Re(3): Strengths And Weaknesses of Entire MC Roster IMO Posted on April 17, 2023 at 10:57:21 AM by Craig G
This is a very good discussion of a topic that simply hasn't been covered well. Namely, day-to-day or even game-to-game variations is intensity.
As a point of reference, a mechanical system such as typically used by computer simulations is going to try to estimate the average performance level for each entry, and do the the computations based on that.
If you think that Bolivar is at his absolute peak on Friday night, the sim says, "No, we need to average in the sleepy matinees for our calculation".
Or maybe your program uses a recency-weighted average, and you have a player who consistently starts off the work-week slowly, and when healthy goes all-out with a finishing kick. The computer will suffer, be continuously whip-sawed, and never learn.
Going back to one of the few Miami Jai-Lites that I watched, Benny B told Big Dave that some players approach their first game of the day as a warm-up. Additionally, the late Dale Martinek was always keenly aware of which players were coming in cold to a particular game, and which were not.
So that is a key area for some analysis and hypothesizing.
A - Is there typically significant variation in intensity?
B - Can a human observer in real-time detect it?
From your comments, it appears that you think that A is undeniable. I agree, and think that a top level human observer should be able to obliterate a business-as-usual computer program along the lines of the Skiena model.
