THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

It might also be interesting to give the poll-of-polls methodology a try and add a contender that consists of simple averages of the projections of all of the other contenders.

Is there a “for dummies” version of what it is you are exactly trying to measure?  Best forecasting system?  Best forecasting system for a 5x5 fantasy league?  A one sentence explanation.  Yes, I see a metric, but why that metric?  How is this different than the studies others ran to compare projection systems at seasons end?
vr, Xei

The difference is that the season enders always look at the list of players after the fact, drawing a line as to who to compare.  In this case, it’s before-the-fact.

Yes, best forecasting system for a 5x5 league.  AND, how much of an advantage each has.

There aren’t many 24-team fantasy leagues (outside of Scoresheet, which of course doesn’t use 5x5 format); any chance you could put together some 12-team leagues, too?  That would shift the emphasis to each system’s top 300 or so players, which fortunately or unfortunately is all most 5x5 players care about. 

Thanks for doing this, looking forward to the results.

Chone doesn’t project saves, does he? How will he compete in the pitcher forecasts?

No, I will stick to having 500+ players selected.  I don’t want to bias the results in favor of Marcel.

In any case, the 12-team leagues would not come from the 30-team MLB would it?

I think Rally (the human) will intervene on Chone (the non-human).

Tango: 12-team fantasy leagues often come from the full 30-team MLB: if a player isn’t above average they aren’t worth having.

Exc: well, that’s surprising.  When I asked about the NL and AL only drafts a while ago, it sounded like they would have 10-team leagues each.  That’s 250 players.

So, I think it would only make sense that if you have an MLB draft that you must draft 500 players. 

That was the idea behind it: that roughly 250 NL and 250 AL players would be drafted, and that’s what I’ve got.

If I project pitcher A to win 15 games with a 3.40 ERA and 175 K, and pitcher B to win 12 with a 3.75 and 160K, it doesn’t look like there is any rule to prevent me from ranking B ahead of A anyway.

Not that doing so would generally be a good idea, but in a case like Ben Sheets you would be wise to drop him from the list no matter how good his statistical projection.  Billy Wagner is another one.

The participants who do the best job of weeding out known injuries will have an advantage.  What we’re measuring is some combination of best forecasting system, and most knowledgeable particpant in terms of injuries and team depth charts.

Right on.  Marcel should be pretty sucky, since he will probably end up with Ben Sheets in every single draft.  Indeed, any good player that is injured in the pre-season will be picked by Marcel.

I am hoping to have the time to run my Community Forecast project again, and enter that into the competition, in conjunction with Marcel.  That should be a powerful force.

***

Oh, and I was considering including a “average of all forecasters”, but I’m thinking that may be unfair.  I’m not sure though.  I’d hate for the forecasters to think that their insights will make up 5% of one of their competitors rankings.  But then again, if it’s only 5%, what could it matter?  Then again, since everyone is helping this one faceless forecaster, then it won’t be fair.  Thoughts?

8- and 10- team leagues are often one league, with 12-, and 16- team fantasy leagues both major leagues.  I realise that this seems unnatural, but it’s often the case that one-league fantasy is deeper than two-league fantasy. 

Nonetheless, it’s still a good idea

Right, that was the basic point.  Say I wanted to put 10 of my participants in an AL-only league (where they draft 250 players) and 12 of my participants in an NL-only league (where they draft 300 players).

At the end of the day, I have 550 players drafted.

What difference does it make if I put the 22 participants in an MLB league?  I’ll still have the same 550 players drafted (more or less).  The depth of each team will look the same, whether in a one-league only, or MLB-wide league.

Speaking of projections, I’d love to hear some opinions of the people here on the Hit Tracker projections that Greg Rybarczyk has introduced:

http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2009/02/2009_projection.php

Will this be tracked during the season?

Dan: I don’t know yet.

Here are the CBS Sportsline projections linked to MLB ID’s.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pzy9IhjJPqatqIOdl7vd_fg

These players have no MLB ID:

2B Richard Lewis
1B Jason F. Stokes
SP Jeremy Hellickson
SP Chi-Hung Cheng
SP Mark Holliman
SP Kasey Kiker
SP Wade Townsend

terps:

wow, that’s so very kind of you.  Thanks so much.

476451 SP Jeremy Hellickson
430687 SP Chi-Hung Cheng
460089 SP Mark Holliman
475561 SP Kasey Kiker
450304 SP Wade Townsend

Terps, send me an email, and I’ll send you the complete MLBAM file.

Tango,

I don’t know what your primary e-mail address is. In the past, I have e-mailed your Yahoo address but didn’t get any response.

What is your Community Forecast?

tom~tangotiger~net is the best email address to reach me, as that’s reachable from the office as well as home.  I still respond to yahoo.com email, but only in the evenings when I get the chance. 

***

I did get a yahoo email with a huge zipped attachment (3MB zipped, 13MB unzipped), but I just let it sit there until I got the chance to go through it.  I should at least have replied back that you shouldn’t let me be a bottleneck to your work.

The best best is to post what you have to the group (or web), and then let the community (and me) comment as needed.

I’m looking at it now, and it’s really too overwhelming for me to go through it.  I’d also suggest posting things in piecemeal, so that you have a better focus from everyone’s comments.

Tango,

Is Ron Schandler providing his Baseball HQ projections as well? I don’t think I saw his on the list…

No, he’s acting as advisor as needed; I can’t include him in case of conflict of interest.  I’ll probably be working on my own (non-Marcel) forecasts at some point, and by the same token, I can’t include those either.

I do have Marcel there, but everyone knows how those are calculated, plus they provide the minimum point that everyone should beat.  For example, Marcel doesn’t know anything new about Ben Sheets.

Surprised nobody has mentioned it get, but the generally accepted standard leagues sizes are:

AL:  12 teams, 14 hitters/team, 9 pitchers/team
NL:  12 or 13 teams, 14 hitters/team, 9 pitchers/team

Mixed (all MLB):  Not positive, but I believe Yahoo style is 12 teams, 9 hitters, 7 pitchers, 5 reserve players.

Some mixed league players use the same roster as the AL or NL-only leagues (14 hitters, 9 pitchers).

Most serious players consider the shallow (12 team) mixed leagues a farce.  They sprung up once Yahoo and ESPN started offering leagues.  Now, unfortunately, because of their ease of access (and because less serious players got to have a team-full of players they’ve actually heard of), they grew more popular.  Which forced the serious players, who began writing about fantasy baseball, to write about them.  Which caused more people to play in these joke leagues.  And so on.

Anyway, to step off my soap box for a second, if you’re selecting from all of MLB, the right amount of teams would be 24 or 25, so I think you’ve got it right.

But actually your teams (15 hitters, 10 pitchers) are a little too large.

Basically, you should have (12+13)*14 = 350 hitters drafted, and (12+13)*9 = 225 pitchers drafted.

So with 15 hitters/team and 10 pitchers/team, I guess the ideal number of teams would be 23.

The ESPN data is going to be a pain to gather because of the page layout. I can’t grab Pecota since I don’t subscribe to BP. Are there any other sites that are participating by proxy?

"So with 15 hitters/team and 10 pitchers/team, I guess the ideal number of teams would be 23”

Which is right where I have it.

Tom, are you still allowing additional participants? I think I’d like to include my projections that are published on FantasyPros911.com. Thanks.

Mike,

I’m going to have to include you as an alternate, in case someone drops out.  Send me an email to tom~tangotiger~net so I can log you in.

Do pitchers’ hitting totals count towards their points total?

Most forecasters don’t forecast pitcher’s hitting. If they did, I still don’t think very many Fantasy Leagues would count it.

Zach: no.

Clay Davenport, ever the gentleman, has agreed to provide the forecast list, ordered, for BPro, which saves me alot of time.

Yes!  He must have read my plea to join on the unfiltered post. 

And with that I will claim credit for any future PECOTA victory (and assume no responsibility for a defeat).

Nick, I didn’t see your post.  If that helped, all the better.  I had sent Clay an email when I realized that he was taking control of the fantasy product, especially the depth charts.  He replied right away, and he seems enthused about it.  I do appreciate anyone that may have influenced him.

Hmmm… A personal invitation from Tom Tango vs. some random question posted on a BPro thread? 

I’m afraid I may be overestimating my own influence.

http://www.denverpost.com/rockies/ci_11740039

Marcel should finish close to last place at this point.  I mean, his pitching staff will be filled with guys that are on the DL.

I am definitely going to have to include Community Forecasts of Playing Time in this as a Marcel+Community entry.