Shall we try the 'slurve' lists again?

by slurve on Sep 9, 2007 8:52 AM EDT

Earlier this year I offered to collect everyone's prospect rankings and put them together into a community list. A few people didn't like how it was done and the wheels sort of came off from there.

I'm willing to try it again. This time we will eliminate all the extra BS. I'm not going to attempt to weight the list in any way. I will simply act as a central hub that everyone can send their list to in order for it to be put into an excel spread sheet. I'll set up a few basic functions so it will average the raw data, but will stop there. Once it's complete, I'll post it here as well as send out the excel file to all who participated or request it.

The only ground rules I'll lay out are these:

Must be top 50 at minimum. Most here can do 100 without problem - but finding the time isn't always the easiest thing to do.
ANYONE is eligible who has not yet reached 130 AB's / 50 IP - regardelss of service time. This includes foreign players, recent draftees, college players, etc. I think these will be interesting to look at over time and if you can peg future stars before they are classically defined prospects - more power to ya. One of the hottest issues was whether foreign players should eligible. This will allow you to simply filter these players out yourself with a few mouse clicks - everyones happy!!!
No real deadline. I'll probably take whatever data I have in a few weeks and put out the first edition. As the off-season goes on - you can send in a list if you didn't previously or you can send an updated version of the list you had sent previously. Thsi would also allow for those who only send in top 50 lists to add to it as they have more time. Periodically I'll send out revised lists as new data accumulates until next season rolls around.

I think this would compliment the diary limo started for "dredging up old predictions" as it would be fairly easy to search for in the future once it gets posted here.

Lists can be sent to: slurveone@yahoo.com

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i'll probably do a list

but i'm also very keen on a community top 100 in the style of the analytic hierarchy process, as discussed back in this thread:

http://www.minorleagueball.com/story/2007/6/28/14165/0821

here's the quick summary:

we could do, say, five guys a day, and have them be in parallel (in principle there's no limit, but more than five would probably be impractical). the voting doesn't even have to be by rank--we could do it like IMDB does movie ratings. "on a scale of 1 to 10, how good is this prospect?" then everybody just votes. it's a trivial matter to then just average the results for each player and compile a list. maybe justin upton would be #1 with a 9.82, and then hughes with a 9.63, etc. a rating of "1" would be something like "this guy does not belong in the top 100."

this method has all the advantages of the slurve lists from last year, and fewer disadvantages:

1. no one guy has to do all the work. the numbers are all there for everybody to see.
2. there's no problem with some people just "forgetting" about a guy and neglecting to rank him, which is a problem when everybody compiles their own list.
3. if fewer people happen to vote on a particular guy, it doesn't significantly affect his ranking, just how confident we can be about that ranking.
4. it lets us see a lot more clearly how big the gaps are between different groups of players. by having a rating rather than just a ranking, we can see if it's really true if there's a big gap between upton and everybody else, or between the {bruce/bailey/braun/longoria} and the group right below them, etc.

i'm getting excited. let's definitely do it this way when we do our off-season list in the winter.

by jpahk on Sep 9, 2007 7:53 PM EDT reply actions

community top 100

btw, i don't particularly think we should start this right away. until the major league season is done, we won't know whether certain guys will still be considered prospects for next year... plus, they have the chance for their stock to go up or down based on what they do during their september callups.

by jpahk on Sep 9, 2007 7:55 PM EDT up reply actions

that sounds interesting

....the imdb style rankings//....i'll probably submit a slurve list as well...but not for another month at least...dont we normally do this around Dec?

by daveh33 on Sep 9, 2007 9:31 PM EDT up reply actions

Well...

This will be an ongoing thing - someone looks good/bad the rest of the way in the majors and/or is no longer eligible - you can update your list to reflect that. I was thinking of getting going now with purpose of having a lot of this stuff fresh in peoples minds.

You realize that prospect lists have a time horizon of like 5-10 years, not 5-10 days, right?

by slurve on Sep 9, 2007 11:40 PM EDT up reply actions

Hmmm...

I like to follow the KISS format as much as possible - Keep It Simple Stupid. Not sure we could get everyone to adhere, let alone have the patience or interest for this. I suppose we could have discussions formatted like this and let those interested refine their lists from that.

You realize that prospect lists have a time horizon of like 5-10 years, not 5-10 days, right?

by slurve on Sep 9, 2007 11:38 PM EDT up reply actions

Very Interesting

and Very cool! i like your idea a LOT. Let me know when you want start or if you need help. Do you just keep adding guys to the list? I like the idea of attempting to evaluate, as a group, maybe 200-300 players and whittling it down (up?) to 100.

by casejud on Sep 10, 2007 3:57 AM EDT up reply actions

It's most fun/controversial/interesting

when its done one at a time over the course of the offseason.

Its fun to try and defend the list from guys you dont list while trying to get some of your guys on.

by wildthang on Sep 10, 2007 12:13 AM EDT reply actions

I think

we should still do the community list and apply jpahk's method to that, but the 'slurve list' as it's come to be known is also a cool thing that compliments the community list. When you average the players rank - it comes out different thna the "winner take all" approach the community list employs.

You realize that prospect lists have a time horizon of like 5-10 years, not 5-10 days, right?

by slurve on Sep 10, 2007 12:20 AM EDT up reply actions