Special Event: Blaseball Season 5
August 31, 2020 8:49 AM - Subscribe

Here we are, heading into season 5 of the immaterial plane's favorite and only splort: Blaseball! Get your ablative armor on, put in your anti-Feedback earplugs, careful consume a peanut, and let's talk blases.

If you missed last week's post, it's here: Blaseball Season 4.
posted by cortex (67 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
posted by restless_nomad at 8:53 AM on August 31, 2020


I am genuinely excited to kick off another year-long week.
posted by cortex at 8:55 AM on August 31, 2020 [2 favorites]


This really has been a nice, fun way to chop up these endless blurry days, and I'm really enjoying the generally goofy atmosphere around it.
posted by restless_nomad at 8:57 AM on August 31, 2020


Somehow I earned enough money to really go wild and I bought a thousand peanuts this morning. Yummy!

Claws up!
posted by dirtdirt at 8:57 AM on August 31, 2020


I'm a Garages fan myself, but this Crabs S5 Hype Trailer is a thing of wonder.
(Hint: When you think you know where it's going, keep going)
posted by CrystalDave at 8:59 AM on August 31, 2020 [3 favorites]


Super excited for the R E V E R B
posted by curious nu at 8:59 AM on August 31, 2020


The Crabs video content has been consistently fantastic. Someone(s) over there are really doing wonderful work.
posted by cortex at 9:00 AM on August 31, 2020


Good vibes over here! No descriptions on the decrees this season! A whole bag of monkey paws, which one to choose...
posted by q*ben at 9:00 AM on August 31, 2020


My guess / hope - reverb is a weather event that steals items.
posted by q*ben at 9:01 AM on August 31, 2020


One of the blessings is to protect a player from feedback
posted by nubs at 9:06 AM on August 31, 2020


The odds are different right now than they were on the betting screen before this round of games started. Hm. I don't think that happened last season.
posted by Ampersand692 at 10:14 AM on August 31, 2020


I was in the 1% that got their coins redistributed and I'm weirdly excited to build my wealth back up again.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 10:33 AM on August 31, 2020


The 60-coin cap on Passive Income has gone up — I have no idea what the new limit is but I intend to find out.
posted by Ampersand692 at 10:42 AM on August 31, 2020


The new limit is 75
posted by nubs at 11:14 AM on August 31, 2020 [1 favorite]


I converted all my cash to votes on Saturday, and then forgot to spend them yesterday... So now I've got lots of votes, but have avoided being in the 1% again. Seems like I will be clicking a LOT on sunday this week...
posted by kaibutsu at 1:13 PM on August 31, 2020


They added a slider for voting last season! Still have to click repeatedly to buy 'em, but you can apportion a whole bunch to a given vote in one transaction on the spending side now.

In other news, Shoe Thieves are roaring out the gate with an 0-4 record and on our way to a fifth loss. Gonna be a heck of a comeback story.
posted by cortex at 1:15 PM on August 31, 2020 [1 favorite]


My Tigers-fan friends and I are enjoying a rare moment of solidarity at the bottom of the Evil league.
posted by restless_nomad at 1:34 PM on August 31, 2020


Here we go, reverb kicks in! Fridays got a whammer of a shuffle, and Tacos beat back 82/18 odds against the Firefighters for the biggest upset in Blaseball history!
posted by CrystalDave at 1:46 PM on August 31, 2020


Claws up!
posted by everybody had matching towels at 1:49 PM on August 31, 2020


So it turns out that Reverb just shuffles your entire roster, which means the Shoe Thieves, with our absolute dogcrap pitching roster other than Cornelius Games, are now standing on a rock in the ocean screaming at the gods to JUST DO IT ALREADY YOU COWARDS
posted by cortex at 2:02 PM on August 31, 2020


Yeah three of our five pitchers are better batters than pitchers, come on, do it.
posted by restless_nomad at 2:03 PM on August 31, 2020


My Lovers are in first! Season 4 was a disappointment after getting to the playoffs in Season 3.
posted by Carillon at 2:05 PM on August 31, 2020


This is causing quite a lot of stress energy among lore folks (and among SIBR nerds, the stats folks at the Society for Internet Blaseball Research) because the maintenance implications of having to shift EVERYBODY around on zero notice is a lot bigger than in previous seasons. My feeling is That's Blaseball and really we're learning to not rely to much on assumptions that because something hasn't happened before doesn't mean it won't happen soon, and constantly.

Like on the one hand I don't want Gunther to stop pitching, because he's such a good kid and he's having so much fun out there on the mound. On the other hand, he seems to actually have pretty okay stats in every other category so man it'd be great to have him batting and fielding instead.
posted by cortex at 2:09 PM on August 31, 2020


I think it's oddly fitting that reverb is causing trouble for both the lore and SIBR peeps, as Blaseball is entertainingly maladaptive to both of these structures. I think the minute it stops breaking everything all the time is when people will get bored and walk away, so keep it coming IMO.

Reshuffle the Mints! Please! Also, theories as to why the Tigers are stuck in reverse gear? Bad vibes, man.
posted by q*ben at 2:49 PM on August 31, 2020


There's been a lot of upsets on the odds the last few games, too. Small sample size so who knows, but I'm having a real hard time getting my bankroll going this season.
posted by cortex at 2:50 PM on August 31, 2020


GUNTHER WON A GAME
posted by cortex at 3:30 PM on August 31, 2020 [1 favorite]


I know nothing about sports, let alone baseball, but I joined up after weeks of being confused by cortex's twitter posts. Finding it difficult to follow along with all the games, but having fun betting (even if I'm not building up much of a bank). LGMBLDM
posted by noneuclidean at 6:30 PM on August 31, 2020


Relax and enjoy the ride, noneuclidean. We're all fumbling in the dark here, trying to understand the rules and possibilities, but it's the fun around the game that matters.
posted by nubs at 8:13 PM on August 31, 2020


Blaseball site is having some real woes yesterday and today with autorefreshes timing out for tons of people, which is...vexing! Given that the entire thing comes down to refreshing every five seconds or so. Just in case you've been having that happen and wondered: definitely a known thing. I've taken to just refreshing every couple minutes during games and treating it like listening on a very dodgy transistor radio that's not quite in range, but hopefully they can get it sorted out soon.
posted by cortex at 7:55 AM on September 1, 2020


< < < R E V E R B D E T E C T E D > > >
posted by q*ben at 12:02 PM on September 1, 2020


I was inspired to join up by these Fanfare posts. I have no idea what is going on but am enjoying it quite a bit. Reminds me a lot of Kingdom of Loathing in spirit.
posted by bassooner at 1:30 PM on September 1, 2020


The Lovers are really pulling ahead this season, it's impressive. The Tigers are pulling back towards the top of the division, ending our weirdly neck-and-neck first day, but I'm pleased to say the Wild Wings are firmly not last. That is all I ask of my team, after all.
posted by restless_nomad at 2:37 PM on September 1, 2020 [1 favorite]


The Lovers/Tacos dichotomy in Good League has been really something. Lovers are 31-6, which is a stunning 9 wins better than the Fridays who are at the head of the rest of the pack with 22-15. The Tacos, in the mean time, are 6-31 and 9 games behind second-to-last Flowers with 15-22. The symmetry of it all is very weird, and everyone else in the league has between 17 and 19 wins, clumped tight.

Evil league has much less overall spread (Crabs in first with 25-12, Dalé last with 11-26) but feels more evenly distributed overall.

Shoe Thieves pitching is a weird mess: Cornelius Games, our sole pitching standout with 3.5 stars in pitching, is 4-3 so far this season, while Gunther, a zero-star penguin with no fingers, is somehow 3-4. Corn finished last season with a 16-4 record, Gunther with 3-17. It's a very weird collapse of pitching universes so far.
posted by cortex at 10:09 PM on September 1, 2020


Is there a record of games played anywhere? We don't even know what positions these players are playing (other than position player/pitcher) so box scores are probably out of the question…
posted by Ampersand692 at 5:41 AM on September 2, 2020


So there is a work in progress site called blaseball-reference.com, and you can poke at the (sometimes broken or unstable or out of date, but usually there and pretty great) dev.blaseball-reference.com for now for a bunch of team and player specific records.

For example, here's the career stats for Cornelius Games and Gunther O'Brian, who overnight have respectively one and lost a game stepping them slightly toward expectations.

You can also currently get some team stats, e.g. Shoe Thieves current season/roster stats, as well as detailed standings and some league stats leaders.

I don't think there's any per-game record there yet; I know there are folks collecting per game info (to among other things feed into that site) but if there's a tool display those publicly I don't know about it yet. I know it's a popularly hoped-for function, though. There's a bot someone built for discord that calls major scoring events in games that might turn into a public record at some point. I'll try asking in the discord stats channel to see if there's any new on upcoming stuff on that front.
posted by cortex at 7:41 AM on September 2, 2020


So there's also this (among apparently additional works in progress): Game day result summaries by team and day and season. Won't get you the play by play or who scored what, but it's a least a record of final scores.

Canonically (I think?) in Blaseball there are no fielding positions; when a player is fielding, they're a fielder, and everybody seems to exist in quantum superposition.
posted by cortex at 8:26 AM on September 2, 2020


There's no quantum superposition about my Seattle Garages, they're straight-up terrible.
posted by wintermind at 6:38 PM on September 2, 2020 [1 favorite]


They're in quantum superposition, but in the wrong stadium.
The Garages are a perfect simulation of Seattle splorts.
posted by kaibutsu at 8:07 PM on September 2, 2020


My college football team just had the greatest season in the history of the sport, and I choose to root for a Seattle team all of a sudden. :-/
posted by wintermind at 4:33 AM on September 3, 2020


Shoe Thieves had a good night while I slept, clawed back up to 33-38. Which is still a few games out from the playoffs but it's...less far than it was? Just enough to start to daydream a little. Tacos in the mean time continue to get annihilated, losing 17-54 currently which (a) means they've lost more games than anyone in the league has won, which means they're really kind of padding the rest of us out, and (b) putting them well on track to at some point have a W/L record of X-69 which is very n i c e.
posted by cortex at 7:37 AM on September 3, 2020 [1 favorite]


Yeah, the "dreaming distance of the playoffs" position is an odd one to be in. If our fortunes continue to turn, it's possible the Wild Wings could be in contention, too, although I think it's statistically pretty unlikely. I could use some more wins, though, I bet big probably a few times too many early in the season and am a little broke now.
posted by restless_nomad at 7:56 AM on September 3, 2020


The Lovers had to come back to earth a little bit sadly. Still in the lead but not by as much as they were at the start of the season. I haven't seen all the games, but solid pitching and defense can take you far.
posted by Carillon at 4:05 PM on September 3, 2020


It's game 95 of the regular season and the Shoe Thieves are not yet mathematically eliminated from playoffs contention and relegated to Party Time. We just need the Breath Mints to lose this and the next four games, and the Steaks to lose at least three, and the Fridays to lose at least one, and also we have to win all five.

It's that simple. Also we're currently losing to the Fridays 3-1 in the 4th so.
posted by cortex at 7:09 AM on September 4, 2020


The Wild Wings are officially in Party Time, then. Woo!! (Although this game is important for our opponent, the Garages - if they win the next four games *and* the Moist Talkers lose the next four, the Garages will make the playoffs.)
posted by restless_nomad at 8:01 AM on September 4, 2020


Holding my breath for a mints playoff berth— don’t know why as I should have been conditioned by the Royals 1985-2005 seasons...
posted by q*ben at 8:29 AM on September 4, 2020


SHOE THIEVES ARE IN PARTY TIME! Looked like we might pull out a little more drama, but then the Fridays ran away with game 96, so spending the weekend diving into the Shoe Vault it is.
posted by cortex at 8:32 AM on September 4, 2020


Hah, well, that at least means the Wild Wings/Shoe Thieves final series can proceed without causing intra-staff conflict on Metafilter :P
posted by restless_nomad at 8:34 AM on September 4, 2020


Heh. We are all love blaseball, after all.
posted by cortex at 8:36 AM on September 4, 2020 [1 favorite]


Huh, looks like the garages some how survived as well! Looks like I'll have to save my existential feelings of disappointment for tomorrow.
posted by kaibutsu at 8:50 AM on September 4, 2020


I'm still waiting for someone to connect blaseball to 98 Koshien on twitter.
posted by q*ben at 9:59 AM on September 4, 2020


Some actual playoff race drama, as on the final game of the regular season the Steaks and the Breath Mints both stand at 50-48, fighting over the fourth Good League slot.

It's Jazz Hands vs. Steaks, and Flower vs. Breath Mints; if the Steaks win and the Mints lose it's Steaks in the playoffs, and vice versa Mints in the playoffs. But! If they both lose or both win, it'll be the Steaks either way, because of the edicts of Divine Favor.

Making it even more interesting, the Jazz Hands came into this Hands vs. Steaks game with a starting point of -3 runs, because of last season's Targeted Shame* decree. Which, if that ends up changing the outcome off the playoff race, will be I think the first time this whole season that Targeted Shame has had a meaningful impact.

*If you're not up on Shame: in blaseball, if the home team is down going into the bottom of inning 9+ and they manage to get ahead on runs, the game goes into Shame mode, wherein it continues until three outs regardless of the win having been mathematically established.
posted by cortex at 11:16 AM on September 4, 2020


And the Steaks win by 3, leaving the question of Shame nicely ambiguous.
posted by restless_nomad at 11:24 AM on September 4, 2020


Yeah! Which is kind of great and kind of disappointing. Steaks take it 3-0 after both teams get three runs, giving Steaks the win and sending them to the playoffs.

There were a couple potential firsts in that game that we didn't get to see:

1. If the Hands hadn't managed to score three runs, we'd have had the first negative-scoring game in Blaseball history.

2. If the Hands had managed to score four or five runs, they would have unambiguously lost because of Targeted Shame, which hasn't happened yet either I don't think.

Instead we have a game that would have gone to extra innings with ??? outcome. Which is delightful in its own right.

In the mean time, Steaks got their win and clinched it while the Breath Mints were still behind vs. the Flowers in the 9th. And then they tied it up, took it to extra innings, and eventually one with a Shame run to win at the bottom of the 11th 7-6. A tremendously exciting outcome for a game, and the last game of the regular season as everyone else finished up, and all the while the poor Breath Mints must have known in their hearts that they were playing for a playoff slot they'd already lost.

That's Blaseball
posted by cortex at 11:32 AM on September 4, 2020


Moist talkers and the jazz hands are having an epic playoff game, 19 innings so far.
posted by Carillon at 12:42 PM on September 5, 2020


Which went 23 innings total! Not quite a record breaker but one hell of a thing.

Semi-finals finished up, now it's the Firefighters vs. the Jazz Hands for the whole bag of shoes.
posted by cortex at 3:04 PM on September 5, 2020 [1 favorite]


What's a bummer I had hoped the lovers could get to at least the finals.
posted by Carillon at 5:22 PM on September 5, 2020


Ridiculous bottom of the 9th on that game -- runners on 1st and 3rd, Declan Suzanne gets a single AND ALSO has an allergic peanut reaction.

Jazz Hands go into the final game with -1 runs from Targeted Shame.
posted by curious nu at 6:33 PM on September 5, 2020


I was so hoping the Firefighters could pitch a shutout so that the final game of the series would also be the first negative-scoring game in Blaseball history. Oh well.

Congrats in any case to the Firefighters for a very solid game five win to take the championship; my understanding is that as a result we are now all, without exception, from Chicago.
posted by cortex at 10:07 PM on September 5, 2020


I've never had a sports team, so it was an interesting experience this week to follow the moist talkers, especially that crazy playoff. I think I get splorts now!
posted by joeyh at 11:52 AM on September 6, 2020


Wow, the Crabs sure got a boost in the election this season. Nothing for the Wild Wings except for the 3% impairment from our neighbors. Thanks, Shoe Thieves.
posted by restless_nomad at 12:08 PM on September 6, 2020


Election results are in and, um, I’m not quite sure what happened but things are different now.
posted by Ampersand692 at 12:09 PM on September 6, 2020


Yeah, the Crabs fans have been coordinating their votes and it seems like they’re the only ones doing so.
posted by Ampersand692 at 12:10 PM on September 6, 2020


Oh hey, the leagues were shuffled too, looks like based on the records from season 5. That'll be interesting!
posted by restless_nomad at 12:13 PM on September 6, 2020


How've peoples' team discords been? I'm about ready to go hopping for a new team; the most active Magic chatters are just.. whiny as fuck, and it really makes me not want to engage with blaseball. I need a better team community. =/
posted by curious nu at 4:31 PM on September 6, 2020


Swing on by the Garages chat, we're generally pretty chill. There's a fair amount of working through getting shut-out on blessings again; but generally the consensus seems to be a lot of people going "Yeah, I stick to Garages chat & maybe Stats or Fan-lore or something; Watchparty/HotCorner/Feedback are nightmares".
posted by CrystalDave at 5:04 PM on September 6, 2020


Fun fact, there was a great deal of discussion in the Shoe Thieves discord about NOT voting for that division impairment blessing, in the spirit of collegial friendship and togetherness. The fact that we still won it with 2% of the total votes is amazing. The fact that a plurality of those votes were mine is something I would like folks to not tell the rest of the channel. I may have had a couple of beers come voting time.

The league shake-up is an interesting pile of weirdness; it'll be nice to at least put a thumb on the scale against another Lovers/Tacos sort of event like this last season, though if most matchups are still intra-league the Wild league is gonna have a lot of top-tier S5 teams wailing on bottom-tier S5 teams. I'm glad the Shoes are in Mild.

Also, Gunther can pitch now? So can Beasley? So can Kevin Dudley? I'm really curious how our decent hitting and very solid defense is gonna play out with actual pitching support.

Also you can pick a player to be your Idol, and invest in rewards for when they perform well. I was gonna pick Gunther anyway because Gunther, but he might even pay me back with Ks now.

How've peoples' team discords been?

Shoe Thieves chat continues to be pretty nice and lore-enthusiastic and pretty overtly queer; verges into Discourse now and then but all in all I'm enjoying being one of the older straighter people in there and helping punch up lore pitches when stuff happens in the league.
posted by cortex at 10:03 PM on September 6, 2020


Season 6 thread!
posted by cortex at 7:19 AM on September 7, 2020


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