0 Funny RBI story courtesy of Dee-Nee.com Posted by The Duke of GaGa |

So we were browsing one of the two best RBI Baseball websites in the world and came across this post: a guy was injured while playing RBI Baseball. We'll let him tell the story in his own words:

Here is the story: My brother had to work at 3:00, so we decided to squeeze in a game of RBI. Me: Detroit, Him: Cali. Game is tied going into top of 9th. He scores 2 runs. Bottom of 9th with one out and a runner on first, I hit a routine ground ball to the shortstop and he boots it. Should have been a game ending double play. So Chet Lemon comes up next and hits a walk-off three run home run. My brother gets pissed and goes to throw the controller at the wall but ends up hitting me in the forehead with the corner of the controller and now I have a huge gash in my head with tons of bleeding. Its borderline if I should have got stiches or not, but I decided against it. Just thought I would share this unique experience to show the dangers of heated RBI battles.

We would like to thank golfer5714 for sharing this story of anticipation and excitement, followed by misery and woe; and we will now issue a warning to our blog readers to watch out for objects coming at your head. We have made some adjustments of our own and will now be wearing headgear when playing out our season, as we are too pretty to sustain any kind of facial injuries.

0 Joe Posnanski Posted by The Duke of GaGa |

The GaGa Projection System has been on Spring Break and therefore we have not posted in quite a while. We won't get into the details, but let's just say that we booked a trip to Cabo, and somehow ended up in arctic Canada. And our suitcases were full of swim trunks and spray-tan. Ouch!

Friend of the blog Joe Posnanski just wrote something about Johnny Damon, only it turns out that it wasn't about Damon, it was about the correlation between hits, getting on base, home runs, etc. and wins. What he finds is incredibly interesting: the team that out-hits its opponent wins about 80% of the time. The team that gets on base wins almost 83% of the time. And the team that hits the most home runs wins about 76% of the time. So what does this mean? First his methodology: Well we can't really say that much about Posnanski's methodology except that we trust him whole-heartedly (Joe, just tell us what you need and we'll give it to you. What? My wife? Ok, I'll send her on a plane ASAP). And now to his numbers: he seems to confirm what the saber-geeks have been telling us all along: home runs aren't the only way to manufacture runs. And how does this relate to the Mariners? Baseball "analysts" have been on their case for a while now about not bringing in a power hitter like Jason Bay. The Mariners front office and blogosphere have been saying all along that there are multiple ways to construct a lineup and score runs. What the Mariners have done, in bringing in guys like Figgins and Bradley, who can hit and get on base, can be just as valuable (or even more valuable) as breaking the bank for a guy like Bay.

So, we are about to embark on our 162 game projection season, let's see how Posnanski's findings translate into our RBI season. Any guesses on how many wins the M's will end up with? We're hoping for 132!

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2010/03/15/johnny-damon-detroit/

0 Introducing GUTI Posted by The Duke of GaGa |

Fans of the site have been asking us about defensive metrics for quite a while now. And we can now say that we have completed our study of defense and have come up with a great new system, GUTI. For those of you familiar with defensive metrics already, most notably UZR, GUTI is quite a bit different. Whereas metrics like UZR can seem difficult for the uninitiated, GUTI is extremely simple. It perhaps lacks the power of some of these other metrics, but after extensive comparison, we believe that GUTI comes extremely close to both other defensive metrics and a player's true defensive talent.

Now let's compare UZR to GUTI: Jacboy Ellsbury, for example, had a -18.6 rating last season in center field. Meanwhile, Mike Cameron, who will take over CF duties for the Red Sox this year, put up a 10.0 rating last season in CF. So, what does this mean? Other than Cameron is pretty good and Ellsbury seems really bad, we have no idea. That's why we read Dave Cameron. Also, in order to argue about a player's defensive worth in terms of UZR, you really need 3 seasons worth of data. So how good is Michael Saunders? Nobody really knows.

And here is the brilliance of GUTI. GUTI is an integer-based system, so none of this 5.5, 4.7 or -18.6 business. GUTI's ratings range from 0-1 and are extremely easy to understand. Franklin Gutierrez is a 1. Everyone else is a 0. Some people have said that this system is not as precise as UZR or Dewan. We disagree. Franklin Gutierrez is precisely 1 point better than everyone else. Bang, let's move on. We recently sat down with Gutierrez and asked him how he felt about being the top-rated defensive player based on our metric.

DoG: "So Franklin, GUTI rates you at 1 and everyone else at 0, what do you think?"
FG: "Honestly, it just quantifies what I've felt for a long, long time. I'm just a one, living in a world of zeroes."
DoG: "Wow, good answer. And may we just say that you are incredibly good looking."

0 GaGa Lite Presents: Ichiro Posted by The Duke of GaGa |

Ichiro is a baseball player who defies projections. In fact, DMZ at USSMariner wrote an article in the 2010 Mariners Annual discussing how unique Ichiro really is: Bill James' system compares Ichiro to 10 players, 5 of whom played in the period from 1898-1935, with only two, Shannon Stewart and Mickey Rivers, playing in the past half century. Meanwhile, DMZ notes that PECOTA has consistently predicted declines for Ichiro, with a 2009 prediction of .295/.340/.379 (he actually hit .352/.386/.465) and a 2010 prediction of .322/.375/.426. This isn't to pick on PECOTA, as CHONE has him at .311/.344/.408, Bill James says he will slash .319/.365/.407, and Marcel says Ichiro will go .319/.365/.418. DMZ scoffs at these computer systems, and the punchline to his article is that he doesn't see Ichiro slowing down at all in the near future.

Ichiro thus presents a critique of PECOTA, CHONE, Bill James and Marcel. If they consistently predict declines for Ichiro, and he consistently outperforms these predictions, then perhaps we need a new system. This is where GaGa Projections comes in: GaGa Lite does Ichiro! First we have to admit that Ichiro Suzuki is the best dressed 8-bit, Nintendo-based character we have ever seen. In an informal poll, Ichiro beat our Mario, Link, and the Mage from Final Fantasy in both looks and style.

Moving on to baseball, GaGa Lite sees the 2010 version of Ichiro hitting .400/.423/.720. Yes, you heard that right, .400/.423/.720. This may seem high for a player who "only" managed .352/.385/.465 last year and whose career triple slash is .333/.378/.434, but we know our system is right. The computer based systems are highly complex, taking in a number of variables and embarking on the kind of math equations that make string theorists nervous. But, our system is equally complex: we take a weighted average of the past 4 years, then we weigh their college, high school, middle school and Little League performances. We adjust for height, weight, social security number, date of birth and mother's maiden name. And finally, we add in ingredients X and Y, heart and state of mind. What GaGa Projections understands is that Ichiro has spent a number of years playing on bad teams and has become bored. The 2010 season will be different because Ichiro will be un-bored, that the combination of tickles from Griffey, watching King Felix and Cliff Lee pitch, great summer weather and a possible trip to the postseason will energize Ichiro to take it to a whole new level. A lot of people love Ichiro: his parents, his wife, his dog, his teammates, Mariners fans, baseball fans more generally, the Mariners blogosphere...the list goes on. But it's safe to say that out of all these people, GaGa Lite loves Ichiro the most. Who else has the balls say, on the record, that Ichiro will hit .400?

Here's a little video primer to tantalize you as to what Ichiro could do this year, our favorite is his home run at the 52 second mark:

0 Projecting Figgins and Hannahan Posted by The Duke of GaGa |

Fans of the site have been begging us to do some other kind of projection, as they are too excited about the GaGa system to have to wait for us to play out our 162 game season. So, as of right now, we are introducing GaGa Lite, our preseason projections. Instead of being based on the GaGa Projection System's 162 game season, in GaGa Lite, we have put each cyber Mariner through an intense baseball regimen that allows us to estimate how well they will do over the course of the season. The exact nature of this regimen is top secret, so any attempts to pry it out of us will not work. Let's just say that last night we put Chone Figgins and Jack Hannahan through 600 at-bats in our spring training facilities, which are located somewhere between iMovie and Pages in our fantastic and headache-free MacBook Pro. We realize that we just gave free advertising to Apple, but when a company makes such great products, we like to try to find ways to ask them to send us free stuff: hint, hint.

Here are our findings: Chone Figgins will hit .287/.390/.393 and Jack Hannahan will hit .216/.300.330. And for the sake of transparency, we have to admit that we only put Hannahan through 242 at-bats because, first of all, he sucks and we got tired of watching him hit weak grounders to second base, and second, he has a major league attitude problem. You can't even comprehend all the cursing that this guy did, or how weird it was to hear someone go on a cursing tirade while happy 8-bit music is playing in the background.

0 R.B.I. Baseball Presents The GaGa Projection System Posted by The Duke of GaGa |

So it's time to reveal some truths about the GaGa Projection System. While other systems make heavy use of computers to predict future performance, the GaGa system brings together man and machine. I mean, after all, baseball is a game played by men, so any projection that fails to account for the human side of the game is inherently flawed. So how do man and machine come together? We will use the 1987 Nintendo video game R.B.I Baseball, with updated rosters for 2010 (thanks to TecmoTurd for editing the rosters), and by taking control of the Seattle Mariners and playing their entire 162 game schedule, we will find out how the real Seattle Mariners will do. As we all know, what happens in the R.B.I. Baseball world exactly mimics real life. Unfortunately, playing out 162 games will take quite a long time, so we are shooting to complete the season by mid-July. This will allow Mariners fans to rest easy for the second half of the season, they won't be biting their nails or shaking in their boots, instead they will know exactly how the season will turn out.

So we think you are probably wondering about the major assumption in this post: that R.B.I. Baseball (with us at the helm) will correctly predict what happens in real life. How can we trust such a complex process to a 23 year old video game? Well, all you have to do is witness its accuracy as it plays out Game 6 of the 1986 World Series:

0 Welcome. Posted by The Duke of GaGa |

Welcome to GaGa Projections. Following in the footsteps of the sabermetric community and projection systems such as CHONE, CAIRO, and PECOTA, GaGa Projections will project the 2010 contributions of the Seattle Mariners. Why is this system called GaGa Projections? Because I am obsessed with Lady GaGa, that's why. But don't let the name fool you, this is not some pop/dance/bubblegum system. It is hardcore, and will produce arguably* the most advanced and accurate metrics on the internet. While other projections must be run hundreds upon hundreds of times in order to simulate reliability, the GaGa projection system only needs to be run once.

*I hope

In the coming weeks, you will learn more information about the system and statistics will begin pouring in. In the meantime feel free to pinch yourselves, because yes, this really is happening. Fasten your seatbelts and get ready for a trip to Amazing-Land.