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My dream is that one day, I'll get real. I'll be watching on TV when Chipper Jones misses a grounder near the third-base line. The data shows that third basemen field this ball 74 percent of the time, so Chipper gets docked 0.18 runs (John Smoltz is docked 0.27 runs for allowing a sharply hit ball to this zone). Chipper redeems himself in the next inning by belting a three-run homer. He gets credit for tallying 1.73 runs (Kelly Johnson's double and Edgar Renteria's walk account for the other 1.27 runs). At the end of the game, Chipper gets credit for putting 2.91 runs on the board for the British Srinvasion, and John Smoltz (8 innings, 7 hits, 3 runs, 0 walks, 9 K's) is credited with saving 2.37 runs.

OK, that's the real fantasy; let's get down to today's reality. My goal has always been to get as realistic as possible in my league, but we are limited by current technology and (to a certain extent) statistics. Still, I think my league does an excellent job of modeling offense. Why? I think it's probably time I unveil my league's secret weapon on offense: Extrapolated Runs.

Extrapolated Runs (XR) is a creation of Jim Furtado, the founder of Baseball Think Factory. After 15 years of attempting to cobble together an offensive scoring system, I hit upon XR in 2000, and my keeper league has been using it ever since.

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