Answers to fantasy baseball questions (and much more) since 1996
Rotoman ESPN.com – MLB – Yanks’ hole at 3rd: Boone’s possible ACL tear
What a goofball. The amazing thing is that even if it turns out he’s going to miss the whole season and the Yanks release him they still have to pay him nearly $1M. Hmm, maybe not so goofy after all.
It’s too early to discuss what the Yankees will do, but they certainly aren’t going to play the season with Enrique Wilson as their third baseman.
Welcome to Player Profiles at Patton & Co
The player profiles are going to open to the public soon. There are a few of us insiders (the & Co. part) who get to populate the comment database early. I don’t have an ownership interest in this thing but Patton is my friend and I think it’s the neatest thing around. So I hope to soon get my contribution level into second place, at least.
Mike Fenger is one of the other & Co. contributors and I realized tonight that I didn’t thank him in the magazine for his work getting the minor league stats in shape for the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2004. Mike loves baseball and is a tireless student of the game. He also brings with him a skeptic’s sense of bs, which means the opinions he expresses are usually properly shaded. His enthusiasms, I’ve found, aren’t always right (whose are?) but they always come with a foundation of factual evidence.
It isn’t hyperbole to point out that this makes him a rare pundit.
Thanks, Mike. Your name should be on the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2004 masthead. I’m very sorry it isn’t.
For years Ron Shandler ran a story at Baseball HQ called the Forecast 40, which compared the projections of a group of touts at the start of the season on a selection of players about whom there were decided differences of opinion. Then after the season he did a fun little thing measuring how the touts did.
But two years ago someone posted that story at r.s.b.f. and the usual spew erupted about Ron’s evaluation methods and the rather unscientific sampling blah blah blah. So last year Ron did something a little different and polled members of his site about the players who were confounding them. And then he found projections for them from 13 touts and posted them.
You can read the story at the link above.
I comment not to point out my brilliant Preston Wilson projection, but to point out that Ron ran projections from 11 sources that were put together in March, and from two sources that were put together in early December. My gripe is that the projections in the Fantasy Baseball Guide (and the Fantasy Baseball Index) were done under much different conditions than the others Ron looks at in the story.
I don’t in fact mind being included (I think we win the Preston Wilson and finish high in a few others, which in a 13 team field isn’t bad at all–especially since we skipped the Hideki Matsui and Jose Contreras projections in December but win both of them in our February projections published at mlb.com ), but I think it is material to note when the predictions were prepared. So I note it here.
The whole exercise also raises the question about what type of projection is most useful to a fantasy player. Ron seems a little obsessed with projections that deviate from the norm, and certainly there is glory to be gained by concocting a gutsy risk-taking story of emergence for some player. For Ron that player recently has been Brad Fullmer.
I think the real story about projections is that there is an awful lot of random information that gets transmitted with a player’s stats, which means that the player’s real ability and potential is shrouded beneath a veil of statistical noise. All of us who project player performance for a living (or seriously, I should say) know about this noise, and we know that this noise makes it impossible to judge a player’s skill level reliably. Or rather, we can judge the skill level just fine, but how he performs will be distorted by the noise.
So instead we take bearings and triangulate and hope between some amalgam of averages, similarity scores, and (I dare say) gut hunches, we get more right than the next guy. Ron seems to think there are some of us who triangulate off of his work, which may be true though ultimately really sad.
My point is that we are constantly learning more about what goes into player performance and so we’re constantly stripping away a little more of the veil, but we’re a long way from knowing all that’s knowable, and I’m quite certain there’s a large chunk that is purely random, which is why there will be a very good set of projections the day a bunch of monkeys with typewriters bangs out the works of Bill Shakespeare.
Someone who tries to sell you projections that are “much better” than any others is bullshitting you. The important thing for you as a consumer to understand is what system your prognosticator is using, understand what biases that introduces, and learn to make the necessary adjustments to incorporate risk evaluation into the process and get the players who fit your fantasy league’s rules best.
Those projections that are outside the comfort zone, as Ron calls it, are flashy, but they’re of little statistical use. What you want (I think, but tell me if I’m wrong) is to follow the predictor who gets the general flow (guys who improve, guys who fall off) more right than anyone else.
If someone does that they’ll make you money in almost any league
(So, who’s going to study this?).
Philadelphia Daily News | 01/21/2004 | No ifs, ands, gut: Abreu’s in shape and he’s hungry
There is good reason to think his problems early the last two years had to do with off-season conditioning. If he’s really worked this winter to stay fit (and that doesn’t cause him to wear down as the season progresses) this starts to look like the big year we’ve been waiting for.
This is a lovely story at mlb.com about a Japanese player who had a fine season in Akron last year, and who shows every sign of being able to make it to the big leagues.
Why is he in Cleveland? Because the “off-field distractions” the story refers to include (at the least) his past history as an actor in a some gay porn films, which dropped his price considerably.
Tadano says he’s straight and just did it for the money and I suppose I don’t really care, unless he’s gay and is just saying he’s straight because of the money. And even then I don’t really care.
But if I’m handicapping anyone’s chances of getting over in the big leagues, former gay porn actors rank really low. Call it the foxhole syndrome, call it stupid, but the day that Victor Martinez discovers the difference between a Top and a Bottom is the day that Tadano gets dealt to the Dodgers.
Boston Red Sox Nation 2004 -? A-Rod Shirt
There’s a lot of stink about this shirt (and two others, apparently) that got listed in the shopping pages of mlb.com. It’s hard to argue with the BDD’s analysis, but it’s also hard to see why MLB would be mocking up merchandise before this epic deal was made. And a month after it fell apart.
But for Beantowners the photo will make the heart beat more quickly.
ESPN.com – MLB – Mariners: No Sasaki in ’04
Well kiss my grits. This changes things. The concerns had been that Sasaki might be hurt, but it turns out he was homesick. Sacrificing $9M because you miss your wife and kids is a powerful endorsement of your values. If this turns out to be true I nominate Kazuhiro to the Family Hall of Fame. There’s a spot a guy named Clemens recently vacated.
By the way, I was at a dinner party recently and I mentioned I’d been at a spring training came a few years ago in Port Charlotte that Clemens pitched in. It was notable because I was sitting in the row behind the Clemens family, and I got a powerful sense that Mrs. Clemens was as powerful a competitor as Roger himself. At this dinner I’m talking about I suggested that Roger very well might un-retire himself because his family really wants him competing (where would the energy go if he wasn’t? into enforcing curfews and homework compliance? or should that be kompliance?). The guy I was talking to said he’d met Mrs. Clemens many times which made me feel small.
But I was right. He may want to spend more time with his family, but he can do that in Houston. And the family isn’t telling him to tamp it down. Which is why I have RC on my mock draft squad in the magazine (which should be arriving this Tuesday or next on a newsstand or Walmart near you).
Turns out my dear mom is serving beef for Christmas, too. Shows what I know.
Yahoo! News – First Suspected U.S. Mad Cow Case Found
The news here is that agriculture secretary Veneman said she’s serving beef on Christmas. Who does that?
BTW, I’m sorry that A-Rod didn’t get to go to Boston, but I don’t think the Red Sox are hurt by that this year at all. And they won’t be hurt in the future because John Henry knows they can always go get someone, which is why they played a little hard ball.
The fun part will come if John Hart figures out how to put together a winning team with the game’s best player (and not a few strong-hitting youngsters).
It’s not impossible.
ESPN.com – MLB – Lilly traded for Kielty
Despite Lilly’s second-half success he was clearly not in the Athletics’ future plans. Attitudes did not jibe.
Kielty is lauded for his patience but he has yet to actually generate much offense. At best he looks to be a pale imitation of Mark Kotsay, who the A’s are also trying to acquire. A team built around pitching needs defense, but they could sure use a banger or two, too.
Lilly’s stubborn immaturity is a reason to discount him, but he showed last year that with a good defense behind him he can get some outs. He is perhaps more volatile than Kielty, but his potential is far grander.