THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Have you published Marcel this year or is it forthcoming?

Before I end up getting asked about this - I talked to Tom and PECOTA is in.

So you had to be dragged into it due to massive public pressure then…

Rotoworld is also in.

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I should have said I was waiting to hear from three, not two.  So, I’ll make one last attempt to that person, and then I will go to the queue.

Tom-

Would you be willing to facilitate (or run) a roto / auction variant of this contest?  The idea would be to test valuation systems.

I suspect some entrants might not be interested, but I would guess many have ties to fantasy baseball and would be.

The general idea would be 22 participants and each team supplies an ordered list with a (dollar) value attached to each player based on some set of league rules.  If we use a common 5x5 set of rules the ordering of the lists should be close to the ordering of the lists they would be submitting anyway.  The contest could be done as a combination of drafts and auctions.

I think there is a lot of upside.  Besides the possibly interesting comparison of valuation systems it would likely get some of the wait-listed systems into the mix (there might be a diamond there) and would let you see how accurate your scoring constants are for this league set-up.

If you think the results might be interesting, and if any participants might be interested, I’m willing to do any of coding/processing necessary to get the project down to a work/reward level that you would be happy with.

-Eric

ZiPS is in, so that makes it 22.

To those in the queue: it usually happens that 1 or 3 of the entrants end up backing down.  So, it would be good if you still do an “alternate” list.

@JEH: I don’t know if you’d be interested but we had planned on doing an internal review of most of the projection systems available at the end of 2011.  Basically, we’d like to take a standard 5x5 league setup and run each system through our valuation engine with the system’s preseason projections to get projected $ values on the top 200 players (or so).

Then, at the end of the year we were going to run the actual player stats through our engine to generate the real $ values of those players in 2011.

We would compare the projected values with the actual values in some way to see which system performed the best for fantasy purposes.

This wouldn’t be a test of valuation systems, but a test of projection systems within our valuation engine.

By the way, I’m also a big s-cker, and I would hate it if I have 26 forecasts in my hand, and I would only use the original 22. 

I will find a way to get the other 4 in, in some way.  As I said, there’s always someone or other than just fails to meet the deadline.

Aside from that, I’m not beholden to the “22”.  It’s just what I’ve always used.  If I really want to go to 24 I could, because, in reality, the valuation based on 22 or 24 entrants will be virtually identical.

Furthermore, I could also do a “prescreening” where I do put all 26 into the competition, and then knock out the bottom 4, and then make the top 22 as the “playoff contenders”.  I would do this on Oct 1, 2011.

Believe me, I don’t want to exclude anyone.

@ JEH #5:

really interesting idea. would love to see that. it’s still somewhat odd to me that fantasy valuation isn’t a solved problem at this point. even looking backwards, not every system agrees what a given player was worth in $’s.

Tango, would it be legit to submit two lists: one to compete against fangraphs fans and one to compete against other forecastors?

I’m not sure how that would work.  Can you explain?

I was thinking that the I would send in two ordered lists of players with the request that when the competition involves pro v. joe (competing against 21 “fans” from the fangraph projections) the simulation drafts using List A but when the competition involves Steamer v. the 21 other forecasters the simulation drafts using List B.

Oh, that would be a bit harder for me to code.  I mean, you can send me the 2nd one, and maybe I can do something unofficially for your own edification.

I can stick to one list in that case.  Probably wouldn’t serve as much of an advantage anyway.