If anyone really want to test this, just ran a regression with the independent variable being spring training stats and the dependent variable the corresponding regular season stats.
If you are looking for at least 2 standard deviations, then you need .150 wOBA above average (roughly 200 SLG points). But, that's only to tell you that he is above average, and certainly not that the whole 200 is indicative of anything. Basically, about 20% of that is "real". But, that's for 50 PA in April. Spring training must be even less, say 10% of the 200 SLG jump would be real.
That is, much ado.
0-3 to 4-3. Worst choke in the history of baseball. Enough said.
And then there are a host of adjustments you'd want to make before concluding even that 10% was real, including controlling for park factors and quality of competition (how many of those spring training XBH came against AA and AAA pitchers).
"I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to chase it."
This is a really hard thing to judge because you have to decide which data sets you want to look at. If you look at players with 1000+ major league ABs I bet you see very little correlation. My guess is if you look at players who have not played all that much that if they show a big step up in spring training it does correspond to the season because those are the types of guys who actually are growing significantly as hitters from year to year.
Ender wrote:This is a really hard thing to judge because you have to decide which data sets you want to look at. If you look at players with 1000+ major league ABs I bet you see very little correlation. My guess is if you look at players who have not played all that much that if they show a big step up in spring training it does correspond to the season because those are the types of guys who actually are growing significantly as hitters from year to year.
I thought that might be the case, too, so I did try to look a little bit at this by focusing on the younger guys, but it does not seem to be there either. For example, for 2007 here are some of the younger/less experienced guys from their list:
17 younger guys: 6 big increases, 5 small increases, 2 small drops, 4 big drops. And that includes Rivera and Dobbs in the big increase group. And 2007 was the best year for these lists
"I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to chase it."
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by tianyi86 » Thu Mar 27, 2008 7:41 pm 
