Transaction Oracle: Transaction Oracle, the Future

As most of you probably ought to know by now, I’ve been contributing regularly to ESPN.com for about a year and a half.  As such, a lot of the transaction analysis stuff that went on in this area has gone by the wayside, simply because I’ve done a lot of articles for ESPN that involve player signings and trades.  While I don’t write up every trade for ESPN, I do enough that to oraculate about the rest here would tend to leave this blog unsatisfyingly fragmented.  After all, what good’s a ...

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Transaction Oracle: 2012 ZiPS Projections - New York Yankees

And heeeeeeeere come the pretzels!

Just a reminder, that I'm going in reverse from last year. Starting next year, I'm going to randomly draw for order.

ZiPS is rather grumpy again about the Yankee starting pitching. Banuelos and Betances still have a lot of upside, but ZiPS is suspicious about them immediately making an impact in the rotation, given that they both walked way too many batters in AA. The good news for Yankees fans, of course, is that the team has an open wallet and is likely ...

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Sox Therapy: Statements from the Boston Red Sox, Jon Lester, Josh Beckett, John Lackey, and Terry Francona | redsox.com: Official Info

Tomorrow anonymous sources will report about satanic rituals in the bullpen. YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST!!!

PRESIDENT/CEO LARRY LUCCHINO ON BEHALF OF THE BOSTON RED SOX: "Tonight our organization has heard directly from Jon, Josh, John, and former manager Terry Francona. Each has assured us that the allegation that surfaced today about drinking in the dugout during games in 2011 is false, and we accept their statements as honest and factual. "As we continue our internal examination to fully ...

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Sox Therapy: In which analysis is outsourced

I had been playing around with some different back-of-the-envelope projection methods for Yu Darvish, and then I found out that SG over at the Replacement Level Yankee Weblog had actually done all of that work already, and better. The key point to be made, with regard to Darvish, is just how much better he was in NPB than Matsuzaka. These were Matsuzaka's ERA numbers in his last four seasons in NPB: 2.83, 2.90, 2.30, 2.13 Pretty damn good, right? And those were his age 22-25 seasons. ...Read More...

Transaction Oracle: 2011 ZiPS Minor League Translations 0.9

Archive with files .xlsx and .csv can be found here. I'm calling this 0.9 for now as there are usually some errors to massage out, sometimes big ones I overlooked.

As a reminder, these are translations, not projections and subject to the same pitfalls as any seasonal line is.

Any errors, omissions, or other questions, feel free to ask.

For those that don't remember, I have two flavors, one with no $H regression and one with mild $H regression. I post the latter one as people have found it ...

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Transaction Oracle: 2011 Minor League Park Multipliers

As usual, the raw data for these would be a complete pain to accumulate without the scripting wizardry of Jeff Sackmann. Jeff runs College Splits, GMAT Hacks and has a weekly column on college baseball on ESPN Insider during the season. Jeff also has a tennis sabermetrics blog, Heavy Topspin. So make sure to support Jeff, or else I'll have to put the information together myseful, resulting in a gigantic headache and me retaliating on the community with random beatings and pessimistic ...Read More...

Sox Therapy: Twitter / @TBrownYahoo: Ben Cherington has been to named GM

Ben Cherington has been told he'll be next GM of Red Sox, according to Y sources.

Sox Therapy: The Art Of Winning An (even More) Unfair Game - 09.26.11 - SI Vault

This may have been posted when it first came out but I couldn't find it in our archives. This is especially relevant with Theo heading out the door. The next GM may very well continue the transformation the Red Sox front office has undergone since John Henry purchased the Sox. Then again, maybe he won't. In any event, if you haven't read the article already, you should read it.

One floor below street level on Yawkey Way, in his windowless corner office which looks out upon a bank of cubicles ...

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Sox Therapy: Theo’s Legacy: 2003 and 2004

As it seems highly likely that Theo Epstein will be leaving the Boston Red Sox in the next few days, I wanted to go back over two of the greatest offseasons a general manager has ever had. Theo Epstein inherited a club in 2003 with a great core of superstars (Pedro, Nomar, and Manny), some good complementary pieces (Damon, Nixon, Varitek, Lowe, Wakefield), and pretty much crap-all else. Most of the club’s payroll was already tied up in their stars, so he needed to fill out a championship ...Read More...

Sox Therapy: Hot Stove I: Payroll and Roster

Whether you want the Sox to blow it up, bring the boys back for their redemption, or drop big money on top free agents to fix the club, you need to start with an understanding of the club’s current payroll situation. Before 2010, the Red Sox jacked up spending like crazy, and last season they maintained that payroll – if you discount some of the funny business with Gonzalez, they added to it by several million. I think it’s reasonable to expect another payroll in the range of $170M, and ...Read More...