Nate Silver, a former writer and managing partner of "Baseball Prospectus", invented PECOTA. This acronym stands for "Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm", and is a sabermetric system for forecasting Major League Baseball player performance. Simply put, it assumes that the player's careers will follow a similar trajectory to players that they are similar to now. This system has been owned by "Baseball Prospectus" since 2003 and helps the website's authors invent or improve widely relied upon sabermetric measures and techniques.