The new projections are much more reasonable. Thank you.

Youk can bat .300 this year though, seriously. He hit .288 last year in a division with Halladay, Bedard, Wang, and Mussina. He is only getting better.

Hehe. Joke's on you, pancake.

The 1.200 isn't his BA, you goofball, it's his OBP!

giggle giggle

Jokes on you, Kevin.

You can't have an OBP more than 1.00 either goofball.

Youkilis won't be summoned to Olympus. He makes his offseason home there; he's lived there ever since his birth, when he detached from a growth on Zeus' large, bearded chin.

Lowell: 330/420/600
Pedroia: 377/450/400
Ortiz: 368/520/900, 74 HR, 235 RBI
Manny: 336/510/700, QUADRILLION POINT SIX FEAR FACTOR
Ellsbury: 408/470/525
Youkilis: 1.200/1.600/SUMMONED TO OLYMPUS

Dan, I do not think the value you have for Manny's fear factor is high enough; in fact, I think it is ridiculously low, and just goes to show your bias. Opposing managers thought of walking Manny in 94.6% of his plate appearances with the bases loaded. The only hitter who ever had a higher OMTOWWBL figure is Jim Rice, from 1975-1986. And that was a twelve-year period of unquestioned dominance.

Yes, Youk *can* bat better than .300. Nobody is denying that. The question is, why would you project him to do it when he never has before? You said that the only thing that kept him from doing it this year was slumps. Guess what? Same thing happened in '06. Started out hitting really well and then tailed off in the last two months of the season. At this point it's starting to look like it may be a trend.

Youkilis had those slumps because for unknown reasons baseballs kept making unwanted physical contact with his body. He does have a large target area though.

And no, he won't be summoned to Olympus, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was summoned to the Wall of Tears to quell all the whining in this thread.

Lowell: 330/420/600

Way too low. With his new ability to hit singles, I expect Lowell to break Ichiro's hits record and quite possibly hit 400.

I mean, c'mon Dan, once she put on a Red Sox uniform, your aunt could hit 330 even without the penis.

With, she'd be ... Mike Lowell.

Player Spotlight - Auntie Szym (np)
Name   AVG   OBP   SLG   G  AB   R   H 2B 3B HR RBI  BB   K SB CS  OPS+ DR
Optimistic (15%)  .406  .475  .644 156 570 132 231 67  0 23 112  61  37  7  0  144   7  
Mean  .330  .382  .443 150 548  76 178 44  1 10  62  51  43  3  1  106   3 
Pessimistic (15%) .330  .382  .443 150 548  76 178 44  1 10  62  51  43  3  1  106   3 

Top Near-Age Offensive Comps: Devine, J Edgar Hoover, Renee Richards, Sly Stallone

That didn't format right did it .... ragglesnaggleragglesnagglegrrr

kwarren posted:

Personally, I think Kevin is pretty bang-on with his projections. Very knowlegeable guy. People should listen.

Hmm first initial of "k". Your nickname wouldn't be "Stinky" or "Smelly" would it?

[rrr no edit button]

MTA: Dan, don't take any of our ranting too seriously. We all want to believe that our heroes will all have career years, guess it's just part of being a baseball fan, and Red Sox fan in particular, after all the genuine heroics of 2004 and 2007, and I'm no exception. Some of the numbers seem a bit underwhelming, but reasonable with some perspective.

His OPS, year by year, starting in 2000: 818, 788, 817, 880, 870, 662, 814, 879.

His being Lowell's.

Park effects are masking some of Lowell's decline though. If we neutralize to a 750 run environment in a neutral park (the best choice B-R gives me for today's game), those numbers are 823/800/842/886/895/697/803/862. Now that does give him even more seasons over 800, but he's had 2 of his 3 worst seasons recently. And that 879 in 2007 goes from a near career-high to a more reasonable (but still good) level of performance. He was a stud in Fla (esp 02-04) ... he's a talented old fart in Boston.

Still, 762 is pessimistic -- Marcel puts a projection at about 811 and even with an age penalty that might be 780 before boosting for Fenway. Of course the question is whether that pessimism is warranted or not and for everyone except maybe Dan, we don't know yet.

Dan, can you give us a sense of how much weight is given to the comps and the degree to which incorporating comps seems to improve the projections? Probably a pain, but can you run a few pre-comps ZiPS and post-comps ZiPS on some players? I ask because, though I share ZiPS' pessimism on Lowell, the comps really seem to be dragging Lowell and Manny down (and I've seen this with some other players in that age range). Is this happening to pretty much all players of that age -- i.e. you think the comps give you a more accurate "general" age effect -- or is it highly dependent on the specific comps?

Don't expect you to answer those in any detail, just what's your sense of this.

Or point me to the FAQ.

More fun with Lowell's neutralized stats.

The questions come down to -- were the singles lucky? and has there been/will there be a big power drop? The neutralized stats have squat to say about the first question, but the second is potentially interesting:

ISOs neutralized to 750 runs, neutral park:

206, 166, 200, 253, 218, 133, 190, 172

So the last 3 years have been 3 of his 4 worst. 2007 was worse than 2006, a 10% drop. That's not enough to establish a trend but if he loses another 10% that puts him at 155 (which would be boosted by Fenway but not hugely). ZiPS projects him to a 157 ISO. Pessimistic but in the ballpark -- another 10 points of ISO only gives him about 2 points of OPS+ and amounts to, what, 2 HR.

Sorry, folks get touchy about "lucky." Is that level of hitting singles likely to be repeated?

The power drop might just be unlucky of course!

Dan, can you give us a sense of how much weight is given to the comps and the degree to which incorporating comps seems to improve the projections? Probably a pain, but can you run a few pre-comps ZiPS and post-comps ZiPS on some players? I ask because, though I share ZiPS' pessimism on Lowell, the comps really seem to be dragging Lowell and Manny down (and I've seen this with some other players in that age range). Is this happening to pretty much all players of that age -- i.e. you think the comps give you a more accurate "general" age effect -- or is it highly dependent on the specific comps?


Actually, pre-comp ZiPS had more severe aging curves for mid-30s players. Aging curves by player type has helped keep star mid-30s players from having ugly projections in general.

It's worth noting that some of the "disappointment" here, with the exception of Lowell, is park-factor related. Fenway had much higher park factors across the board than it had for years, so ZiPS is naturally projecting lower park factors than were visible to the observer in 2007.

Btw, how does Mike TImlin still to project to "not suck"?

Timlin's "suck mode" consists of trying to pitch through an injury, then going on the DL, then pitching like crap a handful of times when he returns. Aside from that month, he'll be fine.

Has Tony Granadillo landed somewhere yet?

See Dan, we Dbacks fans will be a lot nicer to you when the Dbacks projections are out--and I know they'll make the Dbacks look like low A hitters compared to the Red Sox lineup...

If there is God, the Red Sox hitters will suck a dry bone next year and the team will finish 3rd in the AL East.

128: My question too. I heard he wanted insane amounts of money to sign a minor league deal.

He resigned with the Red Sox.

Btw, how does Mike TImlin still to project to "not suck"?

Mike Timlin's ERA+ with the Red Sox: 131, 118, 202, 109, 139

He projects to not suck because he has yet to suck, for any of his five seasons with the Sox.

He projects to not suck because he has yet to suck, for any of his five seasons with the Sox.

Tell that to Mike Lowell! :-)

Actually, pre-comp ZiPS had more severe aging curves for mid-30s players. Aging curves by player type has helped keep star mid-30s players from having ugly projections in general.

Hmmm... but you are projecting a drop for Lowell of, I think, about 7% in OPS vs. a straight projection which would be pretty substantial for a "typical" drop suggesting that even really good players (850 OPS) go to kinda sucky (740 OPS) in 2 years to useless in one more year. Two points: you didn't say Lowell was typical and, of course, lots of players in this age group have gone from really good to useless in 2-3 years.

But ... pre-comps, the age adjustment presumably was estimated as the average across all players. You're saying with comps that the top players don't decline as fast as the old projections (depending on player type) ... which means that other groups have to be declining faster than the old projections. Granted, given the latter group is probably larger than the first (though not as much as we might intuitively think given you have to be pretty good to make it to 30), those comp-based declines for the "sucky" group probably aren't that much larger than pre-comps.

So now I'm asking if Lowell is projected to decline more than the typical 34 y.o? And is there anything particular about Manny that would have him decline more than we might think an elite hitter would? (who are Manny's comps anyway ... or is that answered above somewhere?)

So now I'm asking if Lowell is projected to decline more than the typical 34 y.o?

Yes. Remember the BABIP issues in there, too, which is in addition to the decline. ZiPS doesn't see Lowell's 2007 as a "real" 377/501 year, so it's declining Lowell from a lower point.

So now I'm asking if Lowell is projected to decline more than the typical 34 y.o? And is there anything particular about Manny that would have him decline more than we might think an elite hitter would? (who are Manny's comps anyway ... or is that answered above somewhere?)

Manny's 15 best comps (remember, these are recent year comps, not entire careers!):

Frank Howard
Sid Gordon
Gene Woodling
Indian Bob Johnson
Minnie Minoso
Ken Singleton
Lonnie Smith
Frank Robinson
Moises Alou
Sammmy Sosa
Al Kaline
Jeff Bagwell
Monte Irvin
Joe Adcock
Roy Sievers

Here's a question Dan, do you run these projections to predict win / loss records ? I can tell this is a awsome team but i can't really tell if it's better than the Yankees in general. in which at least projection wise clearly out hit the Red Sox by a mile.

I'm adding these questions to the FAQ, hopefully they address a few things:

A couple more questions/answers I'm adding.

Q: ZOMG! ZiPS are so pessimistic! Why do you hate America?

A: ZiPS is historically in the middle-of-the-pack on the positive/negative spectrum. In the most reason season, according to BP's Nate Silver, the group of projected hitters with 250 PA collectively had an OPS of .777 in real-life and ZiPS projected that group to have a .783. The group of projected pitchers with 50 IP combined had a 4.27 ERA in real-life and ZiPS projected that group to have a 4.33 ERA.

Q: Does this mean that the average ZiPS projection was off by only 6 points of OPS and .06 points of ERA?

A: No, it's just measuring if ZiPS has a tendency to be to pessimistic or optimistic. When you take into account the part of the discrepancy explained by the fact that overall offense was slightly higher than ZiPS projected, ZiPS overall was too optimistic on batters by 4 points of OPS and 0.04 runs per game too pessimistic on pitchers in 2007. If my standard error for pitcher projections was really 0.04 runs per game, I'd be wealthy enough to have mountains of blow that I could snort off Google shares of stock.

Q: What about the variances? Maybe ZiPS had wilder swings than other systems?

A: Again according to Nate, for 2007, ZiPS was 4th of the 8 projection systems in pitcher projection variance and tied for 4th of 8 in hitter projection variance, suggesting that ZiPS is smack-dab in the middle for the variance of the individual projections.

Here's a question Dan, do you run these projections to predict win / loss records ?

That's not really the primary purpose, but it's interesting. I don't run win/losses from ZiPS per se, but SG over at the replacement level runs 1000 seasons of DMB with each projection system before the start of the season, which I consider to be the "official" ZiPS win projections.

I can tell this is a awsome team but i can't really tell if it's better than the Yankees in general. in which at least projection wise clearly out hit the Red Sox by a mile.

The Yankees do have better projections for their starting lineup, but one has to remember that a pretty good chunk of a team's plate appearances will be taken by players that aren't considered one of the starting nine. For both hitting and pitching, the Red Sox are better equipped to handle unfortunate happenings than pretty much any team in baseball.

I am assuming that you would think that if Ortiz had missed 20 or 30 games in the past couple of seasons, it would be "about time" for him to play a complete season. Gotta love that logic.

KWarren-

Actually, the logic is that Ortiz is a heavy guy that runs pretty hard on the base paths and (as you apparently don't follow baseball), struggled with knee problems last year and had surgery soon after the season ended. So it's a matter of when, not if, he starts to miss some time, and I just think this year might be the year. I hope not, though.

Never seen you post before, but way to bring the obnoxious! Keep up the good work.

He hit .288 last year in a division with Halladay, Bedard, Wang, and Mussina. He is only getting better.

Remember that Youkilis was older than most rookies. Imagine he'll probably peak between the ages of 32-35. The Red Sox had better lock him up long term before his price skyrockets!

Dan, here's a simple projection system to keep everybody happy.

(1) Calculate career BA, the average of the past three seasons, and the previous season line. Take the maximum of these three and use it as your baseline. Repeat for OBP and SLG.

(2) Subtract 0.010 from each result for players over the age of 40, since they've clearly peaked. Add 0.020 for anybody under the age of 30, since they are still improving.

(3) Add an extra 0.030 for players from major markets, since their fans are the biggest whiners.

Or you could just keep doing what you have been, trying to get the numbers RIGHT. I'm hoping that ZiPS is overly pessimistic on JD Drew, but I can see where it is coming from...

Q: ZOMG! ZiPS are so pessimistic! Why do you hate America?

A: ZiPS is historically in the middle-of-the-pack on the positive/negative spectrum.

So you're saying all the projection systems hate America.

Dan, here's a simple projection system to keep everybody happy.

Or, simpler, just relabel the optimistic/mean/pessimistic lines to: "if you like this player"/"if you don't care about this player"/"if you hate this player"

Dan, do you really expect Abe Alveraz to come up for the Sox and lose 10 games, or is that in the minors?

Dan, do you really expect Abe Alveraz to come up for the Sox and lose 10 games, or is that in the minors?

Assuming you aren't trolling, I'll just copy what is stated *right below the projections themselves*


Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance.
Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors -
many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2008.
ZiPS is projecting equivalent production - a .240 ZiPS projection may end up
being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play
is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting
the future.

Dan, long time fan of your work.

Are you saying that the Red Sox will bring up Lars Anderson, Ryan Kalish and Brandon Moss, watch each of them post OPS of .850 or higher in 400+ at bats per, then trade Manny in August for Johan Santana, Joe Nathan and Frankie Liriano--and still lose the AL East by 5 games? Don't you think that's really a very pessimistic view of the Red Sox future? Why don't you check your prejudices at the door?

Looks like JD Drew the short straw. Har har har. I'm guessing that the reason that he comes out so badly is because guys who get hurt as often as he does probably tend to not have much of a body left at age 32. Drew seems to be in reasonably good health so maybe he'll be better. If he's not, that's one hell of a terrible contract.

I like the look of Lester and Buchholz. In fact, all the pitchers look pretty decent. Even that Papelbon guy and his straight fastball! :)

Even that Papelbon guy and his straight fastball! :)

I hear his third pitch still needs some work. Does he have any options left? Maybe we can send him back to Pawtucket for some seasoning?

He hit .288 last year in a division with Halladay, Bedard, Wang, and Mussina. He is only getting better.

If think he was hitting like crazy into May, until everybody kinda decided to just start hitting him with pitches, since he seems to be pretty easy to both dislike and nail with the ball, AFAICT.

Even that Papelbon guy and his straight fastball! :)

glad i was wrong about that one.

Even that Papelbon guy and his straight fastball!

Crackitty Jones, with the worst TV watching observation-based evaluation in the proud history of BTF. Breathtakingly wrong. Neville Chamberlain territory. Unmatched in horrible forecasting of a young pitcher.

When the Red Sox were trying to re-sign Lowell, I was fond of saying that I thought he had really learned to go the other way in 2007 and had turned a corner. Then the other day I looked back at something from 2006 where I was saying the same thing about him. Apparently he's been pretty good at it for a while and it doesn't explain his big surge in 07.

Coming into 07 I had him pegged for something like 340/440. Given his great year in 07 and being a year older, I'd give him something around that for 08 as well, maybe a hair better.

Dan, if you're not sick people questioning your projections, I'm curious how you arrived at the poor rating for Ortiz at 1B (not that I'm disagreeing, there just seems to be very little data on it). Also, I'd like to know about the fair rating for Carter at 1B. Thanks.

I like the look of Lester and Buchholz.

Yeah might be fun year for us, if that moron Tito can handle these kids. :)

Was it just Crackity? I remember a lot of people saying it. I don't bring it up as a gotcha, just for laughs.

Crackity was the guy who harped on the "straight" heater, in a game thread, IIRC, all bitter after his once great frachise dropped another to their dormats of by-gone years.

Dan, if you're not sick people questioning your projections, I'm curious how you arrived at the poor rating for Ortiz at 1B (not that I'm disagreeing, there just seems to be very little data on it). Also, I'd like to know about the fair rating for Carter at 1B. Thanks.

This issue is mostly related to the DMB disk. Looking at SG's historical LWZR data (I only started doing a spreadsheet of my own after Dial's big writeup-tweaking in 2004), Ortiz used to be -10/162 G at best.

I try to keep a general policy on rating players, mainly for use of the DMB disk. When a player doesn't play a harder position much, I'll generally ding him one fielding level each year starting the second year and increase the error rate slightly. If a player doesn't play a position at all, I'll generally ding him one fielding level a year immediately and also increase the error rate slightly. Now, if the position that the player isn't playing at all is an easier position, I won't ding it farther than his rating at the tougher position, though I still up the error total slightly.

A lot of this is practical and backed up with some amazingly dull research I did some time ago on fielder aging. Fielder aging is kinda boring - it's a simple slight uptick until the mid 20s and then a pretty steady, straight line down. Sort of like standing on the top of a sliding board and tossing a ball gently up so that it lands and goes down the slide.

Just a quick example. There are some things that need to be done for the sake of a disk that is used to play a game.

Crisp played 138 games in left in 2005. He hasn't played a single game in left since. At the time, I had him as EX in left for 2006. And had him as EX/AV for 2006, speculating he'd be average in center based on his play in left. My policy wasn't as fully formed last year, so I moved him to EX/PR for 2007. But what I would have done last year if I could do it again would be rate him VG/FR for LF/CF. And after an amazing 2007, I pushed his CF up to VG, which would keep the LF dropping, making the ratings VG/VG.

If I'm just doing a straight projection for defense, I don't have to bother with a leftfield projection for Crisp. But since I'm doing a game disk, I have to make extra decisions that A) enable real-life usage but B) avoid fantasy-life loopholes. It's realistic that if Manny had a horrible injury, Crisp would see some time in left. It would also be realistic, if, Mike Bordick had been injured terribly, the Orioles would have considered moving Ripken back to short temporarily.

However, I also need to avoid situations in which I do projections for, say, the 1999 Indians and someone decides to play the game and bench Fryman and move a much-bulkier Thome back to third and play Sexson at first. Or move Josh Phelps back to catcher. Same goes with pitching. I did that projection for Papelbon as a reliever. Theoretically, he could start. But I don't want to give people a disk where, without changing anything, people could throw Papelbon on the mound and watch him go 26-3, 1.57.

The DMB disk isn't just an afterthought - I really try to give people a player set that they can actually play games and play different scenarios with.

Good stuff. Thanks Dan.

I see the logic behind your OF ratings, but I don't think I agree with some of it. Don't good CFers almost always make great LF? Why would Coco go from being an EX LF to being only VG at the same time he went from being a PR CF to being a VG one? Wouldn't it make more sense to leave him as EX in LF.

And that's not just for Coco either. It seems that for the vast majority of players, they tend to play all of the OF positions about equally after a brief adjustment. An EX LF usually becomes a VG CF; a VG RF usually becomes an AV CF (the change relating to the competition they're being judged against rather than a change in skills). Arm, of course, tips the scales in some cases, but not by all that much.

Have you found that there are guys who have shown over reasonable size samples to be able to say, be a better CF than LF? If so, is it prevalent?

I see the logic behind your OF ratings, but I don't think I agree with some of it. Don't good CFers almost always make great LF? Why would Coco go from being an EX LF to being only VG at the same time he went from being a PR CF to being a VG one? Wouldn't it make more sense to leave him as EX in LF.

I'm extremely stingy with EX ratings. I've given out 4 EX ratings in LF and I'm too conservative to give another EX rating to a guy who hasn't played the position for 2 seasons. I've only given out 15 *total* EX ratings and 20% of them are Endy Chavez.

Manny's 15 best comps (remember, these are recent year comps, not entire careers!):

Frank Howard
Sid Gordon
Gene Woodling
Indian Bob Johnson
Minnie Minoso
Ken Singleton
...

I think you mean "Native American Bob Johnson," Dan. Tisk, tisk.

I am disappointed that nobody picked up the Cat's Cradle reference. If you can't find my references, you guys are doomed when Repoz is involved!

It was kind of buried, Dan - I didn't even see it. If he'd been a Red Sox, I'd follow with a call to Berraism.

Dan,
Please update your team ZIPS links within the team ZIPS page. Rockies, Indians, Reds and White Sox have no links.
Thanks. This is a big help.
vr, Xei