Crystal Ball Summary
OK, let's wrap this up. The other CBs I did during the season have too much "in-season knowledge" about 2006, so I don't think it proper to evaluate them. So we'll work with the ones we've reviewed over the last week.
First of all, when I started doing the CBs last year, it was as a lark, a way to have fun, and I didn't try to take it particularly seriously. I did put a lot of effort into them. . .they are not just numbers on a page. It can take 2-3 hours to do a good CB. Basically I look at the player in question, find guys who were comparable to him at that point in their careers, see how those other guys turned out, then make some educated guesses about what the future might hold. But I was curious about how such an approach would work compared to more formal, formula-based systems such as PECOTA, so I decided to keep track and evaluate at the end of 2006 how the CB did.
The whole hit/miss category thing is an awkward way to analyze this, and perhaps I'm overthinking it in general. Ideally I'd like to set up some sort of metric and compare the CB directly to other systems, but I don't have the time right now. So anyhow, here are the results. You might disagree with the way I've rated a particular CB, and that's fine, let me know either way.
I'm going to separate hitters and pitchers.
Hitters
Type 1 Hit (dead-on or very close to dead-on)
Jeremy Hermida, Khalil Greene, Matt Murton, Jeff Francoeur, Jason Kubel, Prince Fielder, Josh Willingham, David Wright
Type 2 Hit (generally within the realm of expectation and variance)
Carl Crawford, Rickie Weeks
Type 1 Miss (The projected season was too good compared to actual)
Mark Teixeira
Type 2 Miss (The projected season wasn't good enough compared to actual)
Ryan Howard, Joe Mauer, Grady Sizemore, Lastings Milledge, Wily Mo Pena, Delmon Young
Pitchers
Type 1 Hit
None
Type 2 Hit
Huston Street
Type 1 Miss
Felix Hernandez (borderline case)
Type 2 Miss
Francisco Liriano, Scott Kazmir, Brandon McCarthy, Jon Papelbon
Overall the CB concept seems to work better for hitters than pitchers, however part of that may be because I didn't project as many components for pitchers compared to hitters, making true ERA comparisons more difficult. I will change that in the future.
Here is the bottom line question for you guys: should I continue doing these? Should I try to refine the CBs and try and make it a true projection method? Or should I drop the idea entirely?
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