David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.

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Lucky Strikes
15 years ago

Has any site (or anyone) ever taken the time to compare the accuracy and reliability of various projection systems (CHONE, Marcel, Forcaster, Prospectus, CBS, etc.)? For example, what projection system was the most accurate in predicting the breakout MVP year Jimmy Rollins had in 2007? It would be a tough task indeed but seems like it would be extremely valuable information if some of baseball’s best fantasy sites were compiled and then weighted into a formula that could determine the “margin of error” found in player projections from year to year. It would be interesting to see which systems are best and rank them each year based on accuracy.
Comparing a few of Prince Fielder’s 2008 stats (R:86, 2B:30, HR:34, RBI:102, BB:84, SB:3) to two 2008 projection systems:
Baseball Prospectus 2008: (R:106, 2B:34, HR:38, RBI:111, BB:82, SB:7)
Marcel 2008: (R:86, 2B:33, HR:47, RBI:92, BB:68, SB:5)

Adding the margin of error from each category above yields the following totals:
BP 2008: 43
Marcel: 44

So, in this example, BP was more accurate than Marcel, but not by much. Not bad for a monkey.
There are obviously much better ways to compare these systems and weight their accuracy, but I haven’t seen it anywhere and it would be an interesting resource….

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