I read an interesting article in the Chicago Tribune yesterday about PECOTA, a statistical projection system, the name of which is an acronym for "Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm". It also happens to be the name of a former major league infielder (Bill Pecota) who played a little for the KC Royals.

Apparently this is a system which allows the user to compare a young player to other, older players at that stage of their career to project what that young player might become. Of course, it's much more involved than this makes it sound. And I guess that so far it's proven to be fairly accurate.

I find it incredible that mathematics can be used in such a predictive capacity, when it comes to humans. I love the obscure, Bill James type sabermetric calculations, even though I can't say I understand all of them. I also think it's pretty cool that a 27 year old guy from Chicago (with a degree in Econ, no less) can develop something like this.

BTW, the White Sox apparently use this system, and the Cubs don't (though they say they do use some projection system). Shows in the results, I guess.