Knuckle Curve » cal ripken http://www.everyjoe.com/knucklecurve Major League Baseball News from Spring Training to the World Series Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:55:57 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 More Fun with Career Projections http://www.everyjoe.com/knucklecurve/more-fun-with-career-projections/ http://www.everyjoe.com/knucklecurve/more-fun-with-career-projections/#comments Sun, 03 Feb 2008 04:10:20 +0000 Geoff Young http://www.knucklecurve.com/more-fun-with-career-projections/ Post from: Knuckle Curve

]]> While I’m waiting for Puppy Bowl IV to arrive, I thought I’d flip through the STATS 1997 Baseball Scoreboard for inspiration. I’ve already used this source to re-examine Barry Bonds and now I see that there are a few more projections in here.

This time we’re looking at projected career hits. Specifically we’re looking at the players who were judged at that time most likely to reach 3000 hits. Let’s compare projected with actual, shall we?

Career Hits, Projected pre-’97 vs Actual post-’07
Player Proj Act Diff
Cal Ripken Jr. 3166 3184 +18
Tony Gwynn 3139 3141 +2
Wade Boggs 3025 3010 -15
Roberto Alomar 2803 2724 -79
Rafael Palmeiro 2672 3020 +348
Chuck Knoblauch 2509 1839 -670
Frank Thomas 2355 2409 +54
Marquis Grissom 2328 2251 -77
Alex Rodriguez 2151 2250 +99

Points worth noting:

  • Those projections for Ripken, Gwynn, and Boggs are almost perfect; the Alomar and Grissom projections aren’t bad either.
  • Estimates for Palmeiro turned out to be very low, while those for Knoblauch are very high. Through age 30, Knoblauch posted numbers comparable to those of Lou Whitaker. After that, Knoblauch turned into Kevin Stocker. Ouch.
  • A-Rod provides yet another reminder of why it’s dangerous to work with such small samples. He’d had precisely one full big-league season under his belt when these projections were published. Granted, it was a great season, but the fact remains that he’s blown past his career projection and he’s still in his prime. A-Rod is looking like a real good bet to finish at the top of the above list.

Just a little something to contemplate…

Post from: Knuckle Curve

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