from Amazon
Friday, August 22, 2008
Move over Marcel, make way for…
I’ll suggest Oliver as a name.
Brian has taken the basis for Marcel, and expanded it. Very lovely. What he has done is taken something very simple, and expanded it greatly, by doing all the things that Marcel intentionally ignored (more than 3 years of data, minor league, park, separated components). It is exactly what I would do if I wanted to put the care into it that Brian has.
Ideally, it will beat Marcel in forecasting competitions. Marcel will continue to exist as the minimum level to which all forecasting systems should be compared against (if you can’t beat Marcel, then you should keep working on your forecasting system). “Oliver” (or whatever Brian will call his) would be the next level up to which forecasting systems will be compared against.
I’m still trying to figure out if I am being praised or panned here. I do love the concept of Marcel, and as I develop further tools (fielding, baserunning, etc) they’ll probably all start with this concept.
I might call it Castilo, as it seemed to have nailed Jose so very well (and who just got released again this week).