A Look Back at Forecasting the 2018 Right Fielders

A while back, predictions were made on who would be the best right fielders in baseball for the 2018 MLB season.  I decided to see how I would stack up against the Shredder, as well as seven other analysts (in this case, fans will be counted as one entity), to see how well my predictions would go for that year.

So in this case, we will be looking at my forecast (Alan Lu), Bill James, Mike Petriello, Vince Gennaro, Ben Lindbergh, Brian Kenny, Cliff Floyd, and fans from social media to see who we picked.  Twitter had not mentioned Andrew McCutchen as a candidate to be selected for right field, so I did not know I could select him for that position there, and because of that, he also was not included on The Shredder's or the fans list.   

2018 Right Fielders:

This was the third list that they had put out, as I had tweeted out my right fielders' list on January 12th, 2018.  With this table below, here is who everybody had forecasted for the 2018 MLB Season:

2018 RF	Alan Lu	Shredder	James	Petriello	Gennaro	Lindbergh	Kenny	Floyd	Fans	fWAR	FWAR Rank
Mookie Betts	1	3	1	3	5	1	4	5	3	10.4	1
J.D. Martinez	5	5	5	5	4	5	5	3	8	5.9	2
Aaron Judge	4	1	2	2	1	4	2	2	2	5.1	3
Mitch Haniger	10	9	15	10	15	7	15	15	15	4.5	4
Giancarlo Stanton	3	2	3	4	3	2	3	1	4	4.3	5
Bryce Harper	2	4	4	1	2	3	1	4	1	3.4	6
Nicholas Castellanos	15	15	10	15	15	15	15	15	15	3.0	7
Andrew McCutchen	15	15	7	15	6	6	6	7	15	2.7	8
Jason Heyward	15	15	15	15	15	15	15	15	6	2.0	9
Yasiel Puig	15	15	15	7	7	9	8	10	5	1.8	10
Josh Reddick	15	6	9	15	15	10	15	9	15	1.1	11
Domingo Santana	15	8	8	9	10	8	15	15	15	0.7	12
Avisail Garcia	9	7	6	8	15	15	9	6	10	0.1	13
Jay Bruce	15	15	15	15	15	15	10	8	7	0.1	13
Kole Calhoun	7	15	15	15	15	15	15	15	9	0	15
Steven Souza Jr.	8	15	15	5	15	15	15	15	15	-0.4	16
Aaron Altherr	15	15	15	15	8	15	15	15	15	-0.5	17
Dexter Fowler	6	10	15	15	9	15	7	15	15	-1.1	18
Difference Estimator	85	71	55	72	73	45	71	61	77
Yr Rank	9	4	2	6	7	1	4	3	8

So, you may ask, how did I do?

....

At first glance, it seemed like I did alright.  I correctly picked who the best right fielder would be for the 2018 MLB season, Mookie Betts, and I had picked 6 of the top 10 finishers in that position among players who were ranked in the top ten at one point by analysts.

However, on another viewing, my list wasn't as good as it could've been.  I also picked a handful of players that ended up having down seasons, such as Dexter Fowler, whose falling out with Mike Matheny and season-ended injury negatively impacted his 2018 season, Steven Souza Jr. had a very bad season in which no team brought him back in 2019, and Kole Calhoun and Avisail Garcia all had lackluster years in 2018.

The Shredder seemed to do a fairly average of making its selections here.  It didn't get the top player right, as it had picked Aaron Judge instead of Mookie Betts, but like me, it had correctly picked 6 of the top 10 finishers in that position.  While they also had a handful of players who missed the top 10 in Fangraphs WAR in Josh Reddick, Domingo Santana, Avisail Garcia, and Dexter Fowler, there misses weren't as big as mine, as I had banked heavily on Dexter Fowler, Kole Calhoun, and Steven Souza Jr., whom unfortunately turned in some of the worst performances among right fielders in the 2018 season.

The big winner in predicting right fielders for the 2018 season was Ben Lindbergh, who is a writer at the Ringer.  Like me, he correctly picked Mookie Betts to finish as the season's best right fielder in 2018.  But he also correctly identified Andrew McCutchen and Yasiel Puig as others that would finish in the top 10 among right fielders out of those that were ranked in the top 10 lists by an analyst.  He didn't have any big misses, as Josh Reddick and Domingo Santana came relatively close to cracking the list than some of the other outfielders that were predicted to fare well that year.

In looking at how well people overall had picked right fielders, they tended to be closer in forecasting them than any other position for the 2018 season.  People didn't seem to be far off in making their selections, as most had over half of their picks to turn out successfully that year.
....

In terms of how I did, I think some of my picks were good, but there were definitely others that I would've liked to have taken back.  My Betts pick to be #1 turned out to be correct, but several of my other choices fared poorly in 2018.  I would grade my forecasting of 2018 right fielders to be a D+.  To sum it up in other words, my picks in this category did not tend to pan out as well as I hoped that year.  Better luck next time.

For the entire list, you can view it from Brewers Nation.   (It's kind of ironic, since I'm a St. Louis Cardinals' fan, but in this case, they did a good job of recapping what happened for all of the top 10 lists.) 

Thank you for reading, and you can give me a follow on Twitter at @AlanLuSTL.  

Revisiting The 2018 Third Basemen Rankings' Forecasts

The next list I decided to re-assess was the 2018 third basemen rankings, and forecasting how well they would play during that season.  I decided to see how well my predictions measured compared to the other analysts from the MLB Network and fans of social media alike, which included the Shredder, Bill James, Mike Petriello, Vince Gennaro, Ben Linbergh, Brian Kenny, Mike Lowell, and fans from social media.  Counting fans as one entity, this means I was comparing how well I had performed that year in forecasting third basemen to eight other analysts.

So in essence....how did I fare overall, compared to the Shredder, and to the other analysts?  Let's see for ourselves.

2018 Third Basemen:

This was the second list that they had put out, as I had tweeted out my third basemen list on January 8th, 2018.  For everyone else's list, you can read it through Brewers Nation, or find out on this table below:

2018 3B	Alan Lu	Shredder	James	Petriello	Gennaro	Lindbergh	Kenny	Lowell	Fans	fWAR	FWAR Rank
Jose Ramirez	7	7	2	3	4	7	8	4	5	8.0	1
Alex Bregman	8	9	5	8	8	8	5	8	6	7.6	2
Manny Machado	4	8	10	5	7	2	6	7	2	6.2	3
Anthony Rendon	6	5	1	6	6	5	7	9	9	6.2	3
Nolan Arenado	2	2	4	4	1	4	2	1	1	5.7	5
Justin Turner	5	4	7	7	3	6	4	5	4	4.2	6
Eugenio Suarez	15	15	15	10	15	15	15	15	15	3.9	7
Travis Shaw	15	15	8	15	15	15	15	15	15	3.6	8
Mike Moustakas	15	15	15	15	15	15	15	15	10	2.4	9
Kris Bryant	1	1	3	2	2	1	1	2	3	2.3	10
Kyle Seager	9	10	9	15	15	10	10	15	15	1.5	11
Josh Donaldson	3	3	6	1	5	3	3	3	7	1.3	12
Adrian Beltre	10	6	15	9	9	9	9	6	8	1.1	13
Zack Cozart	15	15	15	15	10	15	15	15	15	0.3	14
Jake Lamb	15	15	15	15	15	15	15	10	15	0.3	14
Difference Estimator	66	74	48	60	72	62	68	78	60
Yr Rank	5	8	1	2	7	4	6	9	2

......

In reflecting back at my predictions, it's safe to say, that I did a fairly mediocre job at making these picks.  Perhaps only my Manny Machado pick at having him be a top 5 performer at this position may have helped me in relation to the other analysts, but the benefit seemed to be minimal as Ben Lindbergh, Mike Petriello, and fans from social media also had him in the top 5.

Unfortunately, I had rated Jose Ramirez lower than plenty of other anaysts, and he finished tops amongs players that were ranked by analysts at this position.  While everyone was more or less equally punished for predicting Kris Bryant and Josh Donaldson to fare well as they had underperformed in 2018, it didn't help my case that I had also rated Kyle Seager and Adrian Beltre to be top ten finishers when they did not do so that year.

For the Shredder, this marks another instance where they finished near the bottom in predictive power.  Their list was actually similar to mine, but the Shredder had underrated Jose Ramirez, Alex Bregman, and Manny Machado, while drastically over-rating Kris Bryant, Josh Donaldson, and Adrian Beltre in 2018.


This list suggested that famed sabermetrician and former Boston Red Sox statistical analyst Bill James had the best list among all of the analysts here, with fans from social media and Mike Petriello beind tied for second place.

Bill James had banked on Travis Shaw finishing in the top ten among players at this position, which he did amongst third basemen that were ranked by analysts.  He also bet big on Anthony Rendon and Jose Ramirez, and he was rewarded by both of them in having very good seasons respectively in 2018.  While most people were punished for picking Adrian Beltre in the top ten, he had the good fortunes to not pick him on his list, as James had correctly forecasted a decline in Beltre's performance for the 2018 season.

In terms of how everyone did, people seemed to do a decent job of projecting performances of third basemen for the 2018 season.  It was right around the middle of the bell curve, but most people accurately projected at least six players to finish in the top 10 (among players that were ranked by one of the analysts on this list).

For the 2018 third basemen list, in judging how I forecasted third basemen for the 2018 season, I would give myself a C.  I don't think my list was anything spectacular, but it didn't seem entirely unreasonable, either.  It was a run of the mill list, as suggested by its 5th place among 9 analysts.  I did predict 6 of the top Fangraphs WAR players at the 3B position in 2018, but so did everyone else, and I didn't really have a true sleeper pick nailed down to separate myself to be above the rest of the pack in that category.

Looking Back At My 2018 Top 10 Shortstop Rankings' Forecasts

The MLB Network's top 10 countdown lists always intrigued me.  They have sabermetric panelists, former baseball players, fans, and other analysts alike debating on who would fare the best in the upcoming season, and when I first heard of "The Shredder," it sounded like a smart, sophisticated way to evaluate baseball players, as it was a computer-based system that forecasts them solely without emotion.

Nearly a couple of years ago, I decided to make my own top 10 lists of which baseball players would be the best at their positions.  I wanted to see how my lists would compare against The Shredder and other experts, and whether or not if The Shredder actually had much predictive power, or if it was another theoretical, hit or miss system.  Analytical systems are not going to be perfect, and everything has its strengths and flaws.  I also wanted to see how well my picks would hold up throughout the season.

With thanks to Brewers Nation and my old Twitter posts from when I used the hashtag #Top10RightNow, I was able to re-visit the past to see how my lists stacked up against the other panelists and fans from social media.

So in its entirety, I will be evaluating my own picks (Alan Lu), the Shredder itself, Bill James, Mike Petriello, Vince Gennaro, Ben Lindberg, Brian Kenny, the Expert they brought in for the specific list that day, and fans on social media in general.  Counting fans as one entity, and the random baseball expert as another, in total, I would be nine analysts' forecasts throughout the 2018 baseball season.

To gauge at the best forecasts, I decided to look at all the picks that were made, and use the absolute value from our picks, and from how players actually performed via Fangraphs WAR that season to gauge the difference amongst all the players that were ranked.  Then to see how well everyone did in relation to predicting players overall, I decided to look at the average difference per player.  It's not a perfect system, but hey, this shall suffice, I guess.

So in essence....how did I fare overall, compared to the Shredder, and to the other analysts?  Let's see for ourselves.

2018 Shortstops:

This was the first list that they had put out, as I had tweeted out my shortstop list on January 7th, 2018.  For everyone else's list, you can read it through Brewers Nation, or find out on this table below:

2018 SS	Alan Lu	Shredder	James	Petriello	Gennaro	Lindbergh	Kenny	Reynolds	Fans	fWAR	FWAR Rank
Francisco Lindor	2	3	3	1	2	3	3	1	1	7.6	1
Andrelton Simmons	6	5	4	4	5	4	5	7	5	5.4	2
Trevor Story	15	9	15	10	15	15	15	15	15	5.1	3
Xander Bogaerts	4	15	8	8	15	6	6	9	10	4.9	4
Trea Turner	5	4	6	7	9	5	4	6	8	4.8	5
Didi Gregorius	9	15	7	5	4	8	10	3	3	4.7	6
Jean Segura	15	6	15	15	15	10	9	15	15	3.7	7
Paul DeJong	8	7	15	15	6	15	15	10	15	3.3	8
Brandon Crawford	7	15	15	15	10	9	8	8	15	2	9
Carlos Correa	3	1	2	2	1	1	1	2	2	1.6	10
Addison Russell	10	15	15	9	7	15	15	15	7	1.4	11
Elvis Andrus	15	8	5	6	8	7	7	5	9	1.2	12
Corey Seager	1	2	1	3	3	2	2	4	4	0.5	13
J.P. Crawford	15	15	15	15	15	15	15	15	6	0.3	14
Orlando Arcia	15	15	10	15	15	15	15	15	15	-0.4	15
Tim Beckham	15	10	9	15	15	15	15	15	15	-0.5	16
Difference Estimator	55	75	87	65	73	61	65	67	81
Yr Rank	1	7	9	3	6	2	3	5	8

......
So on first glimpse, my pick of Corey Seager to be the number one shortstop of the 2018 season was a bust, as he ended up getting injured early on, and missed the rest of the season with a Tommy John injury.  So it appears that I was not off to a great start.

But things then get interesting.  I correctly predicted Xander Bogearts and Trea Turner to end up in the top 5 among candidates that were ranked, and I also managed to correctly pick Paul DeJong and Brandon Crawford as top 10 finishers among those that were chosen by one analyst.  While everyone else had decided to pick Elvis Andrus, I did not, and leaving him off the top 10 list turned out to be a smart move, as he did not finish in the top 10 among players on this list.

For the Shredder, everyone seemed to be nearly equally punished for picking Corey Seager and Carlos Correa high, as heavy expectations were placed upon them, so that was not a huge detriment there.  Also, they had correctly identified Trevor Story as a player that would be a top 10 finisher amongst shortstops, as he turned in a very good season.

However, the Shredder left off Xander Bogaerts, who turned out to be a very good performer in the 2018 season, and leaving off Didi Gregorious also turned out to be a bad decision for the Shredder.  They also had predicted Elvis Andrus and Tim Beckham to be top 10 finishers at the shortstop position, but their relative lackluster years also hurt the Shredder's predictive score on this list.

In terms of how well everyone predicted 2018 shortstops in relation to the other categories, the data seemed to suggest it was around the middle of the bell curve.  Everyone rated Carlos Correa and Corey Seager too high, with good reason as both are very good players, but neither fared quite as well as anticipated.  Most people rated Elvis Andrus too high, but also most people had Francisco Lindor, Andrelton Simmons, and Trea Turner in the right range.

In judging how I did versus the Shredder in predicting 2018 shortstops, I think I did better than I thought I would have.  It's not a perfect list, but managing to predict Xander Bogaerts, Trea Turner, Didi Gregorius, and Paul DeJong to fare well boded well for my score here.

I think I'd give myself a solid B for how I did in terms of my 2018 shortstops forecast.

Call For A Celebration! My New Album Is Available In Stores!

Hello readers!

I would like to inform you that my 3rd album, Call For A Celebration from The Offseason Hobbyist is available online for you to listen to.

I encourage you to give this a listen and a spin, and I think that there are a lot of good songs on this album waiting for you to listen to.

Here is where you can listen to this:

Spotify
Amazon Music Unlimited
YouTube
Apple Music/iTunes
Napster
Google Play
iHeart Radio
Deezer
WiMP


For my fans!  Here's a couple of places for you to listen to my music.

Thank you, and hope you guys enjoy listening to my new album.

The Offseason Hobbyist's Fun Elevator Music CD on Amazon

Just a reminder....

My first album, Fun Elevator Music is back!!!!

You can buy my Fun Elevator Music CD on Amazon, as it features the original 16 songs, including a bonus three songs, as two of them were featured on Nina Stakz' short film, "Smoke Out" via Onyx Theory Arts on YouTube, and my music video also can be found here on YouTube: Gut Instincts (The Extended Version).

My Amazon CD link: https://www.amazon.com/Fun-Elevator-Music-Offseason-Hobbyist/dp/B07GP1RG3F

My album, Fun Elevator Music was re-released on September 13th online through Routenote.  Just another thing...

Fun Elevator Music is back online in stores!

Here's the list of stores you can find this at:
Spotify
iTunes/Apple Music
TIDAL
Deezer
Amazon
Amazon Music Unlimited
YouTube
iHeart Radio
Google Play
JioSaavn
WiMP

I also have a new album that's dropping on September 30th.  Thanks for reading!

The Re-Release of My 1st Music Album, Fun Elevator Music, as It's Back In Stores Online

Welcome back!

I would like to inform you guys that my first album, Fun Elevator Music is back online and in stores such as Spotify, iTunes/Apple Music, YouTube, TIDAL, Deezer, iHeartRadio, Napster, and so forth.  It was originally released through Stem Disintermedia on August 31st, 2018, and now it is back for you guys to listen to, as I have now re-released it through Routenote, as this is a 13-song version of this album.

The Offseason Hobbyist's "Fun Elevator Music" is back online in stores!

Here's the list of stores you can find this at:
Spotify
iTunes/Apple Music
TIDAL
Deezer
Amazon
Amazon Music Unlimited
YouTube
iHeart Radio
Google Play
JioSaavn
WiMP

Also, you can buy my physical CD on Amazon, as it contains all 16 of my original songs, including your favorites that were included on Nina Stakz' Smoke Out Soundtrack.
Amazon CD Link: https://www.amazon.com/Fun-Elevator-Music-Offseason-Hobbyist/dp/B07GP1RG3F

Curiously though, it's release date weirdly says "January 1st, 2018," when it should have said, "August 31st, 2018," but minor quibbles aside, let's move on.

I did leave three of my original songs off the album to cut it from 16 to 13, as I did not want to take chances in having those songs potentially being in a copyright claim dispute, since I had lent them earlier to a short film in mid-April of 2018 before I decided that I wanted to release and kickstart my first music album.

I know some of you guys will be bummed out that I decided to not put three of my more popular songs on the re-release, as one particular song, "Dreamt That It'd Be Something Like This" was especially a hit with my fans, but this will be a chance for you guys to listen to the rest of the tracks, and the two songs from me are exclusively in the short film, "Smoke Out" by Onyx Theory Arts from director Nina Stakz on YouTube (songs then made under my actual name, Alan Lu) are still up on the web for you guys to hear forever.

Still, this album marks a celebration of the songs I made early in my music career, and this won't be the last album you'll probably see in stores.  There also may be another album coming in late September, so for my fans, hopefully you guys will stick around for that.

____
9/13/19 Update: My album, "Fun Elevator Music" went from being approved to be being back in review, because I wanted to change the original release date from the incorrect date of January 1st, 2018 to its correct release date of August 31st, 2018.

9/17/19 Update:  Routenote approved of the changes, and now it should read as August 31st, 2018 as being the original release date, as that was when I had initially released this album when I was with Stem.

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9/17/19 Thoughts:

This summer, me and my team at NBA Scouting Live have been busy trying to integrate Ezoic, and the process has been....hellish to say the least.

We've been trying to accommodate them to be able to use their software, as we went through a tedious and rigorous web hosting migration, as we changed web hosts from Wix to Siteground, as we had to manually re-upload nearly all of our old posts and re-link it for functionality's sake, and there's been issues in trying to finish the integration as we've had servers and SSL certificate/private key file issues, and the most frustrating part of all of this, is when we try to follow the steps, and the tutorial skips steps, and we're left trying to pick up the pieces to finish the installation.

We had two good years at running our site on Wix, and we had a good run with them, but unfortunately, we felt like it was time to say goodbye to them in the midst of the web migration process, but hopefully you guys will like our work with Siteground as the new web host.

It hasn't been an easy process for any of us, and it upsets me whenever the site is down, as it has happened a couple of times due to change-over and implementation issues.  There's no telling if our site in the future will use Ezoic, and we're working with a fairly tight budget, as the programmers we've met with have either had outrageous demands, or were unreliable and didn't commit to work with us.

It's been a trying time right now.  At NBA Scouting Live, we run a small operation, and we're hoping that over time, we'll be able to expand and grow.  Figuring out how exactly to do that has been an area of difficulty, but through the ups and downs, and the curveballs we get thrown in life, hopefully this will all work out for all for us.
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Thank you, and thanks for reading.