In a November ’06 blog entry, ESPN’s Keith Law revealed a lot of good info about how Elias determines whether a free agent is Type A, Type B, or neither.
Keith was kind enough to reveal some additional info to me. This will help us immensely in trying to guess types before they come out. Everyone thank him and read his stuff at ESPN.
First let’s start with the positions Elias uses. All players (not just free agents) are put into one of five groups as seen below. Position is designated as the position at which the player appeared the most over the last two seasons.
- Group 1: first basemen, outfielders, and designated hitters
- Group 2: second basemen, third basemen, and shortstops
- Group 3: catchers
- Group 4: starters
- Group 5: relievers
Here are the stat categories used for each of the five position groups.
- 1B/OF/DH: PA, AVG, OBP, HR, RBI
- 2B/3B/SS: PA, AVG, OBP, HR, RBI, Fielding percentage, Total chances at designated position
- C: PA, AVG, OBP, HR, RBI, Fielding percentage, Assists
- SP: Total games (total starts + 0.5 * total relief appearances), IP, Wins, W-L Percentage, ERA, Strikeouts
- RP: Total games (total relief appearances + 2 * total starts), IP (weighted slightly less than other categories), Wins + Saves, IP/H ratio, K/BB, ERA
That is our starting point; I need to somehow get all players into the right position groups while listing all the appropriate stats for the 2006-07 seasons. Then we can worry about adjusting for time spent on the DL and normalizing it to make 100 the top score for each position. If anyone has all of this data in a spreadsheet and wants to help, drop me a line.
