H2H Daily Projections Suggestion

mymaus  5/18/2013 11:04 PM

How do you determine start days for starting pitchers for H2H Daily projections. Do you assume that a SP pitches once every 5 games (i.e. if you don't count days off and you assume a manager isn't going to skip someone int he rotation)? Do you use this assumption or do you guys actually look at each team's rotation and try to guess on skipping starts based on injuries etc. If the former then is there anyway you could go ahead and project starts further than 10 days out? Maybe you could mark those starts with a yellow dot (indicating caution"start is based on best guess). I'd like you to apply those starting pitcher best guess starts to the hitter adjustments too -- or at least have the option to do that.

Better yet....on the pitcher projections only I would love the abiltiy  to have your system add the projections in for any day I put a check by, whether you project it as a start or not. That would allow me to do my own analysis of whether a pitcher is going to start. It would also allow for last minite changes that your sources haven't caught up with yet. I could use this to project H2H matchups 2-3 weeks out. I know its introducing risk, 

mymaus  5/18/2013 11:08 PM

By the way...your source has the Tuesday 5/28 game between SF and Oak being played at SF. It's actually being played in Oakland.

mymaus  5/18/2013 11:14 PM

One more thing....something really strange happening with the daily projeciton of Matt Cain @Oak on 5/27. Your projections have him as a 85% chance of winning with almost 11 K's. That doesn't seem right, does it?

mbuser   5/19/2013 11:13 AM

Our data provider supplies us probable SP on a running 10-day basis. Anything beyond that would be completely unreliable and largely worthless, given the nature of things.

mymaus  5/19/2013 9:19 PM

Thanks for the reply. I agree that projecting starters beyond 10 days is risky but it is definitely not worthless especially if you take the resulting projections with a grain of salt. I (and I am sure others) would love to have the option of having your system project the game results for a pitcher for any day I put a check mark in for H2H Daily projections. I try to plan my WW pickups to accomodate more than just this coming week. I can't do that with only the next 10 days projected. I bet I can project starts out to at least 14 days with 80%+ confidence and that is certainly better than nothing.

This seems like an easy change to make. As a protection against user ingnorance you could put it as an option that you have to select in the H2H Daily settings.

mbuser   5/20/2013 12:55 AM

Guestimating the number of starts for a SP over a certain future timeframe would be less likely to be completely wrong, but assigning them to specific future days with the qualification of "assume this will not come to fruition" would be folly. How could it possibly serve a purpose for you if you agree that the information would almost certainly not be correct?

mymaus  5/20/2013 2:10 PM

I didn't say that my guestimates would "almost certainly be not correct" nor would I be assuming that "this will not come to fruition." In fact, I said I think I could project starts going out 14 days with 80%+ accuracy - especially if you consider that if I am off by just a day, there is a 33% likelihood that the pitcher is facing the same opponent. The biggest thing I would have to be careful with is 1 vs 2 start week.

I think allowing this feature would be easy to implement and certainly provide more useful information than we have now on projections for the following week. For example...if I want to look at my H2H matchup for next week (the week of 5/27),  as of today I can only see starters through 5/30 even though I'm 90% confident that the 5 SP that are in the matchup starting on Monday WILL have a second start in the week. Why not allow your great tool to be even more useful by allowing me to OPTIONALLY select days I think these pitchers will start and see how I look. That feature would allow me to paly "what if" scenarios and observe worse case/best case and make decisions this week that will effect next week. This information is VERY useful as compared to what I have right now -- which is nothing.

mbuser   5/20/2013 2:27 PM

We're talking about two different things. I was referring to your request to be able to pick any matchup on any day for the remainder of the season and have two starting pitchers designated. That isn't something that will be done.

As for extending the current probable starters, we've got with our data provider and now have extended it an additional five days. It's simply based on the prior probables but you are right that it should be reasonably accurate in most cases.

mymaus  5/20/2013 5:10 PM

Awesome as usual!