Stupid Human Tricks Dept.

What was that Facebook satire?  The one where they tested their programmers with about 12 shots of Stoli and sat them down at an unsolvable coding fix?  “Yeah,” said the CEO when his friend objected, “Much better test to see if they can carry about a chicken for 10 days."

No, Dr. D doesn’t do 12 shots of Stoli, but believe you him, he could do a smoother bit of shtick under those circumstances than under the Rx recipe that the UW rocket scientists have cooked up.  

The screen looks like one those optical illusion meters they used in the Adam West Batmans (Batmen).  The more amusing for you, right?

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Bill James’ Fave (Mariners) Toy

At Bill James Online -- $3 per month rat cheer – he revisits the oldliest but goodliest.   Since 1975, James been twonking a little spreadsheet that --- > feeds him back any player’s chance of hitting 500 homers or getting 3,000 base hits. 

To tell you the truth, it makes Dr. D feel kinda like a hobo walking around the corner, finding a kewl pair of Nikes sitting right there, and … Why wouldn’t this thing be a perfectly decent way of projecting the time left to a free agent out on the market?  Do you know any local ballclubs who might want a bit of triangulation on their Stars’ expiriation dates? 

:: shrug ::

Anyway, less’ apply it to some M’s of yore, before we apply it to some M’s of your …

Amazingly, over the intervening 10 Presidential Administrations or so, James hadn’t yet applied the turbo SABE headers to polish this spreadsheet up yet.  This week, he did.  Far be it from us to grub a couple of free URL’s, but:

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His METHOD:  EXEC SUM

1. Take a player’s established performance level.  Whether it be for HR, RBI, H, confrtontations with Don Wakamatsu, or what have you.
2. That level is simple:  just take 3x last year, 2x the year before, 1x the year before, all divided by six.  Easy squeezee.  Nelson Cruz just hit 44 dongs, before that 40, before that 27, so he’s a 39.8 homer amigo.  How's that fer square.

…………….

(3)  Take the player’s years remaining as --- > [half of 42 minus his age].  Cruz will be 35, so he has 3.5 years left of 40-homer power.  (Don't panic.  Some of those 140 homers will be frittered away at ages 38 and 39 as he tries to hang on by his fingernails.

This (42) thingie is the type of “fuzzy guess” that makes Bill James what he is.  There is no substitute for shoving your mower down row 16-20 on your grass, and humming, “16-20, sure, that’s Bobo Newsom, 1934.”  You're never see another like him.  At least, we hope not … Nobody should enjoy their lives this much. 

Anyway, Halfway-to-42 worked out to be an effective number for these purposes.  Either that, or Bill is tormented by Jackie Robinson demons.  In either case we can consider ourselves to be headed in the right direction.

.........

Stupid Human Tricks Dept.

What was that Facebook satire?  The one where they tested their programmers with about 12 shots of Stoli and sat them down at aan unsolvable coding fix?  “Yeah,” said the CEO when his friend objected, “Much better test to see if they can carry about a chicken for 10 days."

No, Dr. D doesn’t do 12 shots of Stoli, but believe you him, he could do a smoother bit of shtick under those circumstances than under the Rx recipe that the UW rocket scientists have cooked up.  

The screen looks like one those optical illusion meters they used in the Adam West Batmans (Batmen).  The more amusing for you, right?

.

Bill James’ Fave (Mariners) Toy

At Bill James Online -- $3 per month rat cheer – he revisits the oldliest but goodliest.   Since 1975, James been twonking a little spreadsheet that --- > feeds him back any player’s chance of hitting 500 homers or getting 3,000 base hits. 

To tell you the truth, it makes Dr. D feel kinda like a hobo walking around the corner, finding a kewl pair of Nikes sitting right there, and … Why wouldn’t this thing be a perfectly decent way of projecting the time left to a free agent out on the market?  Do you know any local ballclubs who might want a bit of triangulation on their Stars’ expiriation dates? 

:: shrug ::

Anyway, less’ apply it to some M’s of yore, before we apply it to some M’s of your …

Amazingly, over the intervening 10 Presidential Administrations or so, James hadn’t yet applied the turbo SABE headers to polish this spreadsheet up yet.  This week, he did.  Far be it from us to grub a couple of free URL’s, but:

.

His METHOD:  EXEC SUM

1. Take a player’s established performance level.  Whether it be for HR, RBI, H, confrtontations with Don Wakamatsu, or what have you.
2. That level is simple:  just take 3x last year, 2x the year before, 1x the year before, all divided by six.  Easy squeezee.  Nelson Cruz just hit 44 dongs, before that 40, before that 27, so he’s a 39.8 homer amigo.  How's that fer square.

…………….

Take the player’s years remaining as --- > [half of 42 minus his age].  Cruz will be 35, so he has 3.5 years left of 40-homer power.  (Don't panic.  Some of those 140 homers will be frittered away at ages 38 and 39 as he tries to hang on by his fingernails.

This (42) thingie is the type of “fuzzy guess” that makes Bill James what he is.  There is no substitute for shoving your mower down row 16-20 on your grass, and humming, “16-20, sure, that’s Bobo Newsom, 1934.”  You're never see another like him.  At least, we hope not … Nobody should enjoy their lives this much. 

Anyway, Halfway-to-42 worked out to be an effective number for these purposes.  Either that, or Bill is tormented by Jackie Robinson demons.  In either case we can consider ourselves to be headed in the right direction.

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MARINERS OF YORE 

Okay, after Ichiro’s Age-37 season his established level of hits was 201 per year.   Got it? 

His presumed time remaining was half of 42-38, or two years at that 201-hits level of production.  We expected him to finish with 402 hits.  This accounts for years where he didn't get 201 hits, but faded softly into the gloaming.  402 hits total, in any distribution, until he went back and became a Manga superstar.

What if you wanted to  calculate his chances stretching all the way to 3,000 hits … well, he needed 719 hits at the time.  His expected hits were 201*2, nowhere near 719.  So we divide the expected hits by the “need” hits to get 202/719 … but!

Bill always then subtracts another .50.  Why?  So that if somebody’s “need” hits are exactly equal to his “expected” hits, the player has a 50% chance of  hitting his target.  Makes sense.  You’re old enough to be within reach of 3,000 hits but it looks like you’lll juuust get there.   Subtract .50 and bang, you got a 50/50 chance of hittig your target.  What if your expected hits are only 75% of what you need?  Call that a 25% chance of hitting the jackpot.

....

Sounds arbitrary?  Check Bill's site.  He just ran the numbers for hundreds and hundreds of historical players.  By some inconceivable miracle, the Toy is dead on for all of them.

Ichiro at age 37, though, had no real chance of hitting his target.   (But he’s done good, as might possibily be expected by those of you who have observed Ichiro from time to time.  As it turns out, Ichiro has crawled along the dust for years and will have to scrape together only 65 more bloops, brambles and bleeders to get 3,000 in the US, to go with his 1,278 hits in Japan.)  We’ll look up Pete Rose for yer … 4,276.  You’re welcome.

………..

Here are a couple of other Astroturf Heroes for you:

Jay Buhner after age 32 was sitting on 253 homers already, and was ripping along at 37.8 homers per season.  Looked good for him.  In order to hit 147 more, and join The 400 Club, where was he?  Well, he had half of 9 years left to age 42, so 4.5*37.8 = 170.1 "expected" homers according to my Excel sheet.  He needed 147, but expected 170.  So, 170/147 = 1.16 but subtract 50% ... we get a 66% chance for the 1996 Bone to get to 400 homers.  Sounds about right.

The Astroturf took its toll, though.  The very next year he hit only 15 homers, and he limped in to 310 career homers.  That's a lot of homers, but you look at it and ... it shorted him.  Bone was really more a 350-400 homers guy, like Torii Hunter or Carlos Lee or Jeff Kent.  Bone was a very, very solid 300 homer guy.

.........

Ken Griffey Jr. was sitting pretty after age 30, wasn't he?  448 homers in the tank already!  And this at an established rate of 52 homers per season.  Hey, using The Seattle Blogger's Favorite Tool that is 52x12 homers remaining ... 1,000 in the bag :- )

James' Favorite Toy, motor-driven by 20,000 such trials in the past, was more conservative.  It had him for a simple 52x6 homers reminaing, or 312.  Add that to 448 collected already, and you had 760 expected ... the same thing as saying a 50-50 chance at 760.

He actually finished at 685, not a long way short, but you can see that the turf -- and the lack of 'roids -- made the 760 estimate a bit dicey as we stood there at age 30 with him.

.........

Anyway:  James' Toy works well, and leave us not neglect to apply it to DiPoto's core fortwith :- )

Cheers,

Dr D