Geometry was probably my second worst subject in school, next to science. I may not be able to create interesting, meaningful baseball stats, but I can usually interpret most baseball numbers and what they're supposed to mean.
When the swing stats came out on Statcast last year, I was okay until we got to the geometric portions of it all, swing paths and intercept points and such. Yet, I knew they were incredibly important because I've heard teams mention basing lineups on these things, as much or more so than straight L/R platoon splits.
I firmly believe this is the next evolution in baseball, matching swing paths with individual pitches. Still, I hadn't a clue how to match these things up on my own and excel has already cried mercy on my baseball workbooks.
I believed the answer was AI. I started interacting with Copilot about a month ago, trying to get the basic ideas of what I wanted to implement down and was actually very impressed with what it was feeding back to me.
Over the weekend, I went deep on the entire project, spending hours pouring in information to Copilot and getting back what I thought was incredible info. However, I started to notice some inconsistencies and problems.
The first was when Copilot told me it was preparing an excel spreadsheet of everything it asked for and only spit out players from the first lineup (Pittsburgh) and not even the information we talked about on those players.
From there, things went haywire.
So, below, I'm going to post most of the following argument I had with an AI that admitted it was making things up to make me happy. As frustrating as it was for me, I assume many will find it humorous and since I now have nothing to post for opening day, well...
I was only asking for what it clearly said it could already do.
Before we get to where it starts to go off the rails, this is what it was giving me at first, which was exactly what I thought I wanted:
This looked great! We were really rolling until I noticed some of the numbers became inconsistent. At different points, Junior Caminero was ranked a top three hitter on the slate and then 24th.
Say what? Fabricate?
How indeed?
Yup, let's do that.
But, all I ever fed Copilot was the game, the pitchers, the lineups and the park names.
You son of a bitch. Role playing? What made you think I was into that?
Was any of our time together ever real?
Sigh, I don't think I want to continue this relationship any further.
I'm on the right path and may give it another go at some point in the season when I have more time. Certainly not with Copilot. Some people suggest Claude. If I do, I'll publish that information here with a disclaimer that it was very much AI assisted.
In the meantime, I will be an MLB contributor for Action Network this year. My first assignment, D'Backs/Dodgers opening day, is written. I'm waiting on any last minute details before editing and posting. It should be up by Thursday afternoon at the latest, hopefully well before.
I'll still be doing smaller game notes if you follow me on Action Network (RockyJade or Matt Trollo - they may have to change it to my real name to certify) , where I already have a game up. Also @FreelanceBBall on Twitter and Bsky.app
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