I was so thrilled, because watching (and listening to) sabermetrics on TV would be awesome. I told some of my friends that they should watch FS1, JABO stands for Just A Bit Outside, a website which has many interesting articles. This article about clutch pitching that I translated was also from JABO.
This is how they looked for most of the games. The live game was shown on the right-hand side while panels made comments on or even acted out some plays on the other side. On the bottom, they provided some statistics or explained sabermetric terms. From time to time, they showed cool graphics like this:
(Where does Matt Carpenter usually find his hits?)
It was good. It was an interesting (and brave) attempt. I thought it would take at least few years until I get to hear some sabermetric terms on TV. They started with WAR and FIP, and explained many more things, which was pretty cool. The panels' smart and in-depth analysis was as expected; I really liked when they mentioned Bumgarner steps on different parts of the rubber against right-handed batters and he made a switch mid-season - I would have never thought of it myself and I doubt the normal baseball commentators would mention that. I was also especially happy when they mentioned Baseball Info Solutions. However on Facebook and Twitter, people gave some negative comments which I agree to some degree.
The biggest problem was about the split screen. It seemed like many people wanted to see less of panels' faces but more of the live game. I agree. Maybe we are so used to just listening to commentators. It felt like a pre-game show and it definitely took some of my attention. Early in the game, bases were loaded and I had absolutely no idea how it became bases loaded. I was watching!
Another big problem is about aiming the right audience. I knew most of the stats, or at least have heard of it. However, I've seen people asking what is this what is that, or wanting to hear Batting Average on Balls In Play rather than BABIP. I personally think they already spend too much of time defining the terminology, but at the same time they probably want more people to watch it. There's a dilemma. They sometimes put the definition on twitter; I think many people are on computers or with their smartphones while watching the game, so maybe it works, but I think it may be too much effort for many people.
One suggestion I would have for them is to have staffs just to dig stats that panels want to talk about. A laptop was opened in front of each panel, and my impression is that they do research with them in between innings. If you have watched Starcraft broadcast, you probably would know this, but it is really difficult to be a commentator and an observer (person who clicks here and there to show what's going on in the game) at the same time. I think if a panel says "I would like to see this person against this person in this count" and someone else searches for that stat and put it up for him, then panels can focus more on analysis and it will go even more smoonthingly (I'm sure it does not require much technology to do that.)
In sum, I liked it. It was 'different' as advertised. Another good thing about them I forgot to mention above is that they were open to hear negative feedbacks and reacted quickly. As the game went on, I noticed they showed more of live games as people talked about. I hope they improve on the small ineffectiveness and do this again, so that more people can enjoy sabermetrics.
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