Balance of Year Projections

[GoldenEagle]

I'm in favor of the pennies, too. Not that I'm likely to make a big decision based on less than $1, and I realize the limitations of SGP to start with, but the pennies are quite helpful when doing historical research, graphs, comparisons, etc. to have the hundreds of values "smoothed" (closer to linear) rather than "artificially flat" (step-linear) within dollar ranges.

[NICK@HQ]

Why would it hurt you to have them on there? You can just ignore them.

But you don't. Your brain sees those numbers and reacts to them in inappropriate ways. If you see a player is worth $15-19, you can easily view them as being worth 15 or 19 or even 21 or 13, and that is all basically correct. But if you see $15.39, you hesitate to even go to $16 since you see the .39 and think you should round down. Yet he's still a $13-$21 play! Those extra digits fool you into thinking that projections can be more precise than is possible.

Now I'm not complaining about your desire to get those meaningless decimals put back in. Go for it. I hope it works out. But I will never view them as having any meaning because I don't think even $15 is meaningful. I'm reaching the point where I only want $5 ranges of values for players as being anything that contains even close to real life accuracy.

[davper]

Lefty Specialist made a good point above that I don't want to see get lost in the pennys.

Are the projections going to get updated based on current factors? Subtracting to date actual from full year projection is not really a great tool. The projection might have been based on him batting 7th in the order. If he is now batting 5th, shouldn't his projections be altered?

[RON@HQ]

All projections are balance of season numbers, which are then added to YTD data to create the full season lines. Balance numbers always take into account relevant changes to a player's skill and playing time.

[Tom_T]

I think there's an error, though. The "Balance of Season" projections appear to be the numbers for the full year. For example, in today's file, Pujols has 10 HR YTD, but his balance-of-season projection is 46. That's the full-year number.

[Whistler]

And, using the Pujols example, the player projections for Pujols show YTD HR total of 10, balance of 46, total projection of 56.

[Dish]

Coming off my Friday donut sugar high, and particulary grouchy...

I see the same error. I would be less upset if I haven't been waiting all week for HQ to get the 'bugs out' of their updates, so I could update all the material I have based on HQ's historical sheet format.

Last year the valuator, this year the projections files. I understand that everything has bugs and kinks, but couldn't there have been more off-season testing?

[RON@HQ]

It's tough to test daily projections updates in the off-season. But it all should be fixed now.

[Dish]

I'll feel better if/when Nick (in his other thread) feels better.

[timg]

It's tough to test daily projections updates in the off-season.

I would have imagined you have years of data. You might have, for instance, tested on the 2005 data.

Not that any of these problems have bothered me, the excuse justseemed a bit lame.

[RON@HQ]

That's not really fair. We do not make these numbers up ourselves. We have to rely on an outside service to provide daily updates, which is something we never had before. That feed has to be integrated into a new process that we have designed. There is no 2005 data to test with because we did not have the feed back then.

[Dish]

I think the move to daily updates will be very cool, just as I liked the upgrades to the valuator from last year. The problem is, these kinks come at the worst possible time. Selfishly, my first free agency interval begins in a day, and now I don't know what to make of the projections files, for what is usually the most critical FA interval of the year. I can accept a work in progress, but just plain wrong stuff (as Nick and co. have pointed out) is really frustrating.

[Michael@HQ]

Subscribers don't like bugs at any time.

If we're going to have bugs, this strikes me as the best possible time, after everyone is done with their drafts but early enough in the season that most folks are doing very many transactions yet but instead letting their team ride and seeing what they've got for a month or so.

[NICK@HQ]

Yup. Bugs is bugs, and they stink any ol' time, but it's the nature of this sort of change. I'm also enjoying the new stuff and looking forward to the future upgrades.

That said, it's in the nature of my weekly spreadsheet analysis that I'm going to notice all of the changes to the projections. That means I tend to catch a lot of these bugs as they happen. Ron & co, is there an email address you would prefer I send these bug reports to, instead of posting them in the message boards? I'm trying to let others know as well, and only when I'm pretty sure this really is a bug. But if you have a hotline email route to your tech team, I'd be happy to do that instead.

[RON@HQ]

If we're going to have bugs, this strikes me as the best possible time, after everyone is done with their drafts but early enough in the season that most folks are doing very many transactions yet but instead letting their team ride and seeing what they've got for a month or so.

This was my thought. Teams should be doing more watching and less moving at this early time of year. I would never think of going through this process in June, when trading season is in full force.

Ron & co, is there an email address you would prefer I send these bug reports to, instead of posting them in the message boards?

techsupport@baseballhq.com