Blaseball News Network existed for many reasons and to do many things. We started with spitposting on Twitter and grew dramatically to include creative writing, live event reporting, broadcasting, and community engagement. While we didn’t do any of this perfectly, we hope everyone had a good time, and maybe even learned something about reporting and journalism along the way.

Before we get into the submitted blurbs, a moment to reflect and appreciate everyone who helped made BNN incredible. Cal, who started BNN, grew the Beancord, and defined where journalism would exist within the community of Blaseball. To Em, Firewall, Lucky, and the many other wonderful editors we’ve had that have been so critical in how we operated. To the broadcasters and podcasters, JoeyTBadger especially, we see the effort and passion that you had and wish there’d been more we did with you all. To our wonderful writers and contributors, too many of you to name, who had the beautiful creativity and work ethic to make the content that we proudly posted on this site, we exist because of all of you. To all of you, we say thank you for everything.

We’d also like to recognize the different organizations around Blaseball that did so much to organize and structure the community at large. First and foremost, everyone at SIBR (forever pronounced SIBR), not only for their hard work and dedication to data, data crimes, and data knowledge, but also their direct support of BNN, which is too much to list out here as is. The Wiki team that’s gone through so much to help document the cultural event that was Blaseball, their on the spot updating of not just Blaseball itself, but the many stories and sections of player information that the community came up with was incredibly hard work. Praise should also be given to the team communities, Captains, those who managed the Sidecords, and the unrecognized community leaders. We see the effects of the hard work you put in and want to make sure you know that you’re greatly appreciated.

We’ll start with community submissions from across the BNN and Blaseball community, then give our regular contributors a section, and conclude with our staff and former staffs thoughts. Let’s do this!

Dantesheperd – they/them – On Instagram @dante.shepherd – Boston Flowers fan

Blaseball was many, many things to me.

Blaseball was a sports fandom I could care about and not have to be angered by greedy team management.

Blaseball was a community that was given free reign on the creative backstory of all the teams and players – and while that could have ended up disastrous, the community created an overwhelmingly queer space that was welcoming in its own existence.

Blaseball was an individual creative outlet – whether it be making up a backstory about an old man that adopted children and punched moose, or whether it be developing names for all the birds that nested in the ballpark – that in its own way reinforced both fandom and community.

Blaseball was other individual creative outlets – with endless other backstories, art, music, fiction, podcasts – that provided more fandom and community. Blaseball was a team creative outlet – with chants, songs, cliches, curses – that further reinforced fandom and community.

Blaseball was a cultural event that was its own moment, and also could have continued on. Weeds to that.

Blaseball was one of the best sports fandoms I’ve ever experienced. I don’t care that the players were 1s and 0s. They could be legitimately uplifting and just as easily break my heart. And I could feel that along with others.

I will dearly miss blaseball because I no longer have those 1s and 0s to care about, and because those 1s and 0s held together that community. The end of blaseball breaks both the fandom and the community. We will inevitably head off in different directions, and will no longer have those characters and those creative opportunities to reunite us as we were. And that in itself is heartbreaking, despite all the uplifting experiences we had before now.

There is no crying in baseball, but there is plenty to cry about in Blaseball today.

DoctorSawbones – they/them – Boston Flowers fan

I first learned of Blaseball from a friend during the season 3 siesta. The pitch was wild, feverish, and exciting. I was instantly hooked. The conception of SCORES BASERUNNER, who I helped in creating a lot of the characterization of, had to be my favorite moment. I ran their twitter RP for a long time. She was my darling. Those days will be with me forever.

My name is Griffin and I am a communication researcher at a southern California university. Blaseball was something that came about right at the beginning of my career as a researcher and has left an indelible mark on who I am today. I have encountered no other space as queer and collaborative as the fans of the splort, and being exposed to this space has informed my research interests into queer and gender communication.

Blaseball was important. It provided a space where those typically shunned from regular sports spaces could congregate and cheer for players we could imagine to be just like us, however strange and unusual we were. It was a mirror held up against the world to show how outlandish and absurd it was in its horror. It was a place where, no matter where you were from, we could all be unified in one thought: We are ALL love Blaseball.

It was an unfathomable moment. A point in time we will never quite get back. It was incredible. It was unbelievable. It was there, and then it wasn’t. My heart cannot contain the joy and sorrow. There’s just too much.

Matik – he/him – On Twitter @matik452002 – Dallas Steaks and Core Mechanics fan

My friend told me about Blaseball, showed a video of how it works, ended up joining ahead of Season 5 start. Waking up to find out Dallas Steaks pulled off a Sun 2 loop to win the season 16 championship was my favorite Blaseball memory. That and the time when the Steaks made their ballpark the smallest in the league.

Possum – they/any – Yellowstone Magic fan

Blaseball itself never existed. It was never a thing that could be pointed to, it was never an object that could be held. It was only through the relationships between the people, the spaces they occupied, their work, and their love for the game that what we had could come to be. Blaseball started with humble seeds and from the tending of thousands it emerged into something eldritch and wonderful. It truly was a cultural event. I am glad to have participated in it. I will miss it dearly.

As above, so below.

New York Millennials Splortscaster – he/him – On Twitter @NYMSplortscast – NY Millennials and Canada Moist Talkers fan

There is this story. It’s about the existence of a game that was growing in popularity as it continued to build itself up. New rules were added. New mechanics were introduced. Lore was continuously added. Stats were getting wildly out of control. Fans became exhausted and overwhelmed. The game grew and grew until it ultimately consumed itself in a black hole, ending the narrative with a moral. A tale of extreme excess destroying what was built. The developers wanted to create a narrative about how too much would inevitably cause the game to collapse.

The expansion era of Blaseball was oddly a prophecy fulfilled. Blaseball tried to reinvent itself, build something grander in scale. With the third era of Blaseball, the Coronation Era, new rules were added. New Mechanics were introduced. Lore was immediately being added. Stats began to grow. Fans began to get a taste of what was to come.

And then it stopped.

To this day I am thankful it existed. Like many others, it came at a time when folks really needed something to cling onto. It formed communities that will outlast Blaseball itself. It inspired folks to create. Most importantly, it helped folks like myself through difficult times. Seeing the end of something that has been inspiring is not exactly the best thing in the world, but all things must come to an end, good or bad. I am forever grateful it happened when it did. I’ve met wonderful people. I’ve seen some amazing content. I’ve created some questionably good content. I’ve watched communities grow and blossom.

I hate to see you go, Blaseball, I really do. I hope everyone affected finds their next projects fulfilling and the communities they are in continue to blossom.

Misella – she/her – Canada Moist Talkers fan

I discovered Blaseball through an article, I think it was, I honestly can’t recall. It’s also hard to say my favorite moment. Already I know that when I look back on Blaseball what comes to mind isn’t so much all the weird horror and amazing moments and plays, it’s not even really the community – a community so potent it gave me a renewed hope in humanity. What actually comes to mind is having this bizarre thing to check in on every day. To poke around with and watch games. No matter what else was going on it was always there. It belonged to everyone but it was also mine.

Sky – he/him or they/them – On Twitter @TheSkyDomain (18+) – Yellowstone Magic fan

It was once a beautiful place. Many people and animals roaming around in harmony. Bears always not too far away, and neither was moss.

It was once a magical place. You could feel the hum of energy always around and stirring. Energy not able to be perceived.

It was once a lively place. Games were never dull and never tiring, always playing on and on. Sometimes it would not end.

It was once a entertaining place. Jokes always being made, schemes being concocted with “evil” intent. Others looked on with bemusement.

It was once a kind place. There was always a special soul waiting around the corner to help you or cheer you up. You were never alone.

The Yellowstone National Parkpark was all of these things, and even now, at the end of it all… it will still be these things. Even after the game ends, even after we have to say goodbye to what which brought us together, the Parkpark will still live on. We will always welcome new visitors to our lovely park, we will always give them a tour of what is here, and we will always keep laughing. No matter what, the Yellowstone Magic will survive. And we will be here always for anyone who wants to join us. As Above, So Below.

Now is the time though. For us say goodbye to the game we love, but its not really goodbye to me. It is The Eternal Siesta. So go to sleep.

Matt, Battorney at lol – he/they – On Twitter @thekillergm – Seattle Garages fan

I read online article about sometime midway through season 2. Sounded weird and a little funny, so I figured I’d check it out to see what would happen. I was born a Garage and I’ll die a Garage. My favorite Blaseball memories were either the time we killed the Coin or the first time the Garages went to the playoffs. Both were must affairs for lots of folks watching Blaseball during those times. The end of the Expansion Era was like a splorts Ragnarok, a fantastic messy culmination of months of weird mechanics collapsing in on themselves. But it wasn’t quite as personally sweet as watching my beloved underdog Garages finally get their due and step up to the big stages after missing playoffs for the early Discipline Era.

Nenkaii – xe/they – On Twitter @Nen-kaii – Core Mechanics fan

My favorite memory was watching a Blaseball spinoff TTRPG called Blittle League, I still doodle the characters sometimes. Thank you, Blaseball. I was able to join a community that could rally together for a silly little online game. I made some wonderful friends and some wonderful art. I made a tabletop game out of it. I got to pitch in for the stories. I got my friends into it and I watched matches and cheered for my team and it’s really so wonderful to say I was a part of that.

RevolverRossalot – he/him – On Youtube @SixSidedVice – Kansas City Breath Mints fan

Plansma – the unlicensed transfer of Uncle Plasma from the Mills to the Mints, had to be my favorite moment. Both the audacity of using the confluence of have mechanics to make it work, the narrow window of mass coordination and the mad week preparing a video explaining it in time for the election results. Maximum hubris!

Woosh – they/xe – New York Millennials fan

I found Blaseball in early October of 2020, at the age of 16. Still recovering from a dark moment in my life, I dived right in, choosing my home team, the New York Millennials, and becoming acquainted with the game as a whole and the fans that made it what it was. Forever I will be grateful to this game and the people who introduced it to me, because I don’t know where or who I’d be without it. 

Blaseball was an opportunity for me to put my whole creative soul into a project without fear of backlash. The more I involved myself in the game and the mills, the more I felt connected to myself as an artist and as a person. I was able to ignite passions that had laid dormant for years out of sheer love for a team, and through those passions I was led to people who have fundamentally changed my life. From a silly idea in Wyattcord to a discord call in Millscord, I was led to Fourth Strike and The Garages (band), some of the most inspiring people in my life. I continued to be passionate about this game while being able to intertwine it with the things I did in real life. I made my own music for the first time, gaining knowledge and advice from people I will remember forever. I grew into someone that I never thought I could be, and someone I am happy to be, and I could not be more thankful to this community for making me into who I am.

Now, at 18, the dawn of a new stage of my life arising, I sit here and think about everyone who made my life so meaningful for so long. While the fandom doesn’t plan on going anywhere, I still want to take the time to be sappy and give my gratitude to those who deserve it. Thank you to Aubz, Dae and Tim, the wonderful moderators of Wyattcord, my home for the past 2 years, as well as everyone in that sidecord for being my friends. Thank you to Astrid, who encourages me everyday to continue thinking blorbo thoughts, and Louisa, who gave me the invite into just what I needed. Thank you to everyone in Fourth Strike for being such great band mates, collaborators, and friends, through all the ups and downs we’ve faced. Thank you to the mills and the reps of Millscord—Amelia, Carc, Rudy, Antenna, EDVA, Al, Salt, Erobo, and everyone else who has taken the mantle—for being the greatest gayest middling team in the league. Thank you to Solar and Aquelon for introducing this game to me all those years ago. And most of all, thank you to The Game Band for investing in a dream and creating this game. I wish everyone who worked there a bright and successful future; I’m sorry things turned out the way they did. 

The game may be over, but this community will never die.

Ella/Ellightened – she/they – On Twitter @Ellightened – Mexico City Wild Wings, Tokyo Lift, and Seattle Garages fan

I was first introduced to the splort about two years ago by another fan. I remember way back then when someone else mentioned it to me but I never got into it until back in 2021. It’s hard to pick a favorite moment because there’s quite a few, both from the sim itself and the community. Season 24 will always hold a special place in my heart because it encapsulated that chaos of Blaseball that I anticipated so much, especially going back and seeing how other fans of the game reacted as well. It definitely felt like the ‘peak’ of Blaseball’s runtime, at least to me, with how active the community was even afterwards. My favorite community memory has to be the 2022 Blasetober I participated in, that was awesome. I love drawing and Blaseball allowed me to really nurture that passion into something more spectacular, and Blasetober in particular let me draw numerous players who I never thought about at all until then.

It’s sad to see it go out like this. I met so many people through it including my partner, and I doubt I’ll ever stop thinking about Blaseball, the iconic cast, the music, and the fanbase for months to come.

Vaporstrike19 / ChiBlaseball Hydra Head #3 – he/him – On Twitch as Vaporstrike19 – Chicago Firefighters, Hawaii Fridays, Mexico City Wild Wings, Hades Sunbeams, and Baltimore Crabs fan

I think I discovered Blaseball through Twitter art and general zeitgeist. My favorite moment was almost certainly the cursed lunchables (I am the lunchable admin) or the Onions. Both are just, a weird way of our community coming together. Oh, and of course our Championship win!

GriffinsTreehouse – he/him – On Twitter @GriffsTreehouse – Miami Dale and Baltimore Crabs fan

In 2021, when I cosplayed The Anchor, was my favorite moment. I had really enjoyed the Roundups and decided it would be a fun way to kill some lockdown time. Then, lo and behold, I received a message from the Roundup Twitter: I was being invited to have a small guest spot on the next Roundup as the “Backup Anchor”. A deeply surreal call with Quinns (a longtime nerdy hero of mine) later, and I filmed it in my kitchen, my mother holding the camera. Being neuro divergent and deeply hyper fixated on the game, I was already deep in the community. I had made friends, and found so much joy in such a weird and tricky time – especially since I had just figured out I was trans at the top of COVID, and Blaseball was one of the first big, largely queer communities I had been in.

Then, the night of the Roundup’s release happened.

I felt like the people around me in the community had lifted me up and crowd surfed me. It was joyous. I had gotten to play a tiny role in something that meant, and will mean, more to me than almost any other piece of media – and I had been embraced by this wonderful, weird, vibrant, nerdy community. Other highlights include staying up until 2am my time to watch my beloved Dale win (lose) the Underchampionship, sitting on my lunchbreak with my best friend in our matching Dale/Tigers jackets after I dragged her in too (in blatant disregard of our school uniform), and screaming with hundreds of people on Discord as Parker was released. Blaseball changed my life, and I will be forever grateful to the incredible people who made it, and the entire community of fans.

Thevdude – he/him – Moist Talkers, Miami Dale, and LA Unlimited Tacos fan

A friend introduced me to Blaseball, we used to joke about a text based baseball adventure, zork style, and then got the next best thing. The biggest one for me (and many talkers) was when we got noticed and called out directly by the monitor! It was such a small thing, but also THE BIGGEST THING IN THE WORLD. I honestly still get a little bit of goosebumps thinking about it!

The Blaseseer – any/all – Yellowstone Magic fan

It’s hard to properly explain how much Blaseball meant to me. It’s hard to put into words how it feels knowing it’s gone. But I don’t think Blaseball will ever truly go away until we forget about it. Blaseball is a cultural phenomena, and even with the sim gone, culture lives on. I know Blaseball will live on, somehow, in some different form.

Being a fan of the Yellowstone Magic inspired me to explore a lot of things I wouldn’t have otherwise, most of all divination. As the Blaseseer, I would do a lot of tarot card readings and interpretations as the seasons went on, and even bet on games following the whims of these cards.

In honor of Blaseball’s past, I look to the future. Here is my final reading:

The Hanged Man
The Magician
The Chariot

Anonymous – it/its or she/her – Ohio Worms and Baltimore Crabs fan

I was first introduced to Blaseball by a Twitter mutual at the start of the Expansion Era – they kept posting about it and eventually I had a look and got hooked. Day 99 and what came after of Season 24. 2021, for a series of personal reasons, wasn’t a good year for me and the Blaseball community really helped me get through it.

Sitting in a call in the Blaseball server as the Expansion Era ended, going from the despair of everything that happened prior to the profound upliftment of everything that happened after the Black Hole (Black Hole) nullified Blaseball has stuck with me ever since.

Shield Captain – he/him – On Twitter @ShieldCaptain54 – Core Mechanics fan

When asked how Shield Captain discovered Blaseball, he commented “Bold of you to assume blaseball didn’t find me, funny how the game works huh?”. His favorite memory was Kelvin Drumsolo being on every base at the same time. What a wonderfully jank inning.

Blake “Basard” Georgias – any/all – Atlantis Georgias fan

I found Blaseball through the podcasts on the Moonshot Podcast network (the Orange Groves at the time), that led me to start listening to garages the band music over the first grand siesta, and eventually join in expansion. My favorite memory in Blaseball has to be the moment that the Georgias got a replica of Chorby Soul and used it combined with our Light Handed modifier to rocket up to the top of the depth chart and discover Blaseball 0 and the blagonball, on Maincord we had folks from the entire league in our watch channel watching the event as it happened.

Rebaia – she/her – On Twitter @STARSLNE – Core Mechanics, Boston Flowers, Yellowstone Magic, and Tokyo Lift fan

I’d like to thank TGB for all that blaseballs done for me. I’ve made friends, had plenty of great memories, gotten inspired to work on more creative projects of my own, etc.

I became a fan of Blaseball right before season 16, as a member of the Flowers. I didn’t entirely understand everything that was happening at that time, as I assume is a common sentiment about Blaseball as a whole, but I still enjoyed it nonetheless. as seasons went on I began understanding more and more, becoming exponentially more interested in what I initially brushed off as some “weird browser simulation game.” while that may still be an apt description, Blaseball is so much more than those four words. Blaseball was weird, Blaseball was strange, Blaseball was sometimes just nonsense, but Blaseball was always community in some way.

By season 20 I was fully taken in by Blaseball, moving to the mechanics sometime prior to this and growing attached to the characters. I began getting more active in the community, partaking in discussions outside of my small circle and hanging out in sidecords more often. I got inspired to work on my creative skills more seriously. I began considering learning art, I started taking my writing seriously, i started trying to learn music. I can only thank Blaseball
for all of this, and I’m really not sure where I’d be without it.

Blaseball will always have an impact on me and my work, whether consciously or not. I’d be upset with myself for not taking interest in it sooner if I hadn’t gotten so much from it even from the relatively short time I was there. I’ve felt a lot of feelings from it ending, but I think there’s something positive to be said about it too. The whole community is together once again, even if united over a loss. It’s nice to see how many others it’s impacted, and I hope
whoever is reading this feels the same.

It’s sad, it’s frustrating, it’s discouraging, it’s aggravating, it’s any number of negative adjectives. But, on the other hand, it’s inspiring. A project this ambitious, started in the pandemic with many odds stacked against it still managed to gain a following this passionate and large.

Cya around, have a great timezone everybody.

Limabees – he/him – Chicago Firefighters fan

A friend I’ve lost touch with found Blaseball and introduced me to it, just after the introduction of the discipline era. They also mentioned the Firefighters before I chose them and they always felt like a perfect fit. All together. All captains.

The resurrection of Jaylen was definitely my favorite event in Blaseball. It all felt so fresh and nobody had any idea what the rules were or even if there were rules, we just wanted to do it to see if it worked. And oh boy did it work. I love all the coming ways that people would work together to defy gods and make a difference, but there’s something about the innocent desire to fuck shit up on purpose that I have always loved about the community. Yeah, open the book, yeah resurrect the dead, see what happens, see what it’ll let you get away with, see what goes wrong. There was no greater organization behind it, as much as I’m aware, just a bunch of people seeing the path of maximum chaos and diving right in.

Kaye, on behalf of the Spies Bureau of Unity – any/all – Houston Spies fan

Blaseball is dead. Long live the spirit of Blaseball.

Back in late 2020, we began running online versions of the IWW’s Organizer Training 101, a class previously taught exclusively in-person. A few proper IWW organizers in the Spies discord got it started, and word traveled fast enough that people from multiple teams and multiple unions got involved. It might seem odd to tie in unionization and workplace struggles to the bizarre and immaterial world of Blaseball, but really, it just felt like the next logical step to us.

Blaseball started out chaotic, a world of fear and uncertainty. Fans could do little but put in their votes and hope their handful of terrible options would lead to some small improvement in this hellish world…

Then people started making plans. Plans that involved moving hundreds to thousands of fans to act in coordination. Plans that required one specific player to hold at number fourteen on the ever-chaotic idolboard. Plans that changed on the spot, or failed outright, or backfired, or succeeded without achieving anything meaningful. All for a few plans that would go on to become legendary victories. We struggled against all powerful forces from on high, against rules made up just to stifle us, and against the obstacles brought on by the apathy of the thousands who could not be stirred to action.

Blaseball always felt to us like the story of collective action and hope in a universe that felt like it had so little hope to run on. It was no wonder it rang true to the world around us and the struggles we faced every day. It was about stubbornly believing, no matter how often we were told otherwise, that we could make the world better, together.

We ran five total organizer trainings, and almost purely by accident, Season 24 coincided with our fifth, which we advertised by sponsoring the season itself. We were warned that this season would be very unusual, but we couldn’t have guessed how well it would fit. As we watched the finale play out, all the fear and hope and defiance rolling together made the perfect backdrop for the training; and when the teams stood together to charge down the Boss, it felt like a better sponsor tie-in than any we could have suggested.

As Blaseball went on hiatus and in-person trainings resumed, our members slowly got involved in other work. After a brief attempt to regroup for the coronation era fell through, the end of Blaseball marks our official end as well.

Our crew is proud of what we did, and as hopeful as ever for the future. Though we can’t personally train you anymore, we know there are groups all around the world who can help. If you have a nearby IWW branch, we strongly recommend getting involved and looking into attending an in-person Organizer Training 101. If you do not, make do with what resources you can find, whether that’s a different union, or the friends you already have around you. We hope we helped, we hope we changed this strange and beautiful world a bit for the better, and we hope you can take all the lessons you learned from Blaseball, all the passion and hope and unity, and bring it to the world around you.

Caelumsthelimit – xe/xem – On Tumblr @saelumsthelimit – Atlantis Georgias fan

I discovered Blaseball from a friend. My favorite memory was when the Georgias and the Ohio Worms both got Chorbies and shot up and down. The Worms broke the gate and the Georgias went to the desert and everyone was screaming in the Georgias channels.

CosmicDuctTape – he/his/him – On Twitter @YesIAmMackenzie – Core Mechanics and Canada Moist Talkers fan

At times I find it hard to believe that I have been participating in the cultural event of Blaseball since season 2, and yet…

I will remember trying to make sense of this game, how to bet and actually earn enough money and tickets, these solar eclipses, these rogue umpires, all these fiery deaths.

I will remember my time with the Canada Moist Talkers, chosen because I’m Canadian and naturally there was only one Canadian team, and how I found myself rooting for Eugenia Garbage and Polkadot Patterson, and coming to love my best friend Richmond Harrison – in my heart he’s still a Talker.

I will remember the discussions about necromancy, and the excitement when the community pulled it off – followed of course by neither the first nor the last time we would experience “consequences”.

I will remember Day X… I’m not sure I will ever forget Day X. Day X remains one of Blaseball’s best surprises: an idea so incredibly bonkers and yet they managed to pull it off.

I will remember when the Core Mechanics descended, and suddenly there was this neat team with an incredible name and I wasn’t feeling disconnected and drifting away from Blaseball anymore.

I will remember the early days of Core Mechanics worldbuilding, filling out and creating this fantastical realm where the only agreed-upon constant was that it was down, no matter where we were.

I will remember that even with the intent of an aesthetically maximalist creative inclusive community, that there were people who did not feel their place could be in the Core, and I hope they found their people elsewhere, and I hope they would still be welcomed Down.

I will remember the coordination that led to events like the Zo-Yo, and becoming the first non-Crabs Breach team to win a Championship (and then we managed to build back and win another one).

I will remember all the times our team was torn asunder, including the election that left our beloved team nigh-unrecognizable… and every time, amidst the grief, “We Can Fix This”.

I will remember listening to We All Lift Together over and over and over, committing its words to memory, joining in the chanting, starting the chanting, playing this song while I was actually on strike and walking the picket line.

I will remember that we made the Core this mysterious, unknowable, outright dangerous locale, and then within it we built a community that said “we will learn what we can, we will learn how to protect ourselves, and we will write it all down and we will teach each other and we will help each other grow and make something good here”.

I will remember the connections I have made, the games we have played, the shows we have watched, the media recommendations we have shared and bonded over, the jokes we have told, and none of that can be taken from me and none of that is going anywhere.

Gear up. Core down. Mechs Good. Forever.

Eight Giant/Sparkle Emoji Mort – he/him – Yellowstone Magic fan

Just delighting in the absurdity of the system before the plot started was really amazing. I just straight up talked people’s ears off about it and the sheer sense of potential there was. In terms of more major memories – seeing people band together to advocate for the Tacos shelling their entire pitching line was just buoyant, honestly. The effort people put into the propaganda, and checking the website regularly to see how it was going… and I ended up writing an essay for my class about the narrative building that went with the number 14 revival.

Crownedpigeon – he/him – On Twitter @Crownedpigeon – Miami Dale and Seattle Garages fan

Blaseball gave a trans kid below the bible belt hope. Blaseball gave a trans kid in Florida hope.

I started to step into the game during this past summer, I watched Fall Balls between reading news articles and reading legislation. I got two seasons of an incredibly broken site and they were spectacular. I cheered for double spillovers and I ran wild in the immensely fun, immensely broken Sim that kept bringing us together in these games.

Then we went onto Siesta. Then I began writing and drawing again – crafting and creating over a shared love of this game. I still fought. I still lived my real life, scared and angry all the same. I wrote about queer and trans joy. I saw queer and trans joy. I got to see this community so amazingly queer and transgender and beautiful. I got to see a community about sports, something that made me nervous about inclusion (despite my own love of real sport) welcome me with open arms.

The Miami Dale, The Seattle Garages, and every team in this league brought me hope. Keep fighting and keep your head up. In the place of fighting against gods fictionally, we will continue to fight against oppressive power structure in our real world. Radical acceptance, radical change, brought on by us. Together. You got this. We all do.

Many teams, one league. See you on the flip side.

Slimebo – she/her – On Twitter @CoolSwagWoman – Canada Moist Talkers and Ohio Worms fan

I’m honestly so destroyed by the ending of Blaseball being like this. Massive thanks to basically everyone on the Ohio Worms, I enjoyed reading through your messages (Even if I was barely present in the community) Thanks to Alt League Blaseball & Ludoplane, Both of those servers are great and have great communities around them. Credits to anyone who interacted with me on Twitter in the expansion era. Blaseball meant a lot to everyone and I’m sorry it had to end like this. Hopefully the future is better for all of us. Hopefully I’ll see y’all around.

Dimitri – he/him – Hellmouth Sunbeams fan

I got started with Blaseball during the Coffee Cup. As usual, a friend got into it and dragged the rest of us along. I fell in love with the concept immediately.

Scouring the wiki after the Cup, I knew I wanted to find a team I would be happy with. Sure, it was possible to switch later if I so desired, but I knew that I would have more fun if I found one that spoke to me and stuck with them through thick and thin, and sure enough one presented itself to me. The Hellmouth Sunbeams. As a native resident of Southern Utah my entire life, and having been a fan of Welcome to Night Vale for some years prior, this strange otherworldly desert spoke to my heart and soul. The strangeness and danger of the landscape surrounding the Hellmouth, the adaptations residents found themselves undergoing that helped them survive, the unnatural pull towards Home that every Hellmouth resident feels, even the distinction between Archery and Bowyeurism stuck deep into my heart as something I immediately cherished. I hadn’t been around when the lore was written, and I’m certain I never learned all of it, but it immediately felt like home. Perhaps I too was starting to feel that strange pull, destined to become a part of Hellmouth as Hellmouth became a part of me.

I was never very active in community spaces. Blasecord, the Solarium, the Starburst Alliance, all of them simply felt too large. Too frightening. I’ve never done well in massive group chats, so I hung back and lurked, placed them deep down on my server list and only checked in on occasion. I’d see how the voting was going, what strategies everyone felt was appropriate. I’d drop in on the watch parties and hope they wouldn’t crash my computer when something absolutely monumental happened, and that was about it. But my friends and I put together our own space, a single channel in our private group Discord where we’d watch and chat about the game. We spent plenty of time rooting for teams to win in the playoffs, fondly regarding our respective teams as rivals and allies, and talking about how Richmond Harrison was our best friend. It was some of the best times I’ve ever had, and even from our corner the sense of community and mystery was palpable.

I’m sad to see Blaseball go, and I don’t think I’ll ever be quite the same. For the last couple of years I’ve been happily proclaiming my place of residence as “Hellmouth, Utah” on various websites, and a part of me will never leave it. I will always fondly remember the stories that happened before I signed up and the stories I watched unfold before my eyes side-by-side as the most fun I’ve ever had on the internet. I doubt anything will ever truly fill this void again, but I’ll keep an eye around regardless. This community is nothing but resilient, and someday someone will open up another league that will get some deserved attention, whether it’ll Blaseball or some other splort.

This isn’t goodbye, it’s only goodbye for now. I believe we’ll all see each other again someday soon, and when that day comes we’ll all be celebrating together. For now, go to sleep, it’s time to rest. And when you rise again always remember that no matter where you are, you can stare into the sun and know that I’m there beside you, staring into the very same star.

Simon Mangomancer – he/him and vil/vils/vilself – Miami Dale, Mexico City Wild Wings, Chicago Firefighters fan

It’s been so long I don’t remember, but I probably discovered Blaseball from reddit? it was the first place I joined the community for sure. My favorite moment was the season 7 semifinals. I arrived at the tail end of season 7 and watching that zero to hero story in real time made me lose my mind. So sorry to Miguel Wheeler whose death I prophesied/caused.

Mandible/Mette – she/it – On Twitter @Stemandstomata – Hellmouth Sunbeams fan

God, where do I even begin. When I first saw the announcement I couldn’t believe it – how do you even begin to process that the constant eldritch hum in the background of your life for the past 2 1/2 years has finally gone silent? Blaseball was a lot of things. It was something to look forward to through the tedium of life, it was a mess that took up far too much of my mental energy. It was transient and fleeting, but its spirit will remain for me as long as I live. It sits at the top of the greenest tree, it sends out an aroma of unrefined love… Blaseball was my favorite tinnitus and I’ll miss it dearly.

Thank you to The Game Band for making it worth it even if it didn’t exactly end as anybody had planned. Rest in violence.

ThatWannabeCat – she/it/aer/fir/+ – Philadelphia Pies fan

HitchBOT (https://twitter.com/hitchBOT) is one of those stories that gets brought up when you want to trash talk the US. More specifically if you want to trash talk Philadelphia–a common pastime in Western, Pennsylvania (PA). One day in the Pies discord channel, a discussion about Philadelphia and Philadelphia’s behavior came up prompted by an article. The article itself alluded to the fate of poor HitchBOT, and how cruel Philly was to it. 

A member of the Pies of course had this to offer:

“HitchBOT was a cop and got what was coming to em”. 

To say there was no shame in his words was inaccurate–in fact he was prideful. The quiet kind of pride associated with stock phrases like ‘job well done’ and ‘dinners on me tonight’. There was nothing to hide, and everything to boast about how his city rid the world of yet another cop–this time in cute robot form.

It was this moment that really solidified the Pies’ love for their city for me. The team had previously made it clear from the way their city affected the lore, the team culture, and even the choice to focus more on being a Philadelphia team over a baking team that they loved their city. But it was this moment the local Pies’ love for their own home town infected me too. 

I came to Blaseball because I heard about Jessica Telephone, and evil Peanut gods, but ended up on a sport heavy team that was more about winning than it was creating the deepest and most complex lore. And during the course of my 18 season tenure, I was slowly converted into admiring a city that I had only been in for a 11pm emergency train ride home. 

The Pies never wanted Philly admiration to be an exclusive club, but rather something they wormed into your head till you counted Philly as something like a second home. I know I wasn’t the only one to express that, at least one other member of the Pies admitted to visiting Philly because of the Pies. So while there were plenty of others in simulation, and in community moments that are going to stick with me for years to come, it’s how the Pies got me to appreciate a city I’d never really been in and how infectious their love for Philly sports and culture was.

Oh and death to HitchBOT. That cop had it coming.

Cynthia1960 – She/her/they – Hades Tigers fan

I didn’t officially become a Stripe of the One Tiger until late season 7, but had been following the splort since my wife found it back in season 3 (it might have even been late season 2, but my memory is a sieve). One of the first things I experienced as a full Stripe was Ruby Tuesday. Talk about a baptism in the worst parts of the Underworld, that would be that. There are so many awesome memories I’ve had over these almost three years and it was only enhanced by the collective explosion of art, music, storytelling, and good humor from all around the fandom. The other two biggest memories I have are the season 11 league finals against the Sunbeams where they colluded with black holes and suns to keep us from ascending and break up TIGERBEAMS, and then the full on mad rush at the end of season 24 where we ambushed the Hall of Flame, helped charge the mound to slag the Coin, and then finally rushed madly to the relative safety of the Vault to escape the expanding black hole.

Yeah, I know the Tigers’ motto is Never Look Back, but I think we’ve earned this one. Thank you everyone.

Bogle – he/him – Core Mechanics fan

My friends referenced Blaseball and I dove head first into making new friends with the Mechs. My favorite memory was attending the Bee Wedding as a hip wader wearing starfish with an unbird companion.

LionessElise – any/all – Dallas Steaks fan

Ya know, some of us were talking a few months ago in some Steakscord or other, and I keep thinking about how the only thing that really explains it all to me is that somebody got the time arrow reversed. So the stuff happening this year was actually the beginning of Blaseball, and then the recent stuff was the early not-really-ready-for-beta stuff, and the first year of Blaseball? That was the pinnacle, the real thing, the thing that captured all our hearts. But the time arrow was going the wrong way. When I said this in Twitch chat, somebody responded that it was beautiful, because it means that the Universe knew when we most needed pinnacle Blaseball, and gave it to us.

Slime – it/its – On Twitch as Footcurtis – LA Unlimited Tacos fan

My best friend since third grade introduced me to Blaseball. My favorite memory was Everyone holding hands as the Black Hole took our teams! It was the first time I got to feel Blaseball as a community, and I haven’t looked back since.

Kidror – they/them – On Twitter @Kidror19 – Boston Flowers and Kansas City Breath Mints fan

Coming off an intense finals against the Hellmouth Sunbeams the Boston Flowers are well positi- wait. 

This is not my beautiful power rankings. 

This is not my beautiful season recap.

Letting the days go by, was easier with Blaseball. I stumbled onto it at a much needed point in my life, my mother had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in the space of the few days between my birthday and hers, in March of 2020. 

I found Blaseball in November of that same year, the night before the Coffee Cup and it was love at first sight. There was never anything like it, and there may never be again.

I started writing for BNN pretty much as soon as the Expansion Era began. I recapped every season from the perspective of my beloved Boston Flowers and participated in the power rankings with accuracy and precision (sometimes). Sadly I never had the chance to write for my beloved Breath Mints.

I’ll miss this place, the people, and this game terribly, but at least my aim is getting better. People always ask us “where is BNN?” and it’s time to tell you the truth, BNN is in your heart.

Now, for the last time, I will sign off, and for probably the last time Google Docs will tell me I mean baseball when I type Blaseball. Yep, right on time.

Goodnight Sweet Blaseball, I love you.

Agent Kit – ey/em – On Twitter @agent_kit_ – Houston Spies fan

I discovered Blaseball thanks to a Polygon article from season 2, and loved the Donia Bailey voting collective. Blaseball was a huge part of my life for two years, and was my first introduction to the stress that comes from your Team losing in the finals. I really don’t know where I’ll go from here, but I will for sure think of this time fondly. Thanks for all your hard work TGB, rest in peace, for once, not violence.

IfhBiff – he/him – Ohio Worms and Hades Tigers fan

I’ve thought about this for several days and I couldn’t quite decide what direction I should go with this. I mostly wanted to say what so many others have said. But then it kind of hit me the other day… Blaseball gave me back my professional pride. In a environment where so many other fans have spoken about this community helping blossom their passion for artistic endeavors (and I know this is an “art is subjective” topic as well, but not the point here), I’m here to say that Blaseball helped get my career back on track, gave me renewed confidence, success, and helped me find my mentoring voice that has allowed me to be where I am today.

I am older than the average Blaseball fan. On my 50th birthday, I was an out of work Data Engineer, with job prospects being just terrible during the pandemic. My last job was supposed to be my “last job”; I had visions of being there for another decade and then deciding when to retire. But the last few years of that company ripped apart my soul; I went from being an early employee who helped shape the way the database and entire data process was being to a castaway; I was “sold” with a team that was considered dispensable to another company who immediately made me feel worthless and unskilled.

But with Blaseball came SIBR. And with SIBR came the very early days of the Datablase. And the Datablase needed a volunteer. And hey, I know SQL…

I became the primary architect of that Datablase for the entirety of its life cycle. I worked with so many other brilliant SIBR Data Witches, but also eased many, many others into the world of SQL and data querying. It turned out I wasn’t so unskilled after all. And when two separate people sent me beautiful messages on Discord to thank me for all the help; how their time using the Datablase helped hone their data skills to the point it helped them gain employment, I realized that hey, I may be OK with this mentoring thing.

My current position started during the first Grand Siesta. I am now the manager of a growing, brilliant team of Data Engineers; two of whom are essentially just starting out in this industry. And I help them. And they also do amazing work, just like the Data Witches do. And when I wrote a matching algorithm that used hashing to dramatically improve a process, the CTO sought me out to praise it.

I’m here to admit to all of you: it was based on how the SIBR Datablase checked for changes in any player stats.

Also: As great as that felt, I still felt more pride when The Anchor used my Chorby Short data during the Round Up.

Thank you Blaseball, and thank you all.

Dargo – any pronouns – Houston Spies, Hades Tigers, and Kansas City Breath Mints fan

Well well well, if it isn’t the end of the road, I don’t have anything very witty or interesting to say. I loved most of my time in Blaseball, I hated some of it, and to all the BNN readers who enjoyed my power rankings blurbs – thank you. See y’all on the other side.

Mal/Kae – they/them – Yellowstone Magic, Hellmouth Sunbeams, Hades Tigers, Data Witches, and Carolina Queens fan

What does it truly mean for players to have been Released? What does it mean for the Observed to become unobservable; for the Pillars of this captivating, electrifying game to finally crumble? What will become of this vast universe that we pulled ourselves into / that we pulled into *us* / that may leave our bodies unmarred but has left a coffee-colored stain upon our souls; drippings from the dredges of a brew that’s labeled Past, Present, and Potential?

We here at BNN will never know. This is the unfortunate truth of the Blaseball News Network: without any Blaseball, there will not be any News. 

There will, however, be a Network. There will always be a Network; that is the same as it ever was. Blaseball was never just a game. Blaseball was about connection. The connecting of ideas, of consequences, of art and data, of need and fulfillment, of name and meaning. And no matter what happens, we will always, *always* have our Network. 

Dear reader, from whenever you’re currently swimming in the timestream: I hope that wherever life leads you, you can carry with you the knowledge that you are not walking it alone. You have been a part of something great; something much bigger than yourself, much bigger than all of us, and yet made so much better by your contribution. I will gladly consider myself a part of your Network, bound with you all in camaraderie by the shared experience of the epic highs and lows of Internet League Blaseball.  

Thank you for everything. I am so grateful to have been a part of this and to be given the chance to share my thoughts with everyone one last time. My life, like so many of yours, was changed by being a part of this game. I am coming out of all of this so much more fulfilled than I was going into it. No matter how much time passes, the impact of this phenomenal community improv game will never be able to be denied or forgotten.  I could go on for pages upon pages, but in the end, all there really is to say is: 

We have participated in the cultural event of Blaseball.

Clip Clipperson – it/its – On Twitter @clip_ny – NY Millennials, LA Unlimited Tacos, and Hawaii Fridays fan

Well, it’s been a time, Blaseball Fans. It’s been a pleasure reporting on the game for you all, even and especially while it was on Siesta. While it was often quite time consuming to recap and keep track of, I wouldn’t really have it any other way if it meant more people could keep up with often confusing and complex game mechanics and narrative. I hope
while Blaseball was running that I could help, in any way I could. I really appreciate all the wonderful people I’ve met along the way, from friends of multiple years now to those I briefly run into on Twitter. My Twitter account will remain online for those who wish to look back on posts and updates and whatnot.

I want to give special thanks to:
● The Society for Internet Blaseball Research, whose impressive and helpful community-made tools have allowed me to report to the best of my abilities and how central to this community their work is.
● The Blaseball Wiki and its recordkeepers for their tireless efforts at keeping the game’s history and community in a helpful place, free from the shackles of larger corporate companies.
● The various splortscasters, streamers, and podcasters for creating an exciting environment of discussion and camaraderie in making the game feel more alive.
● The various artists, writers, musicians, and hundreds of other creatives for inspiring the community with their work and reviving my own creative exploits through sheer awe.
● The Blaseball News Network, for encouraging everyone they could with excellent insight and creativity, as well as expanding my platform to better serve you all.

Let’s go Blaseball community. Love da Blaseball community.

Spludge237 – they/them – Mexico City Wild Wings fan

This is my final column from the Bucket, because the Bucket is closing, because the Wild Wings are closing, because the league is closing. Is been a joy to cover the Wings beat for BNN, and I am sad that it is gone. 

The Wings slogan, Pase Lo Que Pase, translates as “Whatever happens, happens”. And friends, so much happened. Writers wrote, artists drew, musicians composed and performed, statisticians modelled, researchers published research, pollsters surveyed, podcasters orated, and more besides. But most preciously, people found communities, where they could talk and share and feel together while cheering on their band of survivors of a blood sport and watching numbers go up.

To my fellow Wings fans, we’ll always have season 7, even if you personally weren’t around for it. To the BNN editorial team, thanks for making my words more coherent.

Pase Lo Que Pase. Anything can happen. Go and happen somewhere.

Graveerror/Nate – he/him – On Twitter @graveerror – Yellowstone Magic fan

Logan Rodriguez first joined the ILB as a pitcher for the Yellowstone Magic, in Blaseball Beta. He was not a very special pitcher- He was not very good, though, nor was he really the worst. Logan was the closest thing to a ‘trick’ pitcher Magic had, in a game that didn’t know what a trick was. He plagued the team’s rotation, through incinerations, reverbs, feedbacks, and not once did he ever move from his position. That is, until season 16, where he was reverberated onto the lineup. Unremarkable. Prone to playing so far above his stars, that his failures hurt so much more. Really, nothing special about him at all.

When I first started getting serious about being a writer for the Yellowstone Magic team, there was a reputation that preceded me that I wanted to try and keep separate. Call it an obsession, if you will. But Logan Rodriguez was a thorn in my side, and one of the reasons that, despite the arms length relationship I had with blaseball and its apophenia, I still believed some part of it was sentient. Logan Rodriguez was sentient. I am almost certain about that, and if there was ever a time that Logan Rodriguez was incinerated, I swore I would write an article about him and his oddball playing.

Logan Rodriguez is dead, and in a way, he took Blaseball with him. I suppose he got the last laugh, in the end, which is why I write this final submission for him. Somewhat.

Logan Rodriguez rustled up an astounding 1397 BBs across his astounding career – 4th in the League. He averaged 9.61 Hits per 9 Innings, and had a career WHIP of 1.563. He never once had a positive win-loss ratio as a pitcher… for the Magic. In fact, his only positive win-loss ratio was in Season 19, when he had been exchanged to the Jazz Hands. They loved him and his silly pitching so much that they had to send him back.

What truly stood out was his fax-defying Season 23 performance, wherein he had been brought to the mound from our shadows after Fax Machines were ratified. He proceeded to lose every single game from there on, without ever going back into the Shadows. That season, Magic won the Underbracket, and became the Eternally Reigning Underchampions once Blaseball was nullified in the end of Season 24.

Did I mention that during his time as a Magic batter during Season 17, Logan Rodriguez topped the league grind rail total score leaderboard? Him, Bevan Wise, James Mora, and Bonk Jokes were the offensive core of the Magic 8 Ball. There was also the Season 11 postseason, where Logan Rodriguez tactically lost to the Steaks, which opened us up for the chance to pit Curry Aliciakeyes against the Moist Talkers’ PolkaDot Patterson (our best pitcher vs theirs), which led to a sweep against the Talkers to go to the Mild League Conference Finals.

Can you believe he won* his game against the Garages, too, that postseason?
Ed Notes: He didn’t even play

Blaseball gave back what you put into it. I think that’s what drew me in and kept me here. The things you valued, the players you loved, the mechanics you hated- Everything about it felt as if it was made to resonate, to draw some sort of reaction from you. The community that gathered around it helped to strengthen, change and evolve these feelings, and expanded your experiences to match those around you. I learned so much about myself through Blaseball. I learned so much about other people. I learned a lot about fluid dynamics, actually. And now, even with it over, I feel like I’ve still found out something about me that I know will stay with me forever.

Being good… Being bad… Neither of those things mattered that much to me. What mattered, was being dramatic. And as long as you can find the drama in a situation, you can find some measure of enjoyment. I’m going to miss the Blaseball. I’m going to miss the Yellowstone Magic. And I’m going to miss BNN. But most of all, I’m going to miss Logan Rodriguez.

At the very least, I got some pretty good friends out of all this.

Ace Analyst – he/they – On Twitter @AnalystAce – LA Unlimited Tacos fan

My favorite moment was bringing Luckey/-J. aboard Blaseball Prospectus. It was a blast and a fun challenge to co-run our slice of Blaseball Twitter. That, or forcing my friend to watch the Semi-Centennial unfold with me at a Panera! Basically, all the little connections it helped me make.

Setting out to write a Blaseball eulogy was not something I planned to do for a while, and it stumped me at first. I already got to write my sappy thank yous in a (probably too long) Twitter thread when I retired from my beloved Blaseball Prospectus after the Expansion Era, and nobody needs to read that again. (But of course, another thank you to you all.) And disappointment is something I’m sure will be expressed plenty over the next few weeks.

But what I would like to write about, and something that made Blaseball so miraculous, was the humanity of it. Blaseball was a simulation, which, as a lover of facts and statistics and happenings, excited me. But I knew that this game, this idea, this community, was special when the Peanut first appeared onscreen. It was almost an afterthought at first, a little nothing — but, as we often did, the Fans latched on, reacting with laughter and fear. And then, it was something. 

I loved the way Blaseball built somethings out of nothings: in a game with no official records, SIBR built a web of numbers (going up, of course). Teams built identities, headcanons, chants, and emotions from a sea of names and stars. A league of reporters emerged and collaborated (on a platform that doesn’t make it easy!) and spawned the hilarity of Late Night Blaseball Twitter. And a personal favorite was when a certain blallclub took my offhand remark and made a whole damn slogan out of it.

In the end, this silly little eldritch horror roguelike baseball simulator could have easily been lost in a sea of online experiences. But this little corner of community made it one of the biggest somethings I’ve ever been a part of.

Goodbye. Rest in Violence. The Breath Mints.

Panorama Dan – he/him – On Twitter @PandaSunbeams – Hellmouth Sunbeams Estimator and fan

This post has gone through a lot of revisions in the last few days.

For a while, it was a high concept Fight Club related piece with lines like “I am Dan’s Journalistic Integrity” that ended with us watching the world crumble while I said “You met me at a very weird time in my life.”

For a while, it was an even higher concept piece of Panorama Dan interviewing players on various teams. But when it comes down to it, there’s only one thing that I really need to say here in the hallowed halls of BNN.

Thanks for letting me do so many shitposts of varying complexity. Whether it was discussing Dayquil Chicken in Enby Baby Jail, constantly commenting on the Sunbeams insane single-minded batting, drowning myself in the hubris of being the only person allowed to Estimate the Beams, or doing my SHARKOUT or All-Stars articles, BNN and Blaseball have allowed me to be more creative than I ever have in my life.

I’ll never stop staring into the sun, and I’ll find the Fishblades and the Goncharovs someday. Thanks for everything.

Ophelia, fae queen – she/her – On Twitter @Ophiedrowning – Dallas Steaks fan

Blaseball is dead, long live Blaseball. If someone were to tell me that some of the most meaningful relationships in my life would develop solely because of interactions perpetuated by an unsustainable baseball betting sim, I would have laughed in their face. But, as you all know, it’s true.

I found the game through Sam’s dad, MLB reporter Ken Rosenthal, when he tweeted about it on opening day. As a born Dallasite, I quickly picked the Steaks and excitedly played. I engaged solely on twitter, the website, and the wiki until season 7, when a friend from a different server (hi Stara ) convinced me to join the main discord server. The Steaks greeted me were unlike any online community I had ever been in before. Supportive, thoughtful, and kind, the Steaks very quickly accepted me as one of their own. We made very silly propaganda and cheered our team onto victory.

Then, after I wrote an article for BNN, Joey Badger introduced me to Kim Dauber. In an act of genius, or more honestly, insanity, Kim said that we should write a musical for Blaseball. I can write, she can produce, and someone else can make the music. After a couple months of planning, we reached out to rain of Garages fame, and somehow it agreed to write this insane show with us. After writing a short outline of the story, rain and I spent 24 straight hours (we took naps) writing what you all know as Blaseball: the Musical, my propaganda piece to grow the Steaks’ tiny fanbase. With help from some of the most hardworking and talented people I have ever had the chance to work with, we were able to make a genuinely good and meaningful piece of art. I do have to thank Erica especially for her vulnerable performance as a character that every Steaks fan knows and loves.

After the musical, the Steaks were itching to pull off another scheme, and with the introduction of an incredibly harmful bill to the Texas legislature, we had our next goal. Do a 24 hour stream to raise awareness of the bill and money for Rainbow Railroad. After some incredible art by Alexander, Minty, and Aleks, technical work by Invariel, behind the scenes work by Jen, Mahal, Rei, and especially Josh, the heart of the Steaks, as well as all of the community that came together and lent their talents to us, we raised $10,420.69 (this is not a joke, that’s the exact number). Somehow, the smallest team in Blaseball broke the record for Blaseball related fundraisers. And we did it together.

That’s how I’ll choose to remember this game. Not the website or the players, not the Season 16 Championship over our longtime friends the Firefighters, but the people. The people are Blaseball and Blaseball is the people. I’m grateful to the TGB for facilitating a community and experience that led people to treat each other with kindness first, but my heart lies forever with the Steaks.

Patronus – he/him – Ohio Worms fan

The day the Ohio Worms lost the Season 23 Championship to the Canada Moist Talkers, I was pacing
around my wife’s childhood home trying to calm my infant son. I explained the significance of the
game… Scratch keeping the game alive… Ji-Eun’s doubling modifier. I was misty-eyed before Loubert
finished that at-bat, and that season with it: whether the Worms would win or lose, this was Blaseball at
its peak.

We celebrated through the highs, watching XanPan smash through lineups as Vess hit dinger after ding,
scoop after scoop. We wriggled through the lows, breaking records for losing and Dwelling our way up
from the Bottom. From the first frenzied at-bat (THE Lenny Crumb solo home run), Worms nation was a
community of shared joy and loss, love and wistfulness. What we gained from Blaseball we will keep
with us for the rest of our lives. My son may never get to see Blaseball live, but when he asks me to tell
him the story of his Lenny Crumb stuffed animal, he will hear one of the greatest legends of all.

Firewall Andrews (Leo) – he/him – On Twitter @LeoHowell8 – LA Unlimited Tacos, Dallas Steaks, Charleston Shoe Thieves fan

I could write a lot about Blaseball, but the biggest takeaway from the past few years: This was a very special game that created an incredible community with tons of creativity. It created hilarious and epic moments and introduced me to a ton of great people. I cared about my favorite players and teams, despite it all being a baseball box score generator on a black and white website. Kudos to the Game Band, and most of all, to all the volunteers, creatives and fans who made the game incredible from beginning to end.

Forsythia Helltiger – they/she – On Twitter @vortiwife – Lets Go Mills Baby Love Da Mills

Originally discovered Blaseball from Jessica Telephone fanart the K6BD guy posted on Twitter during Season 3! There were SO many great moments. The time we accidentally posted Jason Derulo’s dick on the BNN twitter account. Every single Power Rankings we ever wrote. The Musical. Also shoutout to Mills RP Twitter you guys were absolutely wild. Logging in and trying to parse what was going on in the actual game while like nine player RP accounts were all loudly divorcing each other was always so funny

Luckey Haskins / Blaseball Prospectus – he/him – On Twitter @Dashjperiod – Chicago Firefighters fan

For me, Blaseball was a huge blank piece of paper that you (plural) could write upon, scribble, and fold into so many unexpected layers & shapes. In light of its end, let’s unfold a few layers of meaning I took from the cultural event of Blaseball, yeah?

The first fold was the experience of being a fan. I, an IRL person, was watching a fake sp(l)ort that was replicating the experiences of following a team, cheering for a player, and staring with bated breath at a sports ticker. Without realizing it, I’d become INVESTED in this speedrun of a season, with its ridiculous names and impossible score lines.

Who could forgot the drama of Season 5, when Chicago was looking to ride the league’s best pitcher, Alex Trololol, to the playoffs? UNTIL  Alex was Reverb’d into becoming a lineup player!! There’s no way the Firefighters overcome this event, right?! Or maybe … They did it, even with their canon-armed firetruck of a player holding a bat!

Wait, Alex was what?

That was another fold we made. We noticed that this fictive world enticed us to make up stuff about it. It invited us to play pretend with fulsome names like “Alex Trololol” and unexpected events like “Reverb.” We create headcanon, or we come across something in the Discord that makes us smile. Apophenia waves to us, and a community starts to form around creating narrative & connection out of the sim’s randomness.

At a time when we were isolated, I could lean into my experiences in journalism, theatre, and analytics. I connect with someone (Ace Analyst) who’s created the “Blaseball Prospectus,” a silly echo of an IRL publication I once read. And I create a silly echo of myself, a dimension-hopping sportswriter I name after an exit on I-75 (Luckey and Haskins, Ohio). And like any good theatre company, improv troupe, or role-playing game, we start to imagine together.

These are the indelible moments of Blaseball for me: collaborating with Ace on the Coffee Cup coverage, discussing schedules, building the world behind Blaseball Prospectus. Working with BNN to enact journalistic shenanigans & lexical tomfoolery. Watching other fans take a tweet and adapting it, claiming it, changing it into something new. Starting to realize that folks in Discord refer to you as your OC.

Which brings us to a third fold, more of an experiential fold: the bleed. We’ve made so many folds that our fictive experience bleeds into IRL space, and now we negotiate that blurry line between the two. I notice a game designer or author I follow interacting with something the Prospectus tweeted. Or it’s trying to balance following this 24/7 game with life away from your screen. It’s not realizing you let slip a “waypoinkt qude” in conversation, and now folks are confused. It’s your bartender looking at your jersey & mentioning they’ve never heard of the Firefighters.

And as you hold these two worlds in your mind simultaneously, you ask yourself: do I give them the elevator speech and move on? Or do I start this bystander on the multi-fold journey to a new shared world?

But that was then. Now, we need to change one word in our response, to reflect the new un-reality of the Immaterial Plane / the reality of our business-driven world:

“Okay. So, there was this game called ‘Blaseball.’ … Yeah, with an ‘L’…”

Cal “Benson ‘Nutty’ Newton” – he/him – On Twitter @MTGCal – Ohio Worms fan

There is a lot of things I could say about Blaseball. A silly little baseball simulator with silly characters and everybody dies. A wondrous community that did a lot of very exciting things. A musical. SIBR. A band. A wiki full of characters. A news network. Oh lord. A news network. As the joke so often went, I started the Blaseball News Network as a joke. I had been watching Blaseball for… oh, 3 days? in the middle of a very dark time (as I’m sure it was for all of us). Working a job I hated, stuck in a house for an indeterminate amount of time, barely a year removed from college with little to no direction or motivation, a world ground to a halt. So, why not. Let’s make a silly little RP News account that tweets when players are incinerated, or something. Before you know it, I was taking it seriously. I was livetweeting game results, sending out breaking news notifications for player incinerations or other happenings, and more. Then came the fateful day, August 2020, where I decided I needed to do more. Why not writing?

From there, the rest is history. Firewall, Forsythia, & Luckey hopped right into my silly world of an AI-run news network that wasn’t powerful enough to create meaningful content (prescient?), adding their own twists into the Season recaps, specials, weekly power rankings, and more. And it grew. and grew. and grew. The broadcasters, the podcasters, the videos, even more written pieces… I was astounded. And it was too much for me. Blaseball was too much. Too beautiful, too busy. Too many things for one man to handle (even with so much help and my god there was so much help). So I made my exit and handed BNN off to Cat, easily the best decision at the time AND in hindsight (it isn’t often one can say both). They did a bang-up job, if I say so myself.

Thank you Blaseball, thank you community, thank you BNN contributors. Thank you Cat & Firewall especially. You all have made a permanent imprint on my life for the better & I hope I did for you as well. So long, blaseballers.

THAT’S ALL FOLKS.
THAT’S THE END OF BLASEBALL. THAT’S IT.

Dan “Leto” Hahn – he/him – On Twitter @Leto – Yellowstone Magic and Boston Flowers fan

I’m writing this after having compiled this article from everyones’ submissions, a process that was not only emotionally draining, but also more work on a single piece than I think I’ve ever done before for BNN. Sky’s submission in particular had me absolutely broken for a solid 10 minutes. Thank you everyone for your contributions, I expected a few, but the sheer mass of people who trusted us with their thoughts and feelings after the closing of Blaseball means the world to Cat and me. I’m going to do my best to compile my thoughts here before handing things off to Cat for her to add the final word, editing, and publishing.

Starting out just wanting to cheer on a Boston team, I latched on to the Flowers without hesitation, and in turn latched on to my boys, King Weatherman and Jacob Haynes. I still eagerly reference the “Just a Guy” song from the Garages AWAY GAMES album. In addition, I picked up RPing as King in his last few seasons with the Flowers, which was a fun and eye opening experience on how much of the community interacts. Eventually, the King/Cory trade happened, and a beautiful storyline unfolded with King reconciling with the Magic, best friending Chorby Short, and having a couple truly stellar seasons. I appreciated the heck out of both teams, and really enjoyed finding a home with Yellowstone.

A moment on Yellowstone, no group has made me feel so welcomed or privileged, they welcomed me with open arms from the moment King was traded over. Getting to be their broadcaster, share some incredible moments, and have people make art for me because of everything was something I will never forget as long as I’m above the moss. I wasn’t the easiest to work with, and on a few occasions I angered the keepers and captains with my opinionated nature, but no matter what I did my best to represent how powerful the Magic was as a community. Hopefully, I did well enough with that.

Outside of those happenings, it was an incredible joy to work with so many content creators over the course of my time with the Broadcasters Group, and later on BNN directly. For a bit there, the broadcaster group had some really good things going for it, and we were turning a lot of gears, it’s unfortunate how aggressively real life stopped me from helping that continue to flourish. Props to Joey in particular for being a fun counterpart for so long on the broadcast front, it was a joy being able to cast with him. My hope is, more than anything, that I was able to bring a level of professionalism and education about broadcasting to the Blaseball community that helped everyone step their proverbial game up.

I’m grateful for the mountains of hard work and creativity on the part of The Game Band, getting to interview Elena was a joy, and it’s because of all their effort that we even had anything to talk about. That being said, I really wish the broadcasters and BNN as a whole had received some kind of appreciation or recognition, especially when we were putting out multiple articles a week as well as the Power Rankings and regular weekly broadcasts. The immense effort that went into this level of activity, only for them to never truly credit or be interested in working with us, really stung after a while.

With all that, and in closing, Goodnight BNN Fam, if you found us at any point, congrats on accomplishing the impossible. I’ll forever keep my Yellowstone Magic cap as long as I can, and will continue to say whenever appropriate:

As Above, So Below.

CatBNN – she/they – On Twitter @CatStlats – Boston Flowers and Houston Spies fan

well. it was fun while it lasted, eh buds?

back in the cursed days of summer 2020, a friend told me about a simulated baseball league mixed with lovecraftian stories. my response: “watch, in three days i’ll be one of those people with spreadsheets.” nearly three years later, we’re saying goodbye to our favorite splort, and i’m ending an era in my creative career. blaseball, both directly through the storyline, and indirectly through the community, affected me emotionally in a way no other game has, and blaseball news network has allowed me to contribute my efforts to an honestly incredible fandom.

something wild to think about is how, over three material plane years, there were only 26 official seasons and a few tournament games. yet there’s literally thousands of pages on the fan-run blaseball wiki, hundreds of fanfics across different sites, and this entire online newspaper. that was the power of the blaseball fandom, to take just a few numbers, maybe even just a funny name, and create entire characters wholesale. i feel intensely lucky to have been able to participate from the unique perspective as a curator of the stories that came through the stats.

it’s hard to know what to say here. every sentiment i have is already echoed all over this page. i want to thank cal bnn pwp for trusting my tweeting skill so much he handled over his baby to me. i want to thank every single person who helped the network flourish: dan, joey, em, luckey, firewall, deejay, forsythia, and all the contributors. and i want to thank you, for reading our articles, demanding answers for our power rankings, and never ceasing to search us out.

many readers, one network.

The post Blaseball News Network: Closing Thoughts: The BNN Community Closes Out appeared first on Blaseball News Network.

Forbidden Book-It

The Book is full of redactions but it’s clear enough on a few things:

Section 2. The League. Assorted Sub-Sections

• b. A League of Blaseball should be composed of two Conferences. In the Internet League, the two Conferences shall be named Good and Evil.
• c. A Conference should be composed of two Divisions. In the Internet League, the Divisions shall be split between Chaotic and Awful.
• d. A Division of Blaseball should be composed of six Teams.

Conference = Good and Evil.  Division = Awful and Chaotic.  Got it.

There are rules for the Regular season, and that went, well, not “smoothly,” but it went Blaseball-y. No major gaffes, we ended with 90 games and some teams who did better than others.  Let’s talk about the Postseason.

Section 3.  The Seasons.  Assorted subsections

• j. In the Postseason, Teams compete for a Championship.
• k. Each Postseason of Blaseball shall consist of 8 Teams.

8 Teams, check.  Who played?

• l. The 2 Division Winners from each Conference shall secure a spot in the Postseason Tournament.

Put another way: Each division (there are 4 total) will have a winner, the team that had the most wins in that division (there were no ties, thank the Suns and Black Holes). Your Division winners for Season 2:

• m. The next 2 Runnerups from each Conference shall secure a spot in the Postseason Tournament, based on Standings, regardless of Division.

In a conference, 2 teams are already decided, the winner of each division within them. The other 2 teams will be chosen based on their win-loss record, so conceivably, three teams from one division could play in their post-season Conference. This did happen in the Evil Conference; the Chaotic Evil Wild Wings and Hawai’i Fridays had more wins than the 1st runner up in the Awful division (sorry Jazz Hands). It was a very close race in the good conference, the Lovers were only 1 win above the Dale, and we don’t know how tiebreakers are handled in the Coronation Era.

Your remaining teams for the S2 Post-season:

Back to the book:    

• n. All Postseason Rounds shall be decided by best 3 of 5 Series.

Yup.

• o. Seeds are distributed to Teams based on their position in the Standings. [REDACTED]

A bit of examination can suss out this redaction: Within a conference, the seeds were matched on Win-Loss Record, with 1st playing 4th and 2nd playing 3rd.

• The Home Team in each Postseason Game shall be [REDACTED]

We would love to know what this rule is – why Boston got home-team advantage throughout the post-season and if it provided any form of advantage – but that’s a query for another article.

Post-Season: A Story With Pictures

(all images from Blaseball Commissioner Alternate on Twitter, edits by author where noted)

p. The Quarterfinal Round should begin shortly after the end of the Regular Season.

And this is what it looked like:

• q. The Semifinal Round, the Conference Championships, should begin early on the following [REDACTED] day.

CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIPS. As in, the winner of the GOOD Conference and the winner of the EVIL Conference. It looked like this:

That’s not just anyones’ blue arrow. That’s the Commish trying to explain what happened here.  I didn’t do much better but at least I corrected the lines:

The semi-finals were mis-matched. Instead of the Beams playing the Flowers for the GOOD Conference Championships, and the Magic facing the Fridays for the EVIL Conference, the games went-cross conference.

On the one hand, this is quintessential Blaseball, a wacky glitch, a comedy of errors, and an entertaining outcome. Play Must Continue, after all.

But to editorialize a bit, this one feels particularly wrong.

Dasilodavi’s Editorial (Sunbeams and Flowers fan):

I like rules. When properly designed and implemented, they exist to increase fun, to balance, and to disambiguate. We hold The Book as sacrosanct (I treat The Book as synonymous with The Forbidden Book, which may not be the case). It’s the Rules. It’s a cursed and frightening tome. Every time we open it someone is incinerated. SO, what to do if we find its rules are suddenly fallible?

Section 2 subsection Q of The Book clearly states that the semi-final round is for the Conference Championships. It does not state the specific nature of that matchup, but one can reasonably assume it will be between teams within a conference.  As much as I like rules, I dislike rules-lawyering, that specific brand of logic gymnastics used to twist a rule’s purpose or justify an ambiguity.  I’d accept it if it was backed with an interesting narrative: if The Commissioner gravely informed us, “The Black Hole twisted the very fabric of the bracket at the center and the corners merged into an unforeseen and irreversible mutation of the League.  Play Must Continue,” I’d eat it up.

That’s not what happened here. It was clearly, succinctly, and blandly stated: Internal Error. I still prefer the idea that an intern named Al screwed it up.  

You might have missed it if The Fridays beat the Sunbeams XOR the Magic defeated the Flowers. That didn’t happen; both GOOD teams beat both EVIL teams, leaving no Evil Conference Champ.

So, they “gave” it to the Beams:

Why? Was there something that guided this decision? My guess is, since the Magic were a more Evil team (better record within the Evil Conference), the Beams were granted dominion over that Conference by defeating them. It’s silly and arbitrary, which makes it peak Blaseball.

ILB Finals: Boston Flowers vs. Moab Hellmouth Sunbeams

Hell of a final though, eh? Games 1-3 were decided by a single run, with no shortage of scoring between the teams. The Big Bat Beams primarily scored on Home Runs and big plays, while the fast-growing and agile Vine Wall that is the Flowers put the legs to work with numerous triples, doubles, double plays, and solid fielding. Game 4 was a can-opener to be sure (final score 12 to 2, Beams), but an action-packed series worthy of an ILB Final.

Aftermath

There have been cracks in the crust of reality before but The Book has always been enforced.  That it might in any way be disobeyed without consequence is the most horrifying twist for me in this horror splort. My greatest hope is that we see something deeper come from this. Will the Crew Chief be pressured to make reprimands? Will all Evil Conference Teams have Vendetta status against the interloping Beams (tell me this wouldn’t rock, regardless of how arbitrarily unfair it would be)? Unstable players are one thing, but what of a game with Unstable Rules…

From a fandom perspective, it’s justifiably frustrating with how all this went down – Magic and Fridays fans are discouraged to see their chances of cinching a Conference championship dashed by interlopers, but more than that, a bond between two rival teams was twisted, and the payoff, if there is one, is yet to be seen.

I hope to cherish it. For all my gripes, to me this was something deeply special.

The Beams are my favorite team, the Flowers are my second. To see a Sunflowers matchup in an ILB final isn’t just improbable, it’s forbidden, and yet it happened! Baseball has been punctuated, if not defined, by its gaffes and rule-stretching – NaN is a beloved player, Wyatt Mason VII is the star of a beautiful animatic that always makes me cry, and Jaylen Hotdogfingers’ necromantic rise is the best example of the impossible becoming Legendary.. A bad mistake can make a great story, and this one is an even greater treat for its rarity. I would guess it will never happen again, but it’s like they say in the Solarium; Never Estimate.

Dan’s Editorial (Magic and Flowers Fan):

Ever since the glitch in the sim was noticed Friday evening, well before gameplay started on Saturday afternoon, I’ve been struggling with how to handle how this would affect the postseason. However, before I get into the postmortem on this, a few bullet points:

• Immense appreciation to Dasilodavi for doing the bulk of the work on this piece, and being okay with me adding my own editorial. This would have been overall a much less constructive and more aggressive without their major contributions.
• The Magic and the Fridays have a special name for when they get together for a series called Friday Night Magic. A Semifinals Friday Night Magic was something everyone was immensely excited for. On the Yellowstone side at least, over a dozen different pieces of propaganda were made, and we were organizing with the Fridays for a big watch party in the ParkPark for it.
• Blaseball didn’t communicate about the nature or issue of the glitch in the Sim until after the beginning of the first game of the Semifinals. This is despite nudges on Twitter, as well as with support staff on the official Blaseball discord closer to game time on Saturday.

These help set up a coherent timeline for how things played out. Both Magic and Fridays fans were stoked to see a Semifinals Friday Night Magic based on Blaseballs initial announcement of the semifinal bracket, as well as our knowledge of the rules of Blaseball and how it functions. The vibes were immaculate and energizing, then came game time.

Don’t get me wrong, reader, I love the Flowers, and getting a semifinals with them was great, a tight five game series that saw some explosive bats. However, seeing the Fridays forced to try and fight through the near unstoppable Sunbeams was more than a little disheartening. Hopes of a FNM Finals were dashed, and alongside the half hearted post from Blaseball, the positive vibes and energy for the postseason that week were crushed.

To clarify, what I feel is the first major error with this glitch was not the glitch itself. I understand that sometimes, these things simply CANNOT be fixed in time. Instead, my complaint is how poorly communications were handled about this. A quick “Hey, we see there’s something wrong, we’re working on it.” on Twitter or Discord would have been more than enough.

The second part of where I really struggle with this is how they did end up handling things after they recognized there was a problem, which felt akin to pulling the curtain back on it all. Sure,  making sure the games happened *IS* important, but this was at the expense of showing that all the buildup from the season and quarterfinals suddenly didn’t matter. It broke the kayfabe that the whole enterprise is based on, though I understand pointing this out makes me just as guilty of the same faux pas.

My final point in all this, is that the glitch, alongside Blaseball’s handling of it, detracted from what was supposed to be an exceptionally positive vibes-filled postseason. We all knew the Beams were going to take it, but instead of enjoying their climb to victory and the stories that were going to come out of it, discourse on the glitch has detracted from it. That may be the biggest issue at hand, that if Blaseball had been proactive on this, the vibes and kayfabe would have been perfectly preserved.

My hope is that criticism on this is respected, and Blaseball learns from how this was mishandled, and do a bit more to communicate and preserve the relationship with the fans.

The analysis section of this piece, as well as the first editorial, was written by Dasilodavi. You can find more of him, as well as our own Joey T Badger, over at Magic Laughs at https://www.facebook.com/MagicLaughs/

The post A Smudge in The Book of Blaseball: Recounting the Season 2 Semi-Final Shuffle: Recounting the Season 2 Semi-Final Shuffle appeared first on Blaseball News Network.

I am sure if you asked any Sunbeams fan how they’re feeling about the second season of Blaseball’s new Coronation Era, they’d tell you they’re a bit nervous about all the attention they’re getting.

But the attention is for good reason, as one of the league’s top teams spent the election getting stronger and seems poised to have a great season. After finishing Season N1 with a record of 66-24, the Beams swept the Miami Dale only to stumble and have their kicks taken by the Charleston Shoe Thieves in the second round of the Post Season. But that’s the same Charleston team that finished below the Moab Hellmouth Sunbeams in the Awful Good division during the Regular Season.

So, what should we expect from the Estimated Sunbeams and the rest of Blaseball in this upcoming season in the Coronation Era? Here’s a preview of every division, including our panel of power rankers’ predictions for how each division will finish.

Awful Good

Predicted order of finish:

1. Moab Hellmouth Sunbeams (No. 1 overall)
2. Charleston Shoe Thieves (No. 2 overall)
3. Baltimore Crabs (No. 12 overall)
4. Miami Dale (No. 13 overall)
5. Philly Pies (No. 15 overall)
6. Hades Tigers (No. 20 overall)

While this writer (Firewall Andrews) thinks the Shoe Thieves are the best team in the league, most of our rankings panel picked the Sunbeams, so they get the top spot in the division prediction. However, the panel did put these teams at the top of the overall rankings together, so expect a close fight and a serious title run from whichever team wins the division.

Beyond the two powerhouses, there are three middling teams in the Crabs, Dale and Pies. Miami made the playoffs and saw its roster shuffled a bit with randomized players, but it remains to be seen if they improved enough to take a big step forward in Season 2. The Crabs added the best batter in the Black Hole, but that alone won’t be enough to shore up their roster, and they should struggle to keep up with the Sunbeams and Thieves. The Pies have a solid but unspectacular team destined for a middle-of-the-road finish.

And the Tigers have Zephyr McCloud, who is very good, but will also be very interesting to watch given their curse. So this is a division with lots of great storylines entering the new season.

Chaotic Good

Predicted order of finish:

1. The Kansas City Breath Mints (No. 5 overall)
2. Boston Flowers (No. 11 overall)
3. San Francisco Lovers (No. 16 overall)
4. Canada Moist Talkers (No. 19 overall)
5. New York Millennials (No. 21 overall)
6. LA Unlimited Tacos (No. 23 overall)

The Mints were one of four teams to go over 60 wins in Season 1 and return a solid roster that went unchanged in the offseason. They bump down to No. 5 overall following a fourth-place overall finish as the Yellowstone Magic are projected to jump them in overall standing based on our panel’s picks. I’m not so sure, and I think the Mints should coast to another 60-win season and playoff berth (birth? is that still a thing?).

The Flowers grew as a group over the offseason via the election and are a team with a lot of promise. This could be one of the top pitching and defense teams in the splort, and I think No. 11 overall is a bit low for Boston. They might give the Mints some trouble but likely finish as a runner-up with a solid shot at the playoffs alongside the Thieves, Beams and Mints.

The rest of this division is going to struggle, especially with all the games they’re going to have to play against Kansas City and Boston. None of the teams really got any better in the offseason, and the Moist Talkers losing Simon Haley probably makes them a good bit worse. The Season 2 elections will be very important for these four squads.

Awful Evil

Predicted order of finish:

1. Atlantis Georgias (No. 6 overall)
2. Core Mechanics (No. 9 overall)
3. Broken Ridge Jazz Hands (No. 10 overall)
4. Houston Spies (No. 14 overall)
5. Dallas Steaks (No. 18 overall)
6. Chicago Firefighters (No. 24 overall)

This is definitely a division to watch, as any of four teams could realistically pick up the division title in Season 2. The favorites are definitely Atlantis, with a solid pitching staff and long-time blaseballer Beck Whitney leading a good offense.

But the Core Mechanics have an optimized lineup and promising pitching of their own, the Jazz Hands got a big pitching boost in the offseason to support that was top 10 in OPS a season ago, and the Spies are long shots, but Terrell Bradley’s alternate is still quite the player and the offense in Houston can hit.

Hello, Steaks!

And the poor Firefighters not only missed out on team-improving blessings, but got tossed a terrible batter by a Houston wimdy of a blessing. Sorry, Chicago.

Chaotic Evil

Predicted order of finish:

1. Mexico City Wild Wings (No. 3 overall)
2. Yellowstone Magic (No. 4 overall)
3. Seattle Garages (No. 7 overall)
4. Hawai’i Fridays (No. 8 overall)
5. Ohio Worms (No. 18 overall)
6. Tokyo Lift (No. 22 overall)

If the Awful Evil is “a division to watch,” this is “THE division to watch.” Loaded with four of our top 10 teams in the power rankings, the Chaotic Evil will see the Wild Wings, downgraded by some awful misfortune and a noteworthy incineration, chased by the upgraded Magic and Garages and the slightly shored up Fridays.

These are four genuinely good teams and it’s hard to pick a favorite, because most of what we knew about the dominant Wild Wings team of a season ago is not going to be there to start this season. James Boy does return, but without Fletcher Peck and Anastasia Isarobot on the main roster, it’s left the door wide open for Kiki Avci and the Magic to make a real run at a division title.

Don’t count out the Garages or Fridays, who both finished ahead of the Magic last season, and while their blessings might not have seemed as flashy and fun as the one Yellowstone got, I wouldn’t say either team should be discounted as a true contender for this division.

The post Blaseball Season CE2 Preview: Estimating the Sunbeams appeared first on Blaseball News Network.

Blaseball has returned, and so have the talented athletes who take to the Field every day and play the games. But not every player is equal. Some are better than others. Some are the best. We’re here to talk about the best.

Many thanks to Dargo4#2798 on Discord for organizing the first Most Valuable Player voting of the new era, which let a panel of Blaseball statisticians and observers vote on the best batters and pitchers of Season 1, plus the postseason MVP and some honorable mentions.

So without any more delay, here are the best players from Season 1 of the Coronation Era of Blaseball.

Best Batter Award

Dargo’s panel named five players per ballot, and across 24 ballots, every single ballot contained one name: Fletcher Peck.

The Mexico City Wild Wings’ batter finished with 24 home runs, tied for seventh in ILB, and a 1.234 OPS that was second among full-time players behind only Kiki Avci.

Peck also played sound defense, recording an out on over 78% of the balls hit in their direction, which ranks comfortably in the top half of ILB defenders.

Doing all of this as the league’s RBI leader and second-best run scorer was more than enough to cement their status as the near-consensus MVP of the first season of the era.

Anastasia Isarobot Memorial Best Pitcher Award

The winner of the first Best Pitcher Award of the era is also the new namesake for the award, as they will be honored posthumously after being the target of an incineration by the Umpires following the opening of the Forbidden Book in the Season 1 elections.

Anastasia Isarobot was the only pitcher to top 200 strikeouts in Season 1, finishing with a 2.24 ERA and a 17-1 record on the mound. They also issued only four walks, the second-lowest total in the league behind Randy Dennis of the Flowers.

Isarobot was a star in the league and their talents will be missed, but their legacy lives on through this award.

BNN Postseason MVP Award

While the Wild Wings sweep the Regular Season awards, it was the Shoe Thieves who snuck into the Internet Series and ran away with the victory.

With that in mind, it was their unlikely hero, Ankle Halifax, who gets the nod as Postseason MVP. With several clutch hits in the Post Season, including multiple home runs in the Internet Series and the Series-deciding hit to win it all for Charleston, they stood out ahead of teammate Penelope Berkowitz, who provided world-class defense for the Thieves throughout the playoffs.

Honorable Mentions

Your guess is as good as ours, but here are some players the panel wished to shout out!

Full results

Best Pitcher Award:

1. Anastasia Isarobot
2. Marco Escobar
3. Plums Blather
4. Mehdi Caper
5. Dunn Keyes
6. Mooney Doctor
7. Premjeet Liu
8. Erin Jesaulenko
9. Waverly Mori
10. Malik Romayne

Best Batter Award:

1. Fletcher Peck
2. Kiki Avci
3. Stretch Sutton
4. Katja Twain
5. Baldwin Jones
6. Jorge Owens
7. Mckinney Vaughan
8. Sheri Friday
9. Jammy Decksetter
10. Jira Sealegs
11. Demet Cabrera

Postseason MVP:

1. Ankle Halifax
2. Penelope Berkowitz
3. Fletcher Peck
4. Kaj Statter Jr.
5. Yusef Puddles
6. Fish Summer
7. Anastasia Isarobot
8. Alexandria Rosales

Honorable Mentions:

• Demet Cabrera
• James Boy
• Malin Hsu
• Penelope Berkowitz
• Premjeet Liu
• Yusef Puddles
• Allan Kranch
• Anastasia Isarobot
• Baldwin Jones
• Beck Whitney
• Blimp Hardison
• Elijah Valenzuela
• Elip Dean
• Emmet Atomic
• Fletcher Peck
• Grizz El-Sayid
• Hatfield Suzuki
• Jammy Decksetter
• Jefferson de la Cruz
• Jorge Owens
• Lorcan Smaht
• Mordecai Kingbird
• Nathaniel Wilds
• Nori Bluegrass
• Ovid Schofield
• Randy Dennis
• Roscoe Sundae
• Scratch Deleuze
• Son Jensen
• Stevenson Heat
• Terrel Bradley
• Vanille Okidoke
• Waverly Mori
• whichever ffs pitcher had the sub 2 ERA
• Zack Sanders

The post Who were the MVPs of Season 1 of the Coronation Era of Blaseball? appeared first on Blaseball News Network.

Jordan Hildebert

Jordan Hildebert got alternated in the season 22 elections, and subsequently became one of the best baserunners that the ILB has ever seen. They ranked 6th in season 23 with 85 stolen bases, but that only paints part of the picture. Subtracting home runs, Jordan got on base 70 times that season, meaning that every time they got on base, you could expect them to steal 1.24 bases. I was also interested in looking at Jordan’s steal efficiency, or how many bases they stole that were able to be stolen (e.g. no runners in front of Jordan). According to my research, Jordan had opportunities to steal 162 bases in season 23, giving them a steal efficiently of 52.47%. Jordan also did this quickly, attempting a steal every 2.44 pitches, often times stealing multiple bases with 1 or 0 pitches thrown.

These numbers are impressive, but they are hindered by the fact that the alternation also tanked Jordan’s hitting stats. Their season 23 OPS of 0.236 was below the league average. If you were to give Jordan a league average OBP of 0.299 and assume the same number of home runs, Jordan would have had 100 steals. Give them their season 22 pre-alternation OBP of 0.325, and you could expect 125 steals. And if you were to give them the 0.348 OBP of season 23 stolen base leader Collins Melon, Jordan would be expected to have 135 stolen bases in total. Still shy of Melon’s 164 mark, but Jordan would have definitely turned more heads.

Sadly, Jordan got voicemail’d early in season 24, and we haven’t seen them since. But I know that they’re in the shadows training, waiting to show the world what a true base runner looks like. This is far from the only reason to vote Jordan Hildebert into the hall of fame; they became a staple power hitter for the Shoe Thieves after a crucial trade. But this is definitely a silly reason that I can support with cherry-picked stats, and those are my favorite reasons of all.

-Paradox

You may have heard about Jordan Hildebert, vexatious pitcher and blocker of consensus.  You’ve definitely heard about smol jorn, the funny purple alt. This is about neither of them. The middle of Jordan Hildebert’s oddball career is the least funny, but still worth remembering.

The Spies traded Jordan to the Shoe Thieves for Bennett Bluesky in S14, in the hopes that both players would be better off in each others’ positions—and it worked brilliantly. Jordan was always a slugger (when not at the Wlaffle House) but it was after some late S18 parties that their hitting really took off. At their peak in Season 20, they batted 0.354 (6th in the league) with an OPS of 1.051 (10th).

Unfortunately, Jordan was chomped near the end of S20. By the end of 22, they were well on the way back to their peak when they got hit by the Purple Alt hammer. You know the rest. While smol jorn will always have a place in our hearts, it’s too bad we didn’t get to see more of Jordan Hildebert, power hitter.

-tealdeer

Hiroto Wilcox

Hiroto Wilcox was, alongside Dunlap Figueroa, one half of the dynamic duo of the Tigers rotation, and a large part of why the team won 3 championships, made playoffs 13 times, and ended with a losing record from Season 1 to Season 16. They were a top 10 or top 15 pitcher for most of the Discipline Era, put up one of the best pitching performances ever in Season 12 (26-2 record, 1.34 ERA which is the 6th best all time if excluding Underhanded), and have the second most innings pitched of anyone not named Dunlap Figueroa. Across more than 5000 innings, Hiroto was 20 to 25% better than the average pitcher. Comparable names are Theodore Cervantes, Alexandria Rosales, and of course Dunlap Figueroa. This is as airtight a statistical case as it gets.

But Hiroto gave much more to the team than just fantastic pitching. Since Landry and Moody’s incinerations, Hiroto has been generally thought of as the team’s captain. They are one of, if not the, most beloved Tigers players, and are central to the team’s lore. Hiroto was the Tigers; think of whoever player on your team is the one that most represents them, that everyone knows and puts them in their art or fanfiction – that was Hiroto Wilcox for the majority of the Hades Tigers’ golden years.

-Dargo

Herring Winfield

Early in the Expansion Era, the Shoe Thieves hatched a scheme that can only be described as absurdly hubristic—a three-season plan we dubbed Operation Pitcher of Blood.

(Feel free to imagine the Mission: Impossible theme playing as you read along.)

1. Foreshadow Blood Hamburger and bring out our best shadow hitting prospect.
2. Foreshadow Tillman Henderson, sending Blood to the mound.
3. Shadow our worst batter and bring Tillman into the lineup where he can finally do us some good.

Almost nothing about this plan actually worked. But we got one good thing out of it, and that was Herring Winfield.

After an OK rookie season followed by an Infusion, Herring became the Thieves’ core contact hitter, complementing dinger-oriented Howell Franklin and Jordan Hildebert. I won’t pretend this propelled the Thieves to greatness or even goodness, but let’s see you try batting your way out of the omnishambles that was Expansion-Era Thieves pitching.

Herring peaked at the height of the Ruthlessness era, facing down pitches that flummoxed most batters and turning them into hits. Their best season was S16, when they were 9th in the league in BA (0.311), 11th in OBP (0.334), and 13th in OPS+ (168.2). Overall, Herring earned a solid career wRC+ of 121 and OPS+ of 122—and that’s without considering defense.

Although overshadowed by teammate Richardson “Every Glove Everywhere All at Once” Games, Herring would have been the best fielder on a lot of teams. They were able to make outs of what would normally have been hits given up by our alleged pitching staff. In Season 14, fresh from the Shadows, Herring was already 26th in the league in Outs Above Replacement and 23rd in OAR/1000. Clearly, a recruit with potential. After their infusion, they reached elite status: 11th in OAR and 9th in OAR/1000. We don’t have these stats after S15 but with 1.259-1.349 omni and 1.256-1.383 chase, it’s safe to assume Herring remained a top-tier fielder.

Alas for us, an unexpected trade in the Season 22 elections sent Herring to the Crabs. They were warmly welcomed into their new home, and put in another solid season in Baltimore. And then came Season 24.

The Breath Mints and Fridays were dead. The end of the world loomed. But the Blaseball gods still took the time to inflict smaller tragedies. As the Crabs’ leadoff hitter, Herring was targeted by Consumers fourteen times. By taking those hits, they protected OG Crab and ghost enthusiast Kennedy Loser from Redaction—but their heroism had a cost. Their soul diminished bite by bite until finally they were themselves Redacted on Day 22. But even as they were being systematically chomped into oblivion, they put up some of the best numbers of their career, batting 0.333 for those 22 games. Rest in Redaction, Herring; you went down swinging.

-tealdeer

The post Gonna Fly Now: Hall of Fame Week 26 appeared first on Blaseball News Network.

The Narrative

Baby Doyle began their career as one of the weaker members of the legendary Season 1 Jazz Hands lineup.

During the early Discipline Jazz Hands dynasty, Baby played a supporting role to the elite batting talent in the Jazz Hands lineup. They were never the best batter on the team, but being out-batted by legends like Aldon Cashmoney and Nagomi McDaniel is understandable. However, a series of weather and election calamities in seasons 5-7 gutted the Jazz Hands, depriving us of all of our star power, and forcing us to begin our long, slow rebuild. This is when Baby Doyle’s story really gets interesting.

In Season 8, the Jazz Hands won the Precognition Blessing, the last blessing we would win until Season 18. Precognition targeted Baby twice, boosting their hitting by 40%, and instantly catapulting them into the league’s hitting elite. Baby’s OPS jumped from 0.751 in Season 8 to 0.969 (nice) in Season 9, making them easily the best hitter on the team. The era of Baby had begun. 

The Jazz Hands slowly built up a lineup that could support Baby, Infusing Collins Melon into an awe inspiring blob of stars, and bringing several other members of the lineup to above replacement value. However, Baby was still held back by their position – batting near the end of the Jazz Hands overly long lineup. Worse, Baby had few consistent hitters in front of them to slug in, and was followed in the Lineup by Collins Melon. Melon racked up RBI’s batting Baby, but Baby often blocked Melon from stealing their way around the bases, which held back team’s overall effectiveness. 

That all changed in Season 18, when the Jazz Hands broke their Blessing-less streak and won Grand Larceny. If Precognition had made Baby an effective individual batter, Grand Larceny finally made them part of an effective team. Sorting the lineup by Basethirst put Collins Melon at #2, and Baby Doyle at #3, creating the most dynamic and exciting batting pair in the entire ILB. Both would go on to play in the Exhibition Match, but unfortunately only Baby would return from it. After a weird and messy Season 24 (even by Season 24 standards) Baby was left standing as the last remaining OG Jazz Hand, the core of the Lineup, and one of the greatest batters of all time.

The Numbers

Alright, now for the crunchy stuff. Baby’s long career means they obviously have great counting stats – #3 in career Doubles (544), #5 in hits (2631), #7 in HRs (549) and #2 in RBI (1866.3). With the help of Collins Melon, Baby also set the single season RBI record in season 23 (307.6), and is #1 in both career Hits with Runners in Scoring Position (591), and in career Sac Flies (123). All that’s to be expected – but Baby’s rate stats are where things get exciting. 

Baby’s career OPS of 0.955 is the 15th best among players with 1000 or more Plate Appearances. However, it’s worth noting that Baby’s 9114 PA’s absolutely dwarf the PA’s of everyone above them in that list – Jaxon Buckley (8291) and Valentine Games (8011) are the only players who even come close. Baby achieved a consistent rate of excellence that is simply unparalleled

Graphing Career OPS vs PAs really highlights how exceptional Baby Doyle is in this regard. Every single player with a better OPS played much less Blaseball than them, and no one who’s played as much can touch their rate. The next best Career OPS among players with more than 9000 PAs is, funnily enough, Baby Triumphant, with a OPS that’s 50 points lower (0.902) across a comparably long career (9284 PAs). No one else with more than 9000 PAs has a career OPS above 0.900. 

The raw OPS numbers are the most visually striking, but more advanced metrics like WOBA, OPS+, and WRC+ all tell the same story. Doyle is the best pure hitter among players with 9000 or more PAs, and it’s not remotely close. 

These numbers look even better when you realize how Baby built them. Most great hitters, even ones mainly known for their slugging, excel at drawing walks. Baby Doyle, on the other hand, clearly believed plate discipline was for cowards. They achieved only 279 walks across their career, among the worst walk counts of anyone in their PA range. 

Instead, Baby earned their way on base with their bat, using their career 0.306 Batting Average (15th overall, 1st among batters w/ >9k PAs) to achieve a career 0.319 On Base Percentage (49th overall, 4th among batters w/ >9k PAs). The rest of their OPS comes from their monstrous career 0.636 Slugging, yet another untouchable rate for players who’ve played as much as them (12th overall, 1st among batters w/ >9k PAs). This consistent excellence earned Baby a career WhAT of 80.7, the 9th best of any batter in Blaseball. 

Baby’s not just about career value though – their best seasons rank among the best of any hitter ever. They earned an OPS of 1.000 or greater in 10 seasons, a record matched only by Conner Haley, and exceeded only by Jaxon Buckley (who has 12 such seasons). If we use OPS+ to  normalize performance across different scoring environments, we see Baby is the proud owner of 6 of the 100 best OPS+ seasons of all time (among seasons with at least 200 PAs).

These are the 100 greatest individual hitting seasons in the history of Blaseball. Not only did Baby Doyle hit six of them over the course of their career – they hit five of them in a row. Baby’s season 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22 hitting performances are all included in this list, as well as their excellent performance in Season 14. 

WRC+ tells a similar story, even though it values Baby’s slugging less than OPS+. Baby owns 5 of the top 100 WRC+ seasons with at least 200 PAs, excelling in a metric that highly values on base percentage even though they only walked on 1 in every 33 plate appearances.

I’d also note that Baby did this without meaningful support from Modifications. The Jazz Hands 9 season Blessing drought meant Baby played without the benefit of powerful team mods like Blood types, as well as powerful player mods like Spicy. They had Perk, but it only caused them to play slightly better in rare Coffee weather. Beyond that, their only Modification of note was 2x, which they only gained in the Season 22 Election. 2x certainly helped their RBI numbers, but did not help with any of the other stats I’ve cited here.

Finally, a somewhat speculative point about Defense. Recent research into the inner workings of The Sim has revealed the value that great defenders can contribute to their team, which makes Baby Doyle’s Hall of Fame case even stronger. Defense was Baby’s highest attribute category prior to receiving Precognition, with a natural 3.697 defense star rating that grew to 5.1 stars by the end of Expansion. Omniscience, the defense attribute that has been found to be generally the most valuable, was always Baby’s strength, growing from 0.872 at the beginning of their career to 1.231 by the end. 

This chart shows an estimate of the defensive impact players had from Seasons 12-15. While limited, it shows Baby was one of the top 20 defenders in the league during that time. From this, we can imply that they were likely at least an above average defender throughout their career, all while playing for a team that rarely if ever had an effective pitching rotation. This greatly bolsters their Hall of Fame case, especially since it means they were a valuable and impactful member of the early Discipline Jazz Hands dynasty, even though their hitting during that period rarely impressed.

the iNtangibles

In Jazz Hands lore, Baby Doyle is depicted as a human child, somewhere between infant and toddler age. How exactly a child is able to hit this well isn’t completely clear. Early on, we joked that “their short legs and lack of object permanence make them a slight liability on defense” only to later learn that they were an excellent defender. This line is still on their wiki though, because it’s funny. 

In between Eras, Baby played in the Coffee Cup, and won the tournament as a member of Inter Xpresso alongside fellow Hall of Famers Knight Triumphant, Commissioner Vapor, and Theodore Cervantes. Coffee Cup statistics are difficult to access, so I haven’t looked them up, but I’m sure Baby’s were excellent. Throughout the Expansion Era, Baby’s Perk modification helped them play even better in Coffee weather. The Jazz Hands always appreciated this, even if we did wonder if giving a child that much espresso was a good idea. 

During the Season 17 Earlsiesta, The Reader “gifted” Baby Doyle an Uncertain Necklace of Entanglement, which would cause Baby to be Alternated if they were ever sent Elsewhere. The season before, the Reader had drawn attention to Collins Melon by removing their Alternate modification, which caused the entire league to Notice the Jazz Hands had a 7 star Pitcher hiding in our Lineup. These two events caused many on the team to distrust The Reader for the remainder of the Era. 

The Jazz Hands spent the rest of Season 17 fearing we’d lose our best hitter. Baby had traditionally floated just below the noodle on the idol Board, but we campaigned to get them named an MVP that season to protect them from Flooding. Baby managed to dodge being sent elsewhere by Salmon Cannons in Season 18, and in that election the Jazz Hands used the newly created Item Move will to hand Baby a Careful Fireproof Necklace we thought would protect them from future calamities.

Halfway through the next season though, Baby threw that Necklace away for a basic Bat, which they wielded for most of the rest of the Expansion Era. 

That MVP title meant Baby was selected for the Exhibition Match, alongside Collins Melon. Melon was Vaulted during the match, but thankfully Baby avoided that fate. Afterwards, Baby was dropped into the Jazz Hands pitching rotation. Their pitching attributes were … not exactly competitive, and made even worse by Magnified. The whole team wanted Baby to be Faxed, and on Day 5, the Chicago Firefighters had a chance to do just that. 

Despite being Perked up by Coffee weather, Baby only managed to last 5.2 innings versus the Firefighters. During those innings, they achieved 1 Strikeout, and allowed 8 Hits for 12 Runs (which would have been 14 runs without Gita Sparrow’s Subtractor modification). 10 of those runs were Baby Triumphant RBIs – 4 from a sac fly in the 4th inning, and another 6 from a Wired Single in the 5th, which brought the score to 12-4 and triggered the Fax Machine. Doyle usually had the edge on Triumphant during the Expansion Era, but in one of their last interactions of the Era, Triumphant single handedly Faxed Doyle into the Shadows, to the delight of all those involved. 

The Jazz Hands built Night+ before we even knew what it did, and spent Season 24 begging for a Night Shift. When we finally got one though, it didn’t go as planned. Late in the season, a Night Shift attempted to swap Baby Doyle and Munivoi Rochester. The Jazz Hands were Rogue at that point though, so the Night Shift failed. Munavoi got a Night Shift boost, and used their one at bat to hit into a Double Play, but Baby remained in the lineup and was made permanently Unstable. We don’t quite know why this happened, but we’re very concerned about it. 

iN conclusioN

Baby Doyle sits at the apex of greatness and longevity. Every batter who has played as long as them is worse at batting, and every batter who is better than them at batting has played less. In my opinion, the only batters in the history of Blaseball who are unquestionably better than Baby  Doyle are Aldon Cashmoney, Conner Haley, Valentine Games, and Jaxon Buckley. All 4 hit substantially better than Baby over the course of their careers, and while those careers were shorter than Baby’s, all were over 7000 PAs.

Peak value also matters, and one could  reasonably argue that players like Nagomi McDaniel and Collins Melon had such high peaks they deserve to be considered better than Baby. Even then though, Baby Doyle remains unquestionably one of the greatest batters in the history of Blaseball, and the greatest Jazz Hand of all time. Many greats have passed through Breckenridge or given flasher performances there that caught the eye of the whole league, but no player has contributed more to the team’s (modest) success. Baby may never have been the face of the franchise, but they are the heart and soul of it, and are unquestionably worthy of induction into the Hall of Fame. 

The post The Case for Baby Doyle appeared first on Blaseball News Network.

Introduction

Richardson Games is one of the most Blaseball players ever.  At one point in time, they had the highest natural star count for any stat.  There is a lot that you can say about them, and a lot of reasons that you should consider voting them into the Hall of Fame. 

But if you know me, you know there’s one thing that I’m obsessed with in Blaseball more than anything else.  More than Snyder Briggs, more than Simba Davis, more than Yeet Bright Day.  My Blaseball obsession… RGSOTS.

RGSOTS stands for “Richardson Games scores on the sacrifice.”  It was the text that would flash upon the screen whenever Richardson Games was on third base and reached home via tagging up after a ground out or fly out.  When I started watching Blaseball in Season 9, I noticed that it was something that happened fairly often, so I began to make a meme of it, and other Shoe Thief fans followed suit.  Soon, RGSOTS was known team-wide.  After the Grand Siesta, the wording of it changed to spite me, but the acronym stuck around.  At some point during the Grand Siesta, I started to keep a spreadsheet of all eligible situations and the outcomes of them.  

Does this matter?  No, not really.  Richardson gets to be on third base a lot because they’re fast, but whether or not they score in those situations is very rarely up to them and more up to the batter.  Will this argument help convince you to vote them into the hall of fame?  I hope so, but it’s more so a fun analysis than a serious statistical analysis.  But I’m going to share with you some of my favorite parts of this chart, because Richardson Games is on the ballot and I don’t get enough chances to share this spreadsheet around.  

For reference, the full spreadsheet can be found here.

The Basics

So to start, let me explain the color coding.  There are 19 possible outcomes for a RGSOTS-E (Richardson Games scores on the sacrifice eligible) situation.  They can be broadly broken down into four categories: a score with no out, a score with an out (aka a sacrifice), no score with an out, and no score with no out.  The breakdown can be seen below:

As you can see here, if there is a RGSOTS-E situation, Richardson scores 64.3% of the time.  This shows that if they can get in these situations, they can really help contribute to their team winning.  Famously, the only run the Shoe Thieves scored on Season 9 Day X against The Shelled One’s PODS was a RGSOTS.

If we take a further look at the sections, we can see the breakdown a bit clearer.  The green section is almost always hits, broken down into singles, doubles, triples, and home runs.  Quadruples are technically possible in seasons and games with the fifth base, but it hasn’t happened as far as I’m aware.  In this category as well are the bases loaded walk, which forces Richardson Games home, and the ever exciting steal home, the only time Richardson gets to actively impact their ability to score.  

In yellow, we have the four categories of sacrifice.  Fly balls and ground balls are the most common.  If there is a player on first base, then two additional options are unlocked.  The fielders can throw out the player running to second for a Fielder’s Choice, or they can get both the runner at second and the hitter running to first for the extremely rare Grounded into a double play sacrifice.  This, of course, is only possible with 0 outs in the inning, as a double play with 1 out would end the inning.  

In red, you can see the seven results that lead to an out without Richardson Games scoring.  The most puzzling to me are always the Flyout and ground out without a score.  There must be reasons why Games isn’t able to score in these scenarios, but I haven’t been able to discern anything specific. Similarly are the Fielder’s Choice and GIDP without a score, though the latter can be explained if there is 1 out.  Then, the two most devastating outcomes, the strikeouts, swinging and looking.  These make up a majority of the outs without scores, because there’s no way that Richardson has a chance to even do anything.  The final possibility is when Richardson gets caught stealing home.  

The blue section is reserved for no score, no out.  The only time this ever happens is when a non-bases loaded walk occurs.  There are theoretically other possibilities, such as a Hit-by-pitch, but none have ever occurred.  

The two charts above represent all 832 RGSOTS-E situations from season 3 to season 24.  Seasons 1 and 2 are unavailable due to reblase not having recordings of games from those seasons.  This information can be broken down in a number of ways, and I’d like to go through a few of those now to point out some interesting trends.  Some of these matter, most of these don’t.

Seasons

First, the season breakdown.  This shows how many situations there are in each season.  There are a number of trends that you can immediately see from this graph.  First, you can see the result of Richardson Games getting the grappling hook item in the Season 4 Elections. From Seasons 5 through 11, the number of RGSOTS-E situations were always greater than the number in Season 3, thanks in large part to Richardson’s baserunning being maxed out due to the item. 

Additionally, there were 0 situations in both Seasons 19 and 20.  This is because of the infamous Reverb that occurred in Season 18, often called the Gameswap, where Richardson and Cornelius Games were swapped in Reverb weather, becoming a pitcher and batter respectively.  You cannot have a RGSOTS-E situation if Richardson is a pitcher, and they wouldn’t see the batters box again until Season 21.

Another interesting breakdown can be seen in the general results for each season.  You can see the rise in walks in Seasons 10 and 11, thanks to the Shoe Thieves gaining the Flinch mod, forcing them to take more pitches in general.  This also explains the decline in hits and sacrifices from the championship Season 9 to Season 10.  You also can identify the ruthlessness meta creepin’ in with the low amount of walks from Season 14 onwards (sans Season 16).  The high number of outs compared to sacrifices and hits from Seasons 14 to 17 also reflect this; though this chart doesn’t show the complete breakdown, the majority of the outs in these seasons are from strikeouts.

Batters

We’ll get back to things that matter in a bit, but I want to point out some less useful charts first.  Here’s a breakdown of who is actually at the plate during these situations:

Because the Charleston Shoe Thieves never experienced a Reverb for most of their history, the vast majority of these plate appearances are held by Velasquez Alstott and Simon Haley, the first and second hitters to bat after Richardson Games, respectively.  Stu Trololol represents the third player to bat after Richardson, and thus, the bases are usually loaded when she get a chance to bat in an RGSOTS-E situation. 

Lachlan Shelton was Feedbacked for Simon Haley in season 8, explaining his 4th place position on this chart.  But there are so many names on this list with only one or two situations.  What’s the reason for that?  Why, ghosts of course!  Later in the Expansion Era, Velasquez Alstott had their Flinch modification rerolled into Haunted, which occasionally had dead players take plate appearances instead of that player.  By my count, this happened 20 times over the course of Richardson’s career.  The only player to have at bats in RGSOTS-E situations while both alive and dead is Winnie McCall, who batted after Richardson when he was on the Millenials, and got one plate appearance in Season 17, after their incineration late in Season 16.

Vela is worth a slightly deeper look.  In Seasons 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, and 13, they appeared on either the sacrifice flies or sacrifice bunts leaderboard for the season.  For Season 13 in particular, they appeared on both leaderboards, taking the sole top spot for sac flies.  While hitting a sacrifice isn’t always seen as a great thing, especially when a hit is possible, I want to personally thank Vela for helping immensely with the creation of this meme.  Without their bat, RGSOTS and this spreadsheet might not exist.

Teams

There’s not a ton to say on the Teams front.  The Yellowstone Magic and Hawai’i Fridays top the list, having played in the same division as the Shoe Thieves for every season except the map-driven Season 24.  However, despite being an original team, there has never been an RGSOTS-E situation against the Hellmouth Sunbeams.  The short lived Carolina Queens have 12 situations in six games, and even the Oxford Paws have had one.  A large part of this has to do with the Shoe Thieves and Sunbeams just not playing each other often; they are in opposite divisions, after all.  Hopefully we’ll get to see Dickson on third against the sunbeams when Blaseball returns.

Pitchers

There have been a total of 164 pitchers that have ever faced a batter in an RGSOTS-E situation.  Of those 164, only 25 have been in ten or more situations.

There are few very interesting pitchers that we can take a short dive into.  Topping the list is Cory Twelve, responsible for 10% of all non-bases loaded walks all by themselves.

Another long time magic pitcher, and eventual teammate Inky Rutledge comes in at 2nd on this list, and has given up over 20% of all home runs in RGSOTS-E situations:

Nicholas Mora is the only pitcher on this list to have given up a complete cycle in RGSOTS-E situations:

Evelton McBlase is arguably the greatest pitcher in RGSOTS-E situations.  Their out-no-score rate is 50%, and they’ve never let a batter beat him without recording an out.

Defense

For the entire Discipline Era, fielders were not named for sacrifice plays, only on fly outs and ground outs without a score.  So we only have 19 players that were able to record an out in this era without Dickson scoring.  My initial desire to create this spreadsheet was to try and find a reason why RGSOTS happened so often.  Was it something with Vela’s hitting stats?  Richardson’s baserunning?  Or maybe the individual player’s or team’s defensive numbers? 

I ended up not looking into this as deeply as I would have liked; diving deep into the Forbidden Knowledge stats for each of these possibilities would have been a monumental task, and not long after, the Blaseball community was able to discover the purposes of most of the stats anyways.  But if you ever want to take the dive for yourself, the information is there.

Odd One Out

OK, so earlier I stated that there were 19 possibilities for what happens in an RGSOTS-E situation, but I only described 18.  That’s because there was one instance of an out recorded while the game blipped.  On Day 86 of Season 4, in the bottom of the 8th inning, Stu Trololol faced off against San Francisco Lovers pitcher Milo Brown with 0 outs and the bases loaded.  This was a not-uncommon occurrence in the early Discipline Era of Blaseball; the game lags, and a specific play is skipped, not shown on the Feed. 

Back then, I was doing all of this research manually by hand, going through each individual game.  When I was looking for the outcome of this particular situation, I encountered this blip.  This had only happened one other time in all 832 situations, but due to context clues, I figured out that that situation ended in a single.  There are any number of ways for an out to be recorded, so this out may forever remain a mystery.  Worry not, however, as Sebastian Woodman was able to draw a walk immediately after, sending Dickson home.

Clutch

Finally, we arrive at Hall of Fame consideration again.  While doing this research and analysis, I wanted to see how important these RGSOTS-E situations really were.  So I came up with some criteria for what could be considered a “clutch game.” The criteria for such a game are as follows:

• Any game where RG’s team won or lost by the number of runs equal to the number of RGSOTS-E situations in that game (unless RG scored in all situations and their team still lost, or if they didn’t score and they still won).
• Any game that went to extra innings in which there was an RGSOTSE situation before extra innings occurred.
• Any games with RGSOTSE situations in extra innings.
• If Sun 2 or Black Hole was activated, the situation will only be significant if the number of RGSOTE situations directly caused the activation.

Overall, this gave me about 139 games in which the number of RGSOTS-E situations really mattered and impacted the outcome of the game.  For the purpose of this section, walks without scores were ignored.  I’ve organized those games into a few categories:

38.8% of the time, successful scores in RGSOTS-E situations directly cause Richardson’s team to win.  In another 25.9% of situations, a score forced the game into extras.  That means in 64.7% of all clutch games, Richardson created a positive outcome by scoring in RGSOTS-E situations.  That translates to 90 entire games. 

Now, it’s unfair to say that Richardson is the only reason that these games went to extras or won, but it’s a significant number to consider, especially when compared to their career Wins above Tokyo (WhAT) of 39.796, which while impressive, isn’t among the elite batters in league history.

Unfortunately, the rest of the pie is a bit more complicated to understand.  In orange, we have the “Would have prevented extras” category.  These represent games where there was at least one non-score in an RGSOTS-E situation, where if there had been a score, Richardson’s team would have won outright and extra innings would not have been required. 

This doesn’t mean that all of those games were losses, but it means that the games could have been decided without the need for any additional innings.  And in red, we have situations where the games were lost.  In successful scoring situations, Richardson’s runs could have been enough to force extras or even win these games, however in these games he was unable to make that happen.

Then we have the fun ones.  First up is the “Non-winning run in extra innings”.  There have only been five of these situations recorded, and most were slightly different.  The first was a sacrifice fly from Velasquez Alstott in the top of the tenth inning on Day 64 of Season 5, but the Shoe Thieves had already recorded the run they needed to win the game.  Just 11 games later, another Vela sacrifice in the top of the tenth, a bunt this time, was not enough to prevent the Dallas Steaks from shaming the Shoe Thieves in the bottom of the tenth off of a three-run August Mina triple. 

On Day 61 of Season 11, a Simon Haley homerun caused the difference, however Richardson’s run didn’t contribute to the winning difference.  Similarly on Day 39 of Season 12, a Velasquez Alstott sacrifice bunt occurred after the Pies had already been shamed.  And in Season 17, Richardson did score in the bottom of the 11th, but it was only enough to stay alive until the Georgias were shamed in the bottom of the 17th.  

Then we have the “Contributed to Sun 2 / Black Hole”.  These runs brought the Shoe Thieves’ total number of runs to 10 in Sun 2 or Black Hole weather, causing the activation.  This happened four times in total, with two Sun 2’s and two Black Holes.  There’s also an interesting 5th addition to this list, when on Season 17 Day 24, the Hades Tigers activated the Black Hole, eating ten of their runs and leaving them with a final score of 0.4.  However, Richardson’s score in the 1st was the Shoe Thieves only run, giving them the technical win on the day.

Finally, the “Non-score in extra innings” is pretty obvious; it details a situation in which there was an RGSOTS-E situation in extra innings, but where Richardson failed to score.  This has only ever happened four times: a Velasquez Alstott flyout in the bottom of the 10th inning on Season 14 Day 59, and back-to-back strikeouts from ghost Case Sports and Simon Haley in the bottom of the 10th on Season 17 Day 82. 

The Thieves would go on to win the former of these games and lose the latter, however it should be noted that in that latter game, a sacrifice bunt from ghost Hendricks Ragnel was the reason that the game went into extras in the first place.  Finally, on Season 23, day 49, Richardson Games hit a game-winning double in the 11th, making Conner Haley’s strikeout later in the inning irrelevant for the outcome of the game.

Conclusion

In the grand scheme of things, none of this really matters.  Richardson Games was a phenomenal player for many reasons.  Their baserunning and stealing was widely known, and they may be the player that proved that “defense is real” more than any other.  But despite all of the moments inside and out of the game, the one thing I will remember Richardson Games the most for is scoring on the sacrifice. 

I’m hoping that you will remember them too when it’s time to submit your ballot for the Hall of Fame.

The post Richardson Games Should Be in the Hall of Fame appeared first on Blaseball News Network.

Yosh Carpenter’s story is one of what I can only describe as overwhelming resilience.

Yosh came out of the gate as one of the San Francisco Lovers’ best pitchers in the Discipline era. We are not, under any circumstances, known for our pitching, however Yosh always kept a notable success rate among their cohort.

Of 21 total seasons as a pitcher for both the Lovers and the Hawai’i Fridays, 16 of those seasons Carpenter earned a WHIP under 1.00, with stand out seasons (discounting an anomaly I will get to in a moment), being Seasons 6 and 7, the latter of which would see us in the playoffs finals.

Yosh’s consistent ERA throughout their time as a pitcher was 3.04, and they were a top 15 pitcher in Overhanded Career WhAT. The only other pitcher who has taken the mound of the Lovers in this group is, ironically enough, Gabriel Griffith.

Yosh sustained a significant career throughout era shifts, and spent their entire career both on the Lovers and Hawai’i Fridays, dedicated to the mound up until the absolute moment where they were needed in the lineup, to swap with legacy teammate Don Mitchell, in a play to prevent their vaulting.

If I’m being entirely honest here. I am not a stats guy. That’s not why I’m writing this article.

I want to tell a story.

If there is one thing you need to know about the San Francisco Lovers, it’s our seasoned history with Feedback, and sharing players with our friends in the Pacific.

While many of the Feedbacks we experienced were heart wrenching, I look no further than this season 13, day 79 Feedback for one of the best moments in Blaseball storytelling.

We can be realistic, this was a glitch. Yosh Carpenter took the mound against Gabriel Griffith, the inning began like any other.

Feedback struck.

Where we had come to painfully expect at this point to see Griffith standing in Yosh’s place, what we got instead was 17 more grueling innings of a Lovers staple pitcher refusing to leave the mound. Yosh completed all nine innings for both teams before the Veedback really hit, sending them to the Fridays where they would finish their career.

This would be the second of five Feedbacks we would have with the Fridays, and start a long line of what we’ve lovingly dubbed “the shipping of Theseus,” slowly but surely losing our original roster across the League.

I don’t tell this story out of sadness however, I truly do think that Yosh’s story is one of the most interesting things that has happened to us. It sets a precedent for the love of our roster, it would be the last time one of our most dominant original pitchers got to play with us but would lead to investing in standout Lovers pitchers like Sandford Garner, and newcomer Mindy Salad.

I think this glitch, a love letter to those moments in the game that just write themselves beautifully.

Whether it was Yosh’s performance, or this story that convinced you, I hope you consider Yosh Carpenter for your ballot.

Thanks.

The post Yosh Carpenter appeared first on Blaseball News Network.

Scratch Deleuze

Scratch Deleuze is a fantastic Blaseball player. Scratch Deleuze is a fantastic opossum. Scratch Deleuze deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

Scratch is the fulfillment of the promise that is the Ohio Worms. When the Worms arrived they looked to be horrible at playing Blaseball… and indeed, their first full season was historically losing. But the Worms had a special modification called “Bottom Dweller,” which boosts each player whenever the team finishes last place in its division. And that potential drove Worms fans into a frenzy.

Scratch was not the player most expected to skyrocket into stardom. That might have been Vessalius Sundae (who became an all-star), Augusta Chadwell (incinerated in their first season), or Huber Frumple (never played a game for the Worms). But with a measly 1.5 stars in batting, who would ever imagine Scratch would one day achieve greatness?

Well, us Worms used both of our braincells to dream, and now Scratch is a banger. They hit .380 in season 24 and sat near the league lead in slugging categories. Scratch is also a thieving genius. Frankly, I expect Scratch to steal at least one base every time she gets to the plate… unless they hit a homer, of course. That’s what 7.4 stars in Baserunning (7.8, if you count their item) will do for you!

As pointed out by Discord user deafhobbit, Scratch’s 52.8 WhAt compares favorably with the 53.9 WhAt of York Silk – and Scratch managed it in about 500 fewer plate appearances. It’s been improvement after improvement for Scratch ever since that first 1.5-star appearance, and the future is bright for our Worms legend.

Scratch is varyingly depicted as a team mom, teenage dirtbag, giant opossum carrying the team on their back, and tiny little possum resting on Ephraim Ladd’s shoulder. Scratch is always depicted as adorable. Let’s be real – it’s time to bring an opossum to the Hall of Fame.

-Patronus

Mcdowell Mason

Leader.

This one word summarises the long time captain of the LA Unlimited Tacos so well. Mcdowell, who had been with the tacos through their lows, whether it be the party time speed run or losing six players to the pods was also the most important player for their highs being a core member of the team for the season 13 and 14 internet league finals runs as well as the season 17 championship.

The other reason the word “leader” is most fitting for McD is because Mcdowell Mason is the league leader in career home runs, triples and total bases. Do you love the long ball? I know I do and there is no player who has provided the league with more long balls than Mcdowell Mason.

-DeeJay (@BlaseballACo)

Finn James

This week marks the second anniversary of Finn James’ pitching debut. Two years ago, Finn James began pitching for the Crabs, swapping places with beloathed pitcher Tillman Henderson in the Season 4 Election (paving the way for Henderson to later go up in flames and for fans to drag his corpse up and down the Idolboard in the name of Hall Star Science). It’s Season 5 and Finn’s rookie pitching season. The Crabs are about to top the Evil League with a regular season record of 65-34 and Finn James will lead the Crabs’ pitching staff in ERA and in pitcher wins. One week on in Season 6, Finn James will be top of the Crabs Rotation by ERA once again and the Crabs will take their first championship, stomping the entire League with a season record of 80-19. Vote for Finn because Finn James Wins Games.

–jiggit

Lou Roseheart

Lou Roseheart is one of the best players in the league in any position, and has been for most of their career.

Career stats:
2.53 career ERA, 7th lowest all time, and 3rd lowest among pitchers who never had underhanded.
.817 career OPS, with only 2 seasons below .740 OPS, seasons 3 and 9.
634 career stolen bases despite spending 5 and a half seasons as a pitcher (as well as being on a lineup that was never shorter than 9 players until the season 22 elections and longer than 9 players for over half of the Expansion Era).

Here’s the seasonal leaderboards that Lou Roseheart has been on:

Season 5
#9 Doubles Hit
#2 Hits with Runners in Scoring Position
Tied #2 Triples Hit with Nagomi McDaniel

Season 7
Tied #7 Triples Hit with Conner Haley and Justice Spoon

Season 8
#10 Stolen Bases

Season 16
#5 lowest ERA
#5 HR/9
Four way tie at #6 Walk Percentage of 0.001 with Elvis Figueroa, Sixpack Dogwalker, and Tiana Takahashi
Tied at #8 Walks/9 with Elvis Figueroa

Season 19
#2 Lowest ERA
#5 Hits/9
#2 HR/9
#7 Strike Percentage
#8 Strikeouts/9
#8 Walks/9

Season 20
#8 Slugging Percentage
Tied #6 Stolen Bases with Paula Turnip
Tied #3 Walk Percentage with Coolname Galvanic and Jolene Willowtree
#5 Strikeouts/Walks

Season 21
#5 Stolen Bases Tied
#6 Triples with Engine Eberhardt, Kathy Mathews, Mcdowell Mason, and Rivers Clembons

Season 23
#7 Stolen Bases
#7 Triples

Season 24
Tied #8 Triples with Joshua Watson

Vote for a player who can do it all. Vote for Lou Roseheart for Hall of Fame.

-LaserMessiah (@ChiBlaseball)

Dunlap Figueroa

Dunlap Figueroa is one of the greatest pitchers of all time. There’s a lot I could say about them: how they were one half of the Dunlap-Hiroto duo that gave the Tigers 16 straight winning seasons, both being top pitchers for pretty much day 1 up until S20 for Hiroto and S22 for Dunlap, when they were both alted with disastrous consequences. Talk about Dunlap’s ridiculous S21, Dunlap’s single Underhanded season and the nadir of their career, when put up one of the best Underhanded seasons ever, one of very few to rival Michelle Sportman’s, carrying a completely battered Tigers team on their and Dudley Mueller’s back all the way to finals. I could also talk about their ridiculous all time counting stats (#1 in innings pitched, #1 in strikeouts, #1 in wins, #2 in quality starts, #9 in shutouts). Or, about many of their absolutely bonkers moments, like when they pitched for both teams at the same time in Season 14 following a Feedback with NaN, or when they entered the Semi-Centennial with the Fourth Base and a dream to stop the end of the world. But I’ll just say this.

Dunlap Figueroa has pitched over 5000 innings. They have a 76 career ERA-, meaning they were 25% better than league average during all of them. The only players with more than 2500 IPs and a better ERA- are Winnie Hess, Elvis Figueroa, Burke Gonzales, Gabriel Griffith, Qais Dogwalker, Wyatt Pothos, Yosh Carpenter, Theodore Cervantes, Yummy Elliott, Alexandria Rosales. All of them are, or are hopefully going to be, Hall Of Famers – and Dunlap is right there with them, with double the playing time. But let’s exclude Dunlap’s alternation, and take only their career from when they were generated to when they were Alternated. The only player with more IPs and better era- than S4-S21 Dunlap is Winnie Hess, generally agreed to be the greatest pitcher of all time. If Dunlap had died in S22 instead of being Alternated, Winnie would be their only comparison.

-Dargo4

Basilio Mason

Basilio Mason does not like blaseball. This is a wild sentence for a player who had not missed a game until being reverbed to the rotation in season 18 and has not missed a game since returning to the lineup in that season’s election.

Even when elsewhere, Basilio only stayed for a game, returning with the lost shell containing Basilio Fig to the team. This is the player who has played the most blaseball and eventually, got great at it.

The steady progress from being one of the worst players on the worst team in the league, to being the Tacos best hitter in Season 24. This consistent growth has led to BMase being a top 50 hitter of all time by WhAT and only behind Nagomi Nava in career walks.

Consistent growth and patience.

-DeeJay (@BlaseballACo)

Sosa Hayes

Last week Sosa Hayes gained 16% of the vote share. That’s incredible!!!! It also means they only need 5% more of the vote (~10 more people than last week) to keep them on the ballot for their final week (where the underline will give them another HUGE BOOST)! Here’s a reminder of all the reasons Sosa deserves a spot on your ballot:

1. With a BsR of 116.4, Sosa Hayes is the 9th best baserunner of all time.

2. Sosa is one of the best 2 way player of ALL TIME, being 1 of 11 with more than 2000 plate appearances/batter faced to have an ERA- less than 100 and a OBS+ of over 100!!!! This puts Sosa up there with Castillo Turner, Burke Gonzales, and new nominee Lou Roseheart.

3. Sosa pitched incredibly well with very little stars, especially in season 11 where they with 0.97 pitching stars pitched 1-2 stars better than expected! This helps them become an above average pitcher (as seen by ERA- less than 100 and a career FIP+ of 121). This is despite maxing out at just 2.9 pitching stars during their pitching time.

4. Sosa was one of the best batters of the late expansion era with OPS+ of 140 and SLG+ of 134, with 2 top 10% seasons.

5. Sosa’s season 23 was the 10th best season by BsR EVER, at 29.9. This means Sosa’s best baserunning season was better than Beck Whitney’s, Richardson Games’, Rigby Friedrich’s, Forrest Best’s, and Hewitt Best’s (and also all the ppl on the ballot rn)

6. Sosa killed hype train, is the only player to have to stat caps effect their visible stars, feedbacked for Soibhan Chark twice, and has 3 selves batted in.

I know the ballots stacked right now but even the most popular strategies leave a few slots open. PLEASE throw a vote to Sosa Hayes, I think they deserve a spot in the hall and if we all believe it we can get them in.

-AKAFishy

FRYDEHHM

Here’s a humble suggestion for your ballot. Include all of these players. Yes, all of them:

Finn James
Richardson Games
York Silk
Dunlap Figueroa
Elvis Figueroa
Howell Franklin
Henry Marshallow
McDowell Mason

Or, FRYDEHHM. for short. Time to fry these eggs.

Yes, that only leaves you with 2 free spots. Yes, this is a lot. But this is the most stacked HoF ballot ever, and I truly believe this is the best way to induct as many players as possible. Some players left out are better than some players on the list, and some players left out are more well known than players on the list, but those picked have a specific combination of performance and notoriety and are at a much higher risk of falling off than anyone at 5%. Finally, all of them have considerable team support, which has historically been a great indicator of who has an easier time getting in: Finn from the Crabs, Games and Howell from the Thieves, Henry and Elvis from the Pies, Dunlap from the Tigers, Mason from the Tacos, York from…well, basically the entire league.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s plenty of other deserving players. The idea is simply to vote for the players most likely to make it in, and thus induct as many of them as we can. You may feel bad about leaving someone off your ballot, but if this works, you will be able to vote for them next week.

-Dargo4

Peanut Bong

-DeeJay (@BlaseballACo)

The post Stacked Ballot: Hall of Fame Week 23 appeared first on Blaseball News Network.

James Mora

If you’ve heard of James Mora, you probably already know why you are or aren’t voting for them. For those that haven’t, this blurb is for you.

On the field: James started out as a pitcher for the Fridays, and stayed there for several seasons. As a pitcher, they relied on defense but were never bad, especially by Discipline standards. When James feedbacked to the magic for Jaylen Hotdogfingers, their arrival was celebrated as an improvement over former slot occupant Yeong-ho Garcia.

Once the Move will was introduced, getting Mora onto the lineup became a major priority for the Magic. And once James got on the lineup (after a few failed attempts, like giving Chorby Short Homebody instead), they were without question the best batter on the team and remained thus until their untimely vaulting.

Jimmy was only the best hitting idol for about a season due to a dramatically ensmallened lineup, but their batting had a strong peak that didn’t overly rely on O No like other Magic batters (ie Bevan Wise) and consistent output for the rest of their time in the lineup.

External narrative: For the Fridays, Mora was a Discipline Era staple, one of their better pitchers during a time when the Fridays, like most of Wild Low, struggled to keep up with only sparse blessings to rely upon. During the Expansion Era, the Fridays were subject to significant roster changes, and losing James was a significant blow to them as an original pitcher who was often lored as in a relationship with fellow pitcher Stevenson Heat.

For the Magic, James represented an end to the chaos Jaylen would wreak within their rotation, a beloved player who was both a good prospect and fit in well with the chill vibes of Yellowstone.

Following the storm of redactions, Mora became a symbol of the Magic’s ability to keep up with the league during peak ruthlessness meta in spite of a seriously damaged lineup. Unfortunately, the tiny supply of batters on the team meant Mora became an instant idol sensation, dooming him to eventual vaulting off of momentum alone.

James, thus, is famous most often as an amusing what-if, when he dropped the force field meant to shield him from vaulting (although it could have instead caused a superposition) and when a secondary scheme to give him the Fifth Base didn’t trigger during that season’s election.

Conclusion: While James Mora might not be the best player on the ballot, or one who spent the majority of their time in the right place, their cultural and gameplay impact is significant, and they’re still a very impressive player. Anyone who dreaded matchups against the Magic from seasons 17 through 21 has Mora to thank for many, many of the runs they racked up.

-Beatrice

Jenkins Good

The Most Nominatively Determined Player

Jenkins Good is as borderline of a case as you can get here. 3.77 ERA and .954 WHIP overall. Acceptable numbers, if not inspiring. “Borderline” might actually be a slight bit of homerism on my part. But I love Jenkins, so I’m gonna try.

Jenkins Good sits upon the career Wins list, at #9. Now I’m the first to admit that wins aren’t the best measure of success. But, in order to pile up wins over a career and beat everyone but 8 players in the entire league, you have to be pretty good right? Gotta stick around a while and consistently win games.

A notable fact is that Jenkins Good did not get a single positive pitching statistical boost from season 2 elections until season 18, Day 68, when Jenkins picked up a Weird Arm Cannon. They did not get a single party, shadow boost, blessing, decree, will or item that bumped their stats an iota until well into Season 18, stuck at 3.05 pitching stars. During this period, Jenkins Good compiled 41 WhAT, the most gained without statistical changes in Blaseball.

And now my favorite Jenkins story. During season 23, Jenkins Good struggled a lot, notching an ERA of 6.31, finally paying for their lack of growth. In the s23 playoffs, however, they summoned a vintage Jenkins Good game – a pitcher’s duel with the Garages’ Arturo Huerta that ended in a 1-0 shutout to put the Talkers up 2-0 on the series. If you’ll recall, the season 23 Talkers had 9 pitchers of widely varying quality and a ridiculously cracked lineup. Jenkins Good was completely washed at this point, but they had one more game left in them, and pitched a gorgeous one.

Here’s the thing – I only just now realized how special that game is. Maude (Moderation) has a tendency to, uh, lie about the margin of victory. What looks like a 4-3 game was actually 8-3, etc. You get it. Anyways, Talkers fans have largely been desensitized to close games.

However, this shutout was actually a 1-0 game. The Talkers bats were unusually quiet in this iconic playoffs performance that normally completes a legacy and caps a hell of a career, but few Talkers fans fully appreciate the necessity and audacity of the performance even now.

And really, that’s Jenkins Good in a nutshell. They’re an excellent pitcher who toiled in the rotation under the shadow of PolkaDot Patterson and Greer Lott, never getting the credit or the spotlight. It’s time to give them their due. Vote Jenkins Good for the Hall of Fame.

-Cora

Fitzgerald Blackburn

Fitzgerald Blackburn has been on the Houston Spies since Season 3, Day 76, stepping in as an incineration replacement for Agent Miki Santana. Haven’t heard of them? Of course you haven’t, they’re a spy. Despite being noticed by SIBR for their Seed & Hot Dog viability in S19, they, as any good spy should, narrowly avoided gaining any Ego. Being this good took time, though. Blackburn has been the lead off hitter for the Spies for many of their 8.4k plate appearances (except for that one season on the Lovers), and has managed to keep up with the star increase of the league and the Wild Low despite the Spies’ policy on not partying. Blackburn has had the longest contiguous reign as ILB Pope (highest divinity in the league, from S7D95 to S14D01), and was chosen as the third lineup player for the Americano Water Works – one of the best Americano drinkers at the end of the Discipline Era. They’ve had two batting seasons in the top 10%, with their highest wrc+ hitting 171 in S16 (and a career average of 117). Their career WHaT sits at 38.9 – in the top 15% of the league. This [description redacted] is a vital part of the Spies lineup, and their multiple consumer attacks in the S20 Overbracket had a noticeable effect on the overall performance of the team.

It’s their last week, and your last chance to bet on Blackburn.

-agent kit

Rigby Friedrich

Rigby Friedrich was the greatest Expansion Era player by performance metrics.

They batted from S21 to S23: their career clocks at a fantastic 160 OPS+, meaning they were 60% better at getting on base than the league average. That ranks 12th all time, above such names as Alston Cerveza, Jacob Haynes, Commissioner Vapor, Fish Summer, Baby Doyle. When you account for what they actually did on base, their production is incredible: thanks to how good of a base stealer and base runner they were, they rank fifth all time in career WhAT_PA, meaning they generated an absurd amount of value for each plate appearance. On a rate basis, having Rigby in your lineup was worth more than having Jaxon, Nagomi, or Conner.

As a pitcher, they were also fantastic: career 67 era-, meaning they were 33% better than league average. Their career regular ERA of 2.76 is the 10th best in league history when counting Underhanded pitchers; if we invert the home run values of those, and rank all pitchers by overhanded ERA, it jumps to an outstanding 6th, ahead of Gabriel Griffith, Jaylen Hotdogfingers, Burke Gonzales, Elvis Figueroa.

They were a legendary player on both sides of the plate, and are likely to be the only Georgias lifer to be inducted. Vote for them.

-Dargo4

Sosa Hayes

With a BsR of 116.4, Sosa Hayes is the 9th best baserunner of all time. But how did this normal human adult reach this peak? Let’s start at the beginning.

Sosa Hayes started their Blaseball career on the Mexico City Wild Wings, a team well known for being bad except for that one season where they won the entire league. They quickly became beloved by the fans as well as by the sim, becoming the only player to gain stars due to the introduction of stat caps (they gained 0.5 stars when their patheticism was reduced to 0.990 at the start of season 2). Despite their maxed path, Sosa managed to hit when and how it counted, sporting an average OBP+ of 109 and an SLG+ of 101. During their time batting before season 10, Sosa had a BsR of 21.2, and it was looking up as they feedbacked to the Houston Spies.

The Spies were then hit with, by stars, the worst full team reverb to have occurred as of the end of the Expansion Era. Sosa’s 1.48 pitching stars were put to the test. And they did exactly what the Spies needed: they became a slightly above average pitcher (average ERAAA of 0.078). Beyond just being a winning pitcher over their 9 pitching seasons, Sosa also netted an average ERA+ of 106, FIP+ of 123, and WHIP+ of 106.

As Sosa’s stats increased, the Spies shifted them to hitting. From season 19 to season 24, Sosa batted for the Spies, the Atlantis Georgias, the Miami Dale, the Georgias again, and the Spies again. Sosa was an incredible batter during this period, with an average OPS+ of 140 and SLG+ of 134. In fact, all of those + stats are above 100, making it too hard to list. For peaks, 2 of these seasons were in the top 10% of batters by WhAT, and Sosa’s season 23 was the 10th best season by BsR EVER, at 29.9. As this list includes Don Mitchell 3 times, Collins Melon 4 times, and HOF snubs Mindy Kugel and Engine Eberhardt, this means Sosa’s best baserunning season was better than Beck Whitney’s, Richardson Games’, Rigby Friedrich’s, Forrest Best’s, and Hewitt Best’s. This is also when Sosa stole home and killed Hype Train.

Sosa represents a true success story: a player who came from just around average, managed well in a position they were worse in, and came back to become a phenomenal player with 47 WhAT, 2 rings for 2 teams, and the 9th best baserunning score of all time. Vote Sosa Hayes for Hall of Fame!

-AKAFishy

The post Double Down: Hall of Fame Week 21 appeared first on Blaseball News Network.