Feb 11th, 2013: "Over the next week or so, we will continue to roll out additional parts of the PECOTA product offering: The preseason version of the Playoff Odds Report, PECOTA projections for the Team Audit pages, The Scoresheet Draft Aid, And the full PECOTA cards, including 10-year forecasts, percentiles, and more." Over-promising and under-delivering is officially a pattern. I understand you want to put out a relatively bug-free product; give yourselves a more forgiving window to play with and you'll disappoint fewer customers. Now I will extend long-term contracts (due today) without the ability to even see what PECOTA's previous 10 year forecasts were...

I appreciate that some prefer precision but some of us don't have the luxury to wait. Even February 11th is on the outside of being optimally useful. I understand that earlier will lead to less correct assignments of playing time and what not but the value of an early February PECOTA to me is to identify less visible guys that would perform reasonably well if given the opportunity. I can then manually look at the situation on said player's team to assess the likelihood myself - I don't need PECOTA for that. What I can't figure out is why people who want precision don't just ignore the early forecasts? I do appreciate the responsiveness of the BP team - many a year I have sent out pleas to get the spreadsheet and most years those pleas have been answered - many thanks.

Too bad. The weighted means sheet has typically been available much sooner (end of January or very early February). For those of us with leagues going through player acquisition now, this late of a date makes them almost useless.

While I agree that it is troubling that great players are showing up in the top 3 comps so often, I think you are taking the term comp too literally. If I understand PECOTA correctly, the comps determine the "shape" of a players career (rise or fall from current, eventual decline, etc) moreso than the magnitude of the numbers. Comps determine this "shape" of the performance curve and then are applied to most recent level of performance (last 3 years) to come up with the projections. Colin and team, is this a correct (if simplified) explanation?

Thanks Steve. Can VORP be added to the file?

Yes, please add VORP, its my primary research tool for my league. I hope its not being discontinued, will cause all sorts of rework in my models.

We meet the first weekend in February every year. I know, its annoyingly early. Typically BP has published a weighted-means spreadsheet with a few days to a week to spare.

I guess its better than March but you missed your "earlier than last year" projection. Still looking forward to it but will have to go through our auction and the beginning of our draft without it :(

"As for the DH issue, Thomas and Martinez and whoever else are already being measured against the replacement level as a DH for the years where they played there primarily." This is the problem Jay. They are being measured vs replacement level vs DH but being compared to a JAWS HOF standard at a different position. That's comparing apples and oranges. "The JAWS bar at first base is actually the lowest one already (53.5)" This should illustrate the point. If you look at the average offensive numbers for HOF 1Bman vs other positions, I imagine that 1B has the best average raw numbers. That same phenomenon results in a higher replacement level and therefore a LOWER WARP, demonstrated by your lower JAWS threshhold for that position. I think the argument that comparing DH to 1Bman is a valid one but you couldn't just compare the normal JAWS of a DH to the HOF bar for 1B. What I'm saying is that you should recalculate the WARP for someone like Edgar comparing his original annual numbers to the replacement level for 1B and THEN compare that adjusted JAWS number for the player to the established HOF standard for the position. Make sense?

The easier way Jay? Just above you posted "the search for objective truth about baseball" - the easier way seems to be at least somewhat in conflict with that goal. I'm probably taking your comment too literally :) But FredL makes a good point and Mr. Smith makes a reasonable effort to correct for the issue which will affect the JAWS analysis for any players that played significant time at more than one position. In Biggio's case, I think rather than adjust Biggio's WARP numbers (which should be relative to the replacement level of the position he played most often in a given year), you should compare him to a weighted average of the JAWS standard for the positions he played, weighted by the number of years he played each position as a percentage of his total years. The problem becomes more pronounced for Frank Thomas and especially Edgar Martinez since they played a significant portion of their careers at the DH position which lacks a JAWS HOF standard. Since for their DH years, their WARPs should be based on a replacement level for the DH position, comparing the JAWS based on primarily DH numbers with the standard at another position is flawed. For Thomas it is probably unnecessary to adjust because he clears the threshhold by so much but for Edgar, I think it is necessary to re-cast his offensive numbers in his DH years vs the replacement level for another position (1B is my suggestion since that is where the gloveless are most often stuck when playing the field). Armed with this adjusted WARP and therefore an adjusted JAWS, compare him to the weighted average JAWS HOF standard for 3B (for the years he played there) and 1B (for the years he DH'd) as described above for Biggio. Not a simple analysis certainly but for a borderline case like Martinez, I think the analysis will better hold water. YMMV :)

OK, but you can see how that interpretation would be hard to reach in the context of the sentence it was in. The Cubs will be in trouble if Silva/Gorzelanny regress/get hurt. If Wells continues to pitch to his SIERA, the Cubs will be happy to take that slightly above average performance from a still very cheap pitcher.

"or if Randy Wells continues to show us why stats like SIERA are more important than ERA" Randy Wells 2010 ERA = 4.26 Randy Wells 2010 SIERA = 4.13 So what does this comment mean?

Is it just me or is the whole analysis flawed? Does it make sense that Edgar would compare more favorably to the average HOF corner infielder than he does to the average HOF 3B? No, it doesn't make sense and that is because WARP is a position-dependent metric, both offensively and defensively. And since Edgar spent most of his career as a DH, most of his accumulated WARP is (I believe) relative to the average DH. He would need to be compared to the average HOF DH and since no such average exists, Jay has chosen other positions to compare against but that's really comparing apples and oranges. In order to do this analysis in a way that holds water, you would need to restate Martinez' career WARP numbers vs the replacement level for another position. In my opinion, it wouldn't be fair to compare him vs the 3B position since defense is a large component of a 3Bman's value and therefore the offensive standard is much lower than, say, 1B. I think restating his career WARP numbers vs the replacement level for 1Bmen and then comparing him to the Avg HOF 1Bman would be the most fair way to assess his candidacy.

Agree that some personnel moves will happen too late regardless of when you draw the proverbial line in the sand. It wouldn't bother me in the slightest. I will express my wish that the annual was available several weeks earlier - due to its timing relative to my league's activities, I never end up buying it and I'm pretty sure I'd buy every year if it was available at the end of January...

You are of course looking at his career value number which is plenty impressive. But look at that peak, only surpassed by Schmidt and Matthews. Unbelievable that he's not in the hall...

Is this the cause of the Team Tracker data not updating? It is showing stats only through April 23rd.

Thanks Dave, I think many of us are happy to have the cards available (even with suspect data) while you work out the kinks. On that note, will we soon start this process with the pitcher cards or are you hoping to iron out any issues first? As you well know, for many of us, this data has a hard date where its usefulness drops considerably.

Are the hitter cards still coming today?

Look at eqBA/eqOBP/eqSLG. They factor out the ballparks which help Andrus and hurt Cabrera, resulting in the superior VORP for Cabrera. Hope this helps.

"you’ll see two new tabs in the Weighted Means Spreadsheet–it now has both playing time projected and PECOTA raw projections." Thanks for listening!

I have no problem with a Beta release. However, since the problems at this point appear to be related to the depth charts adjustments, why not release the unadjusted version of the spreadsheet? This has been the usual version we've seen in late Jan/early Feb before and, to some of us, it is preferrable. It would also get past the "why isn't player X listed" questions that come up since not everybody is signed yet. Seems like a simple solution in the interim.

As one who typically begs that the sheets be put up in late January and is typically rewarded in a very short time frame, I can't complain about the issues. Glad to see they are being fixed. One request: while it is informative to see the playing time adjusted version, the raw version seems more valuable (at least to me). I can mentally adjust for anticipated playing time but knowing that a guy has a good chance to breakout if he gets a chance - I can't see that very clearly. Thanks again.

Did you miss the Sammy Sosa fiasco? Sammy played his part but Hendry is EXACTLY the type to call out his players in the press and torpedo their trade value in the process. As a Cub fan, I'd much rather see Hendry gone than Bradley.

First, let me say that I can't remember the last time I watched even a full inning of the All Star Game. I used to watch but that had more to do with fewer options - I never really cared about the game. So Joe's clearly sarcastic comment "I suppose this would explain the increased interest in the game, and its growing stature, over the last quarter-century, as the stars have played less and the non-stars more" got me thinking - has the All-Star Game really decreased in interest relative to the interest in baseball? So, using the ASG TV ratings as representative of the interest in the All-Star Game and World Series TV ratings as a proxy for interest in baseball in general (not perfect certainly - thanks to baseball-almanac.com for all the data), I did a simple regression of the data (since 1968, excluding the 1994 non-World Series year). The results of the regression were statistically significant and the r-squared of .734 suggests that most of the variability in the ASG ratings can be explained by(though clearly not caused by)the variation of the WS ratings. Comparing the predicted ASG rating with the actual does show us something more. In the more recent data (since 1989), the model much more often than not predicts a higher rating than actual. And the exceptions to this rule all seem to be in years were the World Series ratings were down relative to the surrounding years (2008, 2006, 1998, 1993 and 1989), suggesting that the overperformance in these years was really due to underprediction from the model, perhaps due to a WS that didn't fully capture the public's attention for whatever reason. Since the recent data underperforms the model, that does suggest that something else is driving interest in the ASG lower than that of the World Series/baseball in general. Maybe Joe's right and the reason is that its no longer a game primarily populated by the elite players. Or maybe other Tuesday night programming is just SO compelling that people can't drag themselves away (doesn't seem to be the case based on my own personal tastes :) It also suggests that making the game "count" has failed in its attempt to make it more appealing. In any event, I am happy to see the Zobrist's, Marquis' and Wakefield's of the world get their chance for the limelight, however underserving they may be. Missing the game once won't likely matter to the Manny's and ARod's of the world but it sure will mean a lot to these guys. I'm happy to see them make it but its still not enough to get me to watch this meaningless exhibition - get on with the games that count, I say.

I gave Matt an on the fence thumbs up last week - no such fence-sitting needed with this outstanding piece. Minor quibble with the line drive rate persistence (you say it doesn't correlate well year to year then use Young as an example based on historical line drive rate) but overall, the best I've read this round.

Good stuff. I started doing this type of analysis myself when I first learned spreadsheets, then lacking any knowledge of vlookups or pivot tables. I guess I had assumed much of the BP constituents had done the same. The skills I honed doing this for my hobby has somewhat led me to my current profession (Finance) and prove to be valuable skills used on a daily basis there. For the unitiated, pivot tables allow a very quick summary of data based on fields you choose. Vlookups are a way to link to datasets together when you have fields in one that you want to use with fields from another, or if you simply want to combine the data. Both are relatively simple to use and worthwhile to learn if you have any inclination to do statistical analysis - they will make the task much less daunting. I use pivot tables in particular frequently to help in my Diamond Mind league - help decisions around lineup construction (both who to start and in what batting order), what opposing hitters to pitch around, and pinch hitting and bullpen decisions. Extremely valuable tools.

M.U.L.E is still great. I haven't played in a few years but the mere mention has me itching to mine some crystite and hunt the wampus!

I have a REAL problem with the method of choosing the eliminated writer. As has been pointed out by many, reading this number of articles in a such a compressed time period is a lot to ask. Given that, there is going to be variation in the number of reads which may have nothing to do with the writers themselves. This is still BP right? The site where performance is almost always measured in terms of a rate vs number of opportunities. Seems like an odd choice to abandon that philosophy for your own writing contest. Shame on you...

Hitters are at their best when they hit more line drives. A lower than normal G/F ratio is a symptom of not hitting enough line drives - when a hitter is locked in and hitting a high number of line drives, when he just misses the sweet spot, a good portion of those misses will be where he hits more towards the top of the ball, resulting in more grounders. This would demonstrate that you understand what causes what. Say something along these line and you get my vote. You didn't so you don't.

"...and I hope eventually by a new PECOTA run that explicitly incorporates the current season." Eventually = 2009? or some far off utopia?

Nice article but of course you realize that Curacao is not a nation but belongs to the Dutch :)

We apparently have a ludicrously (not just ridiculously) early auction - February 7th. Always the first Saturday in February. *Sigh* Hopefully the PECOTA weighted mean spreadsheet will at least be up then.

Has definitely been earlier in than mid-February in the past. Two years ago it was mid-January. Last year it was early February - Feb 1st in fact. Hopefully it won\'t slip further again this year but without Nate around lately, I\'m concerned

VORP vs LH/RH - some players are more valuable than their VORP suggests due to their splits, particularly lefty-mashers