Friday, August 10, 2007

Bookends

Bill James invented something called the "Similarity Score" which compares the stats of players across history. The formula for calculating the similarity score for two players is here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/similarity.shtml. Baseball-reference.com calculates the ten most similar players in history for every player with a substantial career -- just go to a player page on b-ref and scroll down to the Similarity Scores.

For example, Mets fans, the most similar player in all baseball history to Moises Alou, according to Similarity Scores, is --- Shawn Green!

Games: Alou 1,881, Green 1,913
Runs: Alou 1,075, Green 1,110
Hits: Alou 2,049, Green 1,970
2Bs:Alou 410, Green 440
3Bs: Alou 38, Green 35
HRs:Alou 324, Green 326
BBs:Alou 725, Green 730

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