The Other Fifteen

Closest by Baseball-Reference.com similarity scores, anyway.

First off, credit for this idea goes to Harry Pavlidis, or at least credit for stealing it.

Second - this is junk analysis. I know that B-Ref does their sim scores in fluky ways, and they don't have a lot of the things (like height and weight) in there that you'd really like to have for this sort of analysis, much less something like sim scores. And I chose four players mostly because that's what made the graph look clean enough. So take this with a massive grain of salt. It's mostly a curiosity, like the geek show at the circus.

And I'm using OPS+, because it's cheap and its available. Average is a weighted average of Theriot and his four comps; the weight is plate appearances. [Weighted average, in this case, will tend to slightly overrate better players in our "sample" and underrate worse players. Again: junk analysis.]

A few notes on interpreting this graph: players are listed in order of their Theriotness, as judged by sim scores; Ryan Theriot is the most Theriot of any of them, and Buddy Rosar is the least Theriot.

Just going by his four top comps, we'd expect Theriot's OPS+ next season to be about 85. Again, take with a grain of salt.

And we can take a look at the same four players, this time by plate appearances:

Again, just going by his four top comps, we'd expect Ryan Theriot's playing time to drop to about 490 plate appearances; more of a super-sub than a starter. Again, take with a grain of salt.

What have we learned from all of this?

1. I like graphs.
2. Ryan Theriot is a white Tony Womack, according to B-Ref.
3. I like graphs a lot.

But mostly, I like graphs.

Labels: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Projections, Ryan Theriot