The Favorite Toy is a tool devised by noted baseball statitician Bill James to project the final career value of a particular counting stat. It can also be used to calculate the chances of a player achieving a certain statistical milestone.
I thought it would be fun to run some projections on the OOTP league and see what comes out. I ran some projections on five stats (HR, Hits, Wins, Saves and Strikeouts).
So, who do you think has the best shot of hitting 500 homers? Well, you might think that it's Hikory's Gregory Mudge... but it's not (although, to be fair, the fact that he's out for the year does bias things a bit. If I run it again next year after he's hit some homers, his chances may go up again). The player with the best shot is John Hukill, who currently has 243 and is only 27 years old. In fact, Hukill is so good, that he is projected to have a 7% shot of hitting 900 (no, that's not a typo) home runs by the time his career is over.
Hits, on the other hand, seems to be a tougher sell. It seems that almost none of the current active career leaders have a decent shot of getting 3000 hits. The current leader, Michael Fay, is just about done at 2070 hits and age 37. The league's best shot for 3000 hits among the active leaders currently lies with Sean Arant, who has about a 9% shot of achieving that goal.
On to wins... where Chad Nelligan leads the pack with 193. He has about a 47% chance of getting to 250, but no reasonable chance of reaching 300. The best shot in the league rests with Juan Villatoro, who currently has a 47% chance of being the 300 club's charter member.
For saves, you might think that Timothy Vallejo has the best shot of getting 500 saves... but you'd be wrong. That honor goes to Junior Cuomo, who has one save less, but is two years younger. Cuomo has a 43% chance of reaching the 500 save mark. It might even have been higher, had not Mike used him as a starter for half a season. :)
For the last stat, strikeouts, there is no one who has a shot at catching Nolan Ryan (5714), but there is one player who has a chance of coming close. It isn't Frank Osborne (2396 K/ Age 35/12% chance of 3500). It isn't Demarcus Ramirez (2180/35/17% for 3000). It isn't even Placencia (1433/30/26% for 3500) or Villatoro (1077/26/20% for 3500). The answer is a young kid from New York named Joshua Giddings. He only has 781 strikeouts so far, but he is also only 23 years old. He actually has a 21% of reaching 4000 K, an 11% shot of reaching 4500 and a 4% shot of reaching 5000 K.
Here's the data. Have fun browsing.
Interesting stuff, Zev. Thanks for posting this.
ReplyDeleteBTW: Has anyone else had problems posting comments to the new blog? It frequently takes 3+ tries to get it submitted.
That was AWESOME, Zev. And it shows how injuries derail counting stats.
ReplyDeleteYeah, well, Giddings odds probably are going way down now that he's suffered a season ending injury.
ReplyDeleteI am interested in seeing how this tool deals with youth. Did you run all the player through it? If so what does it think about Goss and Pearsall for hits and Grondin for HRs, but I am sure that it is not yet accurate until they get a few more seasons under their belt.
ReplyDeleteJeremy,
ReplyDeleteI did not run every player through the tool - I used only those who were active, on the league career leaderboards and interesting (to me, subjectively, of course). None of the players you asked about were on the leaderboards, so I did not run them through the tool.
As for your players:
Goss:
Current Hits: 504
Projected Total: 2556
Chance for 3000: 32%
Chance for 3500: 19%
Chance for 4000: 9%
Pearsall
Current Hits: 491
Projected Total: 1859 (however, the fact that he's out for the rest of this hurts him here -- ask me to run it again in a few years if he stays injury free).
Chance for 3000: 18%
Chance for 3500: 5%
Chance for 4000: 0%
Grondin is only in his second season. For this tool, at least three seasons of data is required.
Zev