How many of you have played the old school game Guess Who? For those that haven’t, the premise is simple. It’s a two player game where each player has a board with 24 different people displayed. Both players pick a card from a pile of cards containing the same 24 people. They then take turns asking “yes or no” questions about their opponent’s selected person. Based on the answers they eliminate options until they are left with one. The first player to guess the identity of their opponent’s person wins. I played this game as a kid, and 30 years later I still own it today. It’s a simple, yet entertaining game.
I thought it might be interesting to attempt to incorporate the concept of Guess Who? in a blog about fantasy baseball. Here’s how! In this series, I will post articles in which I compare two players. In the post they will be referred to as “player foo” and “player bar”. Their actual names will never be mentioned. It is your job to try and figure out their true identities. To do this, you are encouraged to ask me as many yes/no questions as you like in the comments section. The first commenter to guess each person will score one point. At the end of the season the person with the most points will win a Razzball T-shirt (special thanks to Jay!).
Here are the rules in brief detail…
You can ask as many questions as you like, but you can only guess once. Your guess needs to include both foo and bar, however if you only get one right, you will get a point. Only the first person to guess a player correctly will get the point. The timestamp of your comment will be used to determine who got it first. If you guess both, you get three points. That’s it.
Meet “foo”. In 2015 foo hit a home run in every 33.277 at bats and finished the regular season with over 90 runs batted in. In contrast, bar smacked a homer once every 20.433 at bats and had just over 100 RBIs. Foo stole seven more bases than bar, but they both had the same number of hits. Bar struck out 32 more times than foo.
Give the following scoring system: RUN (+1), RBI (+1), 1B (+1), 2B (+2), 3B (+3), HR (+4), BB (+1), KO (-1), SB (+1), CS (-1)
Player foo had 423 points and player bar had 396. Bar had an ADP that placed him firmly in the second round. Foo, however, was available until the 14th round in twelve team leagues. Imagine what you could have done with that second round pick had you not taken bar in the second. You could have drafted Josh Donaldson! Drafting foo in the 14th (or 12th/13th to ensure you got him) would have also given your team 10 more runs scored, two extra triples and 11 more singles. Bar had 613 at bats.
Bonus points to anyone that solves this using a NodeJS or Python script.
The identities of foo and bar will be revealed on my next post…
