Rejecting My Projecting

[DOUGHBOYS]

Last night, I had a lot of spare time. The wife was out, no baseball on tv, I'm up to date on studying, nothing to do.
So, I leafed through a copy of Lindys. My attitude on publications has done a 180 since being a Yahoo Kid. Then, I would comb through every number, every sentence, every page looking for clues in how these guys 'really' felt. I would even change some of my own rankings to keep them more in line with what these insiders knew.
It took experience to find out that these folks had the same info as I did. I 'pedestaled' them because they wrote in a National publication.
Now, when leafing through a publication, I am looking for things I did not know. Facts, not opinion. When reading the opinions, I now question their thoughts, instead of changing mine. They still serve a purpose. In some ways it brings baseball season that much closer if there is a baseball magazine on the shelf. MLB is really missing out by not printing a 12 month a year baseball/fantasy magazine. I know a lot of the information will be old by the time it reaches our hands and that is why it would be a combo of baseball/fantasy. I know I'd buy a subscription and I think there are enough folks like me out there that would.

While leafing through the magazine and seeing projections, I thought I'd try my hand at doing a few projections myself. I've never been a projections guy and after doing three of my own, I realized that, for me, it is a waste of time. I just don't believe in what I'm putting down. I write down Miguel Cabrera at .320/100/35/120/2. It was already pretty much in my mind, why complicate things more at a draft by seeing those numbers. It's probably just me.
To me, projections are the practice of taking reliable numbers from the past and making them unreliable for the future.
Sure, we can factor in changes such as Prince hitting beside Miggy and adjust numbers, but our minds eye does that already too.

On the practical side, we gravitate to even numbers. We never think of a 29-29 guy, it has to be 30-30. Willie Mays was a 35-35 guy two years in a row. I never hear about that, but I do hear about Canseco doing 40-40 once, and he had help from 'Mothers Little Helper' (for you Stones fans).
Naturally, most of our projections will have even numbers. I looked back at my 'projections' and 11 of 15 numbers were even. For Cabrera, all five. Unless spit out of a computer program, I'd bet that most projections have more even numbers than odd.

Projections themselves are useful for some folks. They need to visualize numbers in each categories to hit targets. I understand this as a draft tool.
For me, I'd rather look at others and judge, than create my own.
Which works well for writers in publications.