Mephistopheles

Well the problem is what is the point of the stat? Is it measuring performance? Is it measuring value? Is it measuring true talent level? All three of these lead to different ideas on how to improve it. Adjusting for run environment for walks, singles, etc can be done through a park factor inside the Raw formula. If we're in coors, we'll see more runners on base so we'll see walk value fall. if we're in petco getting on base is at a premium so walks will become more valuable. if we're measuring true talent level, who cares? if we're measuring performance, it's kinda both. Yeah HBP/BB/IBB should also be factored out with different weights, but that's not what BP does. It can be improved on this way and probably by adding GIDP in the bottom.

all players have ABs with runners on. in fact we assume that players have an equal proportion of their PAs as the leagues average for them. Ie if the league has 12 percent of PAs with a runner on first, we assume that our player has 12 percent of his PA's with a runner on first. So for those 12 percent of PAs, a single is worth more than a walk. Since we're mapping EqA to runs, we need to take in account for this. In fact roughly a little under 50 percent of the PAs on average come with runners on base. So about half the time a walk is equal to a single, about half the time a walk is less than a single.

A walk is not worth a single. For instance, runner on third two outs. Which is better? A single of course. The only time a walk is worth the same amount as a single is when there are no runners on base*. *Unless it's the first inning, runner on third and your walk requires 104 pitches after fouling off so many from Johan Santana.

Now let's hope the faded jersey fad doesn't come to the US: http://www.marines.co.jp/upfile_m/File/new_uniform.jpg Chiba Lotte's new pajamas.

Hello there. You may have heard of me. My name is Mephistopheles. I post here at NSBB from time to time. My posts can generally be factored into three distinct types. The first are the posts where I am belittling a person without reason and not refuting my claim. Obviously, these are the posts that moderators hate. Obviously, these are the posts that da loungers love. Obviously, these are the posts that the idiots hate. The second type of posts are what I call the obscure baby-baseball posts. These are the posts about Japanese Baseball, MLB Draft, MiLB, Cuban Baseball and so on. Generally, you'll find a relatively tame Meph in these posts. A few moderators love them {1908, Dried Grapes, etc}. Loungers don't read them and neither do most of the idiots. Finally, there's the Mephistopheles that everyone loves. In these posts you'll find Meph teaching about all sorts of things. They tend to include things about sabermetrics, minor leagues, or both. In other words, in case you have not noticed they are generally epic and beautiful. The moderators love them. The loungers love them. The idiots don't read the because they have the attention span of a two year old. The group of others love them too, because they're smart enough to understand them. Generally these posts are not condescending. Being condescending while teaching isn't a really effective teaching method. That brings us to this topic. Runs Batted In was created in the late 1800s. A few teams created the statistic to show how good they were. In fact, some sportswriters of the day realized it's inherent bias towards hitters in the middle of the order and disregarded it. The little guys with pointy hats and horse-drawn carriages knew what they were talking about. RBI would not surface as widely accepted statistic until after the dead ball era was over. Eventually it became THE way to grade an offensive players "production." We all know why it's a bad statistic. Batting average has its flaws as well. If you go out on the street and ask someone what batting average is, they will respond with something sounding like this: How often a player gets a hit. Wrong. Batting average does not tell us how often a player gets a hit. It tells how often a player gets hit when while deciding to throw out some times he goes up to the plate for no reason other than we feel like it. It also fails to tell us to what type of a hit the player got. A single is not worth the same as a double. This is why we use on base average and slugging average. Then again is slugging average really any better? Well yes and no. It tells you the type of hit, but it still has the first problem of batting average. We're partitioning the times the player comes up to bat and excluding one for inherently biased reasons. Is on base average any better? It fixes the first problem, but fails to solve the second problem of batting average. It acknowledges all plate appearances, but it makes a walk and a home run equal. We can sum on base average and slugging average for OPS, but then again who says that the relationship for that is better. Instead we can try to develop a system that solves both problems. Enter equivalent average. This post is going to describe anything and everything about EqA so you can come up with the exact EqA's BaseballProspectus comes up with. One of the criticisms for EqA is that BP develops it in a black box. No one knows how they arrive at it. They do spell out the method here. You can do all the things they do. You'll find out that the league leaders in EqA are generally around .300. BP's EqA leaders are generally around .350 or so. You can play around with the stuff in that article for days and never come up with anything remotely close to their EqA. Sorry. As TangoTiger put it: Opening up the black box will not cause a single dent on [baseballProspect's] bottom line. What I am going to tell you is everything and why Baseball Prospectus is doing what they do. Unfortunately, Tango won't tell you why they're doing what they're doing, either - he says he does not know. It's rather simple. In fact it's essentially what people say mathematicians criticize sabermetricians for: Units. People who dislike sabermetrics generally say real mathematicians would hate their "work" because they shed units completely. This really isn't true. Everything in EqA is measured in relatively precise units that in the end cancel out leaving an answer in runs. Now let's go on and attack the two major problems with oba, slg, and avg. We need to create some sort of rate statistic that includes getting on base and hitting for extra bases as well as stealing a base efficiently. The first thing that is calculated answers all of these problems in what they feel is the best way. We'll call this Raw: Raw = (SF + SH + 1.5*BB + 1.5*HBP + 1.5*SB + 2*1B + 3*2B + 4*3B + 5*HR)/(SF+SH+BB+HBP+SB+CS+AB) What is Raw measuring? It's essentially scaled bases per opportunities of moving up a base. Intuitively the idea that walks are worth more than sacs, but not quite as much as singles is good. Raw EqA addresses our two problems effectively, only adding in SB and CS, which can be described as a third problem with each oba, slg and avg. So in the end what does raw measure? Scaled Bases per PA+CS. It gives a numeric value of production. Now we can use Raw and convert it to runs. For a team we do this with this equation: EqR = (Raw/LgRaw )^2* PA * LgR/LgPA So what is EqR doing? It's measuring the relative production of the team divided by what an average team does squaring and multiplying it by PA and the runs per PA an average team scores. The squared term is based on the idea that the relationship between Raw/LgRaw and runs is not linear. This makes sense because when you add good hitters your other good hitters get more guys on base and each of their hits cause more runs. Now since we're looking at EqR on a team level and we want it on the player level let's look at that. First, an assumption: The player in question is being analyzed by an average team in his home park. This assumption is needed to derive the equation most people see for EqR. Now, to look at the change in EqR for some change in Raw, take the derivative of EqR with respect to Raw. We get this equation: dEqR = 2*Raw/LgRaw*PA*LgR/LgPA Now we're adding some guy to this team, but a team only has nine slots it can play. So what are we doing? We're replacing an average player on this team and adding this players production. So basically we have our runs minus an average player's runs in the same PA. We're NOT measuring runs over an average player. We're measuring all of the runs created by a player. So our equation becomes: dEqR = 2*Raw/LgRaw*PA*LgR/LgPA - PA*LgR/LgPA Now we can factor out PA*LgR/LgPA resulting in the equation for EqR for a player you'll see at BP, only they drop the dEqR and call it EqR. EqR = (2*Raw/LgRaw - 1) * PA* LgR/LgPA Generally people look at that and say what the heck are they doing? Now you know why you're subtracting 1 and multiplying the ratio by two. Here is where we can multiply this by our park factor to normalize for parks, if desired. Now we want to scale EqR and to some rate statistic. What should we use? Outs of course. Why? Outs are the stopclock in baseball. We have 9 sets of 3 outs. We can bat as long as we want as long as we don't make those outs. So we decide to make our rate be something close to runs per out used. So then we get this equation, that you can find at BP, albeit not in the article I linked to regarding how to compute EqA (lol). EqA = (EqR/Out/5)^.4 First let's analyze the "units". We have runs divided by outs, which is want we wanted. Pay no attention to the .4 right now. The thing that should cross your mind is what crosses everyone's mind: Why the hell do they divide by five? WHY? This is where (I think) Tango gets lost. This is where everyone gets lost. In fact if you follow the calculations done in this thread and divide by five you will won't get the EqA BP computes. This is the black box, so to speak. Remember, average EqA is supposed to be .260. If you plug all this in you'll get the league average to be about .266 or so, depending on the season. IT DOESN'T WORK. 5 is more or less a constant that forces the average to be equal to .260. How do we do that? Well League average is going to be (LgR/LgOut/C)^.4. Since we want to "force" EqA to be equal to .260 for an average player, simply set that equation equal to .260 and solve for C. So C =(LgR/LgOut)/.260^2.5. This number tends to be around 5, ranging anywhere from 4.6 (Japan Central League) to about 5.6 (2007 AL). The 2007 National League was about 5.2. And there, with the above information you can get the exact answers that BP gets for EqA and puts on their player cards. In fact, If you want to you can find out the park factors to extra digits. I've gotten to the point where the average "error" on the EqA I come up with is .000226 compared to their's. Remember that their EqA is the ring of integers divided by 1000. In other words: It's rounded after three digits. Theoretically, the average error in rounding then will be .00025, which is actually greater than the error I come up with. So there you have it. EqA perfectly. Now go look up EqR on BP and you'll see this: EqR = 5*Out*EqA^2.5 Oh and 1/2.5=.4, so solving that equation for EqA gives us the EqA=(EqR/Out/5)^.4. Look familiar? Oh, but now we're all smart enough to realize that the five isn't five. So now if you have any questions or anything fire away. Nice Meph isn't eternal. This mood does not last forever. And yes, in case you noticed LgRuns gets canceled out. If you plug in everything you get: EqA = ((2*Raw/LgRaw - 1) * PA* LgR/LgPA) * Out * LgOut/LgR*.26^2.5)^.4 EqA = ((2*Raw/LgRaw - 1) * PA * Out * LgOut/LgPA * .26^2.5)^.4 When you ever want to scale EqA to some league average production based on runs, it's going to cancel out....which of course makes sense.

why werent these included dammit

All the superstars are aging (Ogasawara, Matsunaka, etc) or are are pre-superstardom (Nakata). The lull in between are guys we've taken, although the age 23-28 class doesn't look as impressive as the generation of them before them. However it's the opposite on the mound. Most of the good ones are young.

Eh, there will be some younger players now who will develop into quality players. Nakajima put up a .274 EqA in his 24.5 age season and a .266 in his 23.5 age season. Putting on the same age curve I developed here: 22 .244 23 .266 24 .274 25 .270 26 .276 27 .273 28 .273 29 .275 30 .269 31 .270 32 .276 33 .255 34 .262 35 .247 36 .243 37 .237 He's not great, but he's quite talented. Kawasaki's is even better and he's a much better defensive SS than Nakajima. Both of them (and probably even Nishioka) are better than Ryan Theriot so we should covet them. There's more talent on the way, specifically Sho Nakata. his stats are translated from the Nagoya Dome in the Central League to Wrigley Field in the 2007 National League. Awesome. That takes a whole lot of calculatin'. Not to be a downer or anything and I'm sure it has been said before, but the projected stats from Fuku don't seem that much better from what I would expect in a full season of Murton at the plate. oh I don't know. what's 50 points of slugging and 40 points of obp worth these days?

A round 5 does make the calculation easy, though. Is it really that hard to do 5.2 or something like it? I mean considering in the formula you already have to take their EqA to the fifth power and then square root it. Then multiply it times about two thousand. I can't do that in my head and I am pretty sure no one else can here if I can't. Pardon my humility.

Weird. Abe's 04 JEqA was .329...converted to .273 here. Fukudome's .339 07 JEqA translated to .304. Fukudome's JEqA's are sick: 2000 Fukudome, Kosuke .282 2001 Fukudome, Kosuke .281 2002 Fukudome, Kosuke .340 2003 Fukudome, Kosuke .342 2004 Fukudome, Kosuke .308 2005 Fukudome, Kosuke .346 2006 Fukudome, Kosuke .370 2007 Fukudome, Kosuke .339 And all of the EqA's are accurate. I've replicated the BP EqA formula down to remarkable precession. The average error between MephEqA and BPEqA is .000226. This comparing my EqA to an EqA with three digits for their's. So the expected average error is .00025. So yeah the EqA formula I use is the same. My maximum error is about .0007, which is fine. I don't have the park factors down to the five-hundredth digit.

I was going to post a few more Japanese players, but I figured they'd be too obscure. I think there's a problem with the way it's calculating BA and BBs, but I don't have time to make sure everything's right in the spreadsheet right now. Hopefully I can get around to it soon, but I'm swamped the rest of the week. I have every player in Japan translated since 2000. I'll add previous seasons once I make sure everything's perfect in the system. Then I can work on tweaking the conversion rates to minimize the errors of people coming from Japan to here. If you go the other way and compare them Japanese players will translate better, but the point of this is to project guys coming over. Including the other direction will produce a better MLE, but a less predicative translation. What's the point of an MLE if has little predicative value? I can convert these to any league. Right now everything is converting from the league they were in to the 2007 Cubs in the 2007 NL. This can all be changed just by changing that little CHC and 2007 and NL to the left <3. This stuff will of course eventually be used for Cub minor leaguers as well. http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f189/kctigers23/JapanTranslations6.gif http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f189/kctigers23/JapanTranslations7.gif http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f189/kctigers23/JapanTranslations8.gif http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f189/kctigers23/JapanTranslations9.gif http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f189/kctigers23/JapanTranslations10.gif http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f189/kctigers23/JapanTranslations11.gif http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f189/kctigers23/JapanTranslations12.gif

Now compare Kenji's and Iguchi's translations for me versus BP's. BP's in parentheses again. 2004 .334/.389/.494/.289 (.334 /.412/.519/.315) - Jojima 2005 .291/.342/.451/.278 (.313 /.372 /.488 /.292) - Jojima 2003 .328/.408/.458/.301 (.327/.414/.461/.305) - Iguchi 2004 .322/.366/.449/.278 (.331/.390/.477/.297) - Iguchi 2003 .284/.334/.428/.254 (.282/.344/.418/.264) - Kaz Matsui

Some others: 2004 Agbayani, Benny .282/.378/.463/.284 2005 Agbayani, Benny .258/.320/.381/.236 2006 Agbayani, Benny .268/.347/.402/.255 2007 Agbayani, Benny .260/.358/.389/.257 In the US he was a career .274/.362/.445/.276 hitter. Apparently he's gotten worse since moving across the Pacific. Weird. 2005 Aoki, Norichika .379/.411/.443/.296 2006 Aoki, Norichika .337/.402/.429/.287 2007 Aoki, Norichika .345/.424/.468/.303 Aoki is essentially an Ichiro clone. He's the only person to hit 200 hits in Japan not named Ichiro. He's very fast and better defensively in CF than Ichiro. However, as you can see his value is entirely BA dependent, although he's improving with the walks and power in 07, which was expected given he was 25 last year, just turned 26 last month. 2005 Batista, Tony .245/.281/.383/.221 Oh boy. He wasn't much better in the US, but still. 2001 Cabrera, Alex .250/.345/.461/.266 2002 Cabrera, Alex .300/.456/.606/.340 2003 Cabrera, Alex .278/.372/.503/.284 2004 Cabrera, Alex .233/.317/.462/.254 2005 Cabrera, Alex .269/.380/.472/.284 2006 Cabrera, Alex .291/.387/.485/.289 2007 Cabrera, Alex .271/.362/.437/.267 Cabrera was one hell of a minor league hitter in the US. He actually has a career .258 EqA in 80 PAs in the Majors. Just never got a shot, of course thebig stand out year here is 02. I suspect their may be a similar walk problem there to Matsui's. 2000 Iwamura, Akinori .278/.335/.422/.259 2001 Iwamura, Akinori .281/.315/.416/.248 2002 Iwamura, Akinori .312/.388/.479/.288 2003 Iwamura, Akinori .259/.322/.382/.242 2004 Iwamura, Akinori .277/.355/.432/.266 (.297/.378/.446/.285) 2005 Iwamura, Akinori .304/.369/.468/.279 (.307/.382/.469/.295) 2006 Iwamura, Akinori .297/.376/.462/.282 (.298/.381/.460/.296) Iwamura hit .285/.359/.411/.284 last year. BP's translations for him are in parentheses. 2000 Kanemoto, Tomoaki .301/.398/.460/.294 2001 Kanemoto, Tomoaki .297/.438/.471/.312 2002 Kanemoto, Tomoaki .263/.343/.432/.260 2003 Kanemoto, Tomoaki .295/.390/.398/.275 2004 Kanemoto, Tomoaki .300/.381/.463/.286 2005 Kanemoto, Tomoaki .301/.404/.509/.301 2006 Kanemoto, Tomoaki .289/.384/.450/.281 2007 Kanemoto, Tomoaki .241/.343/.410/.258 Kanemoto is on the downside of a very good career. He won the MVP a couple years ago. 2002 Kawasaki, Munenori .263/.286/.383/.228 2003 Kawasaki, Munenori .321/.358/.380/.260 2004 Kawasaki, Munenori .331/.363/.388/.264 2005 Kawasaki, Munenori .290/.336/.349/.247 2006 Kawasaki, Munenori .324/.372/.427/.280 2007 Kawasaki, Munenori .344/.392/.446/.288 Kawasaki is a gold glove caliber guy with 75 speed. 2005 Lee, Seung-yeop .231/.293/.443/.242 2006 Lee, Seung-yeop .294/.375/.518/.295 2007 Lee, Seung-yeop .251/.306/.435/.244 Lee thought about coming over here after his monster 06. 2003 Linares, Omar .218/.298/.345/.216 2004 Linares, Omar .294/.356/.364/.250 Who knows how old Linares is. He's listed as being born in 1967, but who knows if that is true. Either way he's a walking Cuban legend and one of the greatest Cuban hitters of all time. El Nino was sent to Japan by Castro himself. Teammate of Fukudome by the way. 2000 Nioka, Tomohiro .265/.321/.359/.235 2001 Nioka, Tomohiro .236/.271/.325/.212 2002 Nioka, Tomohiro .266/.326/.448/.260 2003 Nioka, Tomohiro .298/.339/.412/.256 2004 Nioka, Tomohiro .280/.332/.343/.230 2005 Nioka, Tomohiro .297/.347/.396/.254 2006 Nioka, Tomohiro .275/.325/.414/.248 2007 Nioka, Tomohiro .277/.334/.411/.248 There was some talk about the 32 year old shortstop coming over, but doesn't look like he'd be all that good. 2004 Nishioka, Tsuyoshi .251/.284/.335/.220 2005 Nishioka, Tsuyoshi .285/.327/.386/.254 2006 Nishioka, Tsuyoshi .290/.358/.400/.262 2007 Nishioka, Tsuyoshi .308/.369/.406/.267 Much like Kawasaki, Nishioka is a tremendous defensive SS with excellent speed. Nishioka's is probably a pure 80. Not a lot of power, but he's still young. 2000 Ogasawara, Michihiro .324/.376/.465/.285 2001 Ogasawara, Michihiro .324/.378/.489/.276 2002 Ogasawara, Michihiro .325/.421/.509/.313 2003 Ogasawara, Michihiro .338/.435/.504/.314 2004 Ogasawara, Michihiro .341/.417/.455/.296 2005 Ogasawara, Michihiro .255/.339/.443/.259 2006 Ogasawara, Michihiro .288/.382/.502/.294 2007 Ogasawara, Michihiro .292/.347/.470/.273 Ogasawara is a corner infielder who has been one of the best hitters in Japan this decade. Nice translations, no doubt. 2000 Petagine, Roberto .293/.410/.495/.302 2001 Petagine, Roberto .293/.439/.529/.321 2002 Petagine, Roberto .296/.428/.537/.318 2003 Petagine, Roberto .292/.432/.521/.315 2004 Petagine, Roberto .264/.377/.424/.274 2001 Ramirez, Alex .259/.296/.429/.238 2002 Ramirez, Alex .292/.331/.421/.252 2003 Ramirez, Alex .317/.364/.504/.282 2004 Ramirez, Alex .295/.331/.430/.254 2005 Ramirez, Alex .266/.302/.394/.234 2006 Ramirez, Alex .259/.289/.390/.227 2007 Ramirez, Alex .332/.362/.501/.284 2000 Rhodes, Tuffy .263/.314/.393/.235 2001 Rhodes, Tuffy .296/.381/.500/.292 2002 Rhodes, Tuffy .249/.352/.491/.277 2003 Rhodes, Tuffy .230/.342/.421/.261 2004 Rhodes, Tuffy .256/.348/.426/.260 2005 Rhodes, Tuffy .207/.311/.370/.237 2007 Rhodes, Tuffy .255/.388/.504/.293 Tuffy Rhodes and Alex Ramirez did not have the greatest translations in the world. I was a bit surprised about how bad they were. Petagine's was truly great though. 2000 Suzuki, Ichiro .410/.450/.504/.328 Uh...yeah. DP has his 2000 season in Japan translated even better: .392/.458/.549 /.343 so it's not the system. Keep in mind Ichiro was 27 when he came over. Speed guys like him usually peak around 25 or 26. 2000 Matsunaka, Nobuhiko .292/.349/.467/.271 2001 Matsunaka, Nobuhiko .315/.378/.491/.289 2002 Matsunaka, Nobuhiko .246/.343/.409/.255 2003 Matsunaka, Nobuhiko .303/.394/.445/.284 2004 Matsunaka, Nobuhiko .322/.416/.537/.312 2005 Matsunaka, Nobuhiko .279/.387/.522/.299 2006 Matsunaka, Nobuhiko .309/.439/.482/.313 2007 Matsunaka, Nobuhiko .254/.355/.395/.258 Probably the best overall hitter in Japan since Matsui, Fukudome and Ichiro left. He's aging now and was 33 last season. Still expect a bounce back to decent production for a year or two. In conclusion. The guys who translate best: High batting average, good speed and lots of doubles as well as guys who walk. The guys who don't translate the best, pure sluggers. I was going to post the best translated season and compare them to the best seasons in Japan, but there's so much crap in my spreadsheet it keeps freezing my computer when I try to sort things. Lame.

his stats are translated from the Nagoya Dome in the Central League to Wrigley Field in the 2007 National League.

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f189/kctigers23/JapanTranslations1.gif Well one thing looks for sure: he's going to get lots and lots of doubles. Hell be in the mid fifteens for HRs but he should hit for a high enough average and take enough walks to put up a quality OBP and overall totals to make up for his pedestrian HR power. 57 doubles in 06. .325 EqA too! Of course this does not have any validity until we check the outcomes for other players: http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f189/kctigers23/JapanTranslations2.gif Without knowing it's nearly impossible to see the line between Tadahito Iguchi's arrival in the Majors. He had the one great year before leaving, then he had one pedestrian year in Japan before three solid years stateside. http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f189/kctigers23/JapanTranslations3.gif Overall Kenji Johjima has been as good as he was in Japan. He peaked before coming over but the slight downgrade in his numbers are certainly acceptable for an aging backstop. http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f189/kctigers23/JapanTranslations4.gif The only thing out of line in Japan here translated are the walks. I believe this is a mistake in the calculations it should be (a lot) lower. Still outside of that everything seems to be alright. http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f189/kctigers23/JapanTranslations5.gif Now its time for every anti-Fukudome's favorite point: Kaz Matsui. First things first, he wasn't all that good in Japan. Secondly, with the exception of his big season in 02, his major league stats havent been too far out of whack. the power is weird though.

Morgan Ensberg would have been smart.

if it werent for bobby hill we wouldnt have either

http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/72327957.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF193875DCB1DD8387ABB5DD949C867D87D7FA40A659CEC4C8CB6 (white + eye black) + no batting gloves = definition of grit

Worse than ESPN's commercials about Yankees/Sox Drama coming up on Sportscenter?

Don't worry the question will be answered soon enough in a post describing everything you wanted to know about EqA and some. EQR is approximately 5 * OUT * EQA^2.5

I've derived the random 5 in the EqR formula. Of course it's not really five. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/glossary/index.php?mode=viewstat&stat=68

To update. The first waiver transactions have gone down. A couple notables have been dropped (idiots!). Jacoby Ellsbury and Carlos Marmol have been dropped. I have fourth waiver priority and have a claim on both of the. Ellsbury is the quintessential guy for my team when he plays. High BA, lots of steals, no power and lots of runs. Carlos Marmol would get me a handful of saves (maybe) and of course boost up that K rate (as if I needed it). I also have a claim on Troy Percival who was dropped for more saves. If he's healthy he ought to get a decent amount of save opps with the Rays solid offense and improving pitching staff as they march their way to about seventy-five runs.

Remember when Cintron was the next Jeter? I do.

It's okay, CroMagnon will make something up soon.

A simple beta projection system I developed out performed PECOTA in a limited test. I find that hysterical. Of course it's not better than PECOTA and what I was trying to project was simple. It's nothing more than the Marcel idea on EqA. I looked at about thirty MI's from the 1990s to build an average shortstop/secondbaseman age curve for it. Obviuosly a speedy SS will age differently than a power hitting SS, but I lumped them all together because I can. I then tested the model versus PECOTA projecting EqA of all shortstops last year, and a few other MI. Rodriguez and Durham. I don't know why I included them...both PECOTA and MEPH missed ridiculously on both of them. Act Pec Meph E_Pec E_Meph Name .340 .319 .310 .021 .030 ALEX RODRIGUEZ .285 .305 .277 .020 .008 DEREK JETER .271 .296 .289 .025 .018 MIGUEL TEJADA .270 .286 .275 .016 .005 MICHAEL YOUNG .227 .295 .269 .068 .042 RAY DURHAM .221 .264 .242 .043 .021 OMAR VIZQUEL .211 .215 .215 .004 .004 JOHN MCDONALD .210 .234 .221 .024 .011 CESAR IZTURIS .266 .247 .257 .019 .009 DAVID ECKSTEIN .269 .247 .246 .022 .023 JACK WILSON .260 .247 .233 .013 .027 ALEX GONZALEZ .248 .251 .244 .003 .004 YUNIESKY BETANCOURT .254 .252 .250 .002 .004 MARK LORETTA .246 .253 .246 .007 .000 MARCO SCUTARO .261 .254 .241 .007 .020 J.J. HARDY .260 .260 .253 .000 .007 ORLANDO CABRERA .297 .262 .259 .035 .038 EDGAR RENTERIA .222 .263 .228 .041 .006 JUAN URIBE .219 .265 .247 .046 .028 BOBBY CROSBY .244 .268 .278 .024 .034 RAFAEL FURCAL .253 .269 .252 .016 .001 JASON BARTLETT .225 .269 .261 .044 .036 JULIO LUGO .263 .272 .266 .009 .003 KHALIL GREENE .239 .272 .268 .033 .029 FELIPE LOPEZ .290 .274 .272 .016 .018 JIMMY ROLLINS .236 .276 .289 .040 .053 STEPHEN DREW .278 .276 .266 .002 .012 JOSE REYES .315 .277 .302 .038 .013 HANLEY RAMIREZ .259 .281 .265 .022 .006 JHONNY PERALTA .283 .306 .291 .023 .008 CARLOS GUILLEN .257 .269 .260 .023 .017 AVERAGE