2009 Forecaster’s Challenge results
FantasyScope is proud to have participated in Tom Tango’s 2009 Forecaster Challenge over at his “The Book” blog. Well, the results are now out, and for us they weren’t pretty. FantasyScope was ID 111, and we finished near last out of 22 forecasters, no matter the methodology. Still, it was a valuable experience for me, and given me all sorts of motivation to improve what we have to offer in next year’s projections. A more detailed analysis after the jump.
In this kind of competitive draft setup, the key is really in how you value particular players relative to everyone else. Overvalue a guy significantly more than everybody else, and you end up drafting him a lot. Here are the players which I selected the most often out of 1000 drafts, and how many points they were worth under Tom’s scoring system.
| Name | Picked | Pts |
| Span, Denard | 1000 | 110 |
| Anderson, Brett | 1000 | 51 |
| Escobar, Alcides | 1000 | 20 |
| Hudson, Tim | 1000 | 11 |
| Kennedy, Ian | 1000 | 1 |
| Diaz, Victor | 1000 | 0 |
| Castillo, Luis | 1000 | 0 |
| Ramirez, Max | 1000 | 0 |
| Cabrera, Orlando | 998 | 84 |
| Lofgren, Chuck | 994 | 0 |
| Lo Duca, Paul | 932 | 0 |
| Wood, Brandon | 922 | 1 |
| Fox, Jake | 913 | 31 |
| Escobar, Kelvim | 889 | 2 |
| Hoffpauir, Micah | 832 | 25 |
| Sanchez, Jonathan | 813 | 0 |
| Francis, Jeff | 734 | 0 |
| Lindstrom, Matt | 717 | 14 |
| Abreu, Bobby | 520 | 124 |
| Soriano, Alfonso | 519 | 55 |
| Guillen, Carlos | 512 | 30 |
| Roberts, Brian | 478 | 117 |
| Suzuki, Ichiro | 458 | 134 |
| Dunn, Adam | 402 | 99 |
| Jeter, Derek | 376 | 146 |
| Beltran, Carlos | 374 | 71 |
| Thomas, Frank | 364 | 0 |
| Ludwick, Ryan | 346 | 77 |
| Arredondo, Jose | 341 | 5 |
| Hunter, Torii | 336 | 108 |
| Purcey, David | 310 | -3 |
| Davis, Chris | 293 | 44 |
| Lowell, Mike | 219 | 71 |
| Theriot, Ryan | 216 | 81 |
| Hafner, Travis | 216 | 48 |
| Braun, Ryan | 198 | 159 |
| Damon, Johnny | 193 | 105 |
| Romo, Sergio | 172 | 24 |
| Cruz, Nelson | 146 | 99 |
| Young, Michael | 141 | 106 |
| LaRoche, Adam | 116 | 85 |
| Ramirez, Hanley | 115 | 161 |
| Guerrero, Vladimir | 103 | 63 |
I should point out that if you have a guy ranked 10 spots below someone else, you will hardly ever draft him in Tom’s setup. I did find a couple of valuable guys in my rankings, but there are a lot more misses than hits here. I always ended up with Denard Span, who had a very good year. Considering I picked him up anywhere from the 4th round to the 6th, that was a pretty good pick. I got Orlando Cabrera anywhere between the late 6th and late 8th rounds, and he provided decent value from there at his position. I thought I was bullish on Jacoby Ellsbury, ranking him 15th overall, but only ended up with him 5 times out of 1000. Apparently somebody gambled very high on him.
Here are my top 20 ranked players, and how many points they earned under Tom’s scoring system.
| Ramirez, Hanley | 161 |
| Wright, David | 110 |
| Pujols, Albert | 182 |
| Braun, Ryan | 159 |
| Reyes, Jose | 25 |
| Sizemore, Grady | 67 |
| Soriano, Alfonso | 55 |
| Beltran, Carlos | 71 |
| Holliday, Matt | 131 |
| Crawford, Carl | 151 |
| Cabrera, Miguel | 139 |
| Utley, Chase | 129 |
| Suzuki, Ichiro | 134 |
| Howard, Ryan | 141 |
| Ellsbury, Jacoby | 149 |
| Sabathia, CC | 118 |
| Rollins, Jimmy | 98 |
| Santana, Johan | 81 |
| Teixeira, Mark | 130 |
| Kinsler, Ian | 115 |
That is, I earned 2346 out of a possible 2914 points, had I correctly ranked the top 20 players (about 80.5%). As you can see, my ranking suffered a lot from major injuries to Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran; but then again, so did everyone else.
Assessment
I think perhaps our most glaring weaknesses were weak predictions on rookies and players with little history at the Major League level, and also unweighted 3-year averages. I have already made big strides in addressing both of these weak points for our 2010 projections, and things should be much better now.
