Comments on: Chipper’s Pursuit of .400

By: leviinalaska

leviinalaska — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 03:11:36 +0000

JC, your blog is freakin’ awesome. I wish I could take a class from you! Unfortunately…you don’t teach in Alaska and I’d imagine there is even less than a 12-13% chance that you will move up our way.

By: dan

dan — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 05:17:50 +0000

I absolutely love using PrOPS (and its cousins) when evaluating players… I have no idea why it’s not more widely used. People can’t complain about the formula being some kind of secret– we use BP’s stats all the time.

And I really want Chipper to do it, if only to make Mets fans cringe.

By: Sal Paradise

Sal Paradise — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:54:57 +0000

I’m not saying we can nail it down, only that instead of regarding Jones as a ‘true talent’ .310 hitter (what Marcel predicted pre-season), we should look at how that’s changed after 264 PA at .419. While it won’t be perfect, I think that a Marcel changing daily will better estimate what we should project him to do until the end of the year.

By constantly updating our projection with the newest data, it will create a much steeper curve in probability of making it as he gets more hits (and that higher average becomes a large part of the sample).

By: JC

JC — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:36:11 +0000

To me, the important point isn’t nailing down an exact number for what his “true talent” might be. That number is unknowable. Several potential estimators for true talent exist. What I think is interesting is the notion that Jones is better than a .310 hitter at this moment in time. It’s a notion that I think is probably true. Now, does that mean he’s a .350 hitter? No. Silver uses a method based on more recent data, which is a reasonable choice, that gives Chipper a better chance. The fact that it corresponds to what PrOPS suggests his true hitting has been this season is also interesting, because PrOPS doesn’t know Chipper’s career numbers.

By: Sal Paradise

Sal Paradise — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:02:30 +0000

There's also a long discussion about this on the book blog. Several people (myself included) have suggested that David Pinto create a true talent estimator using marcel or something similar, but no go yet.

By: Kyle James

Kyle James — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 01:28:41 +0000

Here’s pulling for you Chipper!

By: K-Funk

K-Funk — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:18:11 +0000

Wow, 12% means he has a realistic chance of doing it!

Some guy at Baseball Musings has a daily graph showing Chipper’s chances of hitting .400. It’s currently at 1 in 725, I think.

I believe his model assumes that Chipper has a 31% chance of getting a hit each time he comes up (based on his career average), which I think is a little silly based on his performance the past couple of years.