With the BtB top 50 of the next 5 years wrapping up I thought now was a good opportunity to do a few things
1. Display some summary stats about the list.
2. Provide the data set so that all of you can look at it however you want.
3. Address some specific players brought up in the comments that didn't make the list.
4. Open it up for discussion about improvements / tweaks you guys would like to see if/when we do this again next year
Before we get to those, here's the set of links in case you missed any of the pieces
Summary Statistics
First a summary by team:
| TEAM | Top 100 | Top 50 |
|---|---|---|
| ARI | 3 | 2 |
| ATL | 6 | 2 |
| BAL | 3 | 3 |
| BOS | 4 | 1 |
| CHA | 2 | 1 |
| CHN | 3 | 0 |
| CIN | 4 | 2 |
| CLE | 3 | 2 |
| COL | 6 | 5 |
| DET | 2 | 1 |
| FLO | 4 | 2 |
| HOU | 1 | 0 |
| KCA | 3 | 1 |
| LAA | 2 | 0 |
| LAN | 3 | 2 |
| MIL | 5 | 3 |
| MIN | 1 | 1 |
| NYA | 8 | 2 |
| NYN | 3 | 2 |
| OAK | 1 | 0 |
| PHI | 4 | 3 |
| PIT | 1 | 1 |
| SDN | 3 | 1 |
| SEA | 3 | 1 |
| SFN | 4 | 2 |
| SLN | 5 | 3 |
| TBA | 6 | 4 |
| TEX | 5 | 2 |
| TOR | 1 | 0 |
| WAS | 1 | 1 |
Colorado and the Rays look pretty tough going forward. The Yankees also showed well when the list expands to 100, and they'll also likely snatch up some of the other guys on the list when they become free agents. This breakdown may not track exactly with future success as it has no concept on who's on what team moving forward; however, it does give insight into team's abilities in player acquisition over the past years.
And then by 2010 age:
| 2010 Age | Top 100 | Top 50 |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | 4 | 1 |
| 21 | 1 | 1 |
| 22 | 5 | 3 |
| 23 | 11 | 7 |
| 24 | 13 | 7 |
| 25 | 10 | 5 |
| 26 | 14 | 10 |
| 27 | 16 | 8 |
| 28 | 4 | 1 |
| 29 | 5 | 3 |
| 30 | 5 | 2 |
| 31 | 6 | 0 |
| 32 | 1 | 0 |
| 33 | 3 | 1 |
| 34 | 1 | 1 |
| 35 | 1 | 0 |
I'd say this distribution looks more or less as it should. Given that the offensive aging curve peaks at 27, you'd expect to see a cluster of players a few years before that age.
And finally by ranking
| Rank | AVG WAR |
|---|---|
| 1-10 | 30.2 |
| 11-20 | 24.6 |
| 21-30 | 21.8 |
| 31-40 | 20.7 |
| 41-50 | 18.1 |
| 51-60 | 16.9 |
| 61-70 | 16 |
| 71-80 | 15.1 |
| 81-90 | 14.4 |
| 91-100 | 13.7 |
The largest gap exists between the top 10 and then next ten, and from there is fairly constant.
If you want to see a breakout by position you'll have to either do it yourself using the link below, or better yet get the BtB Newsletter in which Sky will be expounding on the position breakdown.
Data
The link to the data set is forthcoming. Apparently Google Docs is blocked on the computer I'm using right now, when it hadn't been previously. I'll update here when I post the file. A caveat, relievers are not correct as I just realized I never went back to apply some sort of LI. There RA is right though, so you can still use that.
UPDATE: Link to data (it's not all players just the top ~250ish, I'll link to all in a few days as a few files got corrupted and I have to recreate them)
Thoughts on Individual Players
A couple of guys that came up in the discussion were Ubaldo Jimenez and everyone's current darling Stephen Strasburg. Based on information leading up to this year, Ubaldo didn't crack the top 100 (109th); however, Sean just posted updated projections that lowered Ubaldo's ERA almost half a run. That would put him 3rd among pitchers, right behind Lincecum. As for Strasburg, CHONE didn't have a preseason projection for him, so he wasn't included in the data behind the series. I thought about going to a different system for him, but didn't think that would be a great idea as we'd be comparing red apples to green apples at that point. However just to give you a feel for things, the Book Blog readers just gave his mean projections (via a poll) to be around a 3.35 ERA. That's just ahead of Ubaldo, assuming a similar innings level, and likely makes him a top 20ish player going forward. If you side with the most optimistic projection, THTs Oliver, who has him in the low to mid 2s then he'd likely fall near the top 10.
Moving Forward
Now that the series is completed, what do you think we can do to improve it? Suggestions can be either on the methodology side or the presentation side. A couple that come to my mind are
1. Run the series before the current season starts. I think that would be better timing, but maybe not. What do you all think?
2. Continue to tweak the methodology, especially the playing time estimates.
Finally, many thanks and kudos go out to Satchel for writing all of the pieces. He did all the heavy lifting and deserves all the credit for how well the series turned out. I, on the other hand, will be glad to take all of the blame for your favorite player not making the list :)