Monday, January 12, 2009
Jaffe vs. the BBWAA
Posted by Dave StudemanOur own Chris Jaffe did a fine job of predicting the Hall of Fame results, correctly forecasting that Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice would make it, and Andre Dawson and Bert Blyleven would fall short. I'm sure he'll brag about this himself, but here's a close look at his predictions vs. the actual voting:
Player Actual Jaffe Diff Rickey! 95% 99% -4% Jim Rice 76% 85% -9% Andre Dawson 67% 71% -4% Bert Blyleven 63% 69% -6% Lee Smith 45% 47% -3% Jack Morris 44% 45% -1% Tommy John 32% 33% -1% Tim Raines 23% 19% 4% Mark McGwire 22% 23% -1% Alan Trammell 17% 21% -4% Dave Parker 15% 16% -1% Don Mattingley 12% 17% -5% Dale Murphy 12% 15% -4% Harold Baines 6% 5% 1% Mark Grace 4% 4% 0%As you can see, the BBWAA writers were more choosy than Chris thought they would be. In particular, Rice barely made it past the 75% qualifying hurdle. One other interesting point: Tim Raines didn't decline as much as Chris thought he would.
That's really nitpicking, though. Kudos to Chris for his predictions. Let's just skip the actual voting next time.
Dave was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail.