The Baseball Projection Project

Baseball forecasts collected season by season, so that history can judge them.

Sending in a projection set

2011 SeasonFiled under PitchersThe Baseball Projection Project

Blank scoring grid ruled in pencil
A submitted set is scored the same way a game is: written down first, checked later.

The point of collecting forecasts from amateurs alongside published systems is that the amateurs are frequently right, and almost never on the record. A spreadsheet built in February and never shared afterwards cannot be evaluated by anyone, including the person who built it.

A set worth filing has four properties. It covers a stated population, so that nobody has to guess whether the missing players were omitted deliberately or forgotten. It gives playing time as well as rates, because a rate without an opportunity estimate cannot be totalled. It uses one identifier consistently, so rows can be joined to outcomes without hand-matching names. And it carries the date it was fixed, which matters more than everything else on the list.

That last one is where most submissions fall down. A projection revised in June after the injuries are known is a different object from one published in March, and mixing the two makes the whole archive less useful. If a set gets updated, it belongs in the index as a second entry with its own date rather than quietly replacing the first.

Beyond that the requirements are deliberately light. Hitters and pitchers can be sent as separate files. Any documented method is welcome, including ones that are mostly judgement, because the archive is not trying to select for a particular technique. It is trying to make forecasts checkable.

Labels: Pitchers · 2011 Season index · Archives