, Periscope can be tied directly to Google Maps. The location in Periscope is separated from the stream itself, shown below the stream. Meerkat sees fit to display everything at once. Below are two pictures showing the location of two streams, the first a stream from a restaurant in Stockholm, the second is fire fighting training in California.

If the above picture looks cluttered to you, you aren’t alone in that opinion. It should be noted the following picture is not of the stream itself, merely the location.

Both apps sport a chat function, though again the pros and cons come through. Within Meerkat, the chat cannot be hidden, so you’re at the mercy of other stream watchers. There is the ability to hide the chat within Periscope, or if only a handful of people are spamming the chat, you’re allowed to block specific people. Unfortunately some Periscope streams can be overloaded with chat and a pop up message occurs.

In order to try and parse down the chat spam, Periscope does allow private broadcasts where only followers or selected accounts will be invited to the stream. Meerkat is a strictly public stream and the chat tends to suffer due to that.

Both certainly have their strengths and weaknesses, so despite sounding like a cop-out, it’s nearly a toss up between the two. The option for private broadcasts more than makes up for any issues I have with Periscope, including the inability to search for users. If I find a stream is interesting enough then I’ll follow it, and thus can find the stream through my following list. It isn’t ideal, but at least it is a workaround. Meerkat isn’t perfect either as chat on those streams can rapidly turn into a live version of Lord of the Flies. The lack of a pause and resume feature on Meerket as well as the streams looking awfully crowded due to the chat and constant location make the feeds appear disorderly.

Given my usage patterns and preferences, I give a slight edge to Periscope. The pause and resume feature is incredibly convenient as I tend to receive a high volume of emails throughout the day and the option to get back into the stream and miss a minimum amount of time is fantastic. Periscope offers cleaner looking broadcasts as they can go unhindered by chat and have their location and descriptions hidden away. Neither are perfect, but I can see myself using Periscope more regularly. Of course, without an ability to watch previous broadcasts, only so-so streamer to viewer chat interactions and stream quality dependent on sending and receiving hardware as well as internet connection, both could be fads that fade with time. I envision both Meerkat and Periscope having similar issues to traditional television broadcasts: the inability to be flexibly with watch times — as opposed to YouTube, Twitch and Vine’s abilities to watch any time — may limit their long term success.

FUN FACT ALERT: The day I started putting this review into actual writing, I got this letter from the makers of Schmoylent — the very product I had been consuming for the purpose of reviewing.

Here’s the skinny: This is not for everyone. In fact, I’m specifically asking, “Is this right for athletes?” I spent a good many years as a collegiate athlete who struggled with nutrition and calories. For college students tight on money and limited on time, though, this could be a good fit. I was a scholarship athlete who could never get calories under control because I was too exhausted and too poor to eat anywhere but the cafeteria, and too poor to afford healthy, but quick groceries.

Liquid meals, therefore, could offer the necessary solution for the under- and overfed athlete on the budget. And that is the purpose of this investigation. It is to find the possibility of the Soylent Athlete.

Grades

Taste: 8
Texture: 7
Nutrients: 10
Packaging: 3
Ego Depletion: 6
Price: 6 ($4.04 per meal)

Rating: 6.7

Taste

I gave name brand Soylent a 5-out-of-10 rating in taste and basically said no thanks. I’m giving Schmoylent an 8-out-of-10 rating and saying I hardly knew thee. The difference in taste? So far as I can tell, the only difference is the inclusion of chocolate powder in Schmoylent. Could that have made the powder-drink that much more likeable? Or maybe it was the fact that Schmoylent is based off an earlier version of Soylent, one which required the user to add a few bits of oil during the mixing process?

Not that I could taste the coconut oil I was adding per se, but I do recall wondering often how my Soylent would taste with some sort of smoothing agent like oil added to it. Was it better tasting than my so-far favorite 100% Food? Boy, it’s hard for me to believe it, but for some reason I just really like the taste of Schmoylent. I looked forward to my Schmoylent meals.

Texture

Much like Soylent, it tastes dusty. Maybe my having tried Soylent first prepared me in ways that 100% Food failed to prepare me for Soylent. But all I know for certain is that the texture, while not enjoyable, was not a deal-breaker this time.

Nutrients

A nice 2100 calorie supply of food with:

Carbohydrate: 252g
Protein: 114g
Fat: 70g
Fiber: 27g

That’s essentially the aim of this whole project — get sufficient nutrients and do so in a sustainable way. The latter half is still pending, but the nutrients of these liquid meals have typically left me feeling as or more awake and ready than ever.

Packaging

Here’s the problem with Schmoylent: It arrived in unmarked zipper bags.

Soylent and 100% Food are both clearly young companies, but at least they had unique, professional-looking packaging. Schmoylent felt like some sort of terrifying Internet dare. And while I ultimately loved the product, the packaging would be such a tough sell that I imagine many users would never even taste the product upon seeing it’s floppy, suspicious transmission device.

And besides being a PR problem, the bags also constitute a practicality problem. Whereas 100% Food had self-contained bottles and Soylent had a free pitcher with the first order, Schmoylent lacked any storage accommodations. I was lucky my Soylent order arrived before Schmoylent, otherwise I wouldn’t have had a pitcher appropriate to render my Schmoylent portable (and thereby practical).

Ego Depletion

I honestly think I could eat Schmoylent long term. Had it not ceased its deliveries already. Oh well.

Price

While $4.04 is still better than Taco Bell, but not as good as Soylent’s grocery-level $3.06 price point — especially considering that Soylent also sends a pitcher with the first order.

Conclusions

My final say on Schmoylent:

1. So far, Schmoylent tasted the best. Still dusty though, so maybe my tastes have begun to change.
2. That means I should probably give Soylent another go.
3. I shall miss you Schmoylent, you and your terrifying mystery bags of health powder.

Until the next one, eat well, my friends!

Other Reviews

• 100% Food: 7.7
• Schmoylent: 6.7
• Soylent: 6.3

Check out the Soylent subreddit for some great resources on liquid meal-replacements.

Sports analytics has moved on from the days when an ambitious amateur could fire up Excel or a relational database and make earth-shattering discoveries. Modern front offices must incorporate not only on-field performance but also medical histories, training results, biomechanics data, and a host of other sources into their decision making. To help teams better manage and access that mountain of data, Dublin-based Kitman Labs has developed the Profiler, a system that combines disparate data sources into analytics describing player health and injury risk.

Chief product officer Stephen Smith described Kitman Labs’ offering as “the operating system for sports teams.” The strength of the system is in its ability to combine data from multiple areas — including medical, biomechanical, and on-field sources — to produce more holistic analytics that can better inform team decision making regardingl athlete training and injury prevention. Smith said he was first inspired to create the system while working as an athletic trainer for Leinster, an Irish rugby team.

“One of the biggest challenges I had as a practitioner was that all the fitness data was held in one area, all the medical data was held in one area, and all the performance analytics were held in another area,” Smith said. “That just made it very hard to understand what any of the information actually meant.”

An example of the power of Profiler is demonstrated through a software application that allows users to collect markerless, three-dimensional biomechanical data from an off-the-shelf Microsoft Kinect. The software can calculate select joint angles from an athlete a few feet away — even during rapid dynamic movements, such as running, kicking, or throwing a pitch. And although Smith insisted that the Kinect software was “probably five percent of what we actually do,” he was enthusiastic about its ability to make motion-capture based analysis more accessible.

“Biomechanical information that you would garner in a normal professional sports environment would take you hours to actually get because the downtime is huge, and the cost of that is pretty difficult, and you just can’t access that day to day because it takes too long,” Smith said. “The software that we’ve created jumps professional sports teams into the next generation of real-time technology.”

When interviewed, Smith refused to name the specific organizations that have partnered with his companies.

“We definitely don’t like to speak about our clients because a lot of the information we’re housing, as you can imagine, is very sensitive data on very high-profile athletes,” he said.

But some of his clients have been less tight-lipped about their relationship. In March, The Los Angeles Dodgers announced that they would be partnering with Kitman Labs in their farm system, declaring themselves “the first American sports team” to sign with the company. Across the pond, Kitman Labs works with British Premier League squad Everton, along with a number of Irish rugby teams. Other organizations, including the San Francisco Giants, have also tested this system.

When Kitman Labs signs a new client, the two first collaborate to determine which data and which metrics are most important to the organization, and what sources of information the organization already collects. Kitman’s sports scientists then work with the coaches and training staff to demonstrate how to use the system and understand the analytics the system produces.

“We have a very experienced team of sport scientists who all understand the individual nature of each sporting discipline that we work with, and the uniqueness of each club, team, and athlete,” Smith said. “Those sports scientists will actually be on the ground with teams for a number of days actually helping them to get up to speed.”

Smith says he understands that his company offers an appealing solution to clubs looking to maximize the return on their sizable investments in player salaries, not to mention strength and conditioning, coaching, and other aspects.

“I presume that [general managers] want tools to ensure that they can get the best value from their athletes,” Smith said. “I think the clubs just love the idea of being able to try and maximize on that by being sure they can keep the athletes on the field.”

But the growth of biomechanics data has led to rumblings in some quarters. Some have expressed concerns that medical data which suggests an injury risk could be used against athletes during negotiations. (An example can be seen in the controversy surrounding the Houston Astros’ dealings with top overall pick Brady Aiken last summer.) Despite this, Smith said he hasn’t seen any pushback from athletes on teams using this product, and insists that the system was designed primarily with athlete wellbeing in mind.

“One of the largest driving forces for us in doing this is that we want to protect athlete welfare, we want to improve the standard of care that is given to athletes worldwide,” Smith said. “It’s there purely for the team to use that information to empower their decision making, and that way they can ensure the athlete makes it onto the field in the best possible shape.”

Kitman Labs was born out of Smith’s postgraduate research into injury risk factors, as well as his professional experience as an athletic trainer. The company was founded in October 2012, with its first product offering coming online in June 2013. By early 2014, Kitman Labs had signed their first partnerships with soccer and rugby teams, and were looking to expand into the American market.

“We kind of expected that the market over here would be pretty far ahead of what was going on in Europe,” Smith said. “But when we came over, we realized that it didn’t look like there was anybody else trying to do something like what we were doing.”

The company opened its first American office in Menlo Park, California, in September 2014. Since the MLB season was just wrapping up, Kitman Labs initially focused on expanding into baseball to coincide with teams’ buying cycles. Kitman Labs is now looking to expand into other sports, developing new applications in both professional and collegiate sports leagues.

“We’ve had early success with baseball in the U.S., but we’re actively working with NBA teams, NFL teams, and we’re actually now branching into the NHL as well,” Jeff Eckenhoff, a member of the Business Development team, said. “We’re pretty sport agnostic.”

And with the expansion into new sports comes an expansion of staff, as Kitman Labs looks to add sports scientists and engineers that can help them adapt their solutions for new clients. Smith said his company is actively looking to fill eight vacancies.

“We need industry experts from basketball, football, and baseball to come and be part our team, and to help us solve the largest problems for each of these sports so that we can truly help these teams to uncover the sources of injuries,” Smith said.

Still, Smith insisted that his company’s expansion would not come at the expense of Kitman’s current offerings.

“We don’t want to be a company that walks into a market and grabs a huge collection of customers and then walks away with their checks in our back pocket,” Smith said. “We want to change the face of sports science and sports medicine and we’re going to do that by incredible focus and by being extremely diligent.”

If you watch the HBO television program Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, you may be familiar with a reoccurring segment titled “How is This Still a Thing?” in which approximately three to four minutes are used to discuss the merits of some kind of tired tradition that probably needs to come to an end.

With the recent suspension of not one, but two major league pitchers for infractions regarding foreign substances, you may be asking yourself the same question. Sports, of course, loves a good debate, so when the whole issue was brought up again this go-round, the same old questions arose. Does it really help the pitcher? Do the batters really mind? Does anyone really care?

But the most prevalent question seems to revolve around how this issue hasn’t been put to bed already. Major League Baseball — and some certain managers, it seems — think that a pitcher’s employment of certain substances gives them an unfair advantage. This has not stopped the pitchers from disregarding the rules banning those substances, however. A recent segment on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight featuring former big leaguers Alex Cora and Dallas Braden accentuates this fact.

The subject of all this debate is confusing however. The current discussion isn’t revolving around Vaseline or hair tonic or emory boards or gobs of tobacco spit. Less my memory fails me, all the pitchers who have been suspended for abusing the foreign substance rule within the past few years have all used some sort of combination of pine tar, rosin, and sunscreen. These are all substances that can easily be found within the field of play during any baseball game, and, as Braden pointed out, are freely available for the hitter to use.

The quotes from John Farrell used at the beginning of the segment are also interesting.

“I would like to see an approved substance that pitchers can use,” Farrell said. “Because when we take a manufactured baseball and rub it with dirt, it’s going to create a slippery feeling to it. The mud residue leaves a film on it that you don’t necessarily feel a good, consistent grip. Unless you go to a ball like the one used in Japan where it’s got a tacky feel to it. But I’d like to see something that’s approved that everyone can use. I think if you poll any hitter, the hitter wants to know that the ball’s got a grip. The ball’s not going to get away from [the pitcher].”

This seems like an incredibly even-headed idea. Pitchers want a little something to make sure they have a proper grip on the ball. Batters want to make sure that pitchers aren’t throwing balls caked in substance that will make them dart all over the strike zone. Can we not find a happy medium? Lord knows MLB has not been shy about telling players what kinds of other substances they can and cannot use. Were those just picked willy-nilly? There had to be some science involved.

We have the technology to track a balls rotational spin, on either axis, with pretty tremendous accuracy. In today’s installment at The Hardball Times, Jesse Wolfersberger profiles private companies that are doing amazing things in the world of sports tracking and technology. I find it hard to believe that Major League Baseball, with all their resources and their StatCast tech already in place, couldn’t conduct some kind of study on the effects of certain substances on a pitched baseball.

Golf has a whole division devoted to testing clubheads and balls and shafts and putter inserts. While it would be cool to see baseball invent some contemporary to the golf swing robot, it wouldn’t even have to be that advanced. A group of pitchers and a large enough data set should be enough to find preliminary results.

There has to be a happy medium between tactile grip and rotational disruptment. A bevy of tests should be able to shake out the best compromise between pitcher and hitter. Heck, why not get third parties involved and have them submit their best attempt. Who wouldn’t want to be the Official Ball Gripping Substance of Major League Baseball?

There are rules in baseball regarding lengths, widths, and weights of bats. Gloves need to be within a certain size range. Uniforms have to fit a certain regulation. Perhaps it’s time that we adopt a certain substance as part of the pitcher’s equipment. Rosin apparently isn’t cutting it. Let’s do some testing and find some kind of goop that doesn’t skew the advantage too far in either direction. Make the stuff blaze orange so everyone knows it. No more hiding. No more trickery.

In some matters, baseball is leading the charge in technology and science adoption, both internally and through third-party companies. Fixing this silly doctored ball debate with a little number crunching would be a win for everybody. The pitchers don’t get wild, the batters can still barrel the ball, and baseball can point to yet another measure taken to combat cheating. The sports news networks will have to find something else to talk about, but that’s not really our problem.

(Header image via Keith Allison)

Here at TechGraphs, we want to be your source for all kinds of sports-tech information. Much of it is news and commentary, but we also like to give you some good, old fashioned how to articles. We’ve shown you how to be an Excel wizard for stats domination. We’ve shown you how to make a decent sports podcast. We’ve even gone over how to get your Chromecast to work on ATT U-Verse for all your sports streaming needs. We’ve gone over how to get a Retrosheet database on your computer (and we’ll show how to query it. Promise). We want to bring you more, but we want to know what you would like to see.

So, what sports-tech quandaries are sticking in your craw? Want to brush up on more excel stuff? Want to dive into PitchF/X databases? Still struggling to make a decent GIF? Let us know in the form below. We want to make sure we’re bringing you the stuff you want.

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(Header image via Leo Leung)