Sorare Scoring Suppositions
A Glimpse into the future of Sorare’s MLB NFT game.
A Glimpse into the future of Sorare’s MLB NFT game and its scoring format.
We don’t know a ton about the Sorare baseball drop coming this summer. But let’s channel our inner fortune teller and give it a go anyway.
What we do know is contained in this Sorare MLB announcement here.
There is a lot of excitement in the article, but not a ton of detail to go on. So, what might the Sorare team do, and why? Read on for two impactful futures we might see.
The Background
Fantasy Baseball Scoring
Typical fantasy baseball is either points or roto (rotisserie) based. There are many nuances between the two, but it boils down to the breadth of scoring opportunities and time intervals where those scores are counted.
Points scoring is typically weekly and is based on positional players hitting and pitcher’s pitching. Good things, like home runs, make points go up. Bad things, like strikeouts, drive points down. You play against an opponent each week and whoever scores the most points wins the matchup.
Standard Roto usually counts five major stat categories for hitters, and five for pitchers. Scoring accumulates over the course of the season, with the person who ranks the highest across the ten categories crowned as the victor.
While Sorare could elect for a minimalist approach like roto scoring, my money is on them meeting or exceeding what a typical points league brings to the table. Why? Because *not* innovating here would miss a great chance to incentivize new players to migrate from ESPN, CBS, and the other main platforms. If done right, more players mean a healthier game and, let’s face it, more money. The incentive exists to provide the best product possible.
Most fantasy sports offerings center around points-based systems, from Draftkings to Sleeper to Sorare’s soccer offering, making points the logical choice for intuitive adoption, and what I think the platform will use as their building baseline.
Let’s dive into Sorare’s soccer scoring for some clues on how they might tackle this (I couldn’t resist the soccer play on words, forgive me).
Sorare Soccer Scoring
For an excellent deep dive on Sorare’s scoring intricacies, check out this article from Sorare Hub.
I won’t dive as deep as they did, at least not today. But as you read through the article, definite parallels emerge to points league fantasy baseball scoring. Specifically, when your players do positive things during the game, their net score goes up, while bad things bring the score down, with a maximum “perfect” score of 100.
Most often in fantasy baseball, this takes the form of strikeouts for hitters, and hits, walks, and runs for pitchers. This structure could easily be mimicked for the baseball offering, with different scoring breakdowns by position. In fact, the Sorare team could balance values so that positional differences are less stark than in the average points league where certain position groups tend to lag in value, such as relief pitchers and catchers.
The interesting part of the Sorare soccer scoring is that there are points earned in all phases of the game. This differs from traditional fantasy baseball and could offer a glimpse into the future.
Defenders earn more points for defensive actions and passing compared to midfielders and forwards (Again, I am generalizing here, go check the article for all the juicy bits). Could this be put to use for those position groups I mentioned earlier? The technology exists to track things like catcher blocks and pitch framing, general defensive performance, or even fielding independent of pitching (FIP). Perhaps these things that often matter in a baseball game but not in a fantasy game could soon be key value drivers.
Of course, everything happens on a spectrum, so let’s now explore what I consider the low and the high ends of what we might see take place. While the likely result lies somewhere between the two predictions, the closer Sorare comes to the second outcome, the more I think we could see huge adoption.
The Outcomes
Basic Outcome
Players would accrue points up to the cap of 100 based on the simple translation of points league scoring into the Sorare model. This means that pitchers are essentially the defensive half of the game, and position players (hitters in this scenario) are only valuable for what they do when on offense.
All the metrics we know and love, like home runs, strikeouts, steals, and RBI would continue to be the counting stats that drive “decisive” points in this scoring model. Huge 4 home run performances, and the pitching counterpart of complete games with loads of strikeouts, would serve as the benchmark for what a 100-point game looks like.
In my opinion, this would be fun and engaging due to the added wrinkle of owning the player NFTs that make up your roster.
However, it would fall short of being innovative beyond the use of NFTs. This would mean hurdles for convincing new players to leave the traditional lands of ESPN, CBS, and Yahoo for their seasonal leagues, and Fanduel and Draftkings for their DFS tournament needs.
Fun? Yes. Would this take the fantasy baseball world by storm? Perhaps not.
Epic Outcome
Now here is the fun one. The one you have all been waiting for. What if all the scoring that occurs in a typical points league was only part of the picture? What if we see more widespread innovation that creates a more engaging experience for users?
Sorare’s soccer product values defensive metrics including passing accuracy, clearance effectiveness, and types of save (for Goalkeepers). This same type of thinking could drive value to what a position player does in the field to make a more holistic type of fantasy baseball.
The easiest negative outcome to call out here is errors, which are not penalized in traditional points scoring. They are, however, charged to position players when they mess up on the field. Just like strikeouts, these could eat away at a player’s value for a game.
Conversely, if an outfielder makes a diving catch, robs a homerun, or throws someone out at home, these actions could boost their point score, and more effectively represent that player’s impact to the game.
This functionality would be heavily dependent on what statistical data is available from Sorare’s data provider, Opta. If these metrics exist, using them could be a strong point of differentiation for the Sorare product, and could help drive some serious adoption.
So where do we go from here? I clearly don’t have all the answers, I am just a guy who really loves fantasy sports and who has come to understand how they could transition more effectively to the blockchain from a product perspective. I’ve outlined the broad strokes of what the future might hold for Sorare baseball’s scoring and how that might impact the playability of the game.
In the coming weeks, I will be paying close attention to product updates and their potential impacts. As we learn more, be on the lookout for detailed breakdowns from me here, and be sure to check out my Twitter for more up-to-the-minute reactions!