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Forecasting 2003
February 16, 2003 - Voros McCracken
(e-mail)
David Smyth wrote:
"I still cling to the belief that I can do "almost" as well, looking at the back of a baseball card for 30 seconds or whatever."
Right, and that generally is because in 3/4 of the cases, the projections will be remarkably similar.
Where Tango is on the right track here is isolating a group of players for whom there can and should be a fairly large discrepancy as to what people will think they'll do. Indeed it's in cases like Jeff Cirillo where a fair amount of research and study can be helpful. On the other hand a wild guess on how to do it might match what the research says as well.
It should also be noted that if enough people make guesses, by rules of probability, some Primate should be able to come away with the top score.
I like the player list though.
How are Runs Really Created
August 16, 2002 - Voros McCracken
(e-mail)
As far as the "there'll never be a whole team like Bonds" argument, as Tango pointed out, this isn't exactly true for pitchers.
One thing I'm still struggling with for DIPS is converting the numbers into a consistent ERA. It seems (just from eyeballing it) that DIPS might underrate pitcher in the John Wasdin family (good at preventing baserunners, gives up homers at a rate of one per every sip of beer you take) and might overrate the guys from the Shawn Estes/Russ Ortiz mold (lots of baserunners, keeps the ball in the park). A non-linear method might ("might" being the operable word) handle this better.
I currently use linear methods because deriving a new run estimator wasn't the point of the project, and trying the various non-linear methods out there (like James's RC) produced on average worse results across the board. Plus with a few recent changes to DIPS, the linear method solves a lot of DIPS-specific problems (like the balancing act between singles per balls in play and extra-base hits per balls in play) that would have to be answered with a "standard" run estimator.
So I'm always wondering if maybe Base Runs or a relative might make it more effective, or whether I could customize a formula like it for specific use with DIPS (since as I mentioned it has a few unique problems that normally don't come up in run estimator discussions).
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