Comments on: Community Projection #1 Released

By: Deanna

Deanna — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 03:04:57 +0000

#17 — I wrote a post about this a few months ago, actually. Strangely, Kei Igawa and Akinori Iwamura both showed big reverse platoon splits this past year, and they’re lefty. And Johjima and Iguchi have both shown reverse platoon splits as well. But, it’s not a general trend in Japan as far as I can tell, most players there have normal platoon splits if at all.

I’m not sure what it indicates that the MLB-hopping guys tend to fit this reverse profile, though.

By: Evan

Evan — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 01:41:20 +0000

I knew that, but I was hoping his stat line would say something like .087 against righties and .157 against lefties, in which case there might be a way to employ the two more efficiently.

But there isn’t.

By: DMZ

DMZ — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 21:02:45 +0000

Rivera can’t hit at all, at all.

By: Evan

Evan — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 20:56:33 +0000

I just checked the stats desperate hoping that Rivera was at least better against lefties than righties.

But he’s not. Rivera can’t hit lefties at all.

By: darrylzero

darrylzero — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 19:27:19 +0000

Re: reverse platoon splits, that’s an interesting point about the quantity of RH pitchers faced, but I’ve always assumed the opposite. Since being LH is a commodity in baseball in and of itself, a reverse platoon split for a truly phenomenal LH batter like Ichiro is theoretically possible–to my mind, at least–because LH pitchers as a group actually aren’t as good. So to me a LH hitter who somehow managed to be unaffected by the handedness of the pitcher in terms of how they hit (if that’s actually possible, I think it’s easy for us to imagine that Ichiro would be that guy) would over the course of their career be better against LHP than RHP. And you couldn’t say the same for a RH batter.

But I could see for a year, maybe, Johjima might have the chance to become a little more accustomed to MLB RHers than LHers. Probably just looking at a sample size issue though. It’s certainly interesting that none of the Japanese imports have shown a sizeable standard platoon split, though. It makes me think something about the training or development of players there emphasizes hitting same-handedness more or something like that. Or we’re only getting the cream of the crop, and they don’t have big platoon splits, but I don’t really see why that would necessarily be true.

By: scraps

scraps — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 18:07:07 +0000

Whhops, I just figured out that individuals can set it that way for themselves. Never mind!

By: scraps

scraps — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 17:59:45 +0000

One belated suggestion: Is there any way to set the first line, the one that defines the categories, so that it is always visible at the top when you scroll down the entries? I know this can be done in Excel, but I don’t know whether Google has set their spreadsheets up so this can be done.

By: mark s.

mark s. — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:22:05 +0000

I went for the positive for my projections. Thanks for this. Can’t wait to see the graphs.

By: Jeff Sullivan

Jeff Sullivan — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 08:01:29 +0000

Crap like that gets eliminated. Think of it like a subjective Q Test.

By: bermanator

bermanator — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 07:58:48 +0000

This is a great idea, and I’ll be curious to see how accurate the wisdom of crowds turns out to be at predicting stats.

I say Willie Bloomquist hits 50 home runs.

Just out of curiousity (since work’s in a big methodology kick lately, so I have it on the brain), is there something in the methodology here to squeeze out the obvious fakes? If my three-year old niece happens to find my logon open and thinks Bloomquist will finish with 100 triples (or something similar that would be significant enough to skew the stats a point or two), would that be weeded out? Or is the assumption that an equal number of negative projections would balance something like that out?