6.23.2014

Luyman's Terms #10: The Value of a Bat, Part 1

Over the history of competition, observers have been trying to separate the good from the bad, and the great from the good. We crown champions, and we wonder how those champions became to be. We realize that some competitors are simple better than others, but what is it that makes them better? In baseball, the most popular way of determining this has been to look at a players batting average.

While batting average is nice, it is very seldom a good way to measure the batter of a hitter. A double is clearly better than a single, but batting average weights them both the same. What we need is a metric that weights doubles more than singles. slugging % tries to compensate by giving doubles twice the value over single, triples three times the value, and home runs four - but is that a good way to go about it? It a double really worth 2 singles?

Lets think about that for a minute. A double puts a man on second base, but 2 singles put men on both first and second! 2 singles is clearly better than a double, so slugging % is not as good of a metric as we originally thought. What we need is a metric than can weigh 2 singles better than a double, but also have a double weigh more than a single. Enter: run values.

The concept of run values is simple: each event in baseball has an expected number of runs. As plays begin to unfold in a game, a team can expect to score a certain amount of runs depending on how the plays turned out. This notion is hardly more than common sense, but by using run values it is possible to quantify exactly how much a hit or an out is worth.

For this post (and for the rest of this series), I will use the values given in The Book by Tango, Lichtman, and Dolphin for the 1999-2002 seasons:


By counting each individual event for each player, we can determine just how much value he gave his team with his bat over the course of a season. Let's do a sample calculation with Jermaine Dye's 2002 Season:

  1. Dye hit 71 singles in 2002, good for (71*.475) = 33.725 runs
  2. Dye hit 27 doubles in 2002, good for 20.952 runs
  3. 1 Triple for 1.07 runs
  4. 52 Walks (2 intentional) for 16.508 runs
  5. He was hit by 10 pitches for 3.52 runs
  6. Add all of these run values for a total of 109.303 runs "created" by Jermaine Dye's bat
This sounds pretty good! All Jermaine Dye has to do is never get out, and he will be worth 109.303 runs to his team!. Except, Jermaine Dye will get out. In fact, he got out 365 times in 2002. We need to make another calculation:
  1. 365 outs, good for -109.135 runs
  2. 109.303 runs from hits + -109.135 runs from outs = 0.168 runs total
This means that in reality, Jermaine Dye was good for 0.168 runs with his bat, which doesn't look so good upon first glance. In my next post, I'll show you why this is actually a pretty good thing.

6.20.2014

Luyman's Terms #9: Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

This is just going to be the week of short posts. I have no idea what I'm doing.

I've spent the last couple days building a Retrosheet database, and it looks like I have been successful. I now have 5.75 GB of baseball data on my computer reaching all of the way back to 1950. The problem now is that I have no idea how to traverse though it to get anything useful out of it. Enter SQL.

This is how I will be spending the next couple days. I thought I would be done with teaching myself computer speak after I switched out of Computer Engineering for Math, but I guess it's not quite done with me. If you guys have any tips for beginners of SQL I would greatly appreciate reading them!

6.18.2014

Luyman's Terms #8: Leaning the Ropes

Another short post today, I very much underrated how much work goes into number crunching and this is the first time I have tried to do something on this big of a scale. But that's why I'm doing this blog, it's a learning experience for me (and hopefully for you as well). Here is a look at what I've been working on for the last couple days:



Super interesting right? I'm not sure I'm satisfied with my methodology up to this point, but my results have been interesting nonetheless. Would you guys be interested in post simply detailing my results? Or would you be more interested in process? Both? Let me know.

6.16.2014

Luyman's Terns #7: What?

Quick post today, it was a long weekend.

Yesterday, I went to the Lexington Legends game with my dad to celebrate Father's Day. They, of course, lost 10-3. I lost interest sometime around the 7th inning when I finally got up to get a sno-cone, but my interest was piqued in the bottom of the ninth when I got to see the most bizarre play I have even seen in a baseball game. Something that doesn't show up in the box score.

Situation: Down 10-3 in the bottom of the ninth with a runner on first and one out, Chad Johnson attempts to steal second base.

This is hardly an extraordinary play. The base was successfully stolen without a throw and everyone was getting ready for the next pitch. How was Mr. Johnson preparing for it? HE WAS TROTTING BACK TO FIRST BASE! Everyone around me thought that we missed a foul tip (turned out there wasn't even a swing), suddenly the catcher realizes what is going on and chucks the ball to first. The runner gets caught in a rundown and is tagged out.

Laughter ensued, as everyone tried to figure out just what the heck happened. The runner was never credited with the stolen base (which he did get), and the game log does not do justice as to what actually transpired. But now, there is a record of it (such as this blog is a record of anything). Hopefully, Chad Johnson is a major league player one day, and my dad and I can say "I remember him when..." If nothing else, it was definitely a memorable Father's Day.


6.13.2014

Luyman's Terms #6: The Evolution of a Deck, Part 2

If you're just now joining us, read part one here

The feedback I received on the deck from part one was pretty consistent. Those who commented were mostly in the camp that the deck was not so good, and cited reasons ranging from "looks to be a slow deck" and "too many lands" to one Reddit user commenting that "sh*t deck remains a sh*t deck."

Turns out, the deck fared pretty well, I won probably 65-70% of my total matches with this deck. That percentage goes up to around 80% if you exclude matches against control decks, and jumps up again to around 85-90% if I drew into 2 Plains and 2 Forests (since a third of my spells have double colored pips).

While it is true that the main goal of my deck was to draw the game out (my two favorite win-cons were bestowing a Boon Satyr onto a Dawnbringer Charioteer and, of course, activating Elspeth's ultimate ability), the deck was no slouch in the early game, and had no trouble being aggressive if it needed to be. In matches against other slow (non control) decks, I would often have a Boon Satyr and a Master of Diversion on the battlefield after turn 4 and then bestow another Boon Satyr onto one of those creatures on turn 5 and swing for lethal on that same turn or the next.

In games against aggressive decks board stalls were not uncommon. Pacifism and Ajani's Presence were incredibly useful in these situations, and I decided to bring in Archetype of Courage for it's first strike ability to help in those situations as well. These are the matches where I could play the long game and bestow any enchantment creature onto my Dawnbringer Charioteers and swing away happily.

The only games I was losing consistently were against Esper Control decks, and a Mono Black deck a buddy of mine ran which featured creatures with lifelink, Staff of the Death Magus, and Sanguine Bond. While beating the Mono Black was a simple matter of swapping out the 4 Sedge Scorpions for 4 Naturalize in the sideboard, Esper Control has proven to still be a problem (Supreme Verdict was pretty much a game ender). Here is the updated deck:
  • Artifact (2)
    • 2 Bow of Nylea
  • Creature (24)
    • 2 Archetype of Courage
    • 4 Boon Satyr
    • 4 Dawnbringer Charioteers
    • Elvish Mystic
    • 2 Hopeful Eidolon
    • 4 Leafcrown Dryad
    • 4 Master of Diversion
  • Enchantment (4)
    • 4 Pacifism
  • Instant (4)
    • 4 Ajani's Presence
  • Land (26)
  • Planeswalker (2)
    • 2 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
  • Sideboard (12)
    • 2 Angelic Wall
    • 2 Hopeful Eidolon
    • 2 Oreskos Sun Guide
    • 2 Battlewise Valor
    • 4 Naturalize
I was stuck here for about a week, and I was pretty happy with my results. The only bad match up I had was against the before mentioned Esper Control deck, and I was OK with that. I think it's best to just stay vulnerable to one deck and good to most others, as opposed to having a deck that is mediocre against all decks.

As for my new creatures, I was decidedly underwhelmed. The Elvish Mystics we fine if I needed an extra green mana source in the early game, but once I drew my third forest they became useless in the late game. Archetype of Courage was nice to have in games against aggro decks, but did next to nothing in any other situation. While my deck wasn't doing any worse with my new creatures, it wasn't doing any better either. I thought I had hit the peak with this deck, and started on something else.

While trying out my new deck, I was looking around for cards that it would be weak to. As I was doing that, the card that I needed for this deck revealed itself to me: Fleecemane Lion. I have not had a chance to really play with it yet, but it looks good on all fronts. It's great in an aggro game since it's a 3/3 for 2. It can get bigger with its monstrous ability, and with that same ability can stay on the battlefield even after Supreme Verdict.

I'm incredibly excited to get back out to the shop and play with this new deck. How do you guys think it will do? I'm thinking about cutting down to 24 lands and swapping out another Forest and 2 Plains for 3 more Temple of Plenty. Do you guys think it would be worth the money?

6.11.2014

Luyman's Terms #5: The Evolution of a Deck

If only these were still available!

As of today, there are around 1,500 unique cards in standard (with that number set to grow by 250+ late next month). That number grows and grows as you begin to look at different MTG formats culminating at just under 14,000 total unique cards in all of MTG! This means there is practically an endless amount of ways to construct a deck and, as a result, is not an easy thing to do. I thought I would tell you about my first foray into deckbuilding, and how my deck has evolved. While I wasn't naive enough to think that I knew what I was doing, I did think that my deck would be able to hold its own. Here is that deck:

My theory behind the deck was to burn my opponent directly early, and block my opponents creatures with the Sedge Scorpions. I could then get a Bladetusk Boar or 2 onto the battlefield, and swing in for the last 6-9 points of damage. If the game ended up going long, I would cast Portent of Betrayal and kill my opponent with his/her own creatures

No surprise that I was wrong. With 28 lands, mana flood was not uncommon. Not only would I usually not last long enough to get a have a boar swing for more than two turns, I simply played the deck wrong, and used my burn spells to always attack the player as opposed to using them as removal, which is what I probably should have been doing. I was incredibly vulnerable to creatures with flying, and pretty much any creature with power > 2 (spoiler alert: there are a lot of them). 

I also learned that only one legendary-subtype card of a given name can be on a players side of the battlefield, so I had to rethink how many copies of the Bow of Nylea were worth running. This was also the point where I decided I really wanted to get into MTG, and allowed myself to splurge on a couple cards. That lead to this deck:

I ran with this for about two hours before I realized how terrible it was. My thought was that if I could stall until I get to Elspeth, I could just keep generating soldier tokens and then give them flying after 3 or 4 turns. This turned out to be a viable strategy when in games in which I both had Elspeth in my hand and the mana to cast her. However, that just didn't happen very often, and this deck just did what my first deck did and I lost a lot. I decided R/G was not working out for me, and that I needed to try something different.

I decided that neither the Sedge Scorpions nor the Nyxborn Rollickers were pulling their weight. While having a 1/1 for 1 with some upside is a nice creature on turn one or two, but neither deathtouch nor a cheap bestow that essentially just gives a creature a counter were all that great in the late game when I was ready to be on offense. I knew I liked Elspeth, and the Boon Satyr was quickly becoming a favorite of mine, so I decided to go G/W. That decision yielded the following deck:

I brought in the Hopeful Eidolon to fill in the void that taking the Sedge Scorpions and Nyxborn Rollickers left behind. I really like being able to play a creature on turn one, and I thought that the Hopeful Eidolon's bestow ability would be enough to make it relevant in the late game. How do you guys think this deck performed? What changes do you think should be made? I'll tell you how the deck actually performed and what changes I made in my next post. 

6.09.2014

Luyman's Terms #4: A Beginners Look at MTG Round 2, Drafting

Before I get into my post, I want to say a quick thank you that read my first post on MTG and came back for another. Around 600 people from all over the world visited my blog in the two days that followed that post, and only a little more than a third of that came from /r/MagicTCG, which was the only place I posted a link. So thank you to you guys that spread the word about my blog, and I hope everyone got something out of it and will continue to do so!

A little over a week ago, I attended my first MTG draft (JOU/BNG/THS). Ever since I learned about the format, I have been listening to the Limited Resources podcast, and have become familiar with 70% or so of all of the cards in the block. I decided that it was time to go ahead and dive into something new.

The draft had a pretty even split between new players (it was a first draft for one other player, and only the second or third for two others) and veterans, and the standings reflected that. I ended up going 1-2 and finishing 6th, but the experience I gained and the things I learned about the format were well worth the entry fee.

So, How Did it Play Out?

We started a little late, and as a result I probably had a little more nerves built up than I normally would. I was visibly shaking as I opened my first pack and started looking through my cards, and spent more time trying to stop that than looking to see what my cards were. I tried to remember everything I had learned up to that point about drafting and deckbuilding:
 - try to stay in two colors
 - try to stay open to colors/don't let one pick you make influence another pick    too soon in the draft
 - settle into your two colors fairly early, but not too early
Those three pieces of information alone became too much for me to handle, and my draft went horribly. Each piece of information seemed to contradict the other two, and it was hard for me to decide when was a good time to follow one piece as opposed to the other two. I ended up drafting Underworld Coinsmith first, which set the tone for the rest of my draft.

When the next pack was passed to me, I thought I was all set to go with a white/black enchantment deck, and I could use the Underworld Coinsmith's ability to deal damage to my opponent with the life that I received from my other enchantments. I picked up the pack, and the cards within were incredibly underwhelming in both white and black. I could choose from Bloodcrazed HopliteAjani's PresenceLagonna-Band Trailblazer, or Reprisal. None of those cards had me excited to stay in either white or black, so I ended up drafting Eidolon of the Great Revel, which opened me up to red. I hoped that from this point forward I could draft in two colors, and build a solid deck. The cards thought differently however, and the trend continued. After draft pack one, I had 6 white cards, and 4 cards each of red and black.

At this point, I actually felt pretty good about how the draft had progressed. I thought I was still following the three points above, and I thought I had a decent card base from which to build any combination of two-color decks depending on what cards I would be passed. I thought I would be able to pin down which two colors I would be about halfway through draft pack two, and I could fill any holes my deck had from that point on.

Boy, was I wrong on all counts. Even though I probably did have a decent base from which to build a good two-color deck, I still could not decide which two to go with. Halfway through the draft pack, I had 10 white cards, and 6 each of red and black. At the end of the draft pack, I had 12 white cards and 8 each of red and black.

Now, I'm starting to really panic. I only know one of my colors and we only have one pack left! My mind is scrambling, and trying to think about all of my options. The two options I settled on are:
1) I can play all three colors, and winning the games in which I get a good draw, and losing the games that I don't.
2) Draft a few cards early in either red or black, decide on running a white/red or white/black deck, then attempt to fill some holes
When I opened the pack, I decided I was not comfortable trying to play three colors. I have never played with more than two in any format, and I didn't want to both be trying a new color combination and a new format. Even with that decision, the third draft pack went a lot like the first two. My final count was 18 white cards, 13 black cards, and 11 red cards (how I managed to end up with nothing out of color, I will never know). I decided to go with my original plan of white/black and tried to build the best deck I could with what I had.

Nothing at all exciting happened in any of my matches. Most of my creatures were cheap 1/1s and 2/2s with heroic triggers, and most of my spells were removal so I couldn't target them to make them stronger. Once my opponent was able to resolve a creature with flying, or something with more than 2 toughness, the game was pretty much over for me. It was more than a little pathetic.

In the time since the draft, I have learned much more about the format, as well as been able to think about what I learned from the draft itself. In my next draft, I will look to use BREAD extensively and try to pare down to two colors a lot sooner.

So what do you guys think? Which mistake do you think was the biggest? Do you think I did anything right? What can I try to do to make my draft go more smoothly?

6.06.2014

Luyman's Terms #3: When Pinch Hitting for a Pitcher Might be a Bad Idea

Yesterday my father and I, along with 24,000 or so of our closest friends (and 3 girls behind us who just would not stop talking) attended a baseball game in which the San Francisco Giants defeated our Cincinnati Reds 6-1. The game was pretty much over by the fourth inning, but being the dutiful fans my father and I are, we endured the grueling heat so we could root for the Reds to make a comeback (we have the sunburns to prove it). As we sat there and watched Madison Bumgarner make fools out of the Reds hitters, there was a situation that arose from the game that simply puzzled me.

Situation: Down 6-1 with two outs in the bottom of the fifth inning, Roger Bernadina pinch hits for pitcher Mike Leake.

To most baseball fans, I would imagine this seems like a no brainer. I can already hear some of you thinking:
The pitcher has already given up 6 runs, and should be taken out of the game. His slot in the order is up to bat, now should be the perfect time to pinch hit and try to get some offence going!
That is a perfectly reasonable line of thought, and one that I would agree with probably 90% of the time. However, this situation falls into the other 10%

Let me give you some more context: Roger Bernadina has a .176/.323/.235 slashline through 63 PAs this season. Mike Leake has a .120/.120/.280 slashline though 28 PAs. While both players have woefully small sample sizes, I think we can all agree that both are hitting like a pitcher two months into the season, and only one of them should be. Given this situation, why have Bernadina pinch hit for Leake? To me it feels as if Bryan Price is shooting himself in the foot. Not only is he pinch hitting in an extremely low leverage situation, he is giving himself fewer options for when a high leverage situation might come up.

Even though Bernadina has an OBP 200 points better than Leake, he is not a significant upgrade in this particular situation. For the sake of this argument, lets say that Bernadina takes a walk and trot on down to first base. Not only is that incredibly unlikely, since Bumgarner has walked 5% of the batters he has faced this year (he didn't give up a single walk yesterday), but guess who's coming up to bat next with two outs? Mr. .261/.296/.348 Billy Hamilton. Don't get me wrong, I love Billy Hamilton. He's a treat to watch when he gets on base, and he scores a lot of the time he gets on. The problem lies in that he just doesn't get on very often. I would much rather Hamilton lead off an inning (or at least bat with no outs) than bat with two outs.

From my perspective, there seems to be a lot of merit to letting the pitcher go ahead and bat in his lineup spot, then go ahead and bring in a reliever in the next half inning anyway. At this point, the game is still winnable. There are still 3 more innings to play, and it's not impossible to score five or six runs over the span of three innings (the Giants did it that very game). Why not leave an extra bat on the bench for a possible high leverage situation? While Bernadina is not a major upgrade batting over Mike Leake, he would be a major upgrade batting over whichever pitcher relieves Leake after his hypothetical AB.

There could be a hundred different reasons why Leake didn't bat for himself in the fifth yesterday. Maybe he was sore, and either he or Price decided it was better not to risk his health for an AB that would likely mean nothing. Maybe Price really thought Bernadina was the right guy for the situation. He very well may have been right, Price knows his players a lot better than I do. My guess is, however, that Leake was pinch hit for just because that is the thing that happens when a pitcher is being pulled from the game and his lineup spot is up to bat. Perhaps this is a thing that should be looked into further.

6.04.2014

Luyman's Terms #2: A Beginner's Look at Magic: The Gathering

For the uninitiated, Magic: The Gathering (MTG) is a card game where two (sometimes more) players (called Planeswalkers) battle each other using 60+ card decks to bring his/her opponent's life total down to zero (players start at 20 life). There are several ways for Planeswalkers to accomplish this task. They can summon mighty creatures to attack and kill their opponents. They can also cast spells directly on their opponents. They can even call upon other Planeswalkers to aid in their fight. There are five different colors of cards in MTG, and Planeswalkers can use any combination of cards in any combinations of colors to take down their opponents.

While playing the game is fun, I have found myself enjoying other aspects of the game much more. The most fun I have had with MTG is the process of building decks. Deckbuilding might sound simple at first, but spend just a little bit of time looking at a few cards and you will soon see that it is actually quite a daunting task. Which 60 card combination is the best? Currently, there are 1507 cards in standard. That number gets much bigger when you get into the modern and legacy formats. How in the heck is someone supposed to whittle that number down to 60, much less figure out the best 60 card combination?

For me, the answer is simply that you can't, at least not in the amount of time I am willing to put into MTG. The amount of variance involved with MTG is nothing short of astounding. In the month or so I have been playing and deckbuilding, I have been overwhelmed by the amount of cards in the game, and the intricacies of how one card will work one way when it goes up against one card and loses, and will work a completely different way against another card and win. This concept it referred to as the "metagame" among players, and there are many writings and thoughts about how to solve it.

I'd read a few of these thoughts and, as a result, thought I knew what I was doing. To make sure, I went to a local MTG shop (which also happens to be my local comic shop) for a casual day. For those that don't know, casual day at an MTG shop is a day where players just show up and play. Records are kept for the so you can compare results, but they are destroyed at the end of the day as they mean nothing. That last part was a very good thing for me, as I ended up not winning a single match and I finished dead last.

I ran a Red and Green deck with as much burn as I could get in. My thought behind it was that I could be either aggressive or I could control the board depending on the situation. Even with the best draws the deck could give me, it was only great at dealing the first 10-15 points of damage, but always lacked in trying to get in the last five or so. I'm not sure if I was just playing the deck wrong, or it if was just a terrible deck. Regardless, I felt like someone who reads a book about how to play Blackjack and was ready to take on Vegas. Just like that person, I lost, and it didn't feel very good.

Since that first day, I have learned a lot about the game. My decks now focus on doing one thing very well, as opposed to trying to do two or three things somewhat well. As a result, I am now able to win a lot more games (except against Esper Control. Friends don't let friends play Esper Control), and I have a lot more fun playing Magic. So if you're reading this and you happen to be a new Magic player, just remember to have fun with it. You will play people that are better than you and you will lose. The trick is to not let it get to you, and learn from it.

6.02.2014

Luyman's Terms #1: Thoughts on Comics, Card Games, and the Color Purple (just the color, not the Alice Walker novel)

The reader may or may not know this now, but I love numbers. To those of you that know me, this doesn't come as some great shock. My earliest grade school memory is getting ready for math class in my first grade year, and being told that I had to leave the room as one of my teacher's assistants took me by the hand and led me out. As we leaving, my young mind couldn't grasp what was happening, I thought I had done something wrong and was being sent to the Principal's office. Next thing I know, I'm being dropped off in a second grade classroom and was handed a purple workbook. It was explained to me that my teacher thought I was too smart to do the math we were doing in first grade, and that I would be doing second grade math instead.

And so began the scariest hour of school I would ever have.
Older kids? Bigger kids? Smarter kids? Where are all of my friends?
I think that workbook is still in my parent's house somewhere, tucked away with all of my other grade school things. Turns out, that little purple workbook might be the item that has had the most profound impact on my life. From the time I was handed that notebook, until I graduated high school, I was labeled "one of the smart kids."

And I loved it. Almost always, I would feel like the smartest person in the world (or at the very least could trick myself into thinking I was) and I loved (still do) it. Usually, I think, that label goes hand in hand with "nerd," and I went to great lengths to make sure everyone knew I wasn't one. I would never pass up the chance to talk about sports loudly so all of the pretty girls could hear, or to crack a joke at the guy reading Batman, or the people in the corner playing Magic.

Then, once I started college, something changed. I was no longer the smartest person in the room, or even able to convince myself otherwise. As a result, I started going out less, and by the end of my first semester I left UK not sure if I could bring myself to go back since I didn't have many friends. I did of course go back, but I do not look back on my first year of college fondly.

Not much changed over the next year or so, not until my second semester of my Sophomore year when I walked into a comic book store for the first time. I was out with my family for my dad's birthday and we stopped to get something to eat. I had not gotten my dad a present yet, so I wandered into the shop thinking I could buy him some of the comics he used to read growing up. I looked around the shop, and I couldn't stop thinking about just how cool everything looked!

Less than a year later, I have a pull list consisting of around 20 titles a month, my collection is well over 200 books (my current list is 8-12 titles a month, and my current collection is 1171 single issue comics according to my database (that's right, I keep a database for my comics now). Not to mention all of the Trade Paperbacks and Hardcover collections (referred to as graphic novels in book stores and libraries, a term which I happen to hate) I have picked up), and I can talk about a topic, and not feel bad for not being the most knowledgeable about it. The only downside is I can no longer crack jokes at the guy reading Batman. I could still crack jokes about the people in the corner playing Magic though, and I wasted no time in doing so.

Still more time passed, and I found myself allowing myself to become interested in what is being played on the table tops in my comic shop. I had been wanting to try it out for awhile, but there was always something stopping me from giving it a go. I'd always been either too intimidated by either the complexity of the board state, or by the personalities of the players themselves.

My usual route when faced with this problem is to get on Reddit, and find out more about the subject. For the first time, I am faced with a new problem: Magic (actually called Magic: the Gathering or MTG) is a game. You cannot play a game by yourself and get better at it, you need to play with other people. Since I would always be put off by the people I would run into at the comic shop that played, that was enough for me to just never bother trying it in the first place.

About a month ago, one of my best friends finally convinced me to play. We got online and we hastily put together a couple decks and put them to the test. I loved every minute of it. We played four or five games that night, and even though I only won one (and was lucky to win that one) I wanted more. I went out immediately the next day and bought a Born of the Gods intro pack (Death's Beginning) and the next day found out that a new expansion was being released, and bought a Journey into Nyx intro pack (Fates Foreseen).

Over the past month, I have competed in a couple casual tournaments, as well as a couple DCI sanctioned events and I've had a blast doing so. I've built six or seven decks in the process, and have improved them over multiple iterations. The only downside is I can no longer crack jokes at those people in the corner playing Magic. (But at least I don't play in the corner! Right?)

I've made it though this entire post so far without writing the word baseball. I love baseball, my dream job is to be hired by a MLB team to scout players and/or do statistical analysis (I told you, I love numbers). Since I was introduced to MTG, I have watched only one whole baseball game, and only because I happened to be in attendance.

This is obviously an "about me" post, but I don't think it's doing a very good job of telling you about me. I think it's a nice start though, and I hope that you will stick around to learn about me as I learn more about myself. My hope is to post at least every other day, and that soon, there will be different sections/series of posts on topics ranging from sports to comics to technology to whatever new thing I find I enjoy.

I lied when I said I could no longer crack jokes about the guy reading Batman, or the people playing Magic in the corner. I just happen to be the subject now. Please don't laugh too hard.