I have a boner.

Last night, I fought Quetzalcoatl in a battle of wits during my dreams. This has nothing to do with the above article, but I thought I should mention that. You're welcome.

They're not selling jeans there. Really,

They're not selling jeans there. Really,

ORLY?

Is there anything team aren't selling?

Good God, they ARE selling jeans.

And also projects a bright future for the other 29 teams, is the problem.

And also projects a bright future for the other 29 teams, is the problem.

Poor Jeff Zimmerman was trying to crunch the numbers for the James projections and estimated that they imply the Royals having a 94-68 mean projection.

It'll probably work out in the end that Trout didn't get the MVP. After all, the James projection have him a little better next year!

I'm like 97% sure, from playing with the Bill James projections, that they contain zero regression toward the mean. And estimating how the Bill James projections differ from three-year averages, the league has a net positive improvement due to aging. The distribution is a problem. Mean projections should be a tighter distribution than real-life because, by definition, they're mean projections. But James's distributions are as wide as real life results and for some statistics, even wider. I've been playing with the projections and I calculate they imply a league in which the average team is 89-73.

They're good for headline-grabbing though. Since the BJ projections are optimistic overall, he'll generally hit the players that do the best in the ROY voting better than the rest of us, simply because ROY contenders are more likely to be overperforming than underperforming.

So if I'm reading the excerpt right, James (accurately) predicted an awful season for the Red Sox in 2012.

This is crazy, the guy whose projections were used in putting together the Red Sox has projections out that really like the Red Sox? Next thing you'll be telling me that the Red Sox scouts think the Red Sox players have good skills.

And they're going to need to hire more grounds crew if they're going to have all those ponies out on the field.

James' book has the Sox main SPs all with W-L records at about .500. So I guess it ain't all that optmistic.

Look, James admits his projections of PT are made on some assumption of reasonmably good health and not being benched. A team like Boston who has a few injury-prone types of course is going to projec to do well if the pieces hold together.

A coworker recently told me that ponies aren't that expensive to acquire, so we may have to rethink our archetype.

A coworker recently told me that ponies aren't that expensive to acquire, so we may have to rethink our archetype.

If they're on the field, they have to be paid league minimum.

I wasn't clear from the intro ... was James talking the "official Bill James projections" (which I'm not sure he has much responsibility for at this stage) or his proprietary projections for the Red Sox.

And isn't the main problem with his projections that he's still projecting to something akin to a 2002 run environment? Note, the variance and the mean are pretty much always strongly related in count and rate stats so if you project to a higher scoring environment you might end up with a higher variance than reality. I would think regression to the mean would more than counter-act that though.

Walt, although a few of the numbers are slightly off, comparing the projections to the Bill James Projections on Fangraphs, it looks like it's the "official Bill James projections".