Happy Valley Hardball with a sabermetrics twist

Introducing the “Jim Abbott Predictor”

In their book, The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers, co-authors Rob Neyer of ESPN and the legendary Bill James developed a formula that predicts who will win the Cy Young Award. Rob Neyer tracks how current pitchers numbers stack up through the current season at the Cy Young Predictor site on ESPN.

I thought I’d use the Neyer/James formula to evaluate the how the Big Ten Hurlers are doing. Perhaps it will project the winner of the Big Ten’s Pitcher of the Year. Of course, having decided to use the Neyer/James approach (with modifications of my own), I needed a name for it – B10 Pitcher of the Year Prediction just didn’t have the right ring to it. So why not the “Jim Abbott Predictor”? Can anyone come up with a better player to represent Big Ten pitching excellence? In fact, maybe the award should be called the Jim Abbott Award?

Needless to say, Michigan’s Chris Fetter would appear to be far and away the best pitcher in the league according to the “Abbott” criteria. His 2-3 game lead in wins over the rest of the conference gives him a big leg up on the award.

And props to PSU’s own Drew O’Neil for getting on the list despite not having a win. I’m going to have to do some research and come up with a good measurement for relievers only.

I used the same formula that Neyer/James used with one exception. They include points for leading the team to a title and prorate them during the season. I have excluded those points, although I do recognize that being on a championship team will often lead to additional votes in balloting for honors like this.

Specifically, the formula that I used is:

Abbott Points = ((5*IP/9)-ER) + (SO/12) + (SV*2.5) + Shutouts + ((W*6)-(L*2))

Anyone for a “Dave Winfield Predictor”?