THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

After 17 votes, the high-mark is 3.97, with 1 SD = 0.48.

The midpoint of the high-mark and the low-mark (2.50) is 3.24, which is 75% of the league average.

39 notes, 3.90, SD=0.45

midpoint=3.20, 74% of league average

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Marcel has him at 2.88 (67%) and Chone at 3.12 (73%).

You guys are a bit pessimistic on Lincecum.  I’m a bit surprised you would say that his chance to post a sub-2.50 is as much as his chance of posting a 3.90+ .  It’s almost like you don’t believe he’s really that good.

Anyway, if Lincecum serves as the baseline, then we see that Strasburg is about 10 percentage points higher than Lincecum for the midpoint level.  If you forecast Lincecum as a 65% pitcher, you’re going to forecast Strasburg as a 75%.  If Lincecum is 73%, then Strasburg is 83%, and so on.

And that’s pretty much what I’ve been saying here.

Or perhaps it just has more to do with being down on the Giants defense? Or the variability of ERA?

Is expected performance close to normally distributed? Symmetric? I was thinking that there’s a fairly decent chance that he gets hurt and pitches very poorly before being shut down for the year.

I.e., there’s a larger probability right-hand (high ERA) tail than on the low ERA side.

I wonder how much of the downside votes are affected by Lincecum’s struggles this spring, combined with his fastball velocity loss this spring on top of his velocity drop last year.

63 votes, 3.91 +/- 0.39

Anyone else going to be the subject (or would it be object?) of a poll today?

I wasn’t planning on anyone else.  I just wanted to do Strasburg, and then use Lincecum as the baseline.