IBC

Astros wrote:With 148 replies, can the ExCo please make a decision for 2009? lol We are beating this thing to death here...

We can then debate for a whole year on the 2010 season.

I believe the ZIPS file is suppose to be out today, thus I imagine the ExCo and everyone else is waiting to see what those projections end up looking like.

BBTF has done a number of individual teams already, however not sure if the final ZIPS datafile will match those prior team offerings or not?

Giants wrote:My two cents: the issue is that we cannot run the league based on our existing structure (i.e. using the DMB projection disk). I think the best option would be to maintain as much of the existing integrity of the league as we can, keep DMB, keep the DMB defensive ratings from the season disk, and, since it seems PECOTA and Zips seem to be the only feasible options, have a league-wide vote on which to use for projections only this year.

In addition, I think this should be decided as a temporary, 2009-only fix. Should we decide after this season that, whether due to better performance or another lack of DMB projections, we want to keep the other projection, we should have another vote on that.

That is all.

Picking and choosing defensive ratings to better suit your individual team is not an option.

Mariners wrote:

Astros wrote:With 148 replies, can the ExCo please make a decision for 2009? lol We are beating this thing to death here...

We can then debate for a whole year on the 2010 season.

I believe the ZIPS file is suppose to be out today, thus I imagine the ExCo and everyone else is waiting to see what those projections end up looking like. :shock:

BBTF has done a number of individual teams already, however not sure if the final ZIPS datafile will match those prior team offerings or not?

Dan, the creator of Zips, wrote this on his Facebook page:

I'm releasing the first build after the weekend and an update later in the week as any possible bug reports come in (the community tends to be better at catching errors than I am) and add player requests.

A later disk will be towards the end of March, in which I'll make sure everyone's on the proper team and there are possible depth charts up, but that will probably be of less interest to a projection league player, since that just needs the players themselves.

Back to me again:

We are also waiting to see what is available from Clay at BP ...

Yeah, I'd rather see to make sure that PECOTA indeed DOESN'T have defensive ratings properly built in and splits before we make a decision. What's the rush?

[quote="Pirates"][quote="Giants"]My two cents: the issue is that we cannot run the league based on our existing structure (i.e. using the DMB projection disk). I think the best option would be to maintain as much of the existing integrity of the league as we can, keep DMB, keep the DMB defensive ratings from the season disk, and, since it seems PECOTA and Zips seem to be the only feasible options, have a league-wide vote on which to use for projections only this year.

In addition, I think this should be decided as a temporary, 2009-only fix. Should we decide after this season that, whether due to better performance or another lack of DMB projections, we want to keep the other projection, we should have another vote on that.

That is all.[/quote]

Picking and choosing defensive ratings to better suit your individual team is not an option.[/quote]

Zips isn't really too much different for me. But, you also have to keep in mind integrity of the league. Some of the guys you must be thinking about that would be better in DMB is due to the fact that I traded for them specifically for those defensive projections.

I'd be ok if you go all Zips (projections and defense), but just understand in effect you would be changing the value of some players. We can only guess how DMB would have projected the stats of the players, but we know, based on the season disk, how they would have rated defensively.

I feel, if possible to do so, we should keep that intact. The league has for 7 years gone with DMB's projections and ratings. We can no longer use the DMB projections and I think if at all possible we should keep what we can. It's like in a normal roto fantasy league deciding to add a new stat the day after the draft.

And what of the minor league players? Additionally, they rate the guys defensively based on what they did in the season. Some of the zero error ratings, etc. You would have some pretty wacky stats. We've all built our rosters on how DMB projects players, so it's not like one day somebody said, "Hey, I'm going to build my team off of ZiPS for the hell of it and then figure out a way to make us use ZiPS in the IBC." The "integrity of the league" has nothing to do with what projections we use. Picking and choosing multiple projection systems and then having to make our own debatable projections and picking and choosing MiLB players defensive ratings is what would compromise the integrity of the league, not using a different projection system.

I see your point, that is valid. Forgot that the season disk won't include any of the non-MLB players.

Three points.
First, some members already have the 2008 season disk, so buying anything new would not be necessary.
Second, after the near miss last year, this REALLY should have been addressed last spring. Whatever we choose going forward, we should have a backup plan established at all times just in case.
Third, looking at OOTP isn't "throwing the baby out with the bathwater", it's more like doing due diligence after getting shit on by DMB. We've never seriously considered another system before. Is OOTP better? *shrug* I don't know. OOTP 9 is available for free download, take a look. I meant to look at it in depth over the weekend, but it was 65 degrees here in Boulder and I didn't feel like spending a ton of time on the computer.

Pirates wrote:so it's not like one day somebody said, "Hey, I'm going to build my team off of ZiPS for the hell of it.

I actually did this last year because I felt like being competitive in winter league...

The initial ZIPS projection file is out now in Excel format for those that want to take a look.

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/fil ... rst_build/

i mean i know theres not many options but I have a serious problem with these projections.

Joe Koshansky got a .275\.342\.503 projection with 29 HRs
Evan Longoria got a .264\342\.489 projection with 28 Hrs.

My question is how does Koshansky get a better projection. Yes he did hit .300.380.600 in AAA but he hit .211 in the majors in 18 games. Longoria hit in MLB 272.343.531 and his Slugging was significantly lower.

I know DMB gave the benefit of the doubt to players who tore up AAA but if thats the case in the ZIPs why doesnt it translate to pitchers?????

Justin Masterson got a projection of 4.15 he had a 3.16 era in 36 games in MLB and a 2.89 in AAA for what its even worth. The worst part about it was that i distinctly remember with 0 MLB experience Masterson had a 3.99 projection from ZIPS for me the year before.

I know we can sit here and argue for months about this player vs that player, but I just dont get how any of these make any sense and it seems like they are just WAY more exaggerated then DMB was.

Giambi's Zips projection blew my mind. If you think it's unlikely Joe Koshansky beats out Evan Longoria by 4 ops points, what do you think the chances are that he beats Giambi by 61 points?

Basically, Zips still blows goats.

Does ZiPS have splits than I'm just not seeing? Cause I've installed the ZiPS dbase and only a few guys seem to have them.

Oh, and I don't think it matters how badly the projections suck, because in the four seasons I've simmed most of the players dont finish with #s anywhere close to their projections.

I've just run through a few seasons after building a DB by hand and gotten some interesting results. I can't decide if I like them or not, but they are a little bit different. As much as I love Mike Hessman I'm not sure I buy having him as a better hitter than Jason Giambi.

RedSox wrote: Second, after the near miss last year, this REALLY should have been addressed last spring. Whatever we choose going forward, we should have a backup plan established at all times just in case.

We talked about it. The problem is that you're not going to spend potentially hundreds of hours preparing for it with statwork, etc. without knowing what they are going to do. Coming to a primary plan wouldn't have taken long at all. The main issue is whether you're going to do all that work in one month, and as late as they announced this it didn' take much thought to come to the conclusion that we weren't interested in doing that this month. And I'd suggest that anyone who still thinks that we should do a lot of legwork and do that this season hasn't really thought through everything that would be involved. I was very interested in doing that sort of thing when we started talking about this seriously weeks ago, but as you think through what has to be done and either how much time that's going to take a few people or just how many would have to be involved and working virtually seemlessly, it just takes too much time for where we were/are on the calendar (even if we delayed the season a week or two). As you've mentioned, many of our GMs have increased responsibilities and can't just blow 25-50 hours a week working on something like that to get it done really fast.

And to differentiate between this year and next year, realistically, you're just not going to go through all of that without them actually having ever failed to put out a projection disk. Now they have, so even though there is a possibility that they could put one out next year, us starting in October and doing our own deal is an option that everyone is more likely to come to grips with and do the work over the fall/winter.

OMG, I thought we were just talking hitters, I can't believe the Zips does not have pitcher BAA spits (?!).

I think he said he was still adding some splits. Like I said some of the results have been strange.

ah, thanks.....

Have we talked about which build we're going to go with, assuming that ZiPS winds up being acceptable? I think I read that he's targeting March 15 for the build that is supposed to be the real deal for the season. I assume that that will be what we'd use, particularly if there aren't even splits for a lot of players currently.

what i particularly dont like about ZIPs is that it just seems to watered down, especially the pitchers. Some guys have 7-8-9 eras and even hitters are projected to hit .210-.220. I think DMB had much more of a middle ground and was not so far apart. It seems as though theres a lot less pitchers with good sim's then DMB had.

This thread started in June. DMB came VERY close to not having a projection disk last year. Sorry Brett, but I couldn't disagree more. There was every reason to take some time and decide "This is what we'll do if DMB doesn't produce a disk." It wouldn't mean producing our own stats, it could have been as simple as "Hey, in the event DMB chokes, we'll switch to Zips until something better comes along." But nobody took it seriously, ExCo or non-ExCo, so instead here we are less than a month from opening day wondering WTF happens next.
Would someone on ExCo please step to the plate and let us know wtf is going to happen? Make an announcement, even if it's a conditional one like "We're going to use PECOTA if they produce a d-base. Otherwise, we'll use Zips. -The ExCo"

The only thing is, I'm not sure we "should" make a final decision until we have a look at both the PECOTA and ZIPS products. We've now seen the early run of the ZIPS product.....kind of what we expected, still lots of changes need to be made to it to get it up to par, as far as splits go.

I don't and I'm not sure if anyone else does have a good idea what the PECOTA product will look like? Did they produce one last season? Anyway we could get access to last year's product if they did produce one?

Now if the ExCo wants to come out and say, if PECOTA's product isn't up to par with ZIPS, then we'll use ZIPS, however I just don't think we can make the final decision until we've seen both finished products and then everyone can vote on it.

From what I've read PECOTA might put out a disk. Even if people are dead set on waiting until BP decides whether or not they're going to produce one, everyone should familiarize themselves with the ZIPS disk. I put together a quick and dirty DB last night and I'll send it to whoever wants a copy.