The two most similar players I could locate were Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez. An interesting side note: I poked around, looking to find some people who have put up similar numbers to those predicted for Pablo.
So even though he was a great shortstop in his youth, he would probably be an outfielder in the pros – I predict a center fielder due to his speed. The first test yielded only a 28 percent chance that he would be an infielder. I then substituted in Pablo’s predicted numbers to find the probability of him being an infielder. The process consisted of creating a dummy variable on whether the pros were infielders or not, and then regressing it on all statistics that were significant predictors. Pablo often played shortstop when picked in Backyard Baseball (I know I always put him there), so I decided to narrow down my first test to find his chances of being an infielder, using logistic regressions consisting of the relevant stats significant to predicting whether or not he would be an infielder. I even figure he’d weigh about 180 pounds.įinding these performance numbers was pretty straightforward, so I went even further and tried to guess what position he would play. Using the rest of his ratings, I found that he’d also steal 21 bases out of 29 attempts per year, hit about five triples, and win three Gold Gloves within the first ten years of his career. By regressing each of these stats on his Batting Rating, I discovered that an average year for Pablo would consist of about 48 HRs, 128 RBIs, and a SLG% of. When determining HRs, RBIs, and SLG%, I found that only Batting Rating was useful in the prediction. Rather than using advanced stats like WAR and VORP, I looked at the type of measurements that I assume the analytics wizards and gurus at Humongous Entertainment were using to judge players in the dark ages of the turn of the millenium: traditional counting numbers like home runs, RBI, and batting average.īy regressing the Backyard Baseball Ratings of the Major Leaguers on these typical baseball stats, I was able to figure out which ones mattered most to the head Humongozoids. I started by tallying the numbers of the featured major leaguers in the three years prior to their appearance in the game, adjusted for playing time. Curious as to how the creators of Backyard Baseball (specifically, Backyard Baseball 2001) decided to rate how good the pros were as children, I investigated how their ratings matched up with on-field performance (and for reference, all of my findings are at the 95% confidence level). We may not know his ultimate fate, but using what we just learned about how the ratings were assigned, let’s try to learn as much about his hypothetical success in the Major Leagues as we can, based on the success of his childhood competitors.Īfter all, it used to be a simpler time: players were rated on only four categories (Batting, Running, Pitching, Fielding) on a very complicated and precise scale, ranging from 1-10 baseballs. Perhaps he dropped out of high school, falling victim to a life of crime and drugs. Maybe he lost interest in the sport, or pursued his love of civic engineering. Pablo’s great skill and cool demeanor made him a fan favorite, often chosen first at the playground.īut if Pablo was so excellent as a child - better than every future Major Leaguer who just so happened to live in his neighborhood - then why didn’t he ever make it to The Show himself? Nobody knows for sure. Born a Leo (August 18 th), he speaks exclusively Spanish in all of the Backyard Sports games until Backyard Baseball 2003, when he reveals that he learned Spanish in school, and was fluent in English the whole time, much to the dismay of young John Rocker, who was known to frequent the Backyard.
Pablo is a short, Hispanic boy with a knack for pounding baseballs incredible distances, despite his slight stature. Players earned ridiculous in-game power-ups such as the “Crazy Ball,” and every character was given a goofy nickname, like Jorge “Bonkers” Garcia.Īnd then there is Pablo “The Secret Weapon” Sanchez. These sandlot games were held in such high esteem that future pros like Mike Piazza and Vladimir Guerrero traveled from distant lands to trod around on someone’s back lawn. This post can also be seen on here.īackyard Baseball: the beloved childhood computer game of our generation, where everyday children played in pickup ballgames with the youthful incarnations of your favorite Major Leaguers.
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