I know that some of you tire of me ripping other writers, and I will reiterate again that I appreciate your position and that I could give two shits about it.
Every once and a while I like to head on over to Bleed Cubbie Blue, where most of us have been banned from posting, and because of that, when I need to refute something that the talentless void that is Al Yellon has written, I have to do it here because he won’t let me do it there any more.
Today, he’s got a doozy. He unveiled the results of the moronic community projections he and his legion of dumbasses worked on the past few weeks. You probably know the drill. You guess what numbers certain players will put up during the season and you average those with what everybody else engaged in the pointless exercise thinks. These are never any good, and they’re almost always wildly optimistic.
So I was interested to see what the Pollyellons would come up with. And, it’s just about what you would expect.
They think that six of the Cubs regular eight players will post OPS’s of over .800, and that three of them will top .900. Well, it turns out they really only think two guys will top .900. You’ll see. Anyway, if their projections are true, Rudy Jaramillo deserves a raise, and Mark McGwire is going to demand to find out where Rudy’s getting his shit.
One set of numbers struck me as really odd. Their projection for Kosuke Fukudome is laughable. Here’s what Al has down as the projections for Kosuke’s averages.
BA OBA SLG OPS Kosuke .292 .395 .554 .949
That’s just wrong, and dumb. But when you look at the raw numbers Al published for Kosuke, they don’t look THAT crazy. Crazy, yes, but not THAT crazy.
430 at bats, 120 hits, 27 doubles, four triples and 11 homers.
Here’s why they don’t look THAT crazy. Because when you figure the batting average, on base average and slugging percentage correctly, you get this.
BA OBA SLG OPS Kosuke .279 .385 .437 .822
It’s still too high, but it’s not quite as laughable. And the best part is that in the comments section (that we’re not allowed to play in), Al just can’t figure out why everybody was so gosh darned optimistic about Kosuke.
So it made me wonder. If he screwed that up, how many of the other ones did he botch?
The short answer is…all of them.
He got them all wrong. Every single one. He didn’t do the math right for any of them. In fact, if you just look at batting average, on base average, slugging percentage and OPS, he had 32 chances to take the raw numbers and average them. He was wrong 30 times. Thirty.
Al batted .062 on this exercise.
To be fair, since he didn’t ask for hit batsmen you can’t accurately calculate on base average (hits + walks + hit batsmen/ at bats + walks + hit batsmen + sacrifice flies). But that doesn’t matter for this exercise because you just leave that out of both sides of the equation. Same with sac flies since he didn’t ask for it. Sac bunts aren’t factored into on base average. See, no wonder stat heads think they’re dumb.
So how far off was Al? I mean he didn’t miss them all by 127 points, like he did Kosuke, right? I underlined and made the two he figured correctly red. He can print it out and put it on his mommy’s refrigerator.
Actual Math Al's Math
BA OBA SLG OPS BA OBA SLG OPS
Soto .284 .361 .474 .835 .289 .365 .483 .849 Al +14
Lee .302 .383 .537 .920 .304 .384 .539 .924 Al +4
Baker .283 .348 .436 .784 .282 .345 .434 .779 Al -5
E-ramis .309 .384 .556 .950 .312 .386 .568 .954 Al +4
Theriot .291 .358 .379 .737 .291 .356 .378 .735 Al -2
Soriano .282 .335 .518 .853 .282 .333 .517 .851 Al -2
Byrd .287 .347 .465 .812 .286 .346 .461 .807 Al +5
Fukudome .279 .385 .437 .822 .292 .395 .554 .949 Al +127
It’s pretty obvious that he let the lemmings put in their own averages and he averaged those, instead of taking the time to figure out the averages himself, from the numbers he demanded they provide him anyway. Or is it? Because they came fairly close most of the time. He jacked up Soto’s pretty badly. Maybe he just doesn’t know how to calculate anything?
Nah, not our boy Al. He knows everything.
Oh, and how long did it take to check his work? About ten minutes. Nice job though, Al.
Your story has become tiresome. Is it now time to dance.
Math is hard!
What are the p-values and z-scores? I need to know if this is significant.
I think they were using Google Apps for this. Perhaps the fault lies with Google? From what I understand, The Al is never wrong.
You know that these little rants just drive traffic to his site, right?
I bought stock in SBNation, so when I point out what a douche Al is, it’s a win-win for me.
Everyone knows that Kosuke is going to hit .330 with 33 Homers and 120 RBIs.
Probably a cool 40 2bs as well. Swipe 20 bags.
Goddammit, Kosuke is going to be league MVP. I can smell it.
Just like a burning Ron Santo hair piece.
I blame Milton Bradley.
We don’t need no math….or coloreds.
You should resurrect the Hank White Fan Club as the Andres White Fan Club
This would have been better served as a FanShot.
The Legion of Dumb has posted the corrected numbers now:
http://www.bleedcubbieblue.com/2010/3/10/1365904/2010-bcb-community-projections
I enjoyed Al’s explanation:
“As pointed out in this comment by Dave86 in yesterday’s community projection post, there were some errors in SWL’s spreadsheet calculating AVG/OBP/SLG for the players projected. The spreadsheet added all the projected averages and averaged them rather than recalculating them from the counting stats.
The corrected numbers are after the jump. I think you’ll find most of them (admittedly, Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez may be a little high) more realistic. The counting stat projections were correct and do not need to be reposted.”
Yes, the evil “spreadsheet” added the averages and averaged them because spreadsheets never do as they’re told. Bad spreadsheets! Bad! Sounds like Al used to work for Enron.
Oh, and as for Al’s new numbers? They’re still wrong. They’re closer. But they’re still wrong.
Of course you’re jealous of Al’s success. *You* should be the one who is widely recognized as The Voice of the Cubs Blog Community! *You* should be able to make a good wage off of your site’s traffic, and you should be able to write for a living instead of living in a cubical day-in and day-out. We get it.
Dolan, your shit has been unreadable for at least three years. If your friends are too far up your ass to tell you that, then maybe you should get new friends… unless you really like that squirmy, up-your-ass feeling they give you.
So go ahead. Hate on Yellon and all the other bloggers. The 10-or-so people who like you will keep patting you on the back and telling you how great you are (sorry, 10? I guess maybe it’s closer to 15 or 20?) but you are still a fucktard. And so are your pals. Just wanted to be the guy who spells it out for you, since you apparently need that.