FanGraphs Depth Charts. ZIPS. A steamer. ATC. The bat. Oopsy. These are all good prediction programs that I look at regularly, and rightly so. But what if the “guessing” system was just… basic separation and multiplication? Enter the best leaderboards:
While the Fastest Leaderboards are available within the prediction section of the site’s menu, I cannot stress enough that the statistics you will see are not based on any prediction system. It’s simply an extrapolation of the rest of the season based on what the player has done up until that point in the season, the scale changes depending on whether you select Total Game Played or Games Played % from the menu:
In any case, each player’s season stat line begins by subtracting his individual game numbers; the difference is in the multiplier, so how many games a player ends up on the leaderboard. Every Played Mode calculates a player’s stats as if they will play in every game for their remaining team, regardless of how few they have played so far, or whether they are currently on the injured list or in the minor leagues. That leads to some disappointing results, including the likes of small sample sizes like Enrique Hernández (who played just two games after coming off the injured list before suffering a major setback) and Rafael Flores Jr. (who got in a few games as a catcher for the Pirates in the last few weeks before being selected): going back to the minors
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For pitchers, “every game inning” is considered to be thrown every four and a half days for starting pitchers and every two and a half days for relief pitchers. The proration doesn’t take into account when a pitcher last pitched, so you may see a slight increase in the number of games started by pitchers over the last few days:
The Games Played % mode, on the other hand, takes into account the ratio of games played and team games of each player, making for a general overview that does not exaggerate the impact of very small samples:
This idea also softens the starting total of pitchers, as it knows how often the team uses the pitcher and clearly understands the six-man rotation and the extra days off:
With Shortcuts, the two-and-a-half-day mode reduces the number of commonly used weapons, but the % Games Played mode uses the exact current usage value for each individual player:
To repeat: This is not a guessing system. No reasonable model can tell you that Rafael Flores Jr. projects to put up MVP-caliber numbers for the rest of the season if he gets called up again. These leaderboards are a repeatable and divisive tool so you can more easily see who is on pace to drive in 100 runs or hit 86 games and risk their arm falling off (hello, Mason Fluharty) than you can do those numbers on your own. Leaderboards are sorted into Default, Standard, Advanced, or Legend Statistics, and Members can export to Excel like any other leaderboard.
