There have been some good questions about the Team Health Reports and the underlying system, especially over at Dodger Thoughts. First, I’ll point everyone to this article, which explains much of the underlying system.
The bands — what you see as red, yellow, and green — always get a lot of discussion. Why do I choose to use bands and what do they mean? Yes, the system has an underlying “number,” a percentage that is both more specific and more error-prone. It’s one thing to say “Zack Greinke is a 12″ or “Darren Dreifort is a 101″ but I don’t know that it means much more than the bands. Is 12 that much better than 13? 20? By banding the ratings, I can give you much more meaning and it’s much easier to read.
The bands were initially set at 33 and 50*, but have moved off that slightly based on the changes in experience for the underlying actuarial table. They’re designed to be measuring risk, not cutting the population in thirds, though I can understand why some think that.
As I’ve said, the ratings are just a broad measure. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I disagree (with my own system!), and sometimes it confuses me. All that will be detailed in the team writeups, which is why I always say pay more attention to them and why we work hard to get them out to you as soon as possible.
(* meaning that green was 0-32, yellow was 33-49, red was 50-100)
I'm just wondering how long you've been doing this and who some of the lowest number are. Have you been doing it long enough to get a number on Ripken? I know you said Greinke at 12 was unheard of for a pitcher, who have some of the lower position players been?
This is the 8th year. I can't ever remember anyone as low as Greinke, esp a pitcher. Alex Rodriguez was pretty low - in the teens - a couple yrs ago and the next yr was one of the "blue" rating experiment and naturally he got hurt.
I'd appreciate the numbers as well. So long as readers understand the inherent lack of precision in such an exercise, they can help refine our subjective sense of the player's risk. That way we can see exactly who would be on the threshold of a color switch regardless of whether or not Will takes the time to point that case out.
I don't disagree that the best presentation is to start with the colors, but it would be nice if your writeups provided the number for each player in the blurb so that the information was out there.
A) It doesn't help much. Really much more confusing. This isn't strat-o-matic where a player is a 1-6/20 or something. All players could be injuried - this is a measure of RISK and that's by definition broad.
B) Because the baseline is proprietary (and not to me), putting out the numbers would make it very easily reverse engineered, so the good people that help with that would rather I stayed with the colors.
Maybe the exact numbers are a case of T.M.I., but I'd appreciate guidance when a player falls to an extreme of one of the bands (like a "light yellow" player in past years)
Will, I know that BP publishes a wrap-up of PECOTA vs. the other projection systems at the end of the year. (Or used to... can anyone point me to the 2009 article?)
You've been doing THRs for a while now. Have you ever gone back and analyzed the results? What percentage of green players make a trip to the DL? How many DL days do green players accumulate? Etc.
Yes, I dont have time to do it but we've done it or had people do it in the past. The trick of the system is that while individual players are binary (right or wrong), the bands work very well. Greens are hurt the least, yellows more, reds most. They fall almost exactly where they would be expected, which is the goal.
Of course, this also means that just under half the reds will be "wrong" which is where people misunderstand things.
I dont know if this has been addressed before, but why limit the system to just three types?
If the system has an numerial result, why not allow for a little more accuracy and precision and have 5 types, instead of the green/yellow/red. After all, how different are the player with a score of 32 (red) and a 33 (yellow)?
I'm not sure I like the suck green effect. Something seems really wrong when Jeff Suppan comes out green even though I understand why the system flagged him green given your explanation.
As a Brewer fan, I can firmly state that Jeff Suppan does suck.
Colors have worked for me all along. It is a guiding tool for me during fantasy when I have a green and a yellow dancing in my head before my next pick, and it works for me as a fan when I see Rickie Weeks wearing red when I hear local reports each spring that he is in the best shape of his life, he gets compared to a young Paul Molitor who had injury problems early in his career and THIS is the year he is going to stay healthy.
Will the team reports have more players than the general spreadsheet?
A couple notable ommissions:
Kelly Shoppach - you picked Navarro for the TB catcher slot, but with a 2 yr deal for Shoppach it's probably at least a job share. Being forced to choose juse one player per position is probably a constraint at the catcher position for several teams.
Shaun Marcum - that was a surprise as he's been rumored to be a candidate for the 1st post-Halladay Opening Day slot and his recovery from TJ makes him a key player from a medhead pov.
Ugh, I know this is being annoying, and I am sorry about that. My apologies. I just realized the THR I was looking at was the 2009 one, which I recently downloaded from here:
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Suggestion-- 1. rEQUIRE ALL mlb CLUBS TO MAKE AVAILABLE TO THE GENERAL MANAGERS $ 10 MILLION DOLLARS TO SPEND if THEY FEEL IT IS NECESSARY TO SIGN THE BEST DRAFT PICKS AVAILABLE. tHE OWNERS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO STOP THE GMS FROM SPENDING IT OR INTERFERE WITH THEM SPENDING IT --IF THEY DON'T LIKE THE GMS CHOICES THEY CAN FIRE THE GMS AFTER THE DRAFT. THAT WILL LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD TO THE BENEFIT OF THE FANS.-- SO THE GREEDY OWNERS THAT PUT PROFIT ABOVE THE GOOD OF THE TEAM AND THE FANS THAT SUPPORT THE TEAM WILL BE FORCED TO GIVE THE FANS A FAIR SHAKE. --- AS IT IS THE OWNERS ARE CHEATING THE FANS WHO SUPPORT THESE TEAMS. 2. THAT WAY THEY CAN GET RID OF THESE SLOT BONUSES THAT DO NOTHING BUT DRIVE THE DRAFTEES AWAY FROM BASEBALL. tHE GMS ARE HIRED BECAUSE THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO KNOW MORE ABOUT BASEBALL AND HOW TO JUDGE TALENT THAN THE OWNERS AND THE FANS. -- SO LET THEM DO THE JUDGING !! JOHN BROWN
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I like the bands just fine -- as someone once said, it's better to be approximately right than to be precisely wrong!