From ZiPS inventor Dan Symborski, over at The Hardball Times, his 10 Lessons about making baseball projections. All very interesting and at the same time they feel quite familiar to me, echoing many of my experiences.
Except No. 8, which talks about the regression of inseason stats, which is not as pronounced as from season to season. This means that a player who gets off to a hot start for half a season, is more likely to continue that hot start in the second half than he is to have it continue the next year.
That doesn’t surprise me for any particular individual, but in aggregate it does.
This 10 Lessons story is part of 10 Lessons week at THT. Mitchel Lichtman’s piece about defensive statistics is full of great stuff, too.