This past weekend I visited my brother in Cincinnati.  Ever since being asked to do a user interview by WIS earlier this year, I've kept in touch with the guys at WIS, and when I planned the trip to Cincy I dropped them an email asking if I could come by to meet some of the team.

Tom Zentmeyer and Jake Westrich graciously agreed to meet me for lunch on Friday, and we spent a fun 90 minutes or so talking about WIS, baseball, and life in general.  It was a fascinating conversation, and I asked Tom for his permission to post a little about what we discussed.

Please keep in mind that nothing here is official...and I am definitely not speaking on behalf of WhatIfSports.  Any errors or misinterpretations are 100% my responsibility.

In no particular order, some of what I thought was interesting:
-- We talked a lot about Fox's acquisition of WIS, pros and cons, etc.  It is my perception that Fox has principally been viewing WIS as a way to create content for their other online sports-related businesses; WIS has put a lot of their (very limited) resources into this, at the cost of updating the games with anything close to the frequency Tom would like.
-- That is beginning to change...our lunch was the day after the HBD redesign, some of the visual elements of which were ported over to SLB.  It seems that once again WIS is able to put time and effort into the games themselves.  Tom mentioned several times that he is absolutely committed to updating SLB, but he could not (and I did not push him to) promise a timeline.
-- Tom is a huge baseball fan; it's clearly his #1 passion
-- SLB is, however, at any given time, either their 3rd or 4th most popular game.  By a fair margin, HBD and HD are their top 2.  SLB is roughly tied with GD for the next spot.  I did not realize this, but it perhaps makes more sense to me now that WIS has spent more time on those other games.
-- SLB is their oldest game, and is built on a software platform that is now out of date.  I'm not a coder, and will not embarrass myself by showing how little I know about how games like this are designed.  But it was clear that to do any meaningful update of SLB will require basically rebuilding the entire game from scratch, a daunting proposition, especially given the lack of programming resources they've had to devote to it.
-- We talked a lot about the innovations Tom wants to bring to the game.  He has clearly thought a lot about this, which was exciting.  I won't mention too many things specifically because I can't know what tradeoffs he might have to make when he finally gets to this, but one thing he did mention is there will likely be dynamic pricing in the next update.  We discussed that in depth, because I think it's very challenging to make that work in practice, but he had a very thoughtful framework for doing it.
-- He also mentioned that there may in the future be 2 separate databases of players...one for OLs and other themes (very much like the one we have now), but a second one for progressives.  The progressive database would include all of the players available to OLs and themes, but would likely expand to include all players, even those with as few as 1PA or 1IP in any given season.
-- He also mentioned that with baseball-reference,com and retrosheet.org, there is now good, accurate data on things like platoon splits going way back into baseball history, and that the next update is likely to incorporate those in some way
-- Tom and Jake were kindly interested in a number of suggestions I made...none of which I will mention in detail because I don't want to commit them to anything...but we hashed out a couple of fun ideas that I hope will come to fruition.
-- One very specific thing I did ask them to look at....1965 Campaneris's A+ arm at catcher...I've discussed this in the forums before but that seems clearly to be an error.  Campy played 1 inning at C that season (the famous game where played all 9 positions) and did not throw anyone out.

Anyway, I just want to publicly thank Tom and Jake for their time.  As an avid SLB player for almost a decade, this site remains a great source of joy for me, and it was invigorating to learn that the game has not fallen off their radar.  Like just about everyone here, I've been frustrated by the lack of updates, and the almost total absence of communication from WIS, but I came away from lunch feeling more positively about the future direction of the site than I have in some time.

MY NAME DIDN'T COME UP FER AN INTERVIEW, DID IT?

BASTARDS!

Thanks for sharing. The prospect of dynamic pricing, in particular, is very exciting.

one of these days i'll have to write about my dinner with Andre.

That's awesome that you had a chance to meet and discuss everything with them. That is great that all of you got to share your passion for baseball and this fake baseball we all love. I really hope that he can implement the changes they want with a game they obviously care about.

Thanks for going that extra mile, as always.

That's good news,but if they don't do something soon there will be no SLB. Since I don't play Open Leagues I can't speak to there status,but anyone who plays themes and progressives already knows that the player pool is shrinking fast.

That's awesome and gives us hope. I sure hope that Fox begins to advertise. I would love to see some new blood since so many I have played with have literally disappeared from the site. I don't quite understand the idea of dynamic pricing yet, but I am very happy to hear that one of the main men at WIS is a big baseball fan. 

Who picked up the tab?

Posted by bench5 on 10/20/2015 6:53:00 AM (view original):
Who picked up the tab?

The Underhills

Tom is a very cool guy.  My wife and I visited Cincinnati around ten years ago and I also contacted the guys and asked if we could come by to see their set-up.  Tom met us at the front door and proceeded to give us a tour of the place, showing us where all of the "game experts" sat and described in a little detail about the workings of each system.  Being an idiot when it comes to code-speak and the such, a lot of it went over my head but it was interesting none-the-less.  After about 30 minutes, he took us in the back and introduced us to the "Turk."  What gracious hosts these two were.  The Turk sat us down and asked us if we had any questions.  My wife said, "Yeah, how do I get my husband away from WIS for just a little while each day?"  He laughed and said, "Sorry, your husband belongs to us now - there's nothing we can do."

He gave us both T-Shirts and invited us back anytime.  It was a sad day when I heard he had sold the business to FOX.  I'm sure they made him an offer he couldn't refuse though so I can hardly blame him.

Thanks contrarian23, this was good to read. At least we are somewhat in the loop, rather than relying on rumor, speculation and ouija boards to konw what is happening. 

Wish the news about likely updates were better, and that Fox were swallowed by the Bermuda Triangle restoring WIS to full independence etc. but at least now we know where things stand. 

I enjoyed reading this and thank you for organizing your thoughts regarding the meeting so concisely. I'm myopic and didn't realize SLB might be down their food chain... it's all I play and still (despite its stagnancy) enjoy it quite a bit. There are things to look forward to, and especially like the dynamic pricing idea. I'm glad it's not off their radar entirely and thank contrarian for once again doing something that benefits us all.
Kudos.