Thursday, June 16, 2011

MiLB Stadium Metrics: Judge Not Lest...Wait, No. We're Totally Judging.

My friends Ben, JC, Joe, and I have put together a preliminary list of metrics by which we will be judging all the Minor League parks Ben and I visit. If you have additional metric ideas, please post them in comments. If you want to criticize any of the existing metrics, please post your comments here.

Because I can't figure out how to post a good table here, I've placed our grading sheets in a public Google doc available here. This table will also constantly be updated with our thoughts on each individual park. The metrics themselves are as follows:

Price of Beer
0-10 points: 1 point per $1 below $10. All prices adjusted for least expensive 16 fl oz

Most Caloric Concession Item
0-10 points: 1 point per 200 calories (if I can get my full DVA in one food item, that's 10 points). Estimates based on ballpark staff or our own best guesses.

Minor League Personalities
0-10 points: 1 point per personality spotted; 2 bonus points for all 8. The Personalities are linked to in the first blog post.

Willingness to Give Random Bloggers Free Seats
0-10 points: 1 point per 10% discount we receive.

Tailgating
0-10 points: Largely (read: entirely) subjective based on sophistication of tailgating activities and locals' baseball knowledge.

Funniest Roster Name
0-10 points: John Smith? That's 0. Dick Wood? I'd say that's a 7. Rusty Venture? Yeah, there's your 10.


Promotion Quality
0-10 points: Entirely subjective, but points will be given for value of promotion, cleverness, and vitriol.

Diversity
0-10 points: 1 point per 10% of the crowd that is non-white

Men's Room
0-10 points: 1 point for every urinal under 10. I wanna pee in a trough!

Random Bonus Points!
At Our Discretion

5 comments:

  1. The price beer metric is a little off, isn't it? Seems like it'd be impossible to get a 10. Unless there are stadiums that just give away beer?

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  2. Very astute, shyaamward. Counterpoint: you don't deserve a perfect score for beer prices unless I'm getting free beer hurled at me. Preferably from an air cannon.

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  3. No points for promotions? Peoria's Lebron night deserves some recognition.

    Also to be clear, you're judging partially based on size of bribe received? Because I don't want to start with the the false assumption that you have ethics.

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  4. Fair enough, Andy. We shall add a category for promotions.

    And yes, we're very clear on that point. Actually, I'm making that category worth 100 points just to make sure there's no confusion about how heavily I value bribes.

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  5. 50 bonus point if the person you solicit a bribe from knowingly says "it's a ring toss game"

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