community projection results: rick ankiel

we got 99 individual forecasts on the rick ankiel community projection --- i think that's a record. let's get right to the bottom line:

i'll add a note in the comments section re how i derived the figures for doubles / triples / walks, in case anybody is interested. before i compare our projection to the computer-generated ones, i'd first like to compare it to some similar real-life seasons, as revealed through the magic of the lahmann database:

jay gibbons and jason lane were both 28 years old in 2005, the same age ankiel will be this season; belle and sexson were both 24 in the respective seasons listed above. on a pure gut level (and that's what this exercise is all about, right?) , gibbons and lane seem like fair archetypes for ankiel --- guys who hit with enough power that you're willing to live with their other limitations. we should not overlook the fact that both of them have gone due south since 2005; lane batted .201 and .175 the last two years, while gibbons (a steroid / hgh user who's been suspsended for the first 15 games of 2008) slugged below .350 last season.

let's put our projection alongside the name-brand ones:

as in the yadi molina projection, VEB has a sunnier forecast for ankiel than the objective models; we can be excused for that, 'cause we're fans. and in our defense (in another parallel w/ the molina projection), we diverge w/ the objective models primarily in batting average, the least predictable stat; we generally agree w/ them re isolated power and walk rate:

if you add 11 singles to ankiel's ZIPS line, the forecast is very close to ours (.266 / .309 / .482). add 9 singles to CHONE, and you get the same thing (.267 / .316 / .478). those differences aren't meaningless --- you'd expect 10 or so singles to be worth nearly a full win over the course of a year --- but they're highly influenced by random chance. so we're not way off base here, just mildly hopeful as fans are wont.

the quintessential projector was bigcardsfan5:

tournament results to come this afternoon.