Wait, I won’t get mapped with a shotgun anymore? Insanity!
A shocking development I know. Next thing you know, they’ll be nerfing your favorite gun with a mere eight ton hammer, rather than a ten-ton.
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Sorry for paywall. Really fascinating stuff here. They did experiments to show exactly how much extra spin you get on the ball by cheating vs. not. They also showed how that directly translates to the ball moving more and being harder to hit.
A pitcher who added this much spin to a league average fastball would expect his swinging strike rate to go up from the 10.4 percent (league average) to 11.1 percent…
.7% more swinging strikes adds up to a lot over so many inning in such a long baseball season.
From what I’ve read in the past, hitters are mostly ok with it. They want pitchers to have control.
The article mentions that as well.
The argument is basically that they should either enforce it fairly and equally, and/or they should make changes to the rules and equipment such that it’s a part of the game.
I guess it’s about time I subscribe to The Athletic, huh.
Free trial can’t hurt. See if you read it enough to be worth it.
Because of ongoing innovation in the grip substance marketplace,
Lol, what a sentence.
I’m using this app just for fun, but apparently people are taking it way way too seriously.
There is similar drama on Strava that I’ve seen, but never to that scale.
I think due to cancellation of real world bike races they are starting to have serious races on Zwift with real prizes and such.
Running races are doing the same thing with GPS-tracked races.
But there aren’t really real prizes for those, so I don’t think people have fussed as much about it.
If I were going to cheat in Zwift races, I’d hack a power source to my actual bike so all the data would line up. The robot-with-camera-controlling-keyboard-and-mouse equivalent.
Except motor would “pedal” in consistent manner, while human probably has some slight variations on the power output. So you would have to include some human error in there to make it seem real.
I would just cheat Counter-Strike style. Modify the software that is reporting/recording the power readings. Modify and flash the firmware on your power meter pedals, your smart trainer, and your bike computer.
If P is my actual power output I would have it report something along the lines of P + (20*log(P+1)) That would give you a very believable 40-50 watt boost.
Power Assist is the key. Use it like how many ebikes work.
Heuristic analysis can probably detect wholly synthetic or partially-modified data versus naturally boosted but real data.
Another great way to cheat. Performance enhancing drugs. There is absolutely no testing going on for someone biking at home.
You could even use in-race performance enhancers. Not just training enhancers. Mask up with oxygen. Stimulants in-race. The world is your cheating oyster.
Oh that actually reminds me:
I wonder if when he was a Yank, he was just not cheating thereby making the Mets the evil team in this little story, or if he was making the Yanks the competent cheaters and the Mets the ones who’s players get caught.
What’s interesting is that they are claiming that they didn’t do it. It seems in this case they have a history of cheating, so that seems unlikely. Whether that’s true or not, the horse obviously should be disqualified. But that introduces a quite interesting problem with the restriction of PEDs in sports. If you disqualify any participant that uses them, this creates a rather easy way for people to get superior opponents disqualified.
Obviously that’s a little harder to do if the opponent is human. They’ll be sure to be very careful about everything they take into their body. For a horse you can have lots of security around it, but you need to make sure there’s no inside job, like your security guards getting paid off.
Reminds me a lot of Michael Jordan’s sick game where he alleges the sickness was intentional poisoning on pizzas he ordered the previous night.