Todd Ford: A Biography, Part One

by bruinsfan911 8:39 PM 0 comments

Although I am new here in Plumpy, the recent discussion of Todd Ford's career coupled with an idea I had for a different blog post has given me the chance to combine the two (and tangentially touch on a third as well.) The other idea for a blog post that I recently had was to figure out the market value of a Win Above Replacement in Hardball Dynasty. I think I stumbled upon a bit of information that will really help me nail this down a bit. Before I go into too much detail about my formula, I want to test it out and see how accurate it really is because it would be unfortunate to shout inaccurate information from the rooftops.

In broad strokes, though, I have ways to calculate projected WAR and WAR from previous seasons of Hardball. What I don’t know is whether Hardball owners like to reward past performance or future potential more when giving out contracts (I have a guess about this too, but the trick is figuring out how to quantify it.) In Ford's case, I'll use the previous seasons method to determine a career WAR mark. Next, I will take that career WAR and apply my current estimate for dollars per win to get an estimate of the amount of money Todd deserved to make in his career. Lastly, I can compare that to the amount of money he actually made...in this case, that would be mostly for giggles although a similar process can be applied for other purposes to current players.

When it comes to the "GOAT of GOAT" discussions, I typically rely on the Hall of Fame Monitor Scores (which is the metric I referenced in my HOF post earlier this season.) Using this metric, determining the "best player ever" is fairly straightforward: it's the guy with the highest score across any world that I've seen. I have used this metric to evaluate at least a handful of players in the following worlds:

• Plumpy

• Steinbrenner

• Draft Tournament World (now defunct & folded into Brave New World as part of a merge)

• Johnny5Bench

• Champions

• Diamond Kings

• FYC

Listed in the same order as the worlds above, here are the GOATS (or at least, the highest score that I have on record for each.)

• Plumpy (before doing the math on Todd Ford) : Julio Rijo, 461 points

• Steinbrenner: Jeff Mills, 149 points

• Draft Tournament World: Kyle Stynes, 357.5 points

• Johnny5Bench: Lewis Standridge, 245 points

• Champions: Vin Aquino, 283.5 points

• Diamond Kings: Dummy Spooneybarger, 240 points (STILL ACTIVE)

The next post in this series will focus on his HOF Monitor Score (and what contributed to the total), followed by a post detailing his career WAR and salary season-by-season (including how much he deserved to make.)  

On a different note, I should have a couple more "Tacoma Trail Blazers: A Diary" posts coming up soon so keep an eye out for those as well!