“Twins at the Plate” – Keith Beise
Smart phones are truly amazing devices. I’m baffled by numerous things they can do ranging from music to photos and of course to games.
I’ve personally lost more of my life to Angry Birds than I would like to admit, but there’s no doubt that playing games on smart phones has become a national pastime.
Recently the Twins combined that sentiment with THE national pastime and created an HTML 5 app called “Twins at the Plate.”
The premise behind the game is having fans at Target Field predict what the Twins are going to do while batting in the 4th, 5th and 6th innings. Fans are given eight options of what could happen with point values varying by the likelihood of it happening (e.g. singles are worth 15 points while home runs are worth 150). Before each of the innings, fans pick three of the eight possible outcomes and then watch to see if what they picked happens on the field.
The game is played based on the section where fans are sitting. Whatever section cumulatively scores the most points wins a prize. Section points are adjusted based on how many people are playing to keep it even for all sections.
Thus far there have been a lot of competing strategies of whether it’s better to play it safe and pick the likely outcomes or make bolder picks and go for bigger points.
As more and more fans are catching on to the game, they are starting to figure out they should wait until they know who will be batting for the Twins during the upcoming inning. If Ben Revere is due up there are a lot of stolen base picks and if Josh Willingham is coming to the plate the game gets flooded with home run picks.
I’ve really enjoyed what the game adds to the game watching experience. Of course I always want to see a Twins player hit a double, but I get even more excited when that’s one of my picks. And when I find out that my buddy sitting next to me picked a double too, then it’s high fives abound.
The next time you come out to Target Field be sure to play along. The game is found through MLB.com’s free At the Ballpark app. Get more information here.
