A-Rod, Sabernomics, and a Wisdom of Crowds
Pete Boettke saw my contest for predicting Alex Rodriguez’s contract, and he wonders if there is some useful information gathered from these predictions. Is there a wisdom of crowds result here?
Independently, a poster (”Hairps”) at Sons of Sam Horn wondered the same thing and gathered information from all of the predictions. He aggregated the predictions on the graph below.
Thus he infers:
OK, so I’m not really into making cool charts, but you should get the idea. The “crowd” seems to foresee an 8YR/$261M deal (AAV = $32.6M). Pretty interesting to see how constant the AAV (green, secondary axis) of any deal stays pretty constant throughout, hovering around the $30M AAV marker Boras laid down at the onset.
Nice work, hairps.
J.C. Bradbury is an economist and associate professor at Kennesaw State University in metropolitan Atlanta. He is the author of The Baseball Economist and has operated Sabernomics.com since March 2004.
November 1st, 2007 at 6:41 pm
I think that while this is interesting, it isn’t actually reflecting what people believe he should make which would be a far more interesting question (and probably be a bit more on target for what will really happen).
Perhaps you should ask us all what we think he SHOULD make, and then compare the graphs. As it is now, we’re trying to measure the thought-process of MLB GMs, whereas asking us what we think would measure what baseball fans think he’s worth.
Then again, they could end up the same.