Doolittle's Rankings

[leerichardson]

What are people's thoughts on his position rankings that he's been posting over the last week? Drummond as the #2 center of players like Gasol was a stunner to me. Do you think instead of giving a single WARP projection, he should give a range to account for the uncertainty in the projections? I'm not sure if I believe that Tony Parker isn't a top ten PG either. Is this the same thing Pelton uses?

[Jacob Frankel]

He hasn't really gone into the methodology of his ATH system (which isn't the same as similarity scores based approach Pelton uses) which I'm disappointed in. I really like the idea behind it (quantifying players' athleticism and seeing how that affects their performance in future years). It obviously needs some refining though, as thus far the rankings have been kind of a joke. WARP obviously isn't a perfect statistic, being that it's based in the box score, but I don't think its flaws are to blame for many of the odd rankings. One thing I wonder is if he projects a bunch of individual stats and then calculates WARP from those or if he just projects WARP from the previous season's WARP.

[nbacouchside]

He hasn't really gone into the methodology of his ATH system (which isn't the same as similarity scores based approach Pelton uses) which I'm disappointed in. I really like the idea behind it (quantifying players' athleticism and seeing how that affects their performance in future years). It obviously needs some refining though, as thus far the rankings have been kind of a joke. WARP obviously isn't a perfect statistic, being that it's based in the box score, but I don't think its flaws are to blame for many of the odd rankings. One thing I wonder is if he projects a bunch of individual stats and then calculates WARP from those or if he just projects WARP from the previous season's WARP.

From what I could tell, he uses ATH to project stat lines and then calculates WARP from there.

[leerichardson]

Yeah that's what it looks like too. I think because he works for ESPN he's not allowed to release his projections or system. Nate SIlver said he couldn't release his exact algorithms and stuff too, so I bet it's the same deal. So the jist is that he projects players next season stats based on projected minutes, usage, and age/athletic factors, then calculates warp. He's a really good writer though and I read pretty much anything him, pelton, or lowe releases.

[wilq]

What are people's thoughts on his position rankings that he's been posting over the last week? Drummond as the #2 center [...] Nate SIlver said he couldn't release his exact algorithms and stuff too, so I bet it's the same deal.

That makes sense but I don't get why he doesn't even mention projected minutes played because it could explain some of the results. His system loved Faried last year [and it loves him again this year] but he disappointed because of his low total minutes. The same could be happening with Drummond. Last year he was a monster per minute but will he play starter minutes to reach such lofty WARP total? I doubt it, especially with Josh Smith playing some time at PF.

[bbstats]

I'm almost certain he uses RAPM, thus the high ratings for Drummond and low rating for Parker.