Tim

VORP is Value Over Replacement Production. It is a number that represents the theoretical number of runs that a player provides over a replacement player at the primary position of a given player. I chose it so that I could weight the findings. I did this so that guessing where Beltran and Beltre wind up is more important than guessing where Hidalgo or Millwood end up. One of the lesser known facts of the contest that I hadn't thought of until now is that there's actually a player with negative VORP (Derek Lowe). Which means that if you correctly guess Lowe's destination, it will actually hurt you in the contest. Interesting wrinkle. If I'da thought of that in advance, I would have picked him to end up in Milwaukee or some other team that would never spend good money on a free agent pitcher.

Thanks! It only made a difference to one person, but it got him off the schneid.

Okay, Kris Benson signing with the Mets today drops Serena a bit off the pace. Bukie maintains his slim edge on AlamoCub by 0.1 points, but they've opened up a good 20 point edge on everyone else. I've also made a few enhancements to the results page. - I now list the players guessed correctly for each entry on the scoreboard. - For players that have signed, I change the color of the entries in the other tables to easily see where people guessed correctly and incorrectly.

The scoreboard on the contest has been updated to reflect the policy of only rewarding points for entries submitted for a particular player before he signs. Therefore, Bukie is now in the lead by 0.1 ahead of Serena and AlamoCub. I want to thank everyone who took the time to submit an entry to this contest! Good luck to you all! For those of you who didn't...Why the heck didn't you? Too much trouble to pick from a list 54 times? No interest? Didn't want your predictions on record? :D Wimps! :D

I was going to, but forgot. Anyway, I'm intrigued as to where people think everyone will end up. Your link says "You must submit an entry to see this list". D'oh! I forgot I put that validation in there so people couldn't check what other people had put before they made their submissions. I removed the validation and you should be able to check the entries now.

Sure, I'm not sure why people care about a free contest they didn't enter, though. :D http://www.northsidebaseball.com/Contests/FADestinationEntries.php

link to what vorp is thx tree. you saved Tim some time too :DSorry. I saw the request and intended to respond, but got sidetracked by real life. I promise it will happen again (as much as I'd like to avoid it), so I apologize for any future incidents, as well. :D

Correct.

All the more reason to get your entries in early! I did but everybody who gets them in late can put people in the right place like I said before. So the one guy who got it in early and picked the right place for percival gets points but everyone else who got it in early doesn't and has percival going to a team that might sign someone else now and then everyone who waits to put it in has a better chance of guessing where the other free agents go because there are less options. I'm convinced that the person that wins this thing will be the one who does the best job of predicting where Beltre, Pavano, Clemens and the other high VORP guys end up. To date, I can't see any of these signings impacting those destinations very much unless you picked Benitez going to Detroit.

All the more reason to get your entries in early!

Actually, the way I've structured the database and the code, that would be a LOT of work. Nice thought, but not workable at this point.

Three people had the correct guess for Castilla, three for Guzman and I'd have to check the entry dates to find out about Vizquel. I think the most fair way to do it is to give credit to those who got their ballots in early and picked the correct teams before the signings, but not to give credit for anyone that puts down the correct answers for Vizquel, Castilla or Guzman (so far). The moral of the story is: Get your entries in now so that you have the best chance of getting as many people right as possible! No credit will be given for already signed free agents when you submit your ballot. That's probably a good way to go about it, but my only quibble with it is that people who submitted on different dates now have a different number of possible points that they can get. It's slightly unfair towards those who submit closer to the deadline, since some of the points that others were eligible for they cannot receive. I don't know how to fix this problem, but I thought I'd point it out. I say call the BCS! Yeah, ultimately it came down to screwing the people who submitted early or the people who submitted late. If I've got to choose to reward one group over the other, it seemed to make the most sense to reward the people who got in their ballots early instead of later. After all, everyone had the opportunity to get their ballot in before anyone signed. The early bird gets the worm, so to speak.

Three people had the correct guess for Castilla, three for Guzman and I'd have to check the entry dates to find out about Vizquel. I think the most fair way to do it is to give credit to those who got their ballots in early and picked the correct teams before the signings, but not to give credit for anyone that puts down the correct answers for Vizquel, Castilla or Guzman (so far). The moral of the story is: Get your entries in now so that you have the best chance of getting as many people right as possible! No credit will be given for already signed free agents when you submit your ballot.

or... D) Modify the entries of everyone that submitted early so that they all have the correct entry for anyone that signs before the deadline. This still seems unfair that many actually guessed the correct destinations for Castilla, Guzman and Vizquel but wouldn't get credit for that when compared with everyone else. :-k

Oh, the scoreboard can now be found at the bottom of the entries page: http://www.northsidebaseball.com/Contests/FADestinationEntries.php

Serena's off to an early lead, but there will be plenty of people taking advantage of the early signings to jump ahead. Given the fact that there's a $100 at stake here, how should I handle this? Should I: A) Disregard points for free agents that sign before the entry deadline of the 19th B) Run with it as-is and give the procrastinators an edge C) Not count points for free agents correctly named after submission, (so give Serena credit for Castillo, but not Vizquel, for instance). I'm open to whatever seems fair to everyone. No matter what, it seems that someone gets screwed by the fact that I didn't set the contest deadline aggressively enough. Bad Tim. :x

Isn't the deadline past? Deadline for submission is the 19th.

I'll be adding a page that lists the results for each person, along with correct picks.

I'll delete it when I have a chance.

Done.

Thanks! Don't put it off past the deadline. :D

Try again. The name change shouldn't affect things anymore. I went off "id" instead of "name" for the validation now.

Name change. I should be doing that lookup based on user_id instead of username, I guess...

16 Entries so far. It's worth filling out the form just to see what everyone is guessing for the destinations! JD Drew and Glendon Rusch are tied for the most unanimous destinations, with 15 out of the 16 guesses being the same. At the other end of the spectrum, there are thirteen different teams chosen as the destination for Kevin Millwood in sixteen tries! Entry is free and fun. Put yourself on record so that you can come back and brag later when you get things right. :D

He's #17 on the list.