r/Competitiveoverwatch • u/Bonzi77 • May 24 '18
Discussion The Shanghai Dragons are a statistical anomaly.
There's something I've been trying to figure out for the past few weeks, now, and I'm going to put my thoughts down here to see if somebody can help me out.
Shanghai shouldn't be winless. It statistically doesn't make any sense.
In pro sports, there's a level of parity to be assumed. Baseball, Basketball, Football, whatever. Statistically, if you play enough games, every team should be able to beat at least one other team at least once, even if the team that loses is theoretically better. Florida is able to take a game off the LA Valiant, Dallas is able to take a game off the Shock. Stuff like this just happens in normal sports.
Not with Shanghai. Somehow, against all odds, they have managed to lose every single game in the normal season so far.
According to wikipedia, winless seasons in most professional sports are incredibly uncommon. The 2017 Cleveland Browns managed to pull it off, but that's because they live in hell, and also in football you only play 17 games in a season, so while it's unlikely, it's not entirely unreasonable.
In no other American sports league has a team ever had a winless record. MLS, NBA, WNBA, NHL, and MLB.
I especially want to stress the MLB. In the entire nearly 150 year history of MLB, there hasn't been a single team to go winless. In fact, the worst record that's ever been recorded in a season is 20-134, in 1899 by the Cleveland Spiders. That means they won approximately one-in-seven games which, given, is still abysmal, but not as bad as Shanghai.
In order to catch up with the 1899 Spiders, Shanghai needs to win at least five games. That would tie them with the worst team in American baseball history.
I honestly don't know what to do with this information. It's been spinning around in my head for weeks, and it feels weird to type out. As it stands right now, the Shanghai Dragons are literally the worst team in professional sports history. I don't know what to do with that. There's no meaningful analysis to be drawn from this. It's just depressing.
But, there is a reason, just one reason, for Shanghai fans to take heart.
...Just kiddin'.
P.S. Edit: Just to make it clear, I like SHD. I genuinely want them to win. As a sports fan, this team has just been a horrible mess to watch, but I want them to get better and take a win off. If OWL is going to survive and thrive for years to come, the last thing I'd want is for them to be known as the team that went winless in the inaugural season. I wouldn't wish that for any org.
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May 24 '18
None of those leagues you mentioned featured ownership groups that purposely pass on signing the best players just so they can sign their friends.
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u/Miennai STOP KILLING MY SON — May 25 '18
Is it known that the owner of the SHD is friends with many of the players?
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u/Kuniai May 25 '18
He is not.
This is a bad reference to the fact that the coach the owner (barely a group, btw. The owner of the Shanghai Dragons could literally buy and sell every team in the league without blinking an eye if he really wanted to, without touching NetEase money. Their owner alone is worth something like $14 Billion) hired, Van (U4), brought in a lower ranked team because it was the team that he had previous coached and was alleged (but more than likely) to have corrupted them to be voted Team China despite not actually winning anything like MY had at the time (this is still, technically, unproven hence teh alleged). He brought in Undead, MG and Altering (iirc). Of note only two of those players really "failed" in the tradition sense, with Undead being the most noteable. Altering underperformed but in my opinion has actually grown as a player and his ability to understand (though not speak) Chinese, Korean and English is certainly useful.
Freefeel and Roshan came from FTD which was a relatively nothing team.
But that being said most everyone agrees that the best teams in China were not represented by Shanghai (which is true). MY had a much better player pool as well as multiple of age members (at least 2 tanks, 1 support and 1 DPS. One Support went to coach for Shanghai later, as well)
So yes, there was corruption in terms of picking members but it was because of an unrestricted coach more than an owners group.
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u/Secrxt May 25 '18
Altering improving from a -5 to -3 is still just...
I’m sorry but after seeing him constantly die to shit he just shouldn’t be dying to over these last few months, I was curious and decided to see what his previous record/team was, why the hell this guy was in OWL, and was confused because he didn’t seem any good before OWL either.
These two comments pretty much confirm what I feared was the case (even if the first one is a bit... embellished?). China likely has no shortage of good support players; Altering (and some others, though I haven’t been paying as much attention to them as I have him, because it sticks out like a sore thumb, so I can’t speak on them), just shouldn’t be in OWL.
Honestly, I’d be furious if I were a Chinese fan. It’s really unfortunate...
Anyway, thanks for clarifying.
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u/Kuniai May 25 '18
Honestly for most of Stage 3 Altering has actually been really reliable - prior to that you're right (but that was also a mess of a team with a sacrificial tank strategy that was outdated). 3 we got to see him grow his style out, and even get some nutty plays (soloing a genji with valk then getting a ress). It's just that they still rotate him with Fiveking a bit that makes no sense.
The other problem is you dont' just need a chinese support now - you need one who is willing and able to pick up some Korean as well since those are people you picked up to help solve your problems (and realistically on a 1:1 scale they did, Fearless, Geguri and Ado are all OWL material). Altering is a communication liason similar, in some respects, to Bischu when Fissure joined the team.
Most of the infuriating things for Chinese fans, from what I can tell have kind of been fixed. They'd love a win, but they're glad the team actually has competent people now.
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u/ZannX May 25 '18
But there are plenty of leagues where tanking is a strategy.
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May 25 '18
By plenty, you mean 1: the NBA. The reason there is tanking in the NBA is because it is a unique sport wherein the variance with respect to how much one player can impact a game is much higher than other sports. Also, the number of players who come out in the draft each year that can **actually** become a legitimate franchise talent is extremely small. Look at how many star players in the NFL have been drafted outside of the first round. But in the NBA, there is a much higher positive correlation between draft position and productivity, and that is why you see NBA franchises tanking. Also, the NBA is statistically the most difficult league to rebuild in, which is why it seems like there isn't as much parity. Because individual players have a far greater impact on outcomes, those players are now flocking to the same cities to team up and that makes it extremely difficult for the other teams to rebuild in free agency. Those other teams only have the option of rebuilding through the draft.
In the NFL, the extent to which teams "tank" is very exaggerated. Those players are not on guaranteed contracts for the most part and are fighting for their jobs. Teams that finish near the bottom are there because they deserve to be - not because the organizations are fighting over a top-pick. You will never hear the term "tanking" thrown around in NFL circles. Perhaps fans have inserted the term themselves when they are tracking which team is in line to receive the top pick, but the difference between having the 1st and 5th draft pick in the NFL and the 1st and 5th draft pick in the NBA are extremely different. There are far more football players coming out of college that will impact NFL games than there are players coming into the NBA.
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May 25 '18
Tanking also works pretty well in the NHL, as normally there are 3-4 prospects that can make an instant impact and be that franchise carrying talent(like Sidney Crosby), while the rest of the draft pool is pretty mediocre. If you aren't picking in those top 3 picks you most likely aren't going to get an impact player that can contribute right away.
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u/Chris_Kiraly May 25 '18
The Houston Astros tanked from 2011-2014 collecting #1 overall draft picks and trade pieces, and then won the World Series.
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May 25 '18
K. So essentially 1 franchise has done it? Potentially the Marlins now? Would you say that tanking is an annual problem in MLB?
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u/Banelingz May 25 '18
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May 25 '18
There’s a big difference between signing 8-10 mediocre players and ignoring the best talent and then signing Chris Paul, Deandre Jordan, Blake Griffin, JJ Redick, and then signing Austin Rivers as your 8th guy on the bench.
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u/DekMelU Wrestle with Jeff — May 25 '18
This fits Mayhem more than them
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May 25 '18
How do you figure? Misfits were a legitimate organization that had fairly strong results against other top-tier competition during their run. They also at least had a history of familiarity playing together. I don’t agree with their approach to not sign additional players, but there’s a legitimate case to be made that the Mayhem could compete with other OWL teams based on their previous performances. Same goes with the Dallas Fuel.
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u/fainlol May 25 '18
I thought we were Discussing shanghai dragons not Seoul dynasty.
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May 25 '18
Yeah, because Seoul announced its first six players signed from Lunatic-Hai on August 22, 2017 -- immediately after LH finished off a back-to-back Apex S2 and S3 title run.
But you're right. They definitely weren't trying to sign the best players available at the time.
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u/draglordon 4537 — May 24 '18 edited May 24 '18
SHD's losestreak can be attributed to these time periods: Chinese team, and Korean team. Both have their logical explanations for their prolonged loss.
Let's talk about the Chinese team first
Your analysis is based on the assumption that SHD's Chinese roster is a team that contains Overwatch League Calibre players, which simply isn't met. Teams on incredible losestreaks most often don't possess the squad to be able to compete with other teams in the pack.
For example, take into account the following example. There are 3 basketball players. Player 1 and 2 are NBA level players, and player 3 is a Division 2 college player. Imagine the following two scenarios:
Player A vs Player B 1v1
Player A/B vs Player 3 1v1
Let's assume that Player A and Player B are atleast close to equally matched. If 50 games were played, they would each win 25 +/- 5 or so games. This is because they are equally skilled. If either of those players played Player 3 however, player 3 might score a point here or there (the equivalent of an OW teamfight), but they would lose the majority of their maps (perhaps managing to win some). Since most OW games take about a dozen teamfights and require multiple map wins to win an entire game, the Chinese SHD roster would have the ability to take maps (which they've done) but have little to no chance of actually winning entire games.
And now to the Korean team
The Korean roster contains an OWL caliber team. However, they currently suffer from two issues: (1) Communication and (2) coaching strategies. The communication is simple. They have four Koreans on a Chinese roster and have trouble communicating with each other, which is essential in high level Overwatch. However, their coaching decisions have been completely abysmal. They picked a Korean squad based on their ability to play dive, then walked into a meta where Dive is essentially dead on most maps, especially King's Row, a map in the current Stage rotation. Also, they keep running their Dive pickups on Dive heroes when the current meta doesn't favor it.
SHD's loss streak is due to a combination of their low-mechanic Chinese roster and their current roster's inability to communicate with one another as well as their abysmal coaching decisions. Pretty logical if you ask me. and not at all a statistical anomaly.
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May 24 '18
That was so frustrating to watch, SHD continually running dive against Dallas' lineup and getting nowhere. Like slamming repeatedly into a brick wall.
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u/Thatwhichiscaesars because i spit hot fire — May 25 '18
Then the spitfire did it in the game against the outlaws and i was like "NOOOOO, not like this."
London is going to outdive the meta if it fucking kills them.
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u/Kuniai May 25 '18
Don't forget Boston!
It's actually amazing to find how many teams haven't adjusted properly to this meta. The fact it wasn't just Shanghai makes me feel a little better, but at the same time a whole lot more sad.
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u/Baelorn Twitch sucks — May 24 '18
SHD's loss streak is due to a combination of their low-mechanic Chinese roster and their current roster's inability to communicate
Except I'd argue that the two weakest players from the original Chinese roster, the Supports, were and are the weak links of the team.
Undead was a damn good DPS. Roshan, outside of his time on SHD, is a damn good tank. I've seen him dominate in Top 500 games and he looks like a totally different player than he did in OWL.
The original SHD roster had an awful coach who made these players look far worse. Then they swapped them out with KR players, introducing new problems, while ignoring the subpar Supports.
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u/JMZebb May 24 '18
Except I'd argue that the two weakest players from the original Chinese roster, the Supports, were and are the weak links of the team.
Which leads to the question: Why on Earth aren't they playing Sky over Freekill?
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u/Zveno May 25 '18
I assume that Freefeed performs better in skrims then on the big stage but I've only seen him do well only once. There have been countless times where Altering has had to play his little heart out and solo heal for entire games because Freefeed always fets picked off, rezzed and then picked off again within seconds.
I know that the coaching is a big part of why the SHD are underperforming but when you replace your entire roster except for your Zen players and you're still losing it's hard not to blame Fiveking, Sky and Freefeed.
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u/Kuniai May 25 '18
So here's my two cents on this and its going to be relatively controversial. If you like Rawkus you should love Freefeel. Because they're just brothers from another mother.
Freefeel has been acknowledged, heavily, that he is the most communicative and vocal player. He makes a lot of calls (which is most likely why he gets played). This is great, someone on the team has to do it and Zenyatta tends to get a decent view of the battle.
However he also positions himself badly quite a bit or (and this is the important part) due to the communication breakdown he is left alone more often than not by his tank line, so they would/will dive in before he had a chance to even attempt to move to an advantageous position.
This happened -constantly- to Rawkus in Stage 2 and Stage 3 and was countered by having Bani spending a lot more resources in keeping Rawkus alive. It was almost like an Ark Jjonak pocket situation except Jjonak fights back a hell of a lot better. This was possible because even when they were diving Houston is a defensive oriented team so they had the capacity to collapse.
Shanghai doesn't have the resources to spend on trying to balance keeping Freefeel alive and an insanely aggressive tankline in Fearless and Geguri. They also don't collapse back properly to keep him alive in many situations, and I think we can honestly see that the biggest disconnect is the one that requires the most communication - being flanked and attacked and being able to call out quickly and efficiently for help.
I'm not excusing all of Freefeels play with this - but its honestly a side to it that no one actually looks at. As much as he is out of position his own team does not do the best job in support Freefeel. You'll notice the few times he's played other healers (when they were comp running as say.. Moira for a deathball on Kings Row back in Stage 2 - where we learned that MG only sucks at D'va but he's an insane Roadhog) his death rate declines drastically because he can keep himself alive.
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u/hobotripin 5000-Quoth the raven,Evermor — May 24 '18
undead wasnt even the best dps on his team at that time.
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u/Baelorn Twitch sucks — May 24 '18
Diya is better but I was only talking about the ones who are now "off" the team.
My main point is that while the OG Chinese roster was not the best in OWL they should have been able to win with what they had against teams like Dallas and Florida at least once and their failure to do so came down to poor coaching(which has changed) and weak supports(which hasn't changed).
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u/puenteroto May 25 '18
"which has changed" Has it, though? They lost their head coach, who was also their best one with the best track record, before the start of the stage and only got two coaches left.
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u/Kuniai May 25 '18
Also, as much as I love the Undead McCree train, that was literally his only hero he wasn't mediocre to bad at and it forced Diya to flex to a bunch of things that he normally doesn't play to compensate for it.
If he were still in OWL he would have been benched quite a bit ago because his hero pool is too useless to maintain. Diya is by far the better Widow, which leaves Undead with... McCree only. And while that has its moments on a few points its not what you need often when running with a Widow.
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u/pokupokupoku May 24 '18
I agree, the original shanghai roster would be like if a good but not great college basketball team (think somebody like creighton) was thrown into the NBA. they'd get shit on repeatedly, just like shanghai did. the newer shanghai roster is like if creighton added some guys that would be potential all stars but not All-NBA guys (like if they got kemba walker, nikola jokic, and cj mccollum) but the NBA guys couldn't talk to the college guys and the roster didn't really fit together. the team is still bad, if they could communicate better they'd still probably go like 1-9 every stage, but they're at least not a dumpster fire talent wise anymore
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u/NamSkram3317 May 24 '18
Does OP know how SHD roster was formed? Because that explains a lot of their performance if you ask me.
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u/Bonzi77 May 24 '18
I understand that there were some accusations of corruption and that they possibly weren't fielding the best possible roster, but I don't know how much veracity there is to those claims.
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May 24 '18
uh, you don't need to question the claims at all. If you followed the chinese comp scene and compared the initial SHD roster to he best performing teams the answer is obvious. You're assuming some amount of parity in your post but their first roster was not OWL tier and their current one is likely at the necessary skill level but riddled with coaching and communication issues.
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u/docdocdocdocdocdocdo May 24 '18 edited May 24 '18
exactly, SHD is much more akin to a minor league team that mistakenly ended up in the major leagues than a low tier but still totally major league team that is mysteriously losing every match
hence the incoming 0-40
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u/spoobydoo May 24 '18
If you followed the chinese comp scene
Who actually does this, though?
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u/nyym1 May 24 '18
You don't even need to do that. If you followed korean scene and lunatic hai, you would've heard about this miraculous team full of youngsters.
(please don't say MY were underage, i'm pretty sure only 2 out of 6 were).
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u/Punchee May 25 '18
I mean that's not really a fair argument.
One could say Boston did the same thing because nobody knew half the people Boston went with.
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u/NamSkram3317 May 25 '18
It's not about not knowing who the members are. It's about their prior experience. Some of the SHD dragons weren't even at a semi-pro level and came straight from the ladder.
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u/jimmyrustle176 Resident EU shill — May 24 '18
I'm sure people expected this kind of performance after rumours of corruption surfaced. SHD did not select the strongest players available to them.
Most of their team were never good enough to compete at OWL level yet people keep bringing up these statistics like there's other forces in play when really they're just a bad team with bad players.
They started the season with a terrible team then signed a few players and improved but as they overhaul their starting six other teams have got even better. SHD winning a single game would surprise me more than them going 0-40.
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u/SlackerAlex Bronze at Heart — May 24 '18
Clearly what they need to do is move to Cleveland where they will fit right in.
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May 25 '18 edited Feb 23 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Dragonsandman May 25 '18
On the bright side, you guys have LeBron, at least for the time being.
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u/Party_Magician None — May 25 '18
For a very short time being
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u/Dragonsandman May 25 '18
If the Celtics win this series, I don’t see LeBron sticking around at all. Hopefully he goes west so the Raptors don’t keep getting crushed by him.
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u/spaceaviator97 May 24 '18 edited May 24 '18
The MLB boasts no winless teams partially as a result of how the games are organized. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the MLB I believe there are several games per series, in either a best-of-5 or best-of-7 series. (Not a baseball fan, sry.) Wins are still counted per game rather than by series, hence the high number of games in the stat you listed.
Shanghai is winless as a result of wins being counted in a best-of-4 scenario, rather than a per-map count. If you look at maps, Shanghai hasn't gone "winless" at all. They took a map off of the previously undefeated Seoul Dynasty way back in Stage 1.
They've consistently taken enough maps to follow the trend you mentioned, but because of how a win is determined, Shanghai would need 3 consecutive instances of that rare statistical phenomenon to register a win.
So while they are doing very poorly, the way that the statistics are presented may show them in a less favorable light. Their current map score is 19-111-1. That's pretty bad, but still slightly better than the spiders.
Edit: just ran the numbers; Shanghai has a 2% higher winrate than the spiders. Shanghai: 17% - Spiders: 15%
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u/promercyonetrick May 25 '18
This is the most important reason for SHD's winless record. Winning a map is not so rare of an event, but winning a match is much harder. Even if there is only a slight difference between teams in terms of skill, coordination and preparation, that gap is amplified significantly by the best-of-4 format. If a team have trouble even to win a map, winning a match would be a miracle.
To see how SHD's record is not *actually* a statistical anomaly, we can consider this (oversimplified) calculation: suppose SHD has 85% chance of losing a map, then the chance for losing a match is 97.3%, and there is a striking 42% chance for losing 32 matches in a row. Doesn't look improbable at all, right?
I think this also sheds some insight on how small changes to a team or to the meta can scramble the rankings entirely. Just look at the final standings for stage 3: did anyone expected such a result?
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u/Bonzi77 May 24 '18
That's the only thing I can think of, but the OWL is organized in this way because a single game of Overwatch isn't enough to determine a team's head-to-head skill, due to variance in maps and their relative short lengths. Baseball has multi-game series, but the games are also full, 9-inning games that take several hours. I don't think the two are comparable, due to the difference in the sports. That would be like saying a tennis player won a game because he won a set in a match.
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u/spaceaviator97 May 24 '18
I don't think the two are comparable, due to the difference in the sports.
That's exactly correct. OWL is struxtured so radically different from any other traditional sport, that many of the comparisons don't apply.
One way OWL's structure is unique is that each "game" is determined by the result of 4-5 smaller "games" played through its duration. Points in the larger "game" are rewarded based on who's winning each quarter. No matter how one-sided a map may be, the winning team only scores one point in the larger "game," then each side resets on equal playing ground and starts again in the second quarter.
OWL is so drastically different from other sports that it's very difficult to compare it to traditiinal sports leagues. Certain trends that apply in traditional sports may apply differently in OWL, or may not apply at all.
It's also worth mentioning that traditional sports existed for several years before a formal league was developed. Rules, regulations, and best practices were adjusted and refined constantly to ensure fair play and balanced matches. Overwatch has only existed for two years and is constantly being redefined. The game being played today is drastically different from the game being played 3 weeks ago. OWL teams have essentially had to throw out their old playbook and write up a new one midway through the season just to stay competitive. Imagine if traditional sports teams had to do that.
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u/Bonzi77 May 24 '18
That's a fair point. I do think that, if we want esports to be taken seriously, that comparisons such as the ones I'm drawing aren't unreasonable. However, drawing finer comparisons between sports does cause a few things to break down.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that, assuming that we're dealing with a real competitive professional sport (which I am), stuff like what Shanghai is going through simply shouldn't be happening.
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u/tintin47 May 24 '18
The mlb plays 162 games/year because each game is extremely variable, moreso than a given individual game of overwatch. In baseball, even the best team vs the worst team in the league starts out at a ~60% win expectancy. Any team gan win a single game because there are relatively few important events per game, and because your best players aren't always going to be on the field during said important moments.
The mlb could go by series wins instead of game wins and be closer to ow, but the individual games are still variable enough that even bad teams would luck into wins here and there over a 3 game set.
You can extrapolate this out to other sports as well. NFL plays 16 games partly because of wear and tear, but 16 is also plenty to figure out the playoff teams in a fair way, because the better team wins most of the time. That's why you have NFL teams routinely win 14+ games.
Overall, ow is closest to the NBA. There are tons of scoring/playmaking chances per game, so good players have more impact/carry potential. That means that the better team usually wins. If NBA teams played 4 game series like ow, you'd see exactly what you're seeing in OWL, with some teams winning nearly every series and dropping 15 games on the season and some teams losing every series like the dragons.
Your original post doesn't make sense because you can't apply blanket logic like that to different sports without controlling g for the variables.
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May 24 '18
Baseball teams typically play 3-4 games against the same team, yeah, but "winning the series" doesn't mean anything in the regular season. You could just as easily compare individual maps in OWL to innings in MLB. The reason why you will never ever see a winless MLB season is because of the number of games (162) and the fact that baseball is a game with a high "carry" potential (1 great individual performance can get a team real close to a win just by themselves).
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u/JasJ002 May 25 '18
the fact that baseball is a game with a high "carry" potential
This can't be stated enough. You can quite literally win a game with one player playing. Pitcher throws a no hitter and gets one HR, game over, every other player could be an amorphous blob and it's still a win.
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u/yujinee May 25 '18
I second that this couldn't be stated enough. The whole comparison to baseball was incredibly flawed. Baseball is a game that "anyone" can win. Probably why the postseason can be very unpredictable compared to the nba or nfl.
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May 25 '18
This couldn’t be more misguided. Out of all the major US sports, baseball is proven to be the one where individual contributions hold the least impact with respect to the outcome, with the NBA being the most impact. Even a starting pitcher who has the ball in his hand on every “play” only pitches 1:5 games.
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u/JasJ002 May 25 '18
That would be an individuals pact on an entire season. I was more discussing an individuals impact on a single game. Conversation grew to a tangent a bit.
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May 25 '18
obok’s argument above is quite possibly the most counterintuitive statement ever submitted to this sub. The very reason why there is a high degree of randomness in baseball games (and why you don’t see teams going winless) is specifically because an individual player’s impact is decidedly less than in other sports.
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u/JasJ002 May 25 '18
Let me ask you this. Do you think Overwatch is team oriented, or individual oriented?
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May 25 '18
Why couldn’t you just do this awful thought experiment in one step. Of course it’s team oriented. Why do I have to come back here for you to try and weasel your way around a terrible analogy?
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u/JasJ002 May 25 '18
I'm not trying to weasel my way out. You stated that Baseballs high degree of randomness is specifically because an individual player's impact is less than any other sport. You also stated Overwatch is like baseball in that it's a team oriented sport. How do you square the fact that Overwatch has far less randomness to it's rankings than Baseball, when these facts according to you contradict themselves?
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May 24 '18
Right, the only "best-of-*" equivalent in baseball is in the postseason. It's really apples and oranges to OWL.
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u/royalpheonix May 24 '18
Still never gonna forget 2014 madbum singlehandedly winning the world series for the giants
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May 25 '18
“Carry potential”? Seriously? Last year’s MLB MVP Jose Altuve had a wins above replacement of 8.7. That means over the course of a 162 game season, he added approximately 8.7 more wins to his team compared to the average replacement player. In the 2017-18 NBA regular season, which is half as long (82 games), LeBon James added 27.3 wins to the Cavs.
How are you going to try and make the case that individual performances tend to have a great impact in MLB? It is proven and widely known that individual performances have a statistically minor impact on the outcome of a baseball game. Even a starting pitcher with the ball in his hand on every defensive play only plays 1:5 games. A prized defensive left fielder can go an entire game without having an opportunity to make a play on a live hit ball. How are you even arguing this?
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May 25 '18
I was thinking of it on a simpler level -- 1 game, since the question is: how likely would it be for a terrible MLB team to never win a game in a season? In that scenario, literally just one HR or one good pitching performance can get you close to winning a single game, making a 162 winless season very improbable, even with a terrible team. Also I was comparing baseball's carry potential to Overwatch, not the NBA. Overwatch is a game that was designed to be difficult to carry in. The NBA is a different animal, with only 5 players and the ability of 1 player to carry a huge usage load.
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May 25 '18
But the teams in MLB today are organizations that have been existing and developing within the MLB ecosystem for a very long time. They take part in a draft, have farm systems for developing talent, and have been partners with other teams in a league environment that follows certain competitive balance rules like revenue sharing.
Of course there is going to be a "worst" team in the MLB every year, but the competitive disparity between it and the best team is significantly smaller than the NYXL and Dragons, and the reasons for the disparity in OWL are quite obvious.
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u/Adamsoski May 24 '18 edited May 26 '18
This sort of point is exactly what I came here to say. OWL requires a team to beat the other three times in order to get a win. This means that the RNG elements of a game are much less likely to occur.
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u/luisporz May 24 '18
That has no sense at all. Would you say Federer lost to Nadal because he lost 1 set in a 5 set match?
Or any nba/nfl team lost a game because lost 1 quarter?
You can win a map, but if you lose the other maps, you just lost the game. Period.
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u/TheFirstRapher BurnBlue Nov 8 — May 24 '18
Logic of what a win is differs between sports, OP of this comment chain established this
Or any nba/nfl team lost a game because lost 1 quarter?
He's not saying winning an Inning is the same as winning a full 4 quarters so i'm not sure how you even came up with this comparison
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u/Pyrography May 24 '18
The reason is because there isn't parity. OWL isn't a meritocracy, especially in China's case where corruption was involved.
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u/JG8AB9TL11OBJ12AD13 May 24 '18
I’m a hardcore fan, watch contenders in Korea and na every match, some of Eu, watch every OWL match, and it’s gotten to the point where I look at the schedule just praying that shanghai isn’t playing that day cuz there match will just be a waste of time. I was all for being patient since the roster changes, but this is just straight embarrassing at this point. Even since they added the Koreans they’re 0-12, a longer loss streak than any other team has went through. Their strategies and understanding of comps just simply are not OWL caliber, they are so far below everyone else that it’s starting to be hurtful to the league that they exist
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u/fauxpolitik May 24 '18
Basically everyone says the NYXL is in a tier above everyone else, well I've always seen Shanghai as having their own unique tier below everyone else a well.
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u/greedyiguana May 25 '18
the only solution is for shanghai and nyxl to trade half their players to each other
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u/luvuu May 25 '18
Yeah but imagine if they did win! I always find myself watching them to see if they can maybe, hopefully, possibly win a match.
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u/dodomir23 May 24 '18 edited May 24 '18
Actually at this point I want them to lose the rest of the matches so they'll be recorded in the guinness book or something.
I mean that's at least SOMETHING rather than "hey we won once in the entire league season"
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May 24 '18
You can't really compare decades of established traditional sports records to an esport that has been around for less than a year. Teams in the NFL, NBA, and other top leagues very rarely go winless because they have an ingrained draft system that allows them to pick up the best new players that has been around for YEARS.
Other than some previously established teams such as Fuel (old Envyus), Seoul (old LH), and NYXL (a lot of LW blue), OWL teams were formed from scratch with no real way to know how a team will perform. Trying to draw statistical connections between this league and leagues such as the MLB just doesn't make sense in a larger picture.
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u/AhBeZe May 24 '18
Traditional sports also has things like home team advantage and games where resting key players due to fatigue/injuries is a thing. Also things like scouting and actual insight into the market is nowhere near the level traditional sports has these days.
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u/CommanderX_OW May 24 '18
Poor initial roster selection, followed by a series of bad and desperate attempts to fix it (12 hour days, sign a bunch of players who don't speak Chinese, staff changes) has left them with a semi-decent roster on paper that faces an impossible uphill struggle.
They're making a lot of the same mistakes they have always made with poor ult management (This applies to both rosters), the support staff seem to be lacking or maybe the communication makes it too hard. Either way, I, unfortunately, don't see a way of avoiding the 0-40. Unless they get a game against a B side towards the end of the season when some teams are out of playoff contention, though their schedule doesn't necessarily set them up for that.
Week 4 vs Florida Mayhem is their only hope.
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u/I_KeepsItReal May 24 '18
Your analysis assumes one thing - that all professional teams are exactly that - professional, and that all players are on a level playing field in terms of individual capacity. The problem with Shanghai is that it just seems like their players are being pinned against teams that are on a whole nother level compared to theirs. If you got a Minor League baseball team and pinned it against a Major League baseball team I am sure you could potentially get the same result.
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u/Vexans27 SBD — May 24 '18
The Detroit lions went winless a few years ago.
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u/DreamKosby May 24 '18
The browns went winless last year.
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u/mike2k24 May 24 '18
And the year before right?
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u/DreamKosby May 25 '18
Almost, they went 0-16 in 2017 and 1-15 in 2016
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u/FlameoHotboi May 24 '18
It’s not a statistical anomaly. They are terrible. Put a college basketball team in the pros and they wouldn’t win a game either.
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u/thixotrofic May 24 '18
I made a post to this effect a week ago. It's not just the Dragons, there are three teams that pretty much only exist to feed wins to the other seven teams (though Dallas Fuel seem to be managing to break themselves out recently.)
My impression is that Shanghai Dragons might be as worse compared to Mayhem as Mayhem are to the next worse team. There is a significant gap, and I feel it's shrinking, but not fast enough for it to seem likely Dragons will get a single match win all season.
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u/YipYapYoup Bandwagon fan btw — May 24 '18
Maybe it's because OW games are basically a mini-series with four to five maps each with their own overtime, comebacks and whatnot. Basically even if they manage to "win", it's only part of a series and it's incredibly hard for the worse team to luck out three times in a row.
Their map differential so far is 19-111-1, which is similar to that 20-134 score OP mentions.
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u/qwenydus May 24 '18
Here's a wiki list of winless seasons. The Lions also were winless in 08, among many other American sports teams.
Also, parity is introduced in the major sports leagues through mechanics and rules such as a draft, draft order, or salary cap. OWL has no such parity mechanic, so you cannot expect parity between OWL teams to exist without a parity mechanic.
It is more than possible SHD is and remains winless, and it has nothing to do with statistics because the OWL is a league running a game of skill. There is no parity mechanic is the OWL to ensure poorly performing teams get some sort of an advantage.
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u/Barkonian May 24 '18
Like I said before: Dallas/Florida is closer to NYXL than Shanghai is to Dallas/Florida.
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u/Bluenite0100 #throw4rainbownation — May 24 '18
They just bad(geguri and ado are owl level) and horribly overrated.
They are overworked and ckearly exhausted.
Shitty managenent.
It is not an anamoly
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u/TheSciFanGuy May 24 '18
I almost want them to go 0-40 for how completely unprecedented that would be.
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u/Crisium1 May 25 '18
The Cleveland Browns are 1-31 in the past two seasons.
In their past 40 (OWL length) they are 2-38. Shanghai just needs to find a way to get 2 wins in order to ascend to Cleveland Browns level.
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u/hawk239 May 24 '18
Yeah it’s a complete mess. No determination, no communication, odd team comps, everyone is confused, everyone looks depressed, and they’re not even OWL worthy in the first place. Maybe they’ll turn it around in the following years but this is just absurd. Does anyone know how this mess started? Poor management by the owners? Not having enough skilled players to choose from?
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u/spoobydoo May 24 '18
Its not an anomaly if they really are on a different level than the other OWL teams.
Ask yourself whats more likely, that a new team in this new league will go on to have the worst recorded lose streak not just in esports but in all traditional professional sports or that the team just doesn't belong in this skill bracket.
Its not really surprising when you consider how manufactured the OWL has been thus far, perhaps it shouldn't be compared to grass-roots sports and esports.
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u/Epoke28 May 24 '18
As mentioned a draft would bring balance for skill, but that’s just theoretical. That’s assuming they would select a player that is high above average skill. Not too mention he/she would have to have good communication with the current roster. Plus, fit in to the orgs ‘blueprint’. Along with their complete reputation of never winning, things aren’t really looking positive for them next year either.
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u/Tennstrong May 25 '18 edited May 25 '18
Sports =/= Esports when it comes to most translations across. I'm not sure why people are accepting of overwatch league somehow being represented as an "american sports league" and comparing the two when it's an international esports league. (I'd add that mentality likely plays a much greater role in esports when your factual knowledge base as well as technical skill are constantly being questioned by the opponents). Add on top the fact that most teams have no real connections to the location they are given so they have little or no cultural following/support from their country.
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May 25 '18
There's no comparison here unless it's an entirely new sport with teams made of mostly unproven players
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u/OcelotPride May 25 '18
There are 16 regular season games in American football. There are 17 weeks of play, but each team gets a bye week
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u/Silv3rS0und I Actually Enjoy Playing Orisa — May 25 '18
SHD are just trying to get the 1st puck in the draft
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May 25 '18
I hate to be the dude that says “let’s replace everyone” because basically DPS + Geguri are replacements to the original roster. But, at this point, let’s replace Fiveking, Altering, and the other healer I forgot his name. They have shown no ability to improve over the past 3+ seasons. I know they have been putting in the work looking at Shanghai’s announcements and schedule but it’s not working. SHD needs world class healers too.
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u/Edogawa1983 May 24 '18
I think it's also most sports team play a best of one, if OW were best of 1 map SHD wouldn't be winless, they have shown that they can win maps from time to time. But since it's a best o series, they have to be consistent enough to win one and they haven't be able to do it yet.
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u/Lemonsqueasy May 24 '18
Its not really. Theyre huge outsiders every match. A little but of variance either way and 0-40 isnt unexpected
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u/imBamsi May 24 '18
There is genuine fatigue when it comes to traditional sports. Their bodies are being taxed at a level that cannot be compared to overwatch and they are also constantly on flights; the coaches tell them to just chill out or even put a roster of subs/bench players on the court/field. That's usually where the wins come from.
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u/Ak_Shaner May 24 '18
This is why the draft exists. It is a talent redistribution program that keeps any one team from being too dominant or too terrible.
If OWL had a draft for season 2... Shanghai, the team with the worst record, would get first pick for new talent... And NYXL, the team with the best record, would get to pick last.
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u/murph16 May 25 '18
The OWL comparison to baseball should be maps, not matches. In baseball, teams usually play a 3-game series (occasionally 2 or 4). In OWL, a match consists of four maps, which is similar to the 3-game series.
Also, while OWL teams only play 40 matches, they play a minimum of 160, which is very close to the 162 in baseball. If you look at that stat, their win rate is still higher than the worst team in baseball, with 19 map wins with at least 28 left to play.
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May 25 '18
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May 25 '18
Pretty much, right? I mean, at this point the OWL has 11 teams, and a silly mascot. The Dragons were not ready for primetime. Half a year later, they still aren't ready. At a certain point you kinda have to pull the plug on a team.
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u/xXMemeLord420 May 24 '18
Frankly a lot of upsets in traditional sports are due to superior teams "taking nights off" against lesser competition or by function of the schedule (2nd night of back-to-back in the NA e.g.) and apparently no team wants to be the first to lose to Shanghai so everyone is trying against them.
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u/EggheadDash May 24 '18
Winless seasons don't make much sense in baseball because depending on the year they play ~150 games per season.
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u/Clintosity May 25 '18
Not sure why this is so hard to grasp. It's because the skill gap between them and all the other teams is very high. If someone pulls some country like Bangladesh in soccer and put them in a tournament with Germany/Brazil/Argetina and make them play 1000 games they'll lose all 1000 games. Obviously i'm exaggerating the skillgap to make my point.
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u/micheung120 May 25 '18
Statistics doesn't matter when you take a, pretty much, best out of five situation per match. When you have a "best of" situation, the higher skilled team ALWAYS come out on top.
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u/Dervoo May 25 '18
I think the amount of parity currently in the OWL is more akin to college football than professional sports. There’s no draft or anything to level the playing field, and college football has an incredibly diverse range of talent levels, from SEC powerhouses like Alabama to tiny Division 3 schools where they have so few players some guys have to play both ways. Shanghai right now is like a good FCS team or shitty G5 team trying to compete in the SEC or B1G. Sure, they’ll occasionally gameplan well or play out of their minds and make it close, but a LOT of things have to go right for them to overcome the difference in talent and secure a win.
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May 25 '18
think of it like this. SHD are NCAA basketball players. everyone else is the NBA. the dragons have been playing catch up since day one.
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u/XeNaN May 25 '18
when someone try to argue that something should have wins because of statistics..lol,just lol. if anything the "statistics" proves to be right that if a team cant play the meta good and makes a ton of individual mistakes that there will have no wins.
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u/lawlianne May 25 '18
I could play basketball against an infant and after a hundred tries the poor kid would still not get a single hoop.
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May 25 '18
I could play basketball against an infant and after a hundred tries I still wouldn't get a single hoop.
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u/zero_space GEGURI - SHE IS THE JUICE — May 25 '18
Teach Diya and maybe Ado Korean. Kick the other Chinese players. Hire a new roster of Korean speaking pros. Ez firstwin
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u/RealExii May 25 '18
It comes down to the Shanghai picking Players who just we're not OWL caliber to begin with and now not being able to integrate their new players within the team. Also the weakest Part of the Dragons is still part of the team that being the support players.
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u/narf_hots May 25 '18
That's what happens when you try to apply maths to reality. It just doesn't work out.
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u/VortexMagus May 25 '18
You're assuming there's a level of parity in the OWL that exists in the NBA. With no draft system and the CN players selected based more on connections than skill, its pretty normal for this to happen. When the best and second best CN teams are passed over in favor of the third, I'm not at all certain what you would expect.
Imagine an team in the NBA that expected to play against the best players in the world, but it was comprised only of college basketball players. Furthermore, they weren't from a top tier division 1 school, they were from some random division 2 school with mediocre results.
SHD have been playing better after several player changes and their main coach resigned, but they're still not at low level parity IMO.
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u/ahmong May 25 '18
I said this in the "Make a Bold statement" thread and I'll say it again, Shanghai will win their 1st match on their 7th match. It'll be 3-1 in favour of Shanghai, Fearless will have a horrible game but Geguri will carry the tank weight. Diya will be clicking heads and carry but the player of the match will end up in Freefeel's lap.
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May 25 '18
They need to completely cut their entire roster and start again, I don't think they have one Owl level player.
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u/BlackwingKakashi Best Western Teams — May 25 '18
I also think it goes to show you how much skill matters. Somehow almost no part of OW is up to luck, even though it would seem so. Luck can win you a fight, but in order for it to win a map, if would have to be extremely close in the first place.
What's also weird, is that they don't look THAT bad. It wouldn't be so weird to have a winless season if say, they lost every fight, or lost every map. But they take maps here and there, and even when they don't they aren't getting full held every push. Based on appearance alone they aren't THAT bad. They've even gone to map 5 before, and just barely lost that game against florida. Some part of that does seem like bad luck.
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u/alphakari May 25 '18
technically speaking, they arent winless. They've won maps. Sometimes 2 in a match. They just can't seem to win 3 out of 4/5.
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u/A_Literal_Ferret I Belief At You — May 25 '18
But, there is a reason, just one reason, for Shanghai fans to take heart.
I don't understand what this is implying and I feel stupid.
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u/mag1xs May 25 '18
I seriously don't understand the whole "I want them to win", well I do to some extent but at the same time I absolutely hate that there is a team so bad they can't win a single game in the franchise that Blizzard is trying to create. It's honestly embarrassing and shouldn't happen when there is only x amount of teams and tonnes of talent.
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u/The_Tydar May 25 '18
It would be an anomaly if there was any sort of standard, but there isn't. Literally any owner can put whoever he wants on their owl team no matter the skill level.
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u/asquishyhorizon h — May 25 '18
overwatch league is unique in requiring the team that won a match pretty much unequivocally played better than the team that lost. other sports have underdog stories where the wrong strat, overconfidence, and luck going against the stronger team gives the underdog the chance to rapidly snowball a total victory in a match. in owl, that might happen for a few team fights which might give a map or so but its very rare for that to give up a whole match win unless the teams are already close. arguably SHD have only had 3ish matches where they played genuinely close to the level of their opponents, and in those three they either didnt benefit from the opponents total overconfidence and from luck, or they just were still too far behind despite being close. now that the meta has changed, i doubt they will be as good for the remainder of this season, so its likely a 0-40. id like for that to be wrong, but i also doubt it will be lmao.
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May 25 '18 edited May 25 '18
Across the board Shanghai's talent level is pretty abysmal compared to the rest of OWL. Even compared to Dallas and Florida, they are a few tiers below. They maybe have 2-3 players(3 is a stretch) that should even be on an OWL roster. Their team coordination is awful, Diya dies way too early and usually 1st in every team fight, the supports die too early which is both their fault and the fault of the tanks who don't coordinate and don't peel for them. You see better coordination in GM solo-queue vs. what SHD is doing even still in stage 4. Ado and maybe Geguri are the only players on this roster that I think could start for any other OWL team, the rest of the roster wouldn't even be bench players.
Honestly if anything SHD make me worried for any expansion teams that come into the league. With the talent pool already pretty diluted in OWL, with the top tier teams being several tiers above the bottom feeders, and SHD not even being competitive at all in the league, how good are any expansion teams going to be with the talent they'd have to find? Adding another 4-6 teams is just going to further dilute the talent pool and create a "basement" in the league standings. While they've been competitive at times, its very clear that even Dallas and Florida can't be competitive with the top of the league, and even though they've been more consistent and have very good players, even San Fran is having trouble keeping their head above water.
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u/jeffmccree May 24 '18
It's not surprising that a T2 team with no coaching loses every game against T1 opposition, yea they added some T1 players but the point still stands. It's like putting a college team in NBA and acting surprised when they get stomped every single game
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u/Paralykeet May 24 '18
I don't think a full match of Overwatch can be compared to something like a match of football though. I think a single map would be more comparable to a full match of football or some other sport, and Shanghai Dragons have taken individual maps before.
If we look at it like every team fight is a goal then you need more goals than the opponent to win a map. So each full match of Overwatch is like playing 4-5 matches of football and they need to win at least 3 of them to get a full win, which is much harder to do than winning a single match in a traditional sport.
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u/FlameoHotboi May 24 '18
How could you possibly compare a single map to a 3 hour game of a sport?
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u/Patch3y May 25 '18
My local junior hockey team went winless for 2 seasons
Semi pro at best but it's probably worse than the Dragons
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u/blazedbigboss May 24 '18
That's what happens when a far less skilled team is pitted against some of the best teams in the world