I'm just wondering---what is everyone's take on 'performance history'?  Do you guys use it a lot, even bother looking at it--and how much value do you put into it.

I had paid no attention to it for years. Then, I started looking into for defensive range of my middle infielders and for pitching.  Seemed like it helped somewhat.

Then, I started looking at it even closer and, in some ways, building a team based around perf. history.  Since then my teams have suffered.

I know PERF HIST is not exact...but just wondering how much input people put into it...if any, And if you do look at, mostly what for?   Thanks

Provided the player/season has been used enough to have some kind of statistical validity, I think it's a relatively decent way to see how they might perform in a 80M league. 

And, even with slightly smaller sample sizes, I find the defensive numbers give me a relatively good idea of how many =/- plays and errors a guy might have at a given position over the course of a season. 

I don't think the performance history knows as much as I do about offense in this game.  I've been playing a long time, and I think I have a good enough understanding of how the normalization of offensive stats works that with knowledge of my park and league I feel better about my projections most of the time than averaged numbers from the projection report.  I'll readily admit, however, that I still don't have a total understanding of fielding normalization.  Obviously the projection report is biased towards the types of players popular in OLs, but at least it gives some reasonable expectation of what to expect from a guy defensively as long as there are at least a couple of seasons in there.

Me personally, I pay very close attention to it because depending on the sample size, you can often make a pretty good determination as to whether a player may or may not perform within reason of their normalized numbers, or even over or under perform.  This is because a lot of players' histories will reveal that they come no where near their good looking numbers, while others who don't appear so hot will routinely over perform.  I also find a player's performance history especially valuable when they have a history of playing decent defense at a position at which they have no rating. I will often use such players at that position even though they have no rating there, but plays the position well.  It's a great way to save money in the Draft Center.  

I use it all the time for D- range guys, to see how bad they'll really be. 

Other than that, I might glance at it just to make sure a guy isn't a habitual underperformer, but like dashdebater, I generally trust my own instincts about offensive numbers.

Just check any Nolan Ryan performance history against his real life  numbers for that season. RL stats say 'stud' PH stats says 'not so much'

PH is my guidling principle for selecting someone.  I take into account that the RL stats are padded with the player facing a Shane Rawley many time in their season. 

plus I'm not nearly as smart as dahsdebater.

Probably smarter than boogerlips though

I think PH should include both mean and median averages.

Thanks boogerlips and Micki - you two made me laugh on a hectically busy day. I do use PH a lot to get a sense of how players perform typically, but no one should rely any any single indicator. 

After all, as Bill James himself put it in Baseball Abstract, the only stat that is 100% correlated to wins and losses, which is the whole point, is W-L record !