Hey Dan, looks like Doug Davis is missing.

The Cubs will surely cub it up.

How does Weeks' batting average projection drop from last year (even if only .006), when he his well above it in the short time he did play. Is this taken from only '07, '08, and '09 leaving his '06 avg out of the equation and basically replacing it with the slightly lower but with far few at bats in '09?

The bullpen looks solid, if anybody other than Gallardo and Bush can get them a lead.

It would probably be worthless, but does ZIPS have a prediction for Capuano?

That is one Cubbed up Mat Gamel projection. I thought he was supposed to be good at hitting and bad at fielding...apparently he sucks at both.

Pretty good career projection for Fielder, considering his frame.

1,991 RBIs for Prince would be 6th all-time. A-Rod and Pujols and maybe a couple other guys (Manny, Griffey) will end up past that but that would still be an historically impressive total. I hope he can get there.

All in all, the team looks as uninspiring as I feared. Prince, Braun and Gallardo will probably have to beat those projections if the team is going to do anything (which is a lot to ask considering how good those 3 already are). I see ZiPS isn't buying McGehee's "breakout" last year or Gamel's potential. Counsell might still be their best option at 3rd, which is kind of funny.

Also, too bad DiFelice is out for the year, he's a nice story and a good pitcher.

Prince Fielder est un monstre.

Gamel was decent in the games he started in the majors. He was bad as a PH in the majors and when he got sent down, he just didn't perform well.

BTW, thanks Dan for these.

I mostly came here for Harveys's opinion. I'll come back later.

Fielder's RBI total should be 1691.

ZiPS hates Gamel because Gamel's an absolute strikeout machine (the biggest improvement from old-style MLEs to my version is that traditional MLEs overrate very high BABIP hitters).

Don't know where Davis got to - I'm not at the ZiPS Supercomputer right now.

Fielder's RBI total should be 1691.

Dang! Still pretty good though.

That is a pretty impressive collection of arms in the bullpen.

It's interesting that Prince's comparables suggest a fairly short career--Hrbek, Powell, Aikens, all of whom seem like reasonable, if somewhat-pessimistic comps, but his projected career looks quite long.

It's interesting that Prince's comparables suggest a fairly short career--Hrbek, Powell, Aikens, all of whom seem like reasonable, if somewhat-pessimistic comps, but his projected career looks quite long.

No kidding. More hits than Braun?

Seems like with all the left-handed dross, Heether has at least a shot at making the roster. Assuming McGehee wins the 3B job, I'd much rather see Heether up and Gamel starting at Nashville than vice versa.

For those who don't follow the Brewers system, Heether's a nice story. He feels like a minor league free agent-type player, but he's actually been in the Brewers organization since 2003; they drafted him out of Long Beach State, where his infield-mate was Ryan Braun's future nemesis, Troy Tulowitzki.

Not bad for Jimmy boy. How'd you handle Edmonds' missed year? I think I remember Silver over at BP mentioned projecting a hypothetical 2009, but if I had to guess you didn't do that here. I'm guessing your comp system just handled him better?

Glad to see the realistic Lopez projection. Paging Howard Megdal! :-) Would you prefer the projected SLG "heavy" 91 OPS+ and AV defense or the projected OBP heavy 94 OPS+ with FR defense? Is it really likely to be more than a handful of runs difference?

Now, who exactly was clamoring for the Corey Hart career projection?

lots of new names in this years zips threads, hope you guys stay and enjoy the site and hopefully become an active participant in it.

Not bad for Jimmy boy. How'd you handle Edmonds' missed year? I think I remember Silver over at BP mentioned projecting a hypothetical 2009, but if I had to guess you didn't do that here. I'm guessing your comp system just handled him better?

Previously, I went through baseball history and made a model for projecting the penalty of a missed season (obviously, bigger for pitchers than hitters).

When ZiPS sees a missing season or a season with a sudden dropoff to almost no playing time, it fills-in the low or no-play season to 38% of the previous baseline playing time for hitters and 26% of the previous baseline playing time for pitchers with an estimated penalty.

So, for Edmonds, ZiPS sees:

2006: 257/350/471 (408 PA)
2007: 252/325/403 (411 PA)
2008: 235/343/479 (401 PA)
2009: 217/301/393 (158 PA)

In essence, I had my computer problem-solve the best way to get the projection for players with missed or very partial seasons, given the baseline performance and the "return" performance and let it run for a day.

OK, Doug Davis is there now (which makes the rotation look better, obviously).

Do you have a projection for Mike Cameron yet, since he signed with the Sox after they were done?

TO on Cameron:

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/oracle/discussion/red_sox_signed_cameron/

The Cubs will surely cub it up.

Shouldn't the Brewers finish ahead of the Cubs one of these years before we get these comments? (Congrats on 05 and 06, when both teams were totally irrelevant). Now where's that smiley face key...

On paper, I don't see the Brewers competing. I don't see a lot of upside here, but at the same time I don't see a lot of downside (IOW, I don't see anyone that seems likely to significantly over or underpeform their projections). The Cubs, OTOH, have a lot bigger range(although I tend to lean towards the pessimistic side, considering age and injury history). I'm slightly underwhelmed by the Cardinals, but they're easily the class of the division.

This is the definition of a top heavy club, and that wasn't a joke about Prince Fielder!

A couple of good role player seasons, with a couple of bounceback seasons from Suppan and Parra might actually see them take the Central.

I think everybody forgets how good a player Corey Hart is. Unless he has an extra appendix that gets cranky I think he's poised for a breakout year. Every projection I've seen for him has been very conservative.

What's disappointing about the Brewers is that GM Doug Melvin cannot seem to commit to a strategy. He originally focused on putting as many bats as possible into the lineup but the 2007 season collapsed because they didn't have a good read on Braun's defense, Estrada was a cancer and Yost did a horrific job with the pitching staff.

So Doug decides to go with defense in 2008 and it pays off. But what Doug failed to recognize some great contributions from his bench and he assigned WAY TOO MUCH credit to his catcher for the pitching staff performance.

Doug goes back to the slugging approach but doesn't go 'all in' so finishing 3rd in runs scored isn't enough to offset the collapse of the pitching staff. And Milwaukee got ridiculously LUCKY in 2009 as there ain't no way on God's green earth Casey, Felipe or Craig have years like that ever again.

So now it's back to pitching and defense with Prince and Ryan to provide the offense.

I will just point out the Brewers last year finished 2 games under .500 with only one starter with an ERA+ of over 100. The rest were, well, rather disgusting. So three guys of this caliber TRIPLES the population. That's progress.

I find the Gamel projection reacting very seriously to the 2009 season when Mat saw his strikeout rate spike through the roof between Triple A and the majors. I think with some time under his belt Mat will calm himself down at the plate.

Having Escobar and Gomez up the middle looks to be a great fit with the pitching staff. Real potential for the staff to be more at ease letting the opposition take their cuts knowing guys out there will track it down.

I like that this is a decidely young team with some guys with a chip on their shoulder. Corey Hart claims to not care that fans are getting impatient with him swinging at sliders in the dirt. Gomez wants to show the Twins they made a mistake. Gamel wants to keep third base to himself. Alcides is determined to snarf up every ground ball on the infield. Prince will be starting his salary bonaza drive. Ryan Braun just hates pitchers.

If Macha can hold the bullpen together and I can keep from biting off my left big toe to ease the pain from watching Doug Davis on the mound I think Milwaukee will exceed expectations.

And you have to love Mose assuming that the post was by a Brewer fan. As if nobody else on BBTF takes shots at the Cubs..........

This projection is for an entirely different team from last year. 2009 ran out 5 excellent hitters and generally two black holes at any time. The projection has two excellent hitters, both worse than last year, and otherwise ordinary to poor hitters. On the plus side, no regular seems likely to quite reach the Mariana Trench-like depths of Kendall and to a lesser extent Hardy. Overall, however, the offense looks below hopes and a big step down.

On the pitching side, Gallardo was pretty good last year with promising peripherals, and all the other starters were atrocious. The projections have 4 solid guys and several other options better than most teams' back-of-rotation filler and also better than any 2009 starter outside of Gallardo. I suppose Parra also still has a small chance to break out. The pen looks good. If anything, the pitching according to the projections could easily be above average this year, though I'm not filled with confidence.

"The Cubs will surely cub it up."

Shouldn't the Brewers finish ahead of the Cubs one of these years before we get these comments? (Congrats on 05 and 06, when both teams were totally irrelevant). Now where's that smiley face key...

Those comments have nothing to do with the Brewers previous performance...

It's got to be pretty difficult to put up a 127 OPS+ in almost 400 PAs and end up with a ZiPS projection of an 89 OPS+.

It's got to be pretty difficult to put up a 127 OPS+ in almost 400 PAs and end up with a ZiPS projection of an 89 OPS+.

Well Robbie Alomar went from 150 to 89 in 2002. I'm sure McGefee will have no problem going from 127 to 89, especially based on his past history.

OTOH, it's entirely possible McGehee was spending more time working on his catching during his past history, and the move to 3rd let him concentrate more on his hitting. Just throwing the idea out there, because he was night & day when he switched positions. Post hoc etc. cautions assumed.

Zach Braddock added.

Can you do a hitting projection for Braddock? He's 1-1 in his career with a grand slam.

Maybe this really ought to be renamed the ZIPS Blog. As time has gone on, Dan's contributions via ZIPS have grown and grown, as his time to evaluate transactions has shrunk and shrunk. I'm as grateful for him and his work as ever, but given that there's no guarantee any particular transaction will be evaluated here, much less in a timely fashion, the title of the blog doesn't seem to apply so much anymore.

If there is to be a Transaction Oracle, maybe Dan could delegate it to a trusted peer. As much as I miss the timely looks at transaction, I'm not about to suggest he take his focus away from ZIPS. Maybe him getting a partner here is the answer?

This shouldn't be read as a complaint. Just some thoughts and observations.

Can you do a hitting projection for Braddock? He's 1-1 in his career with a grand slam

did he get picked off first base there, too?

Why is Felipe Lopez 2010 projection worse than his 2009 projection when he improved last season? It doesn't seem to make sense.

Thanks I knew there was an explanation that would make some sense. Never I looked at his BABIP numbers.

personally, i look forward to seeing as many of joe koshansky's 94 RBIs as i can. it'll make the hourlong trek north all the more worthwhile, as i tell my future grandkids about one of those underappreciated players lost in the remetee braun and son fielder shuffle, the quietest 90 RBI in brewtown, those off of the mighty joe koshansky's bat.