Projections On the Cheap

As I mentioned previously, in last week's Schrodinger's Bat I took a stab at the biggest booms and busts in baseball history for hitters. Over the weekend I posted a followup up on BP's Unfiltered that looked at Brady Anderson in 1996, Adrian Beltre in 2004, Magglio Ordonez in 2007, and Juan Gonzalez in 1994 at the behest of readers.

In writing that post I was looking at projections for individuals and thought I'd post the results of three players. Pete Rose, whose projections were fairly close, Willie Mays who was in the middle of the pack in terms of standard deviation of the difference between the actual and projected, and Rogers Hornsby who came down on the high side, in part because of his 1926 season when the projection had him at an NOPS/PF of 151 when he came in at 116.

Keep in mind these projections are based on a three-year weighted average, regressed to the mean, and are age and league adjusted (as well as park adjusted).