Anybody that's played poker at a winning level (+300K hands) is fully aware of things like variance, regression to the mean, confidence intervals etc.  I often giggle at all kinds of reasonings behind numbers just running their course.

I developed a simulator and plugged in 162 games for an imaginary team I created called the St. Louis Donkeys. 

We got off to a so so start, 11-9, however, they did have some "momentum" going for them and turned it into a 18-2 stretch.  The team had a cold streak here and there and go 13-19 headed into the allstar break at 42-40.

The team had some ups and downs, they're still in this thing. Whoops, 8-19 nose dive.  I won't stand for this, I have good talent.  My manager isn't getting the most out of his players!  50-59?? This is AT LEAST a .500 team (foreshadowing).  I'm gonna fire the manager and put in one that really gives great "win one for the Gipper" speeches.  New Skipper goes 12-13, however, at  62-72 and less than 30 games to go, time to wave the white flag.  Even though my team is full of professional athletes, I guess they were so demoralized they ended the season on a 2-13 skid (damn morale) and finished the season 71-91, 20 games out.  Maybe they should have had a cardboard cutout of Rachel Phelps.

I KNOW they were a .500 team!!  How do I know this?  My high tech simulator wasn't stratomatic, it wasn't a fancy computer program, or even a video game. It was a coin.  Heads = Win, Tails = Loss 50/50.

I guess I'm a terrible coinflipper, however, I have some "interesting" splits:

When Flipping a Quarter I'm 50-48, however, when flipping a nickel I'm 21-43, yikes!  To break it down even further, when Flipping quarter left handed I was 25-13.  If I flipped the quarter left handed I would have had a 107 win season, right?  Anybody scared to take me on flipping left handed quarters?  I don't understand where I went wrong when flipping nickels...I made sure I didn't "make it think too much".   I know it had .500 potential, must have been the Quarter's ego causing problems in the clubhouse.

Obviously people are not number producing robots, however, most likely if something is out of the ordinary it's most likely probability being probability, not some stupid intangible.  When dealing with such small edges you're going to see all kinds of wild patterns and there isn't necessarily some pep-talk behind them.

Do it yourself if you want, that's why I used a coin :-)

Ugh...

Just when you think the sports media are the stupidest people to talk about sports...

When I was looking at the ballot and doing research (basically I just go by VORP and THT defense metrics) I was feeling REALLY good about the NL this year in the allstar game...then reality came crashing down and for some reason it completely lapsed me just how stupid the voters really are.  I do realize this is discussed Ad Nausea every year but this is the first year I look at allstar voting as a SABR guy.

Yes, it's still relatively early.

Vote Leader LF
Sorryano
8th in RZR
8th in NL VORP for LF

SABR Choice (going by Vorp and RZR)
Matt Holiday
2nd in RZR
3rd in VORP

Vote Leader RF
Fukudome
2nd in RZR
8th in VORP

SABR Choice:
This one is a little tough, the VORP leader is Ludwick at 25.7 vs Fukudome's 10.6. The RZR is Ludwick's Tied for 7th at .899 vs Fukudome's 2nd at .933. The balance to the two is Hunter Pence, who is 3d in RZR at .926 and 5th in VORP with 12.1.

I know it's really fashionable (and little league) to preach defense defense defense, but Ludwick is over TWICE as good with the bat  (with 1/4 less PA's) so far while the others are only slightly better in defense.

My Picks are:
Ludwick if he doesn't regress ;)
2d - Xavier Nady: 2nd Vorp 17.6 same RZR as Ludwick
3d - Pence

I'm not even going to mention how silly voting for Ken Griffey Jr is (unless it's for nastolgic reasons) who currently is barely above replacement level offensively (.9 vorp) and dead last in RZR. Don't get me wrong, I love Ken Griffey Jr, he's a HOF'er and I agree with the world it should have been him.

CF:
No CF'er was picked (probably because the fashionable cub's CF platoon sucks) however:

This is slightly more interesting than RF, the VORP leader, Nate Mclouth is 30% better than Aaron Rowand but is the 2nd worst CF in the NL. My choice would be Aaron Rowland who is 2d in RZR and 2d in VORP, but I'm not totally feeling it, I could probably be swayed if a good arguement was presented.  I still maintain at the professional level an impact bat with league average defense is far more important than plus defense and less offense, but Mclouth is comically (or duncan-ish) bad.

 

If look at the MLB VORP leaders position by position you feel really good about the chances the NL will FINALLY break the slump in The House That Ruth Built, however, throwing trendy picks and past their prime HOF'ers isn't going to get the trick done.  Lets just hope AL voters are just as stupid.

 

1.  You spend an hour creating a complex formula to determine a prospect job's Value Over Replacement Level...(true story)
2.  You did the same to your friends and girlfriend (another true story).
3.  Instead of rating a girl from 1-10 you found a way to do it by WARP3.
4.  You have a pet named Walt-Lite...it's name used to be Antonetti.  
5.  Somebody called an employee "below replacement level" and you knew exactly what they meant.  
6.  You refer to "breaking up" as "putting her out on waivers".
7.  You asked your girlfriend if she'd waive her no trade clause for a high upside prospect.  
8. ...you actually have a contract with a no trade clause with your girlfriend.  
9. You refer to the hottest girl at the bar as having "top of the rotation stuff".  
10.  You roll your eyes when somebody uses a baseball cliche like "thew me a curve ball" because you have more advance puns that are park adjusted.  
11. Your girlfriend constantly asks "What is in Memphis and why are you always trying to send me there?"
12.  2am at the bar rolls around and you refer to it as "shopping around the waiver wire for a duncan special" (I know bobbyballgame can relate to that one).
12.  A hot girl comes onto you and your knee jerk reply to her is "I'm not giving up Rasmus".  
13.  .....

I was over at my Mistress Team's blog and they front paged this.  Think he'll go for a take back with Mulder?  

By marcbouch9
Posted on Sat Nov 10, 2007 at 01:50:18 PM EDT

ESPN reported that Billy Beane may make Dan Haren available to replenish the A's farm system.

Haren is under contract through 2010 at $4M in '08, $5.5M in '09, and a club option $6.75M in '09.

The question then is what would the A's want back for him.  Boston Globe has reported that the A's would require Clay Bucholz or Jon Lester from the Red Sox.  Who would you be willing to part with to make this deal?

[editor's note, by jscape2000] front paged by jscape2000

He'll be 27 years old in 2008 and has pitched more than 200 innings each of the last three years, to a 1.2 WHIP. While he's among the most underrated pitchers, I'm not sure he's worth a member of the Trinity.
I'd trade Haren for Betances and cash- and that's saying quite a lot. Otherwise, Horne and Whelan, or a similar package.

I'd give as much for Haren as I would for Santana.

After the brilliant thread about ecks posted by larry, and another great NL MVP diary posted at the red reporter, I thought it'd be nice to have a stats deathmatch.  

Baseball is probably the most misunderstood sport of all time.  Just walk on over to the PD forums and take a gander, go to the local sports bar, or listen to the office water cooler talk (assuming it's not football season) and you can get a good gauge about just how incredibly off the general bandwagoner is.

After some comments here and there, but mostly the thread discussing replacement level got me thinking there should be an official VEB glossary of preferred stats to use when discussing players, trades, etc.  Hopefully here we can discuss and come to conclusions on which stats to use so you don't look silly and we can ride our SABRmetric high horse all over John Q. Edmondsjersey.

TEAM
First when discussing overall/general team quality most Statheads like to use a teams Pythagorean winning percentage.  Basically this is just a simple formula that involves the Runs a team scores vs the runs a team allowed.  "There is no explanation for the correlation between the formula and actual winning percentage in theory, rather the correlation has just been shown to work empirically".  I personally like using this stat to see what a team needs to improve on and how they evolved or regressed throughout the years.

OFFENSE
Most of us know or at least should know that man can not survive on Batting Average alone.  Who would you rather have, a .287 hitter or a .278 hitter?  Well if you chose the .287 you just picked Mark Loretta over Lance Berkman (okay that was predictable to almost everybody).  If you must use average when discussing a player it is more accepted to use the trio of slash stats, AVE/OBP/SLG.  If you don't understand why then you need to read MoneyBall or BP's Baseball Between the Numbers (where most sabr stats are explained in great detail). Often people like to use OPS instead of slash stats or if you want to get really fancy use OPS+, which is OPS with park-factor and you can find already calculated at the famedbaseball-reference.com.

VORP
One of everybody's favorite and seems to be the one that dominates is VORP or Value Above Replacement Player. As I already said, there is a 9 page explanation in BP's Book. Here's the long and short:

VORP is cumulative stat; additional calculations are required before using them to compare multiple player's potentials for future contribution. At the very least they must be normalized for PA. VORPr is rate stat, and therefore is slightly better for comparing players who have had a different amount of playing time as long as you account for sample size.[1]

Replacement level = freely available talent. Basically If your player goes down, a team can replace them from the waiver wire or the farm.

How Replacement level is calculated = It's actually based on RC/27 (runs created will be expanded on later) and it's based yearly. Basically BP tracks each teams regular players, then their backups then compare. They've found that generally backups perform at around 80% (again this will change year to year and by position)

Since they use RC/27 to determine replacement level, there is a formula published (that they don't explain how they came up with it) to turn slash stats into replacement level.

VORP is OFFENSE only and does not consider defense and it DOES consider position played so ARODs vorp isn't technically comparable to Pujols vorp since VORP compares Arod to 3b-men and Pujols to 1b.  

VORP is defined that way for a reason. A player putting up Hanley Ramirez numbers at SS is more valuable to his team than a player putting up those numbers at 1B, so if you are comparing "value" (IE trying to determine the league MVP) it is fine and common to use VORP.[2]

RC
One of my personal favorites is RC.  The reason why its the easiest way to relate a player to a teams Pythagorean W/L.  You can click on the link to see the different versions, but I just use Baseball-References.com already calculated ones, which he uses the "technical version".  

Clutch Hitting
Clutch hitting is still in dispute by BP because they can't empirically prove it yet.  If you are a hardcore fan of clutch hitting then a lot of people like to use either WPA that is tracked by fangraphs.com OR Win Shares (they are calculated way differently and often thought as the same stat as WPA).  

This blog isn't meant to tell you what to use, so I'm not going to expand any further on WPA/Win Shares and clutch in general, I'm just saying if you like "clutch" these are the most accepted stats for clutch.

Please don't use RBIs as a validation for a player.  I like using RBI when only discussing a hit.  BP tracks players performance in RBI situations, but even fans when RBI was created in the 20s knew that RBIs would be team dependent.  If you are in a fantasy league that uses RBIs I like sorting players by RBI opportunities then try to balance who is the best with the most.  

The scope of this blog was to inform readers of the most commonly used stats around here, maybe eliminate some, maybe add some.  Also help myself understand or hammer out any details.  If I have any info wrong or missing please feel free to add/discuss. Also, if you have a better way to data mine specific stats PLEASE add.  A lot of times I have to copy/paste stats into a excel spreadsheet when there is probably a better way.  If this blog is on the right track, next will come Pitching then Defense.  

Summary
Team: Pythagorean W/L  
Offense:  Vorp, RC, Slash stats, OPS, OPS+
Clutch:  WPA, Win Shares

NOT to use:  Average alone, RBI

Special thanks to
SleepyCA for [1][2]

My last blog the table syntax janked it all up.  Here's hoping it comes out better....

This is a current depth chart from http://sportsline.com.

FLA    Vorp

1. D. Willis     0.7
   
2. S. Mitre     7.9
   
3. S. Olsen     -23.1
   
4. B. Kim     -4.4
   
5. C. Seddon     -8.1
   
6. J. Johnson     -7.3

Texas    Vorp

1. K. Millwood     5.7
   
2. V. Padilla     -6.8
   
3. B. McCarthy     6.5
   
4. K. Gabbard     1.8
   
5. E. Volquez     4.6
   
6. K. Loe     -3.6

Seattle    Vorp

1. F. Hernandez     36.4
   
2. J. Washburn     24.8
   
3. M. Batista     25
   
4. J. Weaver     -9.7
   
5. R. Feierabend    -12.2

Washington    Vorp

1.  S. Hill    20.8
   
2. J. Bergmann    15.5
   
3. T. Redding    19.4
   
4. J. Hanrahan    -2.2
   
5. M. Chico    11.1
   
6. J. Patterson    -5.1
   
7. J. Simontacchi     -8.1

Tampa Bay    Vorp

1.  S. Kazmir    47.2
   
2. A. Sonnanstine    0.2
   
3. E. Jackson    -8.4
   
4. J. Hammel    -1.7
   
5. J. Howell    -11.5
   
6. J. Shields     45.4

St. Louis    Vorp

1.  A. Wainwright    39.8
   
2. B. Looper    14.8
   
3. J. Pineiro    12.7
   
4. B. Thompson    9
   
5. K. Wells    -9.4
   
6. M. Mulder    -9.6
   
7. C. Carpenter     -1.1

Pittsburg    Vorp

1.  I. Snell    42.8
   
2. T. Gorzelanny    42.6
   
3. M. Morris    -3
   
4. P. Maholm    7.4
   
5. Z. Duke     -3.4

Philidelphia    Vorp

1.  C. Hamels    48.8
   
2. J. Moyer    14
   
3. A. Eaton    -9.7
   
4. K. Lohse    7.2
   
5. K. Kendrick    27.1
   
6. F. An. Garcia    -0.1
   
7. J. Lieber     7.7

Houston    Vorp

1.  R. Oswalt    59.8
   
2. W. Rodriguez    18.9
   
3. B. Backe    5.9
   
4. M. Albers    -4.6
   
5. F. Paulino    -2.3
   
6. J. Gutierrez    0.1
   
7. J. Jennings     -8.2

Detroit    VORP

1.  J. Verlander    45.9
   
2. K. Rogers    5.6
   
3. N. Robertson    10.1
   
4. J. Jurrjens    4.2
   
5. C. Durbin    13.5
   
6. J. Bonderman     10.1

Baltimore    VORP

1.  D. Cabrera    2.2
   
2. J. Leicester    -5.6
   
3. V. Santos    -3.2
   
4. V. Zambrano    -4.6
   
5. R. Liz    -4.5
   
6. B. Burres    -0.9
   
7. J. Guthrie    38.2
   
8. G. Olson    -6.3
   
9. E. Bedard    54.9
   
10. A. Loewen    6.1
    
11. K. Benson    

Cincinnatti    VORP

1.  A. Harang    53.8
   
2. B. Arroyo    30.7
   
3. M. Belisle    7.7
   
4. T. Shearn    11.6
   
5. H. Bailey    -1.4
   
6. E. Milton    0.1
   
7. B. Livingston     2.5

Milwaukee    VORP

1.  B. Sheets    31.4
   
2. J. Suppan    23
   
3. D. Bush    13
   
4. Y. Gallardo    25.1
   
5. C. Villanueva    23.1
   
6. C. Capuano     6.3

KC Royals    VORP

1.  G. Meche    47.1
   
2. B. Bannister    34.9
   
3. Z. Greinke    30.1
   
4. K. Davies    -7.2
   
5. B. Buckner    2.9
   
6. O. Perez    2.4
   
7. L. Hudson    -3.6
   
8. J. Thomson     2.1

Colorado    VORP

1. J. Francis     42.7
   
2. J. Fogg     13.4
   
3. U. Jimenez     9.9
   
4. F. Morales     11.1
   
5. M. Redman     5.2
   
6. D. Bautista     -5.8
   
7. A. Cook     25.3
   
8. J. Hirsh     13.2
   
9. R. Lopez     10.9

NY-Yankees    VORP

1.  C. Wang    48.5
   
2. A. Pettitte    36.8
   
3. R. Clemens    13.8
   
4. P. Hughes    9
   
5. I. Kennedy    6.7
   
6. M. Mussina    11
   
7. C. Pavano     0.5

Chicago White Sox    VORP

1. M. Buehrle     49.3
   
2. J. Garland     26.6
   
3. J. Vazquez     51.1
   
4. J. Danks     1.8
   
5. J. A. Contreras     -6.1
   
6. G. Floyd    2.4

Atlanta    VORP

1. J. Smoltz     56.7
   
2. T. Hudson     59.7
   
3. C. James     28.7
   
4. J. Bennett     3.6
   
5. J. Reyes     -5.8
   
6. L. Cormier     -8.2
   
7. B. Carlyle     2.4
   
8. M. Hampton    
   
9. A. Lerew     -2.3

Oakland    VORP

1. D. Haren     56.4
   
2. J. Blanton     46.3
   
3. C. Gaudin     24.3
   
4. D. Braden     -11.7
   
5. R. Harden     10

NY-METS    VORP

1. T. Glavine     28.1
   
2. P. Martinez     7.1
   
3. O. Perez     24
   
4. J. Maine     33.3
   
5. O. Hernandez     31.7
   
6. M. Pelfrey    -0.2

San Fransico    VORP

1.  B. Zito    24.7
   
2. M. Cain    47.6
   
3. K. Correia    26.9
   
4. P. Misch    5.4
   
5. T. Blackley   
   
6. J. O. Sanchez    -0.1
   
7. T. Lincecum    26.5
   
8. N. Lowry    26.6
   
9. R. Ortiz     1

LA-ANGELS    VORP

1. J. Lackey     60.7
   
2. K. Escobar     49.9
   
3. J. Weaver     29.1
   
4. J. Saunders     14.8
   
5. B. Colon    -8.9

Minnesota    VORP

1. J. Santana     57.7
   
2. C. Silva     35.5
   
3. M. Garza     11.3
   
4. S. Baker     25.8
   
5. K. Slowey     5.4
   
6. F. Liriano    

Arizona    VORP

1. B. Webb     66.1
   
2. D. Davis     28.6
   
3. L. Hernandez     20.4
   
4. M. Owings     21.1
   
5. E. G. Gonzalez     7.3
   
6. R. Johnson     12.3

LA-Dodgers    VORP

1.  B. Penny    61.7
   
2. D. Lowe    30.5
   
3. C. Billingsley    40.7
   
4. D. Wells    2.5
   
5. E. Loaiza    -5.9
   
6. E. Stults    -0.7
   
7. R. Wolf    12.1
   
8. J. Schmidt     -3.5

Chi-CUBS    VORP

1. C. Zambrano     43.5
   
2. T. Lilly     46.7
   
3. J. Marquis     16.5
   
4. R. Hill     40.3
   
5. S. Trachsel     -4.7
   
6. S. Marshall     16.7
   
7. M. Prior    

Cleveland    VORP

1.  C. Sabathia    65.2
   
2. F. Carmona    64
   
3. P. Byrd    18.9
   
4. J. Westbrook    21.8
   
5. A. Laffey     6.7

Boston    VORP

1.  J. Beckett    58.6
   
2. D. Matsuzaka    37
   
3. C. Schilling    33.5
   
4. T. Wakefield    23.2
   
5. J. Lester    9
   
6. C. Buchholz     9.3

Toronto    VORP

1.  R. Halladay    50.6
   
2. A. Burnett    37.5
   
3. S. Marcum    31.1
   
4. D. McGowan    34
   
5. J. Litsch    18.7
   
6. G. Chacin     1.5

San Diego    VORP

1.  J. Peavy    77
   
2. C. R. Young    45.8
   
3. G. Maddux    35.7
   
4. B. Tomko    3.7
   
5. J. Cassel     4.4

Does anybody know an easy way at BP to sort Team Starters Vorp?  I did it all manually, took me 2 days :D

I copied/pasted all pitchers with at least one GS into a spread sheet.  Then made a cell for each team to calc average, then manually picked out the Team Averages into another page in the spreadsheet...

BOS    182.9
SFN    168.6
CLE    164.6
TOR    163.5
CHN    160.3
SDN    158
ARI    152.2
ANA    147.7
OAK    147.6
MIN    143.6
COL    135.7
MIL    134.9
LAN    129.3
CHA    124.9
DET    118.1
ATL    114.6
NYN    114.2
KCA    103.9
PHI    102.1
NYA    101.5
HOU    98.8
BAL    84.2
PIT    81.5
CIN    80.7
WAS    48.9
SLN    46.6
SEA    44.3
TBA    32.5
TEX    19.3
FLO    -60.3

This is a "quick" way to see where we can shop looper.  

By doing some guerrilla math I came up with vorps for the number of starter. (I'm trying to refine it, but this eyeballed looks pretty good)

#1 Ave Vorp
48.82068966

#2 Ave Vorp
31.99333333

#3 Ave Vorp
20.05

#4 Ave Vorp
9.923333333

#5 Ave Vorp
3.193333333

Loop-a-doop was at 14.8 which is a 3.5 starter.  You can shop him to a team that has no #3 or even the horrid teams on the bottom that have no #2.  Maybe ship him to a good pitching team that has a weak #4-5.  

Here are the Team Aces (Vorp leaders on each team)

1    Jake Peavy    SDN    77
2    Brandon Webb    ARI    66.1
3    C.c. Sabathia    CLE    65.2
5    Brad Penny    LAN    61.7
6    John Lackey    ANA    60.7
7    Roy Oswalt    HOU    59.8
8    Tim Hudson    ATL    59.7
9    Josh Beckett    BOS    58.6
10    Johan Santana    MIN    57.7
12    Dan Haren    OAK    56.4
13    Erik Bedard    BAL    54.9
14    Aaron Harang    CIN    53.8
15    Javier Vazquez    CHA    51.1
16    Roy Halladay    TOR    50.6
19    Cole Hamels    PHI    48.8
20    Chien-ming Wang    NYA    48.5
21    Matt Cain    SFN    47.6
22    Scott Kazmir    TBA    47.2
23    Gil Meche    KCA    47.1
24    Ted Lilly    CHN    46.7
26    Justin Verlander    DET    45.9
30    Ian Snell    PIT    42.8
31    Jeff Francis    COL    42.7
35    Adam Wainwright    SLN    39.8
40    Felix Hernandez    SEA    36.4
46    John Maine    NYN    33.3
48    Ben Sheets    MIL    31.4
76    Shawn Hill    WAS    20.8
108    Sergio Mitre    FLO    7.9
113    Brandon MccarthyTEX    6.5

As you see, a team ace should be close to the top 30 pitchers, but WAS, FLO and TEX are in dire need of an ace, Looper was better than FLO and TEX's aces this year.  

This is pure raw performance from 2007 from start to finish.  This does not take into consideration injuries, etc.  Based on this list we can see where looper would fit, then see if that team is addressing the need for the spot he will replace via some other option (hot shot rookie, healthy player that was injured, etc)

Continue reading this post »

Part 1: Fall of the MV3

The same Sabermatic community that thinks the STL Cardinals are the joke of baseball once called the St. Louis Cardinals "a Juggernaut" just 2 years ago.

All this talk about missing pitching we still have to keep the Pythagorean in check, however, the desperate need for pitching gives nice stealth to the huge decline in offense since the start of the Empire, 2000.

When Making the Playoffs their Average Actual Wins per year 95.5 games with a 93.3 Pythagorean. Through 2000-2005 the cards have averaged 837 runs, with 3 seasons over 850. The difference between the 2002 Division title with 787 runs scored vs the 2003 3rd place team that scored 876 runs was pitching. I'm not advocating ignoring the horrid need for pitching, however, the current offense can't support even a stellar pitching staff.

If the card's don't change the offense and score around the same runs they did this year, 726, they would need the pitching staff to come up with around 595 runs allowed. To put that in perspective, the best team in the NL has already given up that many runs, The Padres. As it stands you have Wainwright, Looper, 1/2 of Carp, and question marks to turn into the 90s Braves.

I looked at some runs generated by the mv3 since 2003. The only thing to note is in 2003 Pujols played the OF so I moved Martinez on paper to the OF.

2003	45%	24%	26%
Team	MV3	OF	IF
876	396	211	230

2004	50%	25%	22%
Team	MV3	OF	IF
855	428	214	191

2005	34%	29%	31%
Team	MV3	OF	IF
805	277	225	252

Rolen was hurt and only contributed 25 runs. Healthy Rolen averages around 112 runs. Nuniez's 53 + Hurt Rolens 25 = 34 Runs difference. If Rolen wasn't hurt and had an average year, the Runs Created would have looked like:

2005	44%	27%	24%
Team	MV3	OF	IF
843	368	225	252

You can already see what an impact 1 hurt Mv3 member means. If Rolen didn't have that collision at first in 2005, from 2003 - 2005 a healthy Mv3 would account for almost half of the runs scored:

2003	2004	2005*
45%	50%	44%
396	428	368

In 2006 instead of Rolen being hurt, Edmonds suffered from the Post Concussion Syndrome and leg injuries, that cost him half oh his normal Runs Created (Jimmy from 2000-2005 averaged 121 RC, his 2006 total was 59).

2006	40%	29%	25%
Team	MV3	OF	IF
781	311	225	199

Here you can see, again, how an injured mv3 member drastically lowered the Runs created. Here is what the Table would have looked like if Jimmy was Jimmy that year:

2006	44%	29%	24%
Team	MV3	OF	IF
843	373	225	199

This would have changed our Pythagorean Wins from 82 to an almost respectable 88.

So looking forward to 2008, what can you really expect from the Mv3? Does Jimmy have one more left? Will Rolen recover? Is this a freak down year for Pujols, maybe even conventional wisdom right for a change and he had no protection?

This was by far the most brutal year for the MV3 with both Jimmy having his 2nd straight year where he has performed over 50% less effective with a 2 year average of 52.5 and Rolen didn't complete the season and had a RC of 51. With less then two weeks left in the season the RC table looks like:

2007	33%
Team	MV3
673	220

Once we establish the range of RC for Rolen and Edmonds, then we can see if the new boys will make up for that and were we could up grade. Otherwise even with a huge and improbable add like Jake Peavey won't do any notable damage and probably cost the team some bottom line revenue (per Nate Silver's Win Curve article)

Poll

How Will the Mv3 do in 2008?

• Ave Year for all 3: 390 RC
• Ave Pujols and Rolen, Done for Jimmy: RC 300
• Ave Pujols and Jimmy, Hurt Rolen: 290 RC
• Pujols, 60-80% Rolen, 60-80% Jimmy: 300-347 RC
• Ave Pujols, 60-80% Rolen, Done for Jimmy: 277-300 RC
• All 3 Repeat 2007: <230 RC
• Major meltdown by all 3: <190 RC

  37 votes | Results

For argument sake I'm using Baseball-reference.com's RC.  

Example Brendan Ryan's RC so far is 26 for 173 PAs and 113 outs and 54 games played which is a 6.2 RC/G.

How can you use that to project his RC for a full season of ABs if he were a full time starter?

Obv 6.2 x 54 isn't going to work, that's well over 26.  I thought maybe 173/4 x 6.2 but that's not close either.