In reading the comments and taking a second look at the probability of various players reaching 500 AB, I decided to change the calculation. I went back to see how 2006 was predicted. The top nine players in the list all had probabilities around .5, meaning half of them should have reached 500 at bats, and half failed. All of them, however, reached the mark. (And eight of them ended up on the top ten list for their league.)

So I changed the weighting of the two probability distributions, giving the previous season's at bats 75% of the weight and age just 25%. This spread out the high end of the probabilities. It also made the low end more interesting. If you look at the 2006 data below, you'll see there are about 100 players who's probability of reaching 500 at bats rounds to .05. That means, of those 100 players, we'd expect 5 to reach that level of playing time. Eyeballing the list, I came up with five names that I think will reach 500 at bats in 2007:

• Gary Sheffield
• Hideki Matsui
• Stephen Drew
• James Loney
• Derrek Lee

All in all, this looks like a better list than the original. As always, your comments are welcome.

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