What was the distribution of guesses on each one? I got 5/10. The hits I got right are described as: - infield hit - soft line drive to right field - single between short and third - double off base of wall - line drive double over first base The hits I got wrong were: - infield hit, shortstop - line drive single off glove of diving right fielder - infield single dribbled down 3rd base line - popped up single to right field - line drive off Green Monster So I say there was a slight bias towards me getting things right (I missed the harder-hit ball only twice), but the small sample induces too much luck. I don't think we can draw a solid conclusion from so few ABs, but it would be really cool if there was a way to automate the creation of these gifs and the collection of people's responses to see how they did with a variety of batters and a large sample.

All stats are arbitrary to some extent - even BBs and Ks. My problem with the QS as a roto number is that it's still too granular, especially in H2H leagues. It might be an improvement over wins (though your math here only adds up if all that extra value is being removed from somewhere - is it relievers or do hitters lose value because there are now more consistently dominant starters?), but GS probably would be too. Why not just use IP?

1. L 2. L 3. R 4. R 5. R 6. R 7. R 8. R 9. L 10. L I'll say I got 7 of 10 - there's at least a few where I have a really strong feeling one way or the other.

I think it would be cool if there was a mirror feature to this one called the Drop List or whatever, where you discuss players that might be sitting on your bench or in your lineup who have been performing poorly and are now worth dropping for better guys. Basically, the top 20-25 guys who are more than 25% owned whose slots would be better used with one of the guys on this list.

Just curious why Moran isn't on your board. The PG mock draft has him going to the Sox assuming Frazier, Stewart, and Shipley are off the board. I'm sure there was a lot of thought behind your initial list of 14 players, but I wonder if a) you do/should take a step back at various points in the process to see what others are saying and consider whether there are players you should add to your mix b) how much performance since your initial evaluations does / should impact whether new names get added to the list or old ones removed.

I don't think this argues against the idea of stars and scrubs, honestly, it just suggests that "scrubs" needs to mean $1-4 players, not just $1. If you spent $130 on 4 hitters at an ROI of .77, $72 on 3 pitchers at an ROI of .9, and the remaining $58 on 20 players in the $2-4 range (ROI 2.07) and 2 $1 players (ROI 3.75), you'd end up with a total value of $288.32 for your $260. That's a better return than spending $252 on 21 players in the $10-14 range (ROI .96) and getting 8 $1 players (ROI 3.75), which only totals 271.92. Of course, you could also do $167 on 10 hitters in the $15-19 range (ROI .9), $87 on 13 pitchers and hitters in the $5-9 range (ROI 1.15) and 6 $1 players (ROI 3.75) for a total of $272.85. I'm sure there's a set up in there that's more optimized, but just throwing together some naive breakdowns seems to support stars-and-scrubs as a plan. The reason is basically that you get a lot more ROI on <$4 players, so the more of them you have, the better, but you still need to spend the whole $260, because the ROI on unspent dollars is 0, which means you are better off getting some star players despite a poor return to just spend the money and making up for it with far better returns from your scrubs. It also gives you the roster flexibility to capitalize on the scrubs that pan out, instead of having great ROI players sit on your bench because you spent $12 on the guys at their positions. Basically, what this data says to me is exactly what you'd expect: victory means finding the guys who outperform their expectations and only paying slightly more than the expected value in order to get them. It's obviously hard to find an undervalued $35 player, but the data says it's also hard to find undervalued guys that go for the average price.

I think the main reason is just salary inflation. PEDs made offense explode for a while, but the inflated salaries of the 90s convinced kids growing up at that time (and more importantly their parents) that spending the money and effort to make it is a good idea, and thus that having real professional training was a way to get ahead for a job that would pay huge dividends in the end.

Hmm, the Blue Jays draft makes me think they've decided that draftees are generally way underpaid and that dropping big money (relative to that underpaid-ness) for the best talent available is a good deal.

Might also be interesting to see if it has an effect on BABIP. In other words, does a pitcher who gets more swings and misses tend to get hitters to make weaker contact also?

Did you try to do a similar regression, but using vote share instead of just wins (or is that actually how you did it)?

The problem with doing away with the current revenue sharing in favor of a payroll-based subsidy is that payroll isn't the only thing teams need to spend money on. It's fine to argue that the team is only going to invest money when it believes that doing so will result in a positive return, but the argument implicitly assumes that the owners have a bottomless amount of money they are willing to risk on investments in their team. That just isn't necessarily true. A riskier or more marginally profitable bet becomes easier to take when there's more money to bet with. Of course, that doesn't mean that's the most effective way to spend the revenue sharing money. It might be much better spent by using it to match investments in the team that include all the things the team should spend on to become competitive. If all those things receive the same amount of matching, then a team that isn't competitive will be encouraged to spend on the draft/player development, while a team that could be competitive is encouraged to spend on free agents. The problem is that in order to give people the whole picture we need to be showing the expenses as they actually are instead of just the major league payroll.

What I don't understand about the tools discussion is why not base your grades such that 80 means legendary, unheard-of tool regardless of which one? There's no reason to give 10-20 guys (or more) 80 "run" tools and not give anyone an 80 fielding or hit tool. What if you thought about it like this: if a tool is an 80, then it is so good that the player can get to the majors with the rest of his tools maxing out at 40. That's kind of how it is with 80 power, for example - the guy doesn't need to run, doesn't need to play an position well, and doesn't need to get that many hits. Shouldn't that apply to the run tool also? A guy so fast that he maintains a .350+ BABIP can be a natural .240 hitter with sub-.100 ISO and below average defense at, say, 2B or even a 4th OF and still be a useful guy (as long as he can take some walks). I don't know, maybe even with that as the idea there would be more guys that are just that fast because it is a bell-curve, but there's a limit to where getting even faster doesn't make you better at baseball, and you have to put 80 at that spot on the curve.

Just to clarify: I suppose it's possible there were multiple teams interested in taking these guys early and somehow keeping that interest secret, but does that seem likely?

Regarding Culver and Simpson, I think your point is good (that the players are probably a lot better than they were given credit for in the blogosphere before the draft). However, if no one was talking about them, and no other teams were on them, isn't it still a mistake, simply because they could have had a better player and then taken Simpson/Culver in a later round?

Maybe it really requires two things - a star rating and a tier ranking. The star rating can be an indicator of absolute team value, in other words, a championship caliber team of 20 starters needs to have, say, 2-3 5-star guys, 5-6 4-star guys and only 2-3 2-star or lower guys (I'm just throwing those numbers out there). Thus it helps you decide which of the "best available at position" players to grab when you have multiple positions to fill. For the tiers, though, I would divorce them from the star rating, and set them up based on a much finer-grained equivalence between players. For every pair of players at the same position, there are three options - "I would always take A over B" "I would always take B over A" "Whether I took A or B would depend on other factors". You can display those options by sorting the players in to tiers where every pair within a tier falls into the third category, and everyone in a higher tier would always be selected before someone in a lower tier. If you went this route, there's probably a point at which pairwise comparisons become tedious, so the bottom tier might just be a "here's the other options, with projections"

If the point of the stars is that equal production results in equal stars and positional scarcity exists only as a function of the quantity of top-star players at a position, how is it possible for the exact same player to get a different star rating at different positions? In other words - what does the star rating translate to? If it translates to draft order, then it should completely factor in positional scarcity. If it translates to absolute impact on the team, then it should completely ignore position and VMar should be 3 stars everywhere. Am I missing something?

I think the point is that many people think holding out for an extra million or two tacked onto a $15 million deal is superfluous or stupid compared to getting his career started and striving for greatness. Not greatness for the sake of an even larger payday, but for the sake of the game. You may think that's dumb, but it's the reason that salary negotiations always leave a bad taste in the mouth of fans. Strasburg is set for life either way, even if he never signs another deal, so why should anyone, particularly a Nats fan, have sympathy for his need to squeeze out every dollar? Sure, the owners don't deserve that money any more (and perhaps less) than Strasburg does, but this is exactly why a slotting system would be better - it avoids a silly game of chicken that sometimes ends up with everyone worse off. Also, I'm pretty sure that Zimmerman, regardless of what you think of the exact figure he named, was simply saying that Strasburg needs to sign, not that he shouldn't negotiate the best deal he can get before signing. And he's right - if Strasburg goes back in the draft, there's a very good chance he will not get as much next year as if he takes a reasonable offer from the Nats (assuming they make one).

If a guy like Micah Owings can be used as a pinch hitter on a regular basis, doesn't it make sense to push Kelly as both a hitter and a pitcher, or is there just no chance that he could develop both skills and still fulfill his potential as a pitcher?

Free wireless at the ballpark and a netbook would be a good solution for someone who planned to see a lot of games but really wanted to stay informed. You don't have to spend much time looking at the computer to stay up on happenings around the league - there's plenty of time between half-innings for that and grabbing food, etc.

There's a lot more strategy in the NL - proponents of the DH always argue that pinch-hitting for the pitcher is an automatic move, so it adds no strategy, but not only is that not true (there are tons of situations where you have to decide how important a slightly increased chance of a run or two is vs. the value of the pitcher going a couple more innings and the wear and tear on the bullpen that pulling him would cause), it also is a narrow view of the difference. In the NL, teams have an additional roster slot, which allows for more pinch-hitting, pinch-running, defensive substitutions, etc. Double-switching is also not an automatic decision, you can't just take out whoever made the last out and replace them with a bench player, especially in a close game. There is also a significant effect on the game from having the pitcher bat - bunting is much more frequent, and sustaining a rally is much more difficult, therefore runs are more important and tactical choices such as the hit and run, steal or pitchout have more impact. Obviously all of those things are done in the AL even with the DH, they just aren't done as often. If you really think the game should put the best offensive players out there all the time, why don't you believe it should put the best defensive players out there? I guarantee that if you allow teams to have 9-10 more roster slots and play with an offensive team and a defensive one, the quality of play overall would be vastly superior - the best hitters in the world would be in lineups, regardless of their ability to play at a position, and the best fielders would play the positions. I'm sure 99% of people who just read that thought it sounded like a terrible idea that would make the game into something that isn't baseball. Which is why the argument that it is stupid to watch a pitcher bat is simply a bad one. Yes, they get out frequently, but the times that they succeed (like Johan's butcher-boy double a couple starts ago) are that much more exciting.