User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
Page rendered in 1.1160 seconds
64 querie(s) executed
You are here > Home > Transaction Oracle > Discussion
Transaction Oracle
— A Timely Look at Transactions as They Happen
— A Timely Look at Transactions as They Happen
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
2008-2017 ZiPS Projection - Alex Rodriguez
Since I think the subject will be beaten to death as an interesting conversation opportunity by the time A-Rod actually officially signs whatever contract he ends up getting, I thought I'd take the opportunity to really jump ahead and try to project A-Rod over the next 10 years.For entertainment purposes only. Projecting one year into the future is hard enough. So if I see a comment somewhere, either here or elsewhere, of "ZiPS says A-Rod is officially home run king!" or "Dan Szymborski says A-Rod will suck in 2016!" I'm going to hunt you down and hook you up to a Clockwork Orangeish contraption that holds your eyes open while you peruse the Mike Lupica Lifetime Archives.
2008 ZiPS Projection - Alex Rodriguez
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB BA OBP SLG
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Projection 590 127 180 30 1 44 151 93 132 16 .305 .410 .583
2009? 590 125 175 27 1 41 151 93 131 15 .297 .403 .554
2010? 564 117 161 26 1 37 146 85 124 14 .285 .390 .532
2011? 556 113 156 25 1 34 145 83 122 11 .281 .386 .513
2012? 547 108 150 25 1 31 144 81 124 8 .274 .380 .494
2013? 528 102 140 24 1 27 128 78 120 6 .265 .372 .468
2014? 479 92 126 21 0 23 113 70 103 4 .263 .371 .451
2015? 432 82 111 18 0 20 102 61 102 3 .257 .365 .437
2016? 393 79 97 17 0 17 87 54 97 2 .247 .355 .420
2017? 350 63 83 15 0 14 67 46 89 1 .237 .346 .400
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CAREER? 12379 2503 3629 623 32 806 2737 1659 2668 345 .285 .378 .546
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Opt. (15%) 604 147 197 33 1 49 169 103 119 21 .326 .436 .627
Pes. (15%) 489 92 138 19 0 31 101 70 116 9 .282 .378 .511
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Top Comps: Eddie Mathews, Al Rosen
My Bookmarks
You must be logged in to view your Bookmarks.
Hot Topics
About Baseball Think Factory | Write for Us | Copyright © 1996-2008 Baseball Think Factory
User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
Reader Comments and Retorts
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
I'm rather surprised at the top of ARod's comps list: Eddie Matthews and Al Rosen.
Matthews lasted to 36 and Rosen and was out of the league after his age 32 season. Obviously, ZIPS used more than two guys in compiling the data but they're the only names Dan give me :)
With that in mind, I think ZIPS may actually be a little bit pessimistic here. Which is scary since Dan states unequivically that ARod will definitely have 800 homers by 2017 or your money back.
This post is facetious.
BB-Ref uses counting stats. Ignore their comps.
BPro's are much better but I don't have the book handy.
That wouldn't really work - if he performed to his optimistic numbers every year, it becomes part of the base for future projections, and it would get really funny rather quickly, leaving the final totals as his 1 in 200 million chance career of about 2000 home runs. And the opposite for negatives.
The comps are for A-Rod at this part of his career, not overall for the future career. Obviously, the players he's in a group with changes over time. He'll tend to be better than any group of similar type players (ZiPS accounts for this).
I'm on pace for build 1 to be ready before Christmas, which would be a record for me!
HR - 1st
Runs - 1st (by over 200)
RBI - 1st (by 440!!!)
Strikeouts - 1st
At Bats - 2nd
Hits - 5th (one behind Musial)
Walks - 9th
Doubles - 11th
Not as good as this, I'm sure.
But if Griff were a ss/3B, the score would be much higher.
I agree that this is entertaining, so thank you Dan. I suspect A-Rod's projections may be hard to model because, apart from being a fairly unique player, he's also a fairly emotional one. In terms of physicality and skills, A-Rod has a good chance of a steady, semi-graceful decline along the lines of ZiPs's projection. But he also is vulnerable to entering slumps, pressing at the plate, and having "off" years like 2006 (which would've been a good year for 80% of MLB players). I already expect that tying Bonds in HR will start a massive homerless slump, for instance. That said, he's Inner Circle and I'm glad the Yankees are getting him back despite the projections for 2015-2017.
Oh, and I assume the drop-off in playing time in 2016 is partly a result of the nuclear war with North Korea, started by lame duck President Giuliani -- right? At least the radiation won't hurt A-Rod's patience at he plate!
It's hard to triple on balls hit to left field.
I'm not sure a regular column, but I can do these occasionally if there's something of regular interest (I did a similar one some time ago projecting Ted Williams's war years). I figure after all the team projections and builds of the DMB disks and transaction write-ups that contain ZiPS at the end, doing too much more would get people all ZiPSed out (not to mention typecast me).
Oh, and I assume the drop-off in playing time in 2016 is partly a result of the nuclear war with North Korea, started by lame duck President Giuliani -- right? At least the radiation won't hurt A-Rod's patience at he plate!
I know it's a joke, but 10 years ahead, you'll always see dropoffs in playing time like this for players of any age, simply because of the real chance of a career-ending or serious performance-curtailing injury. If we think that A-Rod has a 1% chance of suffering an injury of that type in any given year, that's still a 9.6% chance over a 10 year span. That's a higher probability than an average Mark McGwire AB ending with a home run (9.4% over his career).
Your politics already do that?
I know it's a joke, but 10 years ahead, you'll always see dropoffs in playing time like this for players of any age, simply because of the real chance of a career-ending or serious performance-curtailing injury. If we think that A-Rod has a 1% chance of suffering an injury of that type in any given year, that's still a 9.6% chance over a 10 year span.
Since you disclaim the ability of ZIPS to project playing time, do you think you should pre-set the playing time (for hitters) so that none of this is reflected in the projection? Or is that an inextricable part of performance?
How 'bout this: use his normal 2008 projection to create an optimistic 2009. Then use the normal 2009 for an optimisic 2010 and so on through 2017. And then go back with the negative projections. Dunno how much work it would be, but it might be fun.
Off the top of my head, I think it's more likely that the declines in A-Rod's playing time in 2015-2017 will be less evenly distributed (for instance, a drop in AB in 2016 because of an injury but then a rebound in AB in 2017). But I wouldn't expect ZiPs to project like that, and for all I know he'll wind up with the same career numbers in the end anyway.
On the other hand, the Yankees can finally look forward to a decent firstbaseman at some point in the next ten years.
I didn't think you were. Just because I react so negatively towards RETARDO doesn't mean that I also react negatively towards humans.
So now ZIPS is telling us AROD will be named in the Mitchell report!
I'm also sure this can't be the first time you've heard that oh-so-clever extension of your work.
Another factor is whether A-Rod continues to be a #3 or #4 hitter for the entire contract. If he isn't, and it's more due to his decline than the arrival of the Next Great Yankeeâ„¢, would he continue to play or would he retire? I'm not so sure we see 5 seasons of a sub-.270 batting average.
I'm also sure this can't be the first time you've heard that oh-so-clever extension of your work.
He'd just misplace a third of it anyway.
I think people tend to overrate composer growth curves - the ones that don't die or go crazy tend to be less experimental than Franz Liszt was.
You, and many others here, are forgetting the Golden Rule of ZiPS:
I'm thinking after that dropoff in '12 he'll be toiling away in Charleston trying to recover his swing, and never quite get back to the show.
The RBI numbers for the next 5 - 6 years are wildly inflated. In 2012 you have him driving in 144 with only a .874 OPS, .494 SLG., and 57 extra base hits. These numbers also assume having an extremely productive top of the batting order in front of year after year. Just doesn't look right.
Also, interesting that this projection has him with 0 more 1000 OPS seasons.
The other thing, and maybe this is a result of the methodology, but what's with the perfectly linear decline in every category? Real life almost never works that way.
Oh yeah, never mind, you sorta did.
Optimist! I'd phrase it, the contract wildly overpays for the first two years, becomes grotesque for the second two, and for the last six becomes an abomination.
Thank god the Steinbrenners' stupidity is its own luxury tax.
The "Hardball Times" season preview book for 2007 kind of annoyed me because for every single player there was a projection for 2007, 2008 and 2009. And guess what, for literally every player except some really, really old guys and some really, really young guys, the projections were almost identical for all three years, with 2009 generally expected to be a bit worse than 2007. Basically every single "2008" and "2009" line in the book was a waste of space that could have been used to go into more detail in the sections written by the bloggers who are experts on individial teams. I say this in the hopes that THT people will read it and consider it tough love, and that next year's season preview will take a different approach.
Gonna be tough to homer from prison. PWN3D!
For fun, I do a dumb little projection system where I take a basic Marcel-type projection, and throw in some randomness to get more interesting results. Yes, I'm a huge dork.
Anyway, here's what it sees for A-Rod in 2008-2017 (er...this time.):
Year AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB BB K BA OBP SLG
----------------------------------------------------
2008 566 111 171 30 0 50 124 7 94 142 .303 .412 .624
2009 445 83 129 26 1 35 99 4 64 112 .290 .388 .587
2010 426 77 117 15 0 37 87 4 64 109 .273 .380 .568
2011 492 80 139 14 1 37 97 1 67 131 .282 .380 .536
2012 488 66 127 16 0 38 83 1 69 141 .261 .365 .530
2013 335 44 81 14 0 22 55 0 42 100 .242 .338 .485
2014 229 26 58 6 0 11 29 0 32 72 .253 .356 .423
2015 441 57 108 12 0 23 60 0 51 126 .245 .335 .429
2016 444 51 110 21 0 30 55 0 60 138 .247 .348 .498
2017 362 51 93 12 0 25 38 0 41 108 .258 .344 .499
11578 2147 3384 561 28 826 2230 281 65 1500 2703 .292 .381 .560
Meh, I thought I'd share.
How about a projection that looks at Barry Bonds' career through 1998 and projects his '99-present based on that? People can attach any meaning they like.
The RBI's stuck out to me too...but for another reason. His hit drop from 175-180 to about 150 and his xbh drop from about 75 to 55, so how do RBI only drop 10? That doesn't make any sense.
That's because ARod becomes the clutchiest hitter since, well, ever!
Rickey just pulled up at second so Rickey could steal third!
The RBI's stuck out to me too...but for another reason. His hit drop from 175-180 to about 150 and his xbh drop from about 75 to 55, so how do RBI only drop 10? That doesn't make any sense.
His RBI's drop by 16, then 15 in the following season.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main