I really like BP, but I agree it isn't ready for fantasy purposes to cut and paste and draft with. Lots of good player analysis and the PECOTA projections are a very different way of looking at player projection, which is good. But I have to adjust PA and IP on every player before using their forecast compared to other forecasts I might have. I do like BP's "break out", "improve", "collapse" and "attrition" percentages. It allows me to look at the range of stats I might expect and compare guys where my forecasts or rankings are close to see which I might value higher and tweek my rankings or draft strategy a bit. Just my plug.
If I were going to buy a forecasting or rankings service and plug them in and strictly follow them for my draft, I'd probably just save my money and use J35J's free one here and compare those rankings to the free MDP here and to the rankings or ADP of whatever site was hosting my league.
One snit that I have with Forecaster is that they seem to try a little too hard to make it seem that they're doing more than they are.
In the 2010 one (the only one that I've bought; see above) there's a full-page essay entitled, "The cluelessness of WHIP" and the guy basically spends 400 words to say that if you multiply WHIP times 9, it's a superior measure because it catches distinctions and breaks ties that WHIP misses. And then there's a sidebar at the end as to what he should call his new metric. Well, I could do that, too.... and I would just call it, "WHIP to 3 decimal places."
And then they just label some standard metrics with their own names which IMO just confuses things. They talk about "ct%" for contact % and then you find out it's just 1 - K rate for hitters. And their "Eye" stat is just hitters' BB/K rate. Similarly, for pitchers, they have "Command ratio", "Control rate", and "Dominance rate" which are just K/BB, BB/9, and K/9 respectively. So if you know enough to be familiar with those stats, it's just extra confusion. And if you don't know those stats, it is just an extra layer that gets in the way of you being able to do your own analysis and understand what's going on.
0-3 to 4-3. Worst choke in the history of baseball. Enough said.
Pitchers that Baseball Forecaster influenced me to get last year for cheap in my auction:
Ubaldo Jimenez Jered Weaver Edwin Jackson
Can't say enough about this, really. These guys were the back of my pitching rotation and ended up being one of the reasons I finished 2nd place overall last year.
Matthias wrote:One snit that I have with Forecaster is that they seem to try a little too hard to make it seem that they're doing more than they are.
In the 2010 one (the only one that I've bought; see above) there's a full-page essay entitled, "The cluelessness of WHIP" and the guy basically spends 400 words to say that if you multiply WHIP times 9, it's a superior measure because it catches distinctions and breaks ties that WHIP misses. And then there's a sidebar at the end as to what he should call his new metric. Well, I could do that, too.... and I would just call it, "WHIP to 3 decimal places."
And then they just label some standard metrics with their own names which IMO just confuses things. They talk about "ct%" for contact % and then you find out it's just 1 - K rate for hitters. And their "Eye" stat is just hitters' BB/K rate. Similarly, for pitchers, they have "Command ratio", "Control rate", and "Dominance rate" which are just K/BB, BB/9, and K/9 respectively. So if you know enough to be familiar with those stats, it's just extra confusion. And if you don't know those stats, it is just an extra layer that gets in the way of you being able to do your own analysis and understand what's going on.
I've been a Forecaster guy for about 5 years now and I agree with you on the WHIP thing. However, the command, control and dominance make the book much more readable than continually reading those ratios. They also make sense as words to use which is much less confusing than other saber terms like WAR, FIP and all the other acronyms.
Matthias wrote:One snit that I have with Forecaster is that they seem to try a little too hard to make it seem that they're doing more than they are.
In the 2010 one (the only one that I've bought; see above) there's a full-page essay entitled, "The cluelessness of WHIP" and the guy basically spends 400 words to say that if you multiply WHIP times 9, it's a superior measure because it catches distinctions and breaks ties that WHIP misses. And then there's a sidebar at the end as to what he should call his new metric. Well, I could do that, too.... and I would just call it, "WHIP to 3 decimal places."
And then they just label some standard metrics with their own names which IMO just confuses things. They talk about "ct%" for contact % and then you find out it's just 1 - K rate for hitters. And their "Eye" stat is just hitters' BB/K rate. Similarly, for pitchers, they have "Command ratio", "Control rate", and "Dominance rate" which are just K/BB, BB/9, and K/9 respectively. So if you know enough to be familiar with those stats, it's just extra confusion. And if you don't know those stats, it is just an extra layer that gets in the way of you being able to do your own analysis and understand what's going on.
I think you have to know a little about the history of fantasy/Rotisserie baseball to understand the WHIP issue. 25 years ago, there was no WHIP, only "Ratio" and I think Shandler printed that essay more as a tip of the hat to history (he does that A LOT in his Baseball HQ columns). As for the names for his metrics, he's also about accessiblity - he's trying to market to as broad an audience as possible.
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by Carey Saders » Mon Feb 01, 2010 2:30 pm 
