ZiPS likes the Sox aparently. 15 pitchers with the ability to post an ERA under 4.50? That's pretty darn good. And it likes Nixon to bounce back, Youkilis to play well, and Dustin to match Graffanino. Liking Schilling and to a lesser extent Foulke is nice, but I'd guess any prediction system is going to have a hard time with them since their performances were so injury-related.

Dan, can you explain the defense numbers?

What are Hansen's numbers based on? Just his short stint in professional baseball?

The projections seem a bit optimistic to me, too, but from ZiPS lips to God's ear. I'd expect a few more age 30+ hitters predicted to do worse. Taking a quick look at the '04 numbers, I didn't see anyone who should expect significant playing time forecast to decline much, except perhaps Olerud and Graffanino, and I don't know whether they'll be in Boston and playing much. The banged-up, like Trot, are predicted to bounce back. Petagine will have trouble achieving these rate stats, or won't do it in Boston unless Papi or Manny is hurt (or traded).

PLEASE REMOVE KEVIN MILLAR FROM THE ROSTER

Dan, can you explain the defense numbers?

Range grade and error rate as a percentage of league average. I really should leave the latter off - projecting error rates for minor leaguers is a nearly futile task.

What are Hansen's numbers based on? Just his short stint in professional baseball?

Yeah. These super-quick college-to-majors guys are annoying. But I couldn't not do a projection for Weeks or Street the last couple of years and I couldn't not do Hansen for next year.

ZiPS is really optimistic on the big minor league pitching prospects. I don't think many Red Sox fans really expect that Sanchez/Lester could be major league ready pitchers next year (I sure don't), but ZiPS has Sanchez as 4.24 and Lester at 4.30.

Dan, I'm curious...

I know ZiPS isn't a playing time projection, but I was wondering, where do the playing time numbers come from then?

ZiPS is really optimistic on the big minor league pitching prospects. I don't think many Red Sox fans really expect that Sanchez/Lester could be major league ready pitchers next year (I sure don't), but ZiPS has Sanchez as 4.24 and Lester at 4.30.

I think it's pretty likely that they would be productive major league pitchers next year. AA isn't the majors, but then again, both these guys owned AA to such an extent that ERAs of 4.24 and 4.30 aren't unreasonable translations of what that performance indicates.

funny, zips thinks that pedroia will be almost as good as rentaritis. and about 9.7m cheaper.

Dan,

Thanks. Can you give any insights on how you came to the range grades? Are you using a published system, or something you created, etc?

Old UZR, recent ZR, scouting reports and such. I probably shouldn't post the defensive ratings.

Looks pessimistic on Wakefield to me -- probably makes the usual silly DIPS assumption about knuckleballers. Wakefield COULD drop off a cliff, but my guess would be, not for another 4-5 years.

Not only would DIPS be a problem in judging Wakefield, age would be as well. As knuckleballers go, he's about in his prime right now.

Other than that, YAY ZIPS! You have given us a great bullpen!

Myers: 5.21 ERA, 21/19 K/BB

However, check out his splits vs. LHH for the past few years:

2002: .241/.347/.316
2003: .237/.314/.421
2004: .233/.322/.340
2005: .158/.196/.211

And, how about his wins above replacement (BP's WXRL):

2002: +0.9
2003: -0.2
2004: +0.4
2005: +1.2

We can't expect a repeat of 2005. Still, the 2002-04 Myers is still a solid contributor. During that time his K/BB was 84/61, and if it falls to even we may see something like 2003. So I guess if ZiPS is accurate, Myers will be around replacement level, but it certainly seems pessimistic to me.

Enough with the freakin' Red Sox. Hey, there is a pretty good World Series playing right now . . . and the Red Sox are not in it! Let it go, puuullleeease! I have Fever Pitch coming out of my a$$ already!

Catfish, you might want to get that checked.

Well, maybe you can be second.

Posted 10-18 in Sox Therapy:
I like Pedroia, my guess is he hits .280 with 40 doubles, 10-15 homers, and more BB than K.

He's too short to play major league baseball though. Any chance Dan Duquette can come back, release him and let the Angels pick him up?

kevin would rather feed steroids to children than give away Pedroia.

Am I right, kevin?

Catfish, relax.

Two Morons:

http://www.topplebush.com/photos334.shtml

The Mike Myers projection looks a little too bad...

Btw, if I had to chooose between children getting roids or Kevin Millar coming back... let's load up the syringes

Neither one is a moron. They may have different politics than you do, but that does not make them moronic. Your statement does nothing to encourage people who have different political (and other) views to listen and possibly even learn from what you (I assume) would feel are more intelligent stances on political (or other) issues. Which may or may not bother you, of course -- that's certainly your own business. I just wanted to point it out, just in case.

Even a high level official in Canada openly called G. W. Bush a moron. It's the painful truth. Sorry. And, Schilling is a Nazi . . . he's actually been collecting Nazi memorabilia for years. Great guy.

Even a high level official in Canada openly called G. W. Bush a moron. It's the painful truth. Sorry.

Well, if "even a high level official in Canada" openly calls him that, it must be true. I retract my earlier statement.

And, Schilling is a Nazi . . . he's actually been collecting Nazi memorabilia for years. Great guy.

A quick search online suggests (unless I missed something, and I may have since it was a very quick search) that the only source for this is Stan Hochman who apparently ignored the fact that Schilling has all sorts of WWII memorabilia in order to focus on the nazi memorabilia from which he drew the same silly conclusion you pretend to be making.

(1) Collecting WWII memorabilia does not make one a nazi. (2) Neither does collecting nazi memorabilia. One can be fascinated without being supportive. (3) Apparently no one has taken Hochman seriously on this until you. (Unless you're Hochman, in which case no one has taken Hochman seriously at all, though again, it's possible I missed something somewhere in my quick search of the internet).

So... are you just trolling then?

Even a high level official in Canada openly called G. W. Bush a moron. It's the painful truth.

Hmm. I'm a Canadian and I can assure you that while we've had a number of politicians and flunkies criticize Bush, none of them are taken that seriously here and many of them are pretty heavily criticized themselves. These same people are pretty bigoted against Americans generally and I wouldn't be too quick to jump into bed with them myself.

Even if you agreed with him, you couldn't deny he's a moron. Which, of course, would make you a...

This is going to sound odd here, but my SOSH registration was deleted at some point since I haven't used it.

I use 0.80 as an MLE base - there's no way Clay's using 0.70; we talked about this awhile back and unless he's drastically changed the way he calculates DTs lately, we're not very different here.

As for my MLEs overrating hitters - of all the minor leaguers , only 12 in professional baseball with 300 PA rate an MLE OBP of .360. Only 9 rate a .500 SLG. And you see a lot of good prospects on that list - Jeremy Hermida, Russell Martin, Justin Huber and a few guys who either have or probably could play at that level like Petagine. The only two real oddball names are Kevin Orie and Rick Short and both were over their heads this year (though I still think Orie's '97 is his real level of ability when he can stay healthy for more than 10 minutes)

Even if you agreed with him, you couldn't deny he's a moron. Which, of course, would make you a...

Assuming the "he" with the missing antecedent is Bush, I can deny he's a moron. And do. And that has nothing to do with whether or not I agree with his politics. I'm familiar with really smart people. And with really dumb people. Bush (like most people) lies somewhere in between. (No pun intended).

In my awesome opinion, Bush is not a moron, he's just a person who puts no premium on human life and would gladly torture a child or special needs person just to watch them die.

In my awesome opinion, Bush is not a moron, he's just a person who puts no premium on human life and would gladly torture a child or special needs person just to watch them die.

I loathe the guy but wouldn't say that about him. He would, however, be the sort of person who wouldn't let it bother him too much if his friends were torturing people to death, especially if he somehow profitted from it. Not to mention that he's probably nowhere near naturally curious enough to kill someone to feel what it's like to watch him/her die.

But back to the topic at hand...if Schilling does what's projected for him above, the Red Sox will win the division like, to coin a phrase, Secretariat at the Belmont. While he showed some signs of improvement at the tail end of the season, I just don't see it happening.

They just better not trade Manny and get back Erstad, one of the few ways one could do worse than Kevin Millar at 1B.