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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:

AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB AVG OBP SLG
484 75 129 27 3 27 81 33 .266 .319 .501

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:

AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB AVG OBP SLG
ankiel 08 (proj) 484 75 129 27 3 27 81 33 .266 .319 .501
jay gibbons 2005 488 72 135 33 3 26 79 28 .277 .317 .516
jason lane 2005 517 65 138 34 4 26 78 32 .267 .316 .499
richie sexson 1999 479 72 122 17 7 31 116 34 .255 .305 .514
albert belle 1991 461 60 130 31 2 28 95 25 .282 .323 .540

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:

AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB AVG OBP SLG
VEB 484 75 129 27 3 27 81 33 .266 .319 .501
Marcel 264 42 73 14 2 12 47 23 .277 .334 .481
bill james 456 67 117 19 2 29 94 29 .257 .301 .498
CHONE 510 66 127 21 3 27 75 34 .249 .300 .461
ZIPS 448 46 108 18 2 25 77 25 .241 .285 .458

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:

ISO BB/PA
VEB .235 .06
Marcel .204 .08
bill james .241 .06
CHONE .212 .07
ZIPS .217 .05

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:

AB R HR RBI AVG OBP SLG
VEB 484 75 27 81 .266 .319 .501
bigcardsfan5 488 85 27 85 .266 .316 .510

tournament results to come this afternoon.