Blogging Robot To Make Sportswriters (More) Obsolete

Sportswriters might be Luddites already, but they could be entering Sarah Connor territory with the introduction of Stats Monkey, a program invented by the evil and naive traitors to the human race kids at the Intelligent Information Laboratory at Northwestern University.

Stats Monkey uses an algorithm to construct what turn out to be amazingly coherent stories based on little more than box scores and other information online. Sample language composed by the robot:

"That felt like a big swing at the time," said Drew. "I stayed inside the ball and put a good swing on it. I was definitely going to be ready to battle again tomorrow, but it didn’t work out."

Drew has been excellent at the plate all season, especially in day games. During day games Drew has a .914 OPS. He has hit five home runs and driven in 17 runners in 36 games in day games.

Not much more lifeless than most wire reports, and certainly cheaper than paying someone to translate a box score. Tweak the equation a little bit to include shoehorned pictures of starlets and one word sentences, and you’d make The Big Lead obsolete, too. We support this research in full, even though it may eventually make us obsolete, too. Some sacrifices must be made in the forward march of human history.