Posted 1:36 p.m., January 14, 2004 (#10) - J Cross
when I do my pitcher evaluationas and projection

When DO you do this and do you make your projections public?

Fluid Flow Advanced Level (July 30, 2003)

Double-counting Replacement Level (August 25, 2003)

Posted 6:39 p.m., August 1, 2003 (#2) - J Cross
very cool. look at how much different 1 degree can make.

Posted 1:58 p.m., September 2, 2003 (#27) - J Cross
Wouldn't you just figure that the 100 for 100 batter isn't playing by the same rules and isn't part of the same distribution as the other players? I don't like the chances of a .510 hitter going 100 for 100. It's probably more likely that the batter is life form another planet who has come to earth with the sole purpose of messing with Tango's stats.

Injury-prone players (October 14, 2003)

Posted 4:05 p.m., October 21, 2003 (#24) - J Cross
I'd be interested to see the DL days for Will Carroll's green, yellow and red light players. How do the green players compare to the red players (taking out pitchers and catchers)? Did he predict injury (or at least DL days) as well as past injury did?

Injury-prone players (October 14, 2003)

Posted 11:58 a.m., October 22, 2003 (#27) - J Cross
Nice work, Steve. I think it's a surprising yet convincing result. I would have bet a beer against it in March. Also, 31 games! (or something of that magnitude) That would be an important result in terms of evaluating signings and trades.

Managers Post-season records (October 22, 2003)

Cities with best players (October 23, 2003)

Posted 3:05 p.m., October 22, 2003 (#1) - J Cross
I guess Joe Morgan really does know what not do to.

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1689/top50nhl.html

Posted 3:08 p.m., October 23, 2003 (#11) - J Cross
50 greatest hockey players:

basketball:

http://www.nba.com/history/50greatest.html

can't find this kind of list for football... we just just answer which city has the most of these:

http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/athletes.html

Gleeman - Vlad (November 4, 2003)

Posted 12:13 p.m., November 5, 2003 (#3) - J Cross
Isn't a marginal win worth more like $3M for the Yankees? So Vlad might be worth $21M/yr. to them?

Gleeman - Vlad (November 4, 2003)

Posted 4:00 p.m., November 5, 2003 (#7) - J Cross (homepage)
This study (reviewed in homepage link) came up with a different result that Voros:

Next, Burger and Walters use their estimated revenue function to compute the marginal revenue of a win for all 30 MLB teams. The results show that the value of an additional win for a New York team ($3.62 million) is approximately six times the value of an additional win in Milwaukee ($0.59 million).

Gleeman - Vlad (November 4, 2003)

Posted 4:01 p.m., November 5, 2003 (#8) - J Cross
Yet somehow the Brewers are the most profitable team in baseball. Go figure.

ALCS Game 7 - MGL on Pedro and Little (November 5, 2003)

Posted 7:53 p.m., November 5, 2003 (#7) - J Cross
I agree with RossCW that pitchers do have good days and bad days. Although you might not be able to tell which kind of day a pitcher is having from the results of a few batters you probably can tell by looking at velocity, location and movement. Armando Benitez seems to have days where he can throw 95 or better and days when he can't do better than 88. I'd bet that almost all pitchers can throw harder on some days than others and that this could be demonstrated by someone who kept track. Although it would be harder to prove, I'd bet that pitchers also have days when they have better movement and velocity than other days.

ALCS Game 7 - MGL on Pedro and Little (November 5, 2003)

Posted 8:00 p.m., November 5, 2003 (#8) - J Cross
That should have been "movement and location" in the last line.

btw, I think pitchers as a rule start to lose it as they get up in pitches. Therefore, I'd need evidence that Pedro was different from other pitchers in this respect (or at least reason to believe he was different on that given day) to think that it was a good idea to leave him in.

ALCS Game 7 - MGL on Pedro and Little (November 5, 2003)

Posted 2:05 p.m., November 7, 2003 (#26) - J Cross

Pitch $H
01-15 0.290
16-30 0.285
31-45 0.284
46-60 0.281
61-75 0.287
76-90 0.279
91-105 0.281
106-20 0.288

I find it hard to believe those numbers - what are they based on? We either have to conclude that pitchers never need to be taken out of a game or that managers are quite skillful at removing them before they do any damage.

or maybe pitchers just fall off in K%, BB% and HR%. Tango, do you have those numbers? btw, is the sample large enough that the differences between innings is significant? Is the first inning BIPr high because of the good hitters/speedsters who hit in that inning?

ALCS Game 7 - MGL on Pedro and Little (November 5, 2003)

Posted 2:08 p.m., November 7, 2003 (#28) - J Cross
I meant to say "first 15 pitches BIPr" not "first inning BIPr." Anyway, it seems unlikely that those splits mean anything.

Offensive Performance, Omitted Variables, and the Value of Speed in Baseball (November 6, 2003)

Posted 4:28 p.m., November 7, 2003 (#10) - J Cross
So economic theory suggets that managers as a whole must be acting rationally? What if the decision of whether to steal was left up to the runner (to one extent or another)? Couldn't the runner rationally decided to steal more than regression coeffecients (assuming he's familier with Palmer's work) suggest he should in order to boost his numbers for his upcoming contract arbitration? Of course, GM's and arbitraters should be acting rationally (and with perfect information) too so this wouldn't help him. I'm assuming that economic theory doesn't suggest that ALL managers are making rational decisions (since some managers are more prone to steals than others, they can't all be acting rationally, right?) but rather that the irrational managers will either realize their mistakes or get fired. But what if the irrational managers tend to err in the same direction? Couldn't there be more (or fewer) steals than there should be?

METS SEARCHING FOR STATS ANALYST (November 7, 2003)

David Pinto and fielding (November 10, 2003)

Posted 10:30 a.m., November 7, 2003 (#2) - J Cross
If anyone here gets the job I'm calling every day and sending a resume every week for a spot on his staff. Think Andy getting a library at Shawshank.

Posted 7:41 p.m., November 10, 2003 (#4) - J Cross
Are the 2003 UZR's and SLWT's posted anywhere? or when are they coming out?

Baseball Player Values (November 22, 2003)

Tendu (November 24, 2003)

Posted 3:04 p.m., November 24, 2003 (#13) - J Cross
yeah, 4 closers and a starter as the 5 top pitchers in 2002 is a surprising result but I figure this is b/c he's comparing players to average instead of replacement level. To look at "value" each pitcher would arguable have (Avg. Rate - Repl. rate)*IP added to their total and the starters would all rise compared to the closers, right? What I can't figure is why does Maddux rate so much better than Clemens (I figure that they're really pretty close in career valeu)? Does he not take league into account?

Posted 2:29 p.m., November 26, 2003 (#14) - J Cross
A cutter as opposed to a regular fastball can be problematic, but who cares. Ditto for a 2-seam and 4-seam fastball.

Every player must prove to me his knowledge of pitch movement, pitch grips, pitch follow through, pitching mechanics and prove it via tests before they are hired.

yeah, I don't think there's anyway you can see fastball movement on TV but if you slow it down you might be able to see the grip. To distinguish btw the 2-seam and 4-seam fastballs you'd need to see the stitching on the ball which might not be possible. Maybe you just have to know what a pitcher throws.

Marcel, The Monkey, Forecasting System (December 1, 2003)

Marcel, The Monkey, Forecasting System (December 1, 2003)

Posted 3:31 p.m., December 1, 2003 (#1) - J Cross
In other words:

hitters: .36, .29, .21, .14
pitchers: .375, .25, .125, .25

Does a pitcher's 2001 really have less relevance (compared to 2003) than a hitter's 2001?

I, for one, would like to see the components regressed separately.

Marcel, The Monkey, Forecasting System (December 1, 2003)

Posted 4:01 p.m., December 1, 2003 (#3) - J Cross
Oh, I was just thining about regressing each component to the mean individually but I guess one should age adjust each component individually as well. I've been to that link before and even considered using it to construct a system that guessed a hitter's "Real Age" based on their hitting components. Just for fun... if that sounds like fun to anyway who isn't deranged.

Marcel, The Monkey, Forecasting System (December 1, 2003)

Posted 4:18 p.m., December 1, 2003 (#6) - J Cross
Michael, I think the season's should be weighed by PA, not sqrt(PA). Otherwise, if a hitter had 400 PA in 2003 and 100 PA in 2002 each PA in 2002 would be weighed more heavily than each PA in 2003 which doesn't make sense. The weight of each PA in year 1 should not change relative to PA's in year 2 depending on the number of PA's in each year. The weight of all PA's compared to the weight of league average, however, should probably increase with the sqrt(PA).

Marcel, The Monkey, Forecasting System (December 1, 2003)

Posted 4:29 p.m., December 1, 2003 (#8) - J Cross
I'm thinking the weights for hitters should be:

5*2003PA, 4*2002PA, 3*2001PA, 2*600*sqrt[1800/(2003PA+2002PA+2001PA)]

(I also didn't mention anything about putting stuff to league average, but again, no big deal if you do it or not.)

You said that the final weight is for the league average and that the point is to regress to the mean, right?

Marcel, The Monkey, Forecasting System (December 1, 2003)

Posted 4:49 p.m., December 1, 2003 (#11) - J Cross
okay, I goofed on the formula. I meant to set it up so that for 1800 PA you'd regress 2/14 (14%) but for 900 PA you'd regress 2*sqrt(1800/900)/14 or about 20%. This would result in regressing 27% for 500 AB's.

Posted 5:08 p.m., December 1, 2003 (#15) - J Cross
Yep, that's where I goofed with the equation.

I should figure the three year prediction:

the weights should be:

2003:

[5*2003PA/(5*2003PA+4*2002PA+3*2001PA)]*[1-.14*sqrt(1800/totalPA)]

2002:

[4*2002PA/(5*2003PA+4*2002PA+3*2001PA)]*[1-.14*sqrt(1800/totalPA)]

2001:
[3*2001PA/(5*2003PA+4*2002PA+3*2001PA)]*[1-.14*sqrt(1800/totalPA)]

lgAvg:

.14*sqrt(1800/total PA)

I hope that works out.

Evaluating A-Rod (December 8, 2003)

Posted 6:14 p.m., December 8, 2003 (#2) - J Cross
I'm not following this line:

"A player "generates" about 2.5 million$ of revenue / marginal win. That's about 1.8 million$ of salary generated per marginal win.

Shouldn't marginal revenue = marginal cost for a player? How did you get 1.8 from 2.5?

Evaluating A-Rod (December 8, 2003)

Posted 11:39 a.m., December 9, 2003 (#9) - J Cross
I may generate 200,000$ of marginal revenue for my company, but my salary won't be that. If a company is going to spend say 10 million$ on a hitter, they don't want him to generate 10 million$ of revenue (that's not a good ROI), but more like 12 to 14 million$. And that 12 to 14 million will really be more like 6 to 20 million$ (lots of variability in player performance).

Well, geez, my Microeconomics teacher told me that your salary WILL be your marginal revenue. Now you're going to come and tell me that's not true? Next thing I know you'll be telling me that there isn't perfect information and that people don't always act rationally.

Seriously though, if a player's marginal revenue is $12-$14M I'm sure teams would love to pay him $10M but some other team would offer $11M. I can't see any reason for teams to be risk averse with respect to player's salaries and I'd think that teams would bid up a free agent until his salary equaled his expected marginal revenue. I don't think the investment analogy is a good one since (for the most part) you are receiving the revenue at the same time as you're paying the salary. In fact, with a small pool of free agents and a situation with, say, one star shortstop but several bidders for that shortstop with varying expectations we might expect a little winner's curse and a salary greater than the expected marginal revenue.

Evaluating A-Rod (December 8, 2003)

Posted 12:16 p.m., December 9, 2003 (#11) - J Cross
Uncertainty to their actual true talent level + uncertainty as to their expected true talent level = RISK! So, ARod may have produced over the last 4 years at say +9 wins above average / year, that's not what his true expectation is today, nor would it be for the next 4 years.

Okay, but that's not what I meant by risk aversion. I'm just saying that if after you've calculated your expected return to be $10M next year I don't see why a 50% chance of $4M value and a 50% chance of $16M value is worse. In fact, if a team is more likely to miss the playoffs than make them (and most teams are) the situation with higher variance likely increases "penants added."

Evaluating A-Rod (December 8, 2003)

Posted 12:59 p.m., December 9, 2003 (#13) - J Cross
studes, maybe I'm not explaining it well but that's what's happens in the economic model of perfect competition. Zero economic profit. Marginal revenue equals marginal cost. The owner gets the revenue that's due to capital. The worker gets the price/product*marginal product of laber ie the marginal revenue his labor.

Evaluating A-Rod (December 8, 2003)

Posted 1:06 p.m., December 9, 2003 (#14) - J Cross
"If business management does not get to keep any of the marginal revenue generated by a player, then there is no incentive to hire that player."

Ah, but there's also no incentive NOT to hire that player. That's why it the margin.

Evaluating A-Rod (December 8, 2003)

Posted 2:10 p.m., December 9, 2003 (#16) - J Cross
Yes, they can take that 10 million$ and buy a government bond.

or they could take the $10M in revenue the player produces and buy a government bond. same difference.

To make it clearer I should say that the marginal revenue of the player is the present day value of revenue he will bring in and the marginal cost of the player is the present day value of the salary he will be payed.

Evaluating A-Rod (December 8, 2003)

Posted 2:32 p.m., December 9, 2003 (#18) - J Cross
Even after you account for the best-guess true talent level of the player today, the expected future earnings of that player will have such a high variability, that a team would be crazy to pay a player equal to the marginal revenue he's expected to generate.

Why? It's the variability of your assets as a whole that matters. As far as I understand it people hedge Beta and buy stocks from difference sectors to make sure that the risk across their assets isn't correlated. When you consider than any one player is just part of a team whose injury risks are completely unrelated and that each team is only part of an owner's portfolio I just don't see why an owner would be averse to variability of outcomes. Again, a player who has a 50% chance of being worth 10 runs and a 50% chance of being worth 30 runs is, for most teams, more likely to add a pennant than a player (if there was such a player) sure to be worth 20 runs.

If BP's data shows that A-Rod is a good investment compared to other FA's and also shows that he's being payed at or higher than his marginal revenue then aren't most free agents being payed at or higher than their marginal revenue? Are these teams all crazy? I'd think you'd have a tough time convincing and economist of that.

Evaluating A-Rod (December 8, 2003)

Posted 2:52 p.m., December 9, 2003 (#20) - J Cross
Ofcourse, a players real marginal revenue goes down when you're sharing part of the marginal revenue with other teams. Tango, was that $2.5M/win figure from before or after the new CBA? I guess Hicks didn't see that one coming. He must also have imagined that the Rangers would contend which would (according to that article in the new issue "Journal of Sports Economics") have made A-Rod's marginal revenue higher.

studes, I'm not an economist or even an econ major so my economic theory language might not be so good.

Evaluating A-Rod (December 8, 2003)

Posted 3:45 p.m., December 9, 2003 (#22) - J Cross
I think that's what I'm saying.

So, if your star player is going to be worth $15M with a standard dev of $7.5M and all you players have the same variance/value then a team worth $60M might have a SD of something like $15M, right? So, let's take a typical 81 win team with $75M value (is this a contradiction?) that would have a $16.8M (6.7 win) variance in expected performance. My question is (and I realize that this is a ridiculous idealized situation), wouldn't you rather have a team good for 81 wins with a SD of 6.7 wins than a team that was going to win 81 games for sure? I'm suggesting that the variance could be considered a good thing.

Evaluating A-Rod (December 8, 2003)

Posted 3:48 p.m., December 9, 2003 (#23) - J Cross
okay, the numbers in that last example don't make sense ($15M with a SD of $7.5M???) but I think you get the idea.

Correlation between Baserunning and Basestealing (December 10, 2003)

Posted 1:36 p.m., December 10, 2003 (#6) - J Cross
Zips 2004 projected QAD-BR leaderboard:

Name............Team....SB......CS......QAD-BR

Carl Crawford*..TB......50......10......12.0
Juan Pierre*....FLA.....55......19......10.8
Carlos Beltran#.KC......35.......5......9.0
Alfonso Soriano.NYA.....37......12......7.5
Jose Reyes#.....NYN.....37......12......7.5
Alex Sanchez*...DET.....45......22......6.9
Dave Roberts*...LA......35......12......6.9
Ichiro Suzuki*..SEA.....34......13......6.3

Correlation between Baserunning and Basestealing (December 10, 2003)

Posted 11:34 p.m., December 10, 2003 (#17) - J Cross
"I just assumed that a player with 100 SB and 20 CS would be faster than a player who had 100/40, even though the 100/40 attempted a steal more often?"

Or maybe, and this may be a stretch, Base Runs are a function of aggresiveness as well as speed. The guy who gets caught stealing 40 times is obviously willing to take some chances.

Correlation between Baserunning and Basestealing (December 10, 2003)

Posted 11:50 a.m., December 12, 2003 (#27) - J Cross
What book? Can we get a preview?

Diamond Mind Baseball - Gold Glove Winners (December 11, 2003)

Posted 11:43 a.m., December 12, 2003 (#17) - J Cross
btw, when asked Billy Beane said that the best defenders in baseball were Chavez, Cameron and Mientkiewicz. Seems like DM backs that up. No surprise, to me, to see Beane going after Cameron. Is Mientkiewicz's fielding enough to make him a valuable player? Do any metrics take into account scooping bad throws for first basemen? Any idea how important that is?

MGL, looking forward to those 2003 UZR's.

Is it surprising that Cameron is still great in CF as he gets older? Any chances fielding goes first and can be used as an added predictor for offense? I've heard that some new research suggests that the sense of smell is the first thing to go as people dement and that they might be able to tell who is heading in that direction by testing sense of smell. Do you think they'll ever find something like this for baseball?

Diamond Mind Baseball - Gold Glove Winners (December 11, 2003)

Posted 11:48 a.m., December 12, 2003 (#18) - J Cross
I mean, just as a for instance, Edgar Martinez's defense fell off and then.... nevermind.

Diamond Mind Baseball - Gold Glove Winners (December 11, 2003)

Posted 3:28 p.m., December 12, 2003 (#21) - J Cross
MGL, I'm sorry to hear that. I didn't read to the end of your post before and didn't mean to just ignore it.

Posted 5:59 p.m., December 18, 2003 (#7) - J Cross
MGL, I think that fielding as an OF and fielding as an infielder are somewhat unrelated skills correlated only in that they both rely on mobility.

I'd make the spectrums look like this:

CFLF/RF-->1bDH
or
SS2b3b1bDH
or
C-->1BDH

There is the rare middle infield or catcher to outfield route but I think that should be reserved for young players and Craig Biggio.

C'mon, wouldn't moving Cameron to SS be a terrible idea?

Of your suggestions:

-Shawn Green to first looks like it's going to happen.
-Erstad/Cameron should stay in center.
-B. Williams looks to move to DH or a corner OF spot.
-G. Jenkins does look like he warrants a shot in center.
-Rolen played short in the minors, right?
-David Bell as a second baseman?
-Jeter's an odd case in that I think he'd be equally hopeless at 2nd or 3rd. I'd try him in LF/RF and 1B buy maybe he's just an athletic DH.
-A. Kennedy could probably handle SS
-How much does it increase Helton's value if he can play a solid 3b?

Posted 6:00 p.m., December 18, 2003 (#8) - J Cross
damn, html messed up my formatting.

Posted 6:33 p.m., December 18, 2003 (#11) - J Cross
Moving Erstad to 1b seems like the best way to remove all value he has as a baseball player.

Posted 7:10 p.m., December 18, 2003 (#13) - J Cross
this idea of position changes based on UZRs is, for the most part, quite amateurish.

...

Jenkins is a 29 yr old white guy who steals 3 bases per year

Denying position changes based on race, however, is apparently very professional.

Posted 7:18 p.m., December 18, 2003 (#15) - J Cross
If the difference between replacement shortstops and replacemnt DHs is ~15 runs/year wouldn't anyone who will liklely be 15 defensive runs below replacement at shortstop be more valuable as a DH? Jeter fits into this category easily. Of course, you can only have one DH.

Posted 7:22 p.m., December 18, 2003 (#17) - J Cross
David,

I don't think it's racist. I would have used the word stupid. If you think that race is a better indicator of whether someone can play centerfield than UZR's in leftfield are then you're an idiot. If the best information you have about Jenkins speed is his race then you're not a very knowledgeable baseball fan. Why don't you act stupid then huffy somewhere else.

Posted 11:26 p.m., December 18, 2003 (#26) - J Cross
David,

I'm sorry, I do think I got ticked and let that get the best of me. I didn't mean to imply racism or anything like that with my first post quoting you. It was meant as a gentle proding but also to point out how you discarded what seems to me to be good evidence of CF ability (LF UZR's) with the use of what I believe to be poor evidence (race) and untested evidence (SB's). If there's some evidence that race is a predictor of CF success (I saw the reference to the James study but I've never seen the study) then I stand corrected to some degree. Anyway, I just got ticked after the "reality pill" comment. End of a long day of work, I guess.

Anyway, the tragedy of it all is that this dispute detracted from good research and an interesting thread.

some thoughts:

This may come from my own bias as an infielder who never had much interest in shagging flies but I would guess that outfield ability is more highly correlated than infield ability. I think of OF play as 1) see the ball well off the bat, 2) speed and, to a lesser degree, 3) throwing arm. Ofcourse, I think of infield play as much more involved. Basically, I'd be surprised if an excellent leftfield ability didn't convert to centerfield and vice-versa. I have to admit that I haven't seen much of Geoff Jenkins myself. My feelings here probably aren't too interesting. The point is - can we test this (or did you)? Is there enough data to know how well defense in one position correlates to defense in another for each position swap?

MGL - thanks for the plug. (hijack b/c I don't know where to post this) I was looking for the data on platoon splits I believe you posted a few days ago. My idea is that if it's safe to assume that a player has the same platoon splits as everyone else we could adjust his season line based on the composition of pitchers he faced. If a lefty was platooned and faced 90% righties instead of the normal 70% (?) maybe his numbers should be adjusted down to reflect his true ability. Everbody loves a new stat adjustment. Not sure if this adjustment would be big enough to matter but it might be larger than the "quality of opposition" adjustment.

UZR, 2000-2003 (December 21, 2003)

Posted 12:45 p.m., December 22, 2003 (#4) - J Cross
From Gammons:

"More and more teams are using complex systems to evaluate players defensively. "We use our eyes as well as a combination of statistical analyses to rate players," said one general manager. "We feel it tells us a lot."

For instance, when the Red Sox were looking for a second baseman, their system showed that Pokey Reese two years ago was far and away the best second baseman in the game, which corroborated the wise eyes of Bill Lajoie. When the Oakland A's were in pursuit of Mike Cameron, it was partially because their complex system showed that he was far and away the best defensive center fielder in the majors, followed by Torii Hunter and Mark Kotsay (before Andruw Jones).

Another team's system makes the following observations:

Doug Mientkiewicz is clearly the best first baseman, followed by J.T. Snow.

Mark Ellis and Adam Kennedy ranked 1-2 in the American League at second base, with Placido Polanco right near them.

Eric Chavez is the best at third, better this season than Scott Rolen.

A-Rod and Nomar are far ahead of Derek Jeter, while Orlando Cabrera is far better than his reputation.

Jacque Jones and Garret Anderson are the top left fielders. Ichiro Suzuki the best right fielder.

The outfielder who ranks the worst on two different clubs' systems? Juan Gonzalez."

Okay, this IS Gammons but let's pretend for a minute that he's accurately reporting what GM's think. How well does this info mesh with UZR's?

Pokey Reese - UZRs agree. Cameron - check. Kotsay - check, Hunter ??

J.T. Snow - Is he saving a lot of bad throws?

Ellis, Kennedy and Polanco at 2nd are the same names UZR would come up with.

I guess the biggest disagreement is on the corner outfielders. Anderson, Ichiro and Jacque Jones? Did Jenkins and Nixon miss too many games to be counted? If so, then how does Juan Gone's sample count?

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 7:36 p.m., December 23, 2003 (#6) - J Cross
I think the Mets would argue that Jose Reyes has more defensive ability than Bubba Trammel but who knows. Jose has a small sample so far but I'd expect a +10-15 from him if he continued at shortstop. Maybe he'll stumble a little in his first year at second (0-+5). Bubba looks like a -10 OF. I'd be a bit surprised if he's better than Lawton, Abreu and Floyd.

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 6:16 p.m., January 12, 2004 (#14) - J Cross
I'd be willing to give VERY good odds that Erstad doesn't get +37 at first base. In fact, my money says he doesn't get +20.

So, Olerud is of similar defensive value to Alomar (not even including the balls he picks out of the dirt - I think he's particularly good at this that)?

So, Olerud Career: 8371 PA - 132 OPS+, best 3 years 185, 163, 145
Alomar: 10,210 PA - 117 OPS+, best 3 149, 140, 140.

looks like one of 3 possibilities:

a) Alomar has been worth a lot of runs on the base paths.
b) Alomar used to be worth a lot more in the field than Olerud
c) Olerud's really been a better player than Alomar.

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 12:02 p.m., January 13, 2004 (#24) - J Cross
Nice work. Btw, I'd like it if someone tested to see if there was a "familiarity factor" in moving pitchers between starting and relief roles. I think that Voros studied pitchers who were both starters and relievers a couple of years ago and decided that he'd adjust a pitcher's projection up .25 to account for a move from starting to relief and down .25 to account for a move to the pen. This struck me as a surprisingly small adjustment but I also wonder if it isn't really something like:

starter to relief = no change
relief to starter = +.5 ERA

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 12:12 p.m., January 13, 2004 (#26) - J Cross
Tango,

wouldn't you see some correlation between UZR on the infield for players and UZR in the outfield even if the two skills weren't correlated?

What I mean is, managers do know some things. If a players is really good at one position and bad at another he's probably only going to play the position he's good at. Players who move around between positions are likely to be those to similarly good or bad (in true talent fielding level) at multiple positions. I'm not yet confident that 1b ability would correlate better with CF ability than many other things like speed, age or even hitting. All the same, I think this is all very interesting.

+10 sounds like a fair over/under for Erstad at first.

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 12:36 p.m., January 13, 2004 (#28) - J Cross
I like the idea, Tango, but I think we could spend a lot of time arguing about the real differences between these positions.

I might argue, for instance, that 2nd and 3rd really have more in common than either position has with SS. Both 3b-men and 2b-men have considerably more time to make plays than SS's do (3b-men b/c the ball generally gets to them quickly and 2b-men b/c it's a short throw). Maybe range (I think what you referred to as speed) is much more important, but the SS position really requires a player to be able to get rid of a strong throw quickly and, I think, requires better footwork than 2b and 3b do.

Anyway, none of that's really the point. I think we'd need some systematic way of determining the important componenet skills at each position.

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 2:27 p.m., January 13, 2004 (#32) - J Cross (homepage)
Sure, they do work in the sense that the group of players who played both positions were, on average, however much better at one position than the other. And, I imagine, they do work in the sense that the group of players who play both positions in the future will, on average, be a similar amount better at the same position. I'm just not so sure that this average has much to do with any one player. In fact, Darin Erstad is about as far from being the average player who gets moved from the OF to first base as he could possible be. I think this is a situation where the median isn't the message (see homepage link).

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 3:00 p.m., January 13, 2004 (#37) - J Cross
That sounds more like it to me.

It's hard for me to imagine something like Erstad as a SS without knowing how long he has to make the conversion. If I had to pick btw Erstad and Sheffield to be my shortstop tomorrow I'd take Sheffield b/c he was once a SS. If both players had the rest of the offseason and spring training to work on it I'd be tempted to go with Erstad but not so sure. If both players got to work at the position for 2 years I'd bet on Erstad. I'm not sure what the idealized or average situation is yeilds the true talent conversion factors.

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 3:18 p.m., January 13, 2004 (#41) - J Cross
Which is why it is so shocking at the amount of time that he has ALREADY put in at 1B. And this was in his 20s.

agreed.

Erstad played the most 1b in 1997 when he was 23. The Angels outfield was Anderson, Edmonds and Salmon. Edmonds won a gold glove that year and Salmon and Anderson were younger and probably better than they are now. It looks like the Angels just didn't want to move the veterans. In 1998 they did move Salmon to DH some and put Erstad in the OF. In 1999 I guess they decided that getting Mo Vaughn off the field entirely was more important that playing Erstad in the outfield. It's still strange that they didn't try Salmon or Orlando Palmero at 1st.

I don't think the Angels realized exactly how good Erstad was in the outfield.

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 3:27 p.m., January 13, 2004 (#43) - J Cross
Assuming he's healthy, how long would you think Erstad needs to play SS to be better than Jeter? better than the average SS? Would he ever be an average SS?

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 3:42 p.m., January 13, 2004 (#44) - J Cross
Tango,

here's a shot at some components of fielding skill along with relevance to difference positions:

1) picking up the ball off the bat (cf=lf=rf)
2) first step (3b=ss=2b=1b>>>of)
3) several quick steps (ss=2b>3b>1b>cf=lf=rf)
4) sprint speed (cf>lf=rf>>>2b=ss>3b=1b)
5) footwork/quick release (ss>3b=2b>1b)
6) arm strength (ss=3b>>cf=rf>lf~=2b>>1b)
7) arm accuracy (3b>ss>of>2b>1b)
8) hands (ss=2b=3b=1b)
9) instincts (ss=2b=3b=1b)

basically, I think picking the ball off the bat and sprint speed are the two biggies for OFers with arm strength down there somewhere.

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 3:49 p.m., January 13, 2004 (#45) - J Cross
To be clear, I meant for that #2 to include reaction time. #1 refers to quickly judging how hard ball was hit, how much it might hook or how quickly it will drop (an OF skill).

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 4:22 p.m., January 13, 2004 (#49) - J Cross
oh, I forgot/didn't know that Erstad throws lefty.

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 5:02 p.m., January 13, 2004 (#53) - J Cross
Looking good. Okay, I think I can come up with "handedness" for all the players if you guys handle the other categories. Can we measure any of this or compare it to measurable statistics? triples/xbh = sprint speed, Sb's = several quick steps/sprint speed. Maybe we can look at non-throwing error rates for infielder hands. Throwing errors/attempts for arm accuracy?

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 5:33 p.m., January 13, 2004 (#54) - J Cross
one more comment before I go: Should the LI reflect that some of these categories are just more important than others (not just more important for some fielders relative to others)? Should we be making our judgments about players with their UZR's in mind or scale the finals rating to equal a regressed UZR?

To start the ball rolling my WAG Jeter ratings are (1-10 scale):

(btw, I'm no Jeter expert)

Picking up the ball - ??
1st step/reaction - 1
several steps - 5
sprint - 8
hands - 4
footwork/release - 2
arm strength - 5
arm accuracy - 7

I think he's worse than the sum of his parts. What's his best position if we assume that he's average in judging fly balls? Ok, gotta run.

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 4:17 p.m., January 14, 2004 (#57) - J Cross
Back to Erstad for a minute. The following was written in a January 8th article on mlb.com:

Despite speculation that Erstad might play first base next year to take it easy on the hamstring (the Angels parted ways with their top three first baseman from last year, Scott Spiezio, Brad Fullmer and Shawn Wooten) the Angels have continued to say they plan on him playing [in] center...

"I'm 100 percent confident I'll be able to do that," Erstad said.

So, if as of January 8th the Angels were planning on playing Erstad in center then did the January 10th signing of Vlad change that?

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 6:17 p.m., January 18, 2004 (#58) - J Cross
from Stark's sidebar:

Garret Anderson hasn't played much in center field since 2001. And Darin Erstad hasn't played extensively at first base in five years. But one AL scout says: "Erstad is going back to the place he plays best, I think. And Garret Anderson is a real good center fielder. He's not as spectacular as Erstad, but I think he's better. He glides. He's not an ESPN highlight center fielder."

Wow. You might not want to take that scout's opinion's too seriously.

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 2:19 p.m., February 16, 2004 (#63) - J Cross
I don't know about this. I think the true talent fielding is an interesting concept but in truth I don't think we really know for certain that A-Rod would be better than Jeter at third. He probably would be but you never know.

We have good reason to believe that A-Rod will be 30 runs better than Jeter at short. Is our best guess really that A-Rod is 24 runs better than Jeter at short? I kind of doubt it. That's a pretty big difference to project between two player's based solely on what they did at short.

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 10:06 p.m., February 16, 2004 (#65) - J Cross
Is that right? Or is it just that if you had two guys who played BOTH SS and 3b and one was 30 runs better than the other at short you'd guess that he was 24 runs better at third? I guess if Jeter and A-Rod both play third next year they enter that pool of players who were in the analysis and if the Yankees play A-Rod at third it will be some indication that they think A-Rod 's advantage at third is comparable to his advantage at short. But, despite everything that's been said, I'd still bet on Jeter moving for A-Rod.

True Talent Fielding Level, 1999-2003
Adjusted by Difficulty of Position, and
Extracted to All Positions (December 23, 2003)

Posted 12:45 p.m., February 17, 2004 (#68) - J Cross
Thanks, tango, that's a good read. So, most relevant to A-Rod Jeter we have a +1 SS goign to +8 at third (runs/1000 plays).

but, is there any data that suggest that it doesn't work something like this:

SS ---> 3b (runs/1000 plays)

+11 ---> +13
+1 ----> +8
-9 ---> +3

BGIM : Maximum Likelihood Estimation Primer (December 26, 2003)

Posted 5:55 p.m., January 5, 2004 (#4) - J Cross
Tango, did you get 1 sd =.040 from somewhere. That's higher than I'd expect.

MLB Timeline - Best players by position (January 14, 2004)

Posted 2:55 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#20) - J Cross (homepage)
Off topic:

Can we get AED (Andy Dolphin, I believe) back here discuss this (homepage) and details about his simluation game?

An interesting exerpt:

What I didn't mention, since it was just in passing, is that fully half of clutch hitting effects are because power hitters try too hard to be heros and hurt their teams. (They have more home runs per hit in clutch situations, but so many fewer hits as to be a net negative.)

I don't know about you guys but I hadn't heard such a thing before.

MLB Timeline - Best players by position (January 14, 2004)

Posted 3:49 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#22) - J Cross
Wow. That's certainly new to me. If the write up isn't published somewhere else why don't you publish it here or with baseball prospectus? How big an effect is this?

Obscure Rule Flags Students Who Sharply Improve SAT Scores (January 21, 2004)

Posted 12:29 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#28) - J Cross
using Josh's cheat program I'll say a) 17% (17.4 to be exact)

now to figure out how it got that...

Obscure Rule Flags Students Who Sharply Improve SAT Scores (January 21, 2004)

Posted 12:58 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#29) - J Cross
ok, got it. one car one witness gives 4% chance the car is green and said to be green (.8*.05) and 19% it's yellow and said to be green (.95*.20). We know that it was said to be green so the chance it is green is 4%/(4%+19%) = 17.4%

Obscure Rule Flags Students Who Sharply Improve SAT Scores (January 21, 2004)

Posted 1:07 p.m., January 23, 2004 (#30) - J Cross
I think it's interesting that if one witness says green and one witness says yellow then you're back to your priors. 95% chance the car is yellow.

Smack the Pingu (January 29, 2004)

Posted 2:38 p.m., January 30, 2004 (#9) - J Cross
I'm looking at a 1224.1 too.

Smack the Pingu (January 29, 2004)

Posted 2:57 p.m., January 30, 2004 (#12) - J Cross
Maybe Bob's score is in the old version that tango linked???

Smack the Pingu (January 29, 2004)

Posted 5:11 p.m., January 30, 2004 (#15) - J Cross
Try the old version Tango linked. 1334 is certainly possible in that version.

Forecasting Pitchers - Adjacent Seasons (January 30, 2004)

Posted 7:26 p.m., February 2, 2004 (#39) - J Cross
So, FJM, would it be fair to say that a pitcher age for the purposed of projection is:

Age - 3*(23-debutage) ???

Pedro, age 32, debut 20 --- proj. age... 23!!!
Colon, age 28, debut 24 --- proj. age... 31

Look's like Pedro's got another decade left :)

Forecasting Pitchers - Adjacent Seasons (January 30, 2004)

Posted 1:12 p.m., February 4, 2004 (#44) - J Cross
Okay, but let's assume that three players from the same cohort all decrease in true talent by 10% one year. One of the players had good luck and his stats showed no decrease. One of the players has even luck and showed the 10% decrease. The third player had bad luck and his stats showed a 20% decrease and he's forced to retire. Assuming the two remaining players would be expected to decrease in true talent by another 10% the following year their stats would actually be expected to decrease by 15% overstating their decline.

Forecasting Pitchers - Adjacent Seasons (January 30, 2004)

Posted 1:28 p.m., February 4, 2004 (#45) - J Cross
Yeah, what tango said.

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 1:26 a.m., February 3, 2004 (#6) - J Cross
Interesting. I wonder if good hitters or sluggers are less likely to have a platoon advantage in a clutch situations than singles/bad hitters. Maybe the better hitters face tougher pitching matchups in these situations. Maybe power/flyball hitters benefit less from a shifted/moving infield. I doubt it's a noticeable effect but sometimes when a pitches falls behind a slugger in these situations he'll decide to complete the walk intentionally. In that case a situation where a hitter had worked the count in his favor would be thrown out.

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 1:45 p.m., February 3, 2004 (#19) - J Cross
Tango, do you have data on the quality of the average pitcher pitching in a clutch situation? Basically, the season/career OBP against for pitchers who pitched in these clutch situations weighted by the # of PA they pitched in these situations.

I'm not sure that looking at how well these pitchers did IN the clutch situations themselves is a good measure of how good these pitchers really are. There might be a higher level of batters in clutch situations (so the change in pitcher would be understated) or the obp's might be effected by more/less common base/out situations. Or maybe there are more clutch situations (as defined by run differential) in pitchers parks or in games with better pitching/fielding teams.

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 2:36 p.m., February 3, 2004 (#21) - J Cross
Okay, I got it now. Makes more sense than the way I read it.

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 3:27 p.m., February 3, 2004 (#24) - J Cross
thanks guys. Is the smaller differential in AED's pitcher's due to the fact that his study stretches back to the day of more complete games and less bullpen use or rather a different assignment of "clutch"? Looking at who's pitching in "clutch" situations is interesting for it's own sake

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 6:23 p.m., February 4, 2004 (#53) - J Cross
I think AED was asking for the correlation btw OPS change in situation 0 and OPS change in situation 4 and "anticorrelation" just refers to the fact this it's negative (or we expect it to be).

Are those just correlations btw OPS (not relative to general performance) btw one situation and another? Looks like they have more to do with the number of plate appearance than anything else. Just as we'd expect, I suppose.

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 2:04 p.m., February 6, 2004 (#74) - J Cross
AED, maybe you could use this method to study the BABIP of pitcher's who changed teams. I'd imagine that there would be almost no correlation of ballpark effects and quality of fielding for pitchers on a new team.

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 6:15 p.m., February 9, 2004 (#114) - J Cross
actual probability of a team winning increases more while they are fielding than when they are batting.

Ross, take a step back and look at this statement. If the AVERAGE turn of will lead to "x" probability of winning at the end of the inning then, as I understand it, x is by definition the probability of winning at the beginning of the inning.

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 7:52 p.m., February 9, 2004 (#117) - J Cross
Ross, I left out a word. Should have been "if the AVERAGE turn of events will lead."

Clutch Hitting: Fact or Fiction? (February 2, 2004)

Posted 1:22 p.m., February 10, 2004 (#143) - J Cross
There is no theoretical reason why it should increase and decrease equally when a team is in the field or at bat.

On average it can't increase OR decrease whether the team is at bat, in the field or waiting around between innings. Just becasue you are refusing to listen to the theoretical reasons doesn't mean they don't exist.

it's EXPECTED WINNING PERCENTAGE, afterall. As AED stated, if you expect that a team's chances are .6 but an average turn of events (on defense, offense of whereever) will make them .7 then your expectations were wrong. The expected winnings percentage is by definition the same as any subsequent expected winning percentage in the game after the average sequence of events has taken place.

What you're claiming is equivalent to saying that batting average doesn't HAVE to be equal to hit/at bats. We all just think it is without bothering to verify this with data.

Aaron's Baseball Blog - Basketball (February 9, 2004)

Posted 12:14 p.m., February 9, 2004 (#1) - J Cross (homepage)
Points (including free throws) per Shot (homepage).

Aaron's Baseball Blog - Basketball (February 9, 2004)

Posted 2:58 p.m., February 9, 2004 (#10) - J Cross
hmmm... Maybe we also want a shooting value above replacement metric:

(PSA - .9)*opps

where opps = FGA+.44*FTA

Aaron's Baseball Blog - Basketball (February 9, 2004)

ARod and Soriano - Was the Trade Fair? (February 16, 2004)

Posted 3:28 p.m., February 9, 2004 (#12) - J Cross
I'm not following you David. You use a possesion on each attempt whether you hit or miss. 2 for 6 on 3's is just as good as 3 for 6 on 2's...

or maybe it's a little better. Let's say that on each missed shot your team has a 30% chance of getting an offensive rebound. If you go 2 for 6 on 3's you've missed 4 shots and gets 1.2 rebounds. So, you've scored 6 points and used 4.8 possesions. 1.25 points per possesion. If you shot 3 for 6 on 3's you missed three shots and got .9 rebounds. 6 points on 5.1 possesions or 1.17 points per possesion. Ofcourse we'd have to weigh in the chances of a team getting rebounds from different types of shots.

Posted 7:03 p.m., February 17, 2004 (#25) - J Cross
Is there any reason to think that A-Rod's "drawing power" is greater than the drawing power of the typical mix of players that give you 12 wins above replacement? He might not get an added bonus here. I think Jeter's drawing value exceeds his baseball value b/c people think he's better than he is. Ichiro's drawing power exceeds his baseball value. Which players drawing power would be less than expected by their baseball value? There have to be some.

Posted 4:02 a.m., February 22, 2004 (#2) - J Cross
Well, I�ve put way too much thought into fantasy league baseball lately and here�s what I�ve come up with. You can use the following equations to determine rotovalue for 5x5 leagues:

Hitters:
AVG points = (AVG - .281) * AB * 0.061
HR points = HR * 0.088 - 1.94
SB points = SB * 0.088 � 0.94
R points = R * 0.036 � 3.05
RBI points = RBI * 0.033 � 2.74
(add them up for total value)

Pitchers:
W points = .2695*W-2.6815
S points = 0.0695*S-0.7118
ERA points = (3.88-ERA)*IP*0.0065
WHIP points= (1.28- whip)*IP*0.0382
K points= K*0.0203 - 2.517

I looked at 100 5x5 teams (10 leagues w/ 10 teams each) and it looks like team totals are distributed normally in each category (I�m still working on this though). I don�t have the numbers in front of me (they�re in a spreadsheet at work) but I think the teams average ~300 HR w/ a stdev of 30 and ~130 steals with a stdev of 30 so even though steals are much scarcer either 30 more steals or 30 more homers allows you to pass 34% of the teams in that category and pick up another 3 points. Another implication of this is that the first 30 homers above average are worth a lot more than the next 30 homers (which would pass another 13.5% of teams and be worth 9*.135 points in a 10 team league). Anyway, those equations for rotopoints above are calculated for a 10 team league rotopoints = (change in stdev)*.34*9 so they�re the vlaue a player's contributes to a team that�s average in every category. Using these formulas and Zips I figured out rotovalues for every player. I was thinking of fixing it up so that the spreadsheet would figure out how many stdev�s from average in each category your team is based on the players you have drafted already and re-rank all the players based on how much they could contribute to that team.

What do you think? Does this make any sense?

Posted 3:16 p.m., February 22, 2004 (#4) - J Cross
My leagues are drafts not auctions so I just need a rank order (not exact value). I do adjust positions based on replacement level.

Posted 8:46 p.m., February 22, 2004 (#9) - J Cross
Very cool, Score Bard. I think I'm going to use it to simulate 2 drafts: 1 where I'm punting steals and one where I'm not. Then I'll look at how the two teams compare (based on ZiPS projections) to the one hundred teams I've looked at and see which team would score better.

I've looked at SABR scoring league but I haven't looked at leagues w/ a different # of teams. Maybe I will.

Nord, how did you get your equations?

Posted 11:26 p.m., February 22, 2004 (#12) - J Cross(e-mail)
Wow, that primate league is going to be pretty darn competitive. I'd be interested to see how that plays out. I'm pretty much assuming that no one in my league is developing competing draft software but you never know.

Posted 11:16 a.m., February 24, 2004 (#22) - J Cross
Dackle, think about the stdev of saves on the individual v. team level. I don't think saves would be normally distributed on the individual level. I think method a is the way to go. I have 100 teams in a spreadsheet if anyone wants the numbers.

Posted 12:26 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#24) - J Cross
Well, the equations I posted above are actually from ESPN.com player rater which calculates the value of players compared to an average fantasy player. I looked at a bunch of players and a bunch of values and figured out that the values were based on those equations.

Then I went and took 100 espn 5x5 rototeams from 2003 and looked at the SD on the team level and figured the value of a stat in rotopoints should equal (.34*(n-1))/std] where n is the number of teams. This matches up very well with the coefficients from the espn player rater equations if you use an n=9 and I'm guessing they loooked at a mix of 8 and 10 teams leagues. I'll look at wins and saves and see how differently it turns out if you use std's on the team v. player level.

Posted 12:57 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#25) - J Cross
okay, here's a comparison of Wins v. Saves values looked at in different ways:

1) scarcity. The average team had 88 wins and 98 saves. Just going by scarcity you might say that wins are worth 1.11 saves.

2) player std. The average pitcher (in the pool of FLB players) had 8.1 wins and 9.0 saves with a std of 5.9 wins and 13.5 saves. Going by the std's a win would be worth 2.28 saves.

3) team std. The standard dev. of team wins was 12.0 and team saves 38.0. Going by team standards a win was worth 3.17 saves.

I think method 3 is the right way to do it and it does come up with a different answer.

Posted 1:04 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#26) - J Cross
A little more info: Although saves looks very normally distributed on the team level I'm not so sure about wins. I'll let the statisticians decide:

w/in .5 stds (should be 38%): 38/100 in saves, 46/100 in wins

w/in 1 std (should be 68%): 69/100 in saves, 67/100 in wins

w/in 2 stds (should be 95%): 96/100 in saves, 95/100 in wins.

More teams are w/in .5 stds of the mean win number than you'd expect but I'm not sure how meaningful that is. Is there an excel function to test for "normalcy"?

Posted 1:29 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#28) - J Cross
Well, I think the draft has to be a little subjective and surprising b/c that's some of the fun. My main FLB team (I now have two) I run with a friend of mine. We do the draft at his office where we have a a couple computers going, a bunch of print outs and even a white board in our "war room." This year I'm going to hire a couple of guys to sit in the corner of the room, spit, and yell stuff about which players have good makeup.

Posted 1:31 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#29) - J Cross
btw, Nod, I think ideally the draft software would tell you how far away from the mean you're projected to be in each category and either re-rank the players or just let you know to stress categories where you are close to average. The more stdev you are from the mean the less additional stdev are worth in terms of points.

Posted 1:58 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#33) - J Cross
I agree that comign up with the system is fun. I'm just saying that I might still take the player I like better when it comes time to draft (assuming they're close).

I'm not sure how to apply that test. I suppose I coudl apply the Shapiro-Wilk test if I knew how to calculate ai.

Bard- I used you draft simulater yesterday but now I get the 'need Flash Player' message. I'm pretty sure I have 'Flash Player.' At least the Flash Player webstie tells me I have Flash Player. I reset the computer and everything.

Posted 2:22 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#36) - J Cross
z-scores? if the z-score is just (wins- mean wins)/ stdv then z-score v. wins has to be a straight line. I think I need more coaching. I'll try to figure out how to get z-scores.

Posted 2:44 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#40) - J Cross
well, (wins-mean wins)/std = wins/constant - constant so graphed against wins we'd just get a straigh line, right?

The standardize function gives me the same #'s as (wins-mean wins)/std

Posted 3:12 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#41) - J Cross
something else to look at:

correlation to team rotopoints:

team w: .503
team s: .544
team K: .739
team ERA: -.482
team WHIP: -.397

team run: .728
team hr: .579
team rbi: .678
team sb: .429
team avg: .461

so, should we be trying to win the K and R categories?

Posted 3:44 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#43) - J Cross
Nod, I can but there's a problem using those equations on the team level. For instance the team with the most wins of the 100 gets 7 win point above average using those equations but a team can't really get more than 4.5 win points. The problem is that this team is 2.3 standard deviations out in wins but the second standard deviation is worth less than the first in rotopoints. With players, no one player shifts any one category more than a standard deviation so while there are diminishing returns it isn't THAT big a factor. I guess I should come up with a multiplier to adjust for this... not sure how to do it off the top of my head.

Posted 4:03 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#44) - J Cross
okay, I think if I weigh the value of each diffence from average by 1 -.2*(stds from mean) it should work out. I could do this with players too to be more exact.

Posted 5:28 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#46) - J Cross
I don't have total IP or total AB numbers b/c I only have final rosters for these teams. But, I know that the average pitcher on these teams has 7.21 K/9 and that these teams finished with an average of 1098 K's so that gives me a best guess of 1370.8 innings/team. I'll do the same thing to figure out AB's and then post all of the numbers.

Posted 6:06 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#47) - J Cross
ok,

Stat (team avg, team std)

Wins (88.39, 12.01)
Saves (98.19, 38.09)
K (1098.38, 149.30)
ERA (3.85, .305)
*SAVED ER (0.00, 46.58)
WHIP (1.28, .050)
**SAVED W+H (0.00, 7.67)

Runs (1118.9, 76.7)
HR (286.1, 30.17)
RBI (1073.5, 82.1)
SB (131.6, 28.81)
AVG (.282, .0067)
***EXTRA HITS (0.00, 47.58)

*SAVED ER calculated as (3.85-ERA)*1372.9
**SAVED WHIP = (1.28 - WHIP)*1372.9
****EXTRA HITS = (AVG-.282)*7091

Posted 6:10 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#48) - J Cross
Oops. those Saved ER and Saved WHIP forumlas are wrong. should be:

saved ER = (3.85-ERA)*(1372.9/9)
and
saved WH =(1.28-WHIP)*(1372.9/9)

but now that I think about it I shouldn't have devided by 9 on WHIP so using

saved WH = (1.28-WHIP)*1372.9
we get
average = 0.00
std = 69.07

that makes more sense.

Posted 6:24 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#49) - J Cross
So, finally, my empirical coefficients (assuming an average of 9 teams in a league) compared to espn player rater's coefficients.

stat (player rater, empirical)

W (.270/.226) !!! The only notable difference
S (.0695, .0714)
K (.0203, .0182)
ERA (.0065*IP, .0065*IP)
WHIP (.038*IP, .039*IP)

R (.036, .036)
HR (.088, .090)
RBI (.033, .033)
SB (.088, .094)
AVG (.061*AB, .057*AB)

So, outside of a disparity when it comes to valuing wins it looks like my empirical results back up the espn player rater equations.

Posted 7:34 p.m., February 24, 2004 (#50) - J Cross
Nod, I finally have an answer to your question.

Correlation btw calculated team fantasy value and actual rotopoints:

R = .9685

Posted 1:54 p.m., February 25, 2004 (#57) - J Cross
Score Bard, I think it's just my wacky work computer. Sorry about that.

Matt, I think the averages would be too high for a twelve team league with talent more dispersed. I don't think the standard deviations (coefficients) would change all that much going from 10 to 12 but I don't know how they would change. I got the data by viewing 2003 espn teams and copying and pasta into an excel spreadsheet.

Right now I'm working on putting all this info into a spreadsheet that adjusts for the team you have and how much extra #'s can help you in each category. It looks like it makes a difference. It ranks Ichiro #7 overall but if you have Beltran and Soriano (two basestealers) on your team already he falls to #23 overall. I'm hoping to have this ready for my draft next week and then, after working out the kinks, I'll send it out to anyone who's interested.

Posted 1:55 p.m., February 25, 2004 (#58) - J Cross
oh, yeah, tango's post answers how they'd change.

Posted 2:27 p.m., February 25, 2004 (#60) - J Cross
Yep, maybe after I have this draft spreadsheet worked out I'll get data for AL only/NL only and other scoring systems. Needless to say, I'm not getting much of the work I'm paid to do done.

Posted 2:56 p.m., February 25, 2004 (#62) - J Cross
yeah, I think those are for all espn leagues.

Posted 12:19 a.m., February 28, 2004 (#73) - J Cross
jto, Nate Silver from primer did a comparison of PECOTA, Zips, BBHQ (Shandler), Diamond Mind, Rototimes, Rotowire and Warren so he must have all the data.

Nod, I like your pitching staff. I'm going to be going after strikeout pitchers almost exclusively, I think.

Posted 6:00 p.m., March 1, 2004 (#80) - J Cross
jto, nice, a 3-yr study would tell us a lot more. btw, does anyone know whether the difference in predicting pitchers for 2003 btw PECOTA and others was significant or could it have just been luck?

Big Series, and it relies on other players thinking Crawford was the best available at the time. And, if you're in a position where you HAVE to trade a player you'll probably lose a little value in the trade. I think in most cases there are several players of similar ability left remaining on the board. If one player really stands out I'd take them even if they don't fill a need.

Posted 11:16 a.m., March 2, 2004 (#83) - J Cross
Nod, I'm not sure I know what's going on in that graph. That looks like mean ERA and mean OPS with the error bars representing RMSE. Is that right? If so, it looks like pecota has the same size error bars as every other system but that's not what I remember from their report.

Posted 1:41 p.m., March 2, 2004 (#88) - J Cross
I agree that some credit but not too much should be given for picking the league level.

Using correlation, as I understand it, will favor the system that had players in the right rank order regardless of league level or amount of spread. Now, for the purposes of snake drafting FLB a rank order is basically what you need but really we should be judging the RMSE or each systems OPS/league OPS and ERA/league ERA values.

Posted 10:29 a.m., March 3, 2004 (#95) - J Cross
jto, one thing I'd really like to see is which players/kinds of players have the widest range of predictions and which systems are the best for those players (if there's enough data to get anything but noise there).

Posted 12:08 a.m., March 5, 2004 (#101) - J Cross
You need to find the expected standard deviation on the team level (more on this later). Once you do that you find the 30th best middle infielder and call that replacement level for middle infielders. At least, that's what I did.

To account for the fact that one standard in HR and one standard in steals is worth more than 2 standards in HR (or steals) you can discount points by (1 - .2*abs(std)). So, 1 standard in HR's would be worth .8 and one standard in steals is worth .8 points for a total of 1.6 points. 2 standards in HR is worth 2*(1-.2*2) =2*(.6) = 1.2 points.

I set up a spreadsheet to calculate how many standards from average the team I was in the middle of drafting was from average in each category and adjust the value of stats in each category and rerank the players accordingly. It's mildly useful.

So, how to find the expected standard deviation on the team level? Well, I looked at 10 past leagues with 10 teams each but if you don't have that is there anyway to predict the std on the team level from a look at the std's of the players you expect to be in the league?

Posted 1:14 p.m., March 5, 2004 (#107) - J Cross(e-mail)
Matt, I'll send you the spreadsheet. I should warn you that I have very little "programming" experience so this isn't exactly robust. The other problem is that it tries to adjust for the # of round of draft that have done by and account for the opportunity cost of next getting saves, home runs or whatever in the rounds gone by. So, if you're drafted 2 pitchers so far you're projected hitting numbers will look pretty bad. It gives projected team percentiles in each category and projected team points at the bottom of the draft page. I'll send it to whoevers intersted and apologize ahead of time if it's difficult to use.

Posted 3:49 p.m., March 5, 2004 (#109) - J Cross
Tango and Matt,

I'm going to work on that spreadsheet later today if I get the chance and should be able to send you a copy with just ZiPS data that works more smoothly.

Posted 6:49 p.m., March 5, 2004 (#111) - J Cross(e-mail) (homepage)
Sounds good. I sent you the spreadsheet. Let me know what you think. I'm thinking about emailing Score Bard and seeing if he wants to use these equations with his draft simulator program.

Posted 5:48 p.m., March 11, 2004 (#119) - J Cross
First I'd find the 70 best pitchers. If more than 20 are starters and more than 20 are relievers than I think you could just call the 70th best pitcher (overall) the replacement level.

More Help Requested (March 4, 2004)

Posted 3:27 p.m., March 19, 2004 (#144) - J Cross
Jim,

In order to answer your question you'd have to plug projections for hitters and pitchers into those equations and find every player's value over replacment. I don't have quite that much time but here are the top 10 hitters (unadjusted for position) using Marcel projections and your scoring system:

Rodriguez, Alex
Pujols, Albert
Soriano, Alfonso
Helton, Todd
Ordonez, Magglio
Garciaparra, Nomar
Wells, Vernon
Thome, Jim
Boone, Bret
Beltran, Carlos

More Help Requested (March 4, 2004)

Posted 1:02 p.m., March 5, 2004 (#6) - J Cross
Yeah, I think you make a good case for removing this ballot. I think it would be harder to call range or even hand ratings "wrong" but arm strength is right there for everyone to see and Bernie doesn't have it. In general have arm strength rating been less variable than other ratings?

More Help Requested (March 4, 2004)

Posted 3:21 p.m., March 5, 2004 (#13) - J Cross
wow, I would have thought there would a LOT less agreement on first step (which you can't see on TV) then on speed or arm strenth. huh.

Posted 12:14 p.m., March 18, 2004 (#26) - J Cross
I think IMDB should regress the the genre mean instead of the overall mean :)

Silver: The Science of Forecasting (March 12, 2004)

Posted 12:47 p.m., March 12, 2004 (#5) - J Cross (homepage)
I made the calculation in the homepage link to see if there's some trend to who PECOTA favors compared to ZiPS. I'll make a similar comparison for pitchers. I also want to sort pitchers into "high K" and "low k" groups (since K's are the first determination of comparable for pitchers) and compare their pecota/zips projections and then return to them at the end of the year.

Silver: The Science of Forecasting (March 12, 2004)

Posted 4:35 p.m., March 13, 2004 (#20) - J Cross (homepage)
What are the chances that we can get Marcel in on your comparsion of ZiPS and PECOTA?

very good, that should be no problem, mathteamcoach.

Silver: The Science of Forecasting (March 12, 2004)

Posted 3:14 p.m., March 15, 2004 (#30) - J Cross(e-mail) (homepage)
mathteamcoach sent me rototimes and shandler projections and I stuck those in a spreadsheet with pecota, zips and marcel.

Here are the top 4 hitters PECOTA doesn't like comared to average:

1. Bill Mueller
2. Javy Lopez
3. Vlad Guerrero
4. Jose Guillen

3 of the 4 are guys who had "breakout" years well above past performance.

top 4 notable (ie everyday) players PECOTA does like:

1. Adam Dunn
2. Nick Johnson
3. Tony Batista
4. Carl Everett

2, 3 and 4 are all players acquired by the Expos in the offseason. BP has an extreme park factor for the Expos (Nate Silver mentioned this in a chat) which also explains Vlad's bad PECOTA projection. Actually, I think it's pretty amusing Prospectus' expos park factor is enough to push the all 4 players that moved to or from the 'spos in the offseason to an extreme projection. It easily the most dominant trend in pecota projections compared to other systems.

Adam Dunn get a very high pecota projection b/c of his extreme isolated power and the fact that isolated power is the #1 basis for finding comparables in the pecota system.

So, what have we learned?

pecota likes:

1. The Expos home parks
2. Isolated power

pecota doesn't like

1. players with 2003 breakouts.

I should have more to come on this and I'm hoping it'll get more interested when I get the pitchers in there.

Silver: The Science of Forecasting (March 12, 2004)

Posted 5:49 p.m., March 15, 2004 (#35) - J Cross
correlation with Marcel

pecota OBP: .893
pecota slg: .882

zips obp: .846
zips slg: .879

rototimes obp: .901
rototimes slg: .893

shandler obp: .864
shandler slg: .852

just as a reminder, OPS corr. with actual last year (min 300 PA):

pecota: .711
zips: .692
rototimes: .683
shandler (bbhq): .690

Silver: The Science of Forecasting (March 12, 2004)

Posted 5:59 p.m., March 15, 2004 (#36) - J Cross
The pecota v. marcel list looks reasonably similar to the pecota v. average list. Adam Dunn and guys will with ISO are still near the top alogn with Montreal players.

Silver: The Science of Forecasting (March 12, 2004)

Posted 2:21 p.m., March 17, 2004 (#46) - J Cross
well, just for fun I muliplied the PECOTA "breakout%" by the "collapse%" for all players with 300 or more AB's. Then I controlled for AB's and ranked players by "brk%*clp% over expected." I didn't put much thought into this it was just quick and dirty. Anyway, the top "Wild" ie high surpise factor players are:

Edgar Martinez, Rocco Baldelli, Johnny Peralta, Jose Reyes, Ramon Santiago, Frank Thomas, Jose Lopez, Carl Crawford, B.J. Upton and Matt Kata.

To me this just looks like a group of very young or very old players. Their ages: 41, 22, 22, 21, 24, 36, 20, 22, 19, 26. The average age of players projected to have 300 ab's or more was 28.6 with a stdev (4.4) so stricly speaking only one of these players was within 1 std (although 24 is close).

Anyway, what suprised me was the most "reliable" players:

#1 Javy Lopez, #2 Barry Bonds

Javy Lopez!?!? Gosh, if there was a player I thought I didn't know what to expect from...

Anyway, the ages of the top 10 "reliable" players:
33, 39, 33, 37, 32, 32, 30, 28, 26, 33... a lot of 33 yr olds.

Not sure there's much to see here but I'll keep fiddling with the data. I had to use the breakout/collapse rates b/c I don't have the precentile projections in a spreadsheet.

Silver: The Science of Forecasting (March 12, 2004)

Posted 2:56 p.m., March 17, 2004 (#48) - J Cross
btw, AED, I used your basetball rankings for my bracket. Thanks.

Silver: The Science of Forecasting (March 12, 2004)

Posted 10:33 p.m., March 17, 2004 (#50) - J Cross
It's the new misspelling game. All the rage on primer.

Gleeman (and Sheehan) on the Importance of Height in Forecasting (March 12, 2004)

Posted 2:15 p.m., March 12, 2004 (#1) - J Cross (homepage)
I agree with Gleeman that there's probably not much to Sheehan's argument. I wrote my thought about it the other day (homepage). How does Gleeman's data on 6'4" players by position match up with my theory that height (ie power) is selected for more strongly at positions that are more offensive where as defensive position are closer to average in height?

From Gleeman's article (moving along the offensive spectrum going down)

Pos #6'3" #6'4"

SS 2 14
C 28 78
2b 2 5
CF 8 32
3b 9 36
lf 22 54
rf 29 63
1b 62 132

It actually looks like their are MORE tall catchers than would be expected based on their defensive position (and slightly fewer tall 2b).

Wolverton - Wavin' Wendells - Outs on Base (March 12, 2004)

Posted 11:58 a.m., March 15, 2004 (#10) - J Cross
well, in their essay on catcher's value (BP2004 book) in the running game they concentrate on preventing steals and rank catcher by steals prevented but talk about the extra outs as an afterthought. As far as I could tell they didn't combine prevented steals and extra outs into a value number because the value of these extra outs depends on the base/out situation and whether the team was playing for one or more runs. Still it seems ridiculous to ignore them completely. It's really a cop out considereing that this study used play-by-play data and could have made an attempt to figure this out.

They ranked Piazza as the worst catcher based on career numbers because he's allowed an extra ~400 steals compared to an average catcher (I forget the exact number but that's somewhere in the ballpark) but ignore the fact that by their calculation he had an extra ~150 outs above the average catcher because runners ran against him so often. 400 extra steals and 150 extra outs might not be so bad. In total I'm guessing it's not bad enough to support the statement that their study suggests moving Piazza to first is a good idea (although I think that moving him to first is a good idea for other reasons).

btw, I also don't trust their added outs numbes or know how they got them. One year that gave Hatteberg 8 CS but 22 added outs so I think they either messed up or I'm missing something. I'll re-read the essay tonight.

anyway, my point is that the analysis coming out of BP lately (eg "waving wendell" and "tall catchers") hasn't been very impressive. I think the forumlas they used for their fantasy forecast manager are just wrong. What's going on? I'm getting a little disillusioned with Prospectus. Can't wait for the Tango/MGL book.

Wolverton - Wavin' Wendells - Outs on Base (March 12, 2004)

Posted 10:38 p.m., March 17, 2004 (#23) - J Cross
As a rule of thumb, your 3 best hitters should hit somewhere 1,2,4.

Is this true if the pitcher is hitting 9th or only if your worst hitter is hitting 7th or 8th?

Wolverton - Wavin' Wendells - Outs on Base (March 12, 2004)

Posted 5:34 p.m., March 18, 2004 (#27) - J Cross
So, the Sox shouldn't have switched Manny to 3 and Nomar to 4.

Wolverton - Wavin' Wendells - Outs on Base (March 12, 2004)

Posted 12:24 a.m., March 19, 2004 (#34) - J Cross
Theo has a simulator. He said that the Sox were projected to win 100.6 games and the Yankees 100.7. But this is the lineup the Sox are planning on using (I think):

Damon
Mueller
Ramirez
Garciaparra
Ortiz
Millar
Nixon
Varitek
Reese

How different would the following lineup be?

Nomar
Ramirez
Ortiz
Nixon
Millar
Mueller
Varitek
Reese
Damon

Wolverton - Wavin' Wendells - Outs on Base (March 12, 2004)

Posted 11:31 a.m., March 19, 2004 (#37) - J Cross
Wow. That discussion of Batting Orders by LW is pretty dense. Correct me if I'm wrong but from what I understand you would take each players linear weights in a lineup slot compared to an average player in that lineup slot and find the lineup that maximizes the sum of these values? (MGL's sim isn't available to open) In order to do that you used empirically determined linear weight values of events for that spot in the lineup?

Here's my hangup. In a typical lineup you wouldn't want a homerun hitter in the top 2 slots because he doesn't have enough runners on base (and also had great hitters behind him) and you wouldn't use the #9 hole as a second leadoff hitter because a) there are bad hitters in front of him so a HR has high relative value compared to a hit or walk and b) the best hitters aren't up until 3,4,5.

BUT if you both place you best hitter in the 2 hole AND place a "second leadoff hitter" type in the 9 hole then don't you both give the 2 hitter situations with more runners on (and fewer great hitters behing him) thus increasing the value of his HR's and give the 9 hitter's obp more value? So, could a combination of two things that are bad in a typical lineup be good when used together?

The LW or events per batting order slot are true for the average lineup, right? Wouldn't they be different in any given lineup?

Earlier in this thread Tango mentioned using the highest slg-obp hitter in the 3 hole b/c the 3 hitter is least likely to lead off an inning. Isn't the fact that the 3 hitter leads off fewer innings than the 2 hitter mostly a function of how lineups are typically constructed and not something inherent to the structure of the game?

Wolverton - Wavin' Wendells - Outs on Base (March 12, 2004)

Posted 12:12 p.m., March 19, 2004 (#40) - J Cross
Is your batting order sim really a "sim" or more of an equation? I understand wanting to use an equation so that you know WHY a hitter is better suited for a given role but shouldn't you compare the results of your sim to something like a diamond-mind sim?

Wolverton - Wavin' Wendells - Outs on Base (March 12, 2004)

Posted 1:09 p.m., March 19, 2004 (#42) - J Cross
Oh, okay, well that should take care of my hangups. From what I remember of the description of Baumer's "Pinch Hitter" is was using Markov.

Wolverton - Wavin' Wendells - Outs on Base (March 12, 2004)

Posted 4:38 p.m., March 19, 2004 (#44) - J Cross
I think I'd have to learn how to write a computer program first... but then.

The Scouting Report, By the Fans, For the Fans - Most Similar Fielders (March 18, 2004)

Posted 4:05 p.m., March 18, 2004 (#2) - J Cross
Great Stuff!!

Some random comments:

Craig Biggio top 3 most similar players have moved between a few positions (Cat, McEwing and E. Wilson).

Barry Bonds most similar player is also his country's greatest slugger.

Mike Cameron's are two exc. defensive CF's (Hunter and Shinjo).

Jermaine Dye and Vance Wilson??? (this is one I don't see)

Darin Erstad and Pokey Reese - making up for bad offense group

Huff's comps: Cuddyer, Bellhorn and Scutaro - "we didn't get a chance to play when we deserved one" group.

The fact that Scutaro is McEwing best fielding comp adds insult to injury for Mets fans.

Rey Ordonez and his comps would be a dominant Hacking Mass team.

Mike Piazza the next "pickin' machine?"

I think it's interesting that players tend to comp well with others from the samp position. It looks like this is especially true for the best defensive players at each position.

The gambler in me see the following next step:

1) Regress MGL's UZRs to make 2004 UZR predictions for each player.
2) Let "Scouting Report" pick the over or under and see how it does.
3) If it does well, make 2005 predictions based on regressing UZR's to the scouting report.

Something like that?

Was the Eric Chavez signing a good one? (March 22, 2004)

Posted 3:53 p.m., March 22, 2004 (#5) - J Cross
Rally Monkey, that's true but it also applies to Chavez. That fact that he's been so good thus far makes him more likely to be among those that peak early.

I'm not sure there's much sense to pointing out Chavez's consistency. If a lot of inconsistency can be explaing by luck/noise then so can a lot of consistency. I wouldn't assume that Chavez's actual ability was the same for the last three years.

Was the Eric Chavez signing a good one? (March 22, 2004)

Posted 6:32 p.m., March 22, 2004 (#8) - J Cross
okay, so if

1) we can't use the standard aging patterns to predict Chavez's future b/c he's more likely to be among those that peak early.
2) can't use the set of 10 similar players because ther'e too much noise.
3) obviously, can't go by any "trend" or consistency in Chavez's career

then how do we best project chavez's next 6 seasons? Well, we could regress Chavy's data and then use apply the normal aging trends to that data or we could be lazier and look at Pecota which uses a much larger set of comparable players (50-150, I think).

Here's how it stacks up with the Namee's Results

yr...WARP1(BP)..winshares

01...8.6.......26
02...6.7.......25
03...8.9.......25

tot..24.2......76 (25.3 wins)

projected

yr...WARP(BP)..WS(Namee's comparables)

04...5.9.......21
05...5.7.......22
06...4.7.......16
07...4.7.......12
08...4.3.......14

tot..25.3......85 (28.3 wins)

It looks as if Pecota is just as harsh on Chavez as Namee's comparable list.

Was the Eric Chavez signing a good one? (March 22, 2004)

Posted 11:43 p.m., March 22, 2004 (#14) - J Cross
okay, it's true, it's inaccurate to say that pecota doesn't like him. It wouldn't like any star player to maintain their level.

Was the Eric Chavez signing a good one? (March 22, 2004)

Posted 12:56 a.m., March 23, 2004 (#17) - J Cross
No doubt that if there is a player worth giving this kind of contract it's Chavez (or one of a handful of other players like him) and I think he's well worth it, but maybe the HT analysis does point out just how few players would be worth $10M per for 6 years. I'm guessing that the way things have gone the A's are pretty happy that Giambi didn't take the 6 yr. $90M offer.

Sophomore Slumps? (March 23, 2004)

Posted 12:58 p.m., March 23, 2004 (#1) - J Cross
All points made in the Chavez signing thread apply here. Of course, ROY's don't do as well the next year.

Sophomore Slumps? (March 23, 2004)

The Scouting Report - Compared to UZR (March 23, 2004)

Posted 4:19 p.m., March 23, 2004 (#11) - J Cross
Uh, Sophomore slump says that players put up worse #'s in their second year but this article just showed that ROY winners put up worse #'s in their second year. If you looked at ALL sophomores you'd get a very different result.