Transaction Oracle: 2012 ZiPS Projections - Chicago Cubs

Epstein!  That’s pretty much the big news in Cubs baseball the last month.  It’s still hard to tell what direction exactly Epstein will take the Cubs, but it’s likely that the list of

players employed by the Cubs in 2012 will look very different than the list of players below.  Epstein wasn’t brought in with giant sacks full of money in order to politely churn Jim

Hendry’s assemblage of awesomeness.

On the plus side, the Cubs aren’t really as decrepit a team to rebuild as the Houston Astros ...

Read More...

Transaction Oracle: 2012 ZiPS Projections - Boston Red Sox

Despite the September collapse, the Red Sox managed to still win 90 games, but the collapse is what will be remembered about this team in the year 2050. Hopefully, as we listen to baseball games in our rocket cars or watch with our virtual reality Ballparksperience contraptions. Still, what it came down didn't really have much to do with beer drinking in the clubhouse (drinking beer and playing video games seemed to work just fine for the 5/6th of a season during which the team was one of ...Read More...

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 ...Read More...

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 ...

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 ...

Read More...

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: Red Sox Fans Need to Take a Deeeeeeeep Breath

One phenomena which is quite interesting to me is how most of the analysts calling for Theo's head, and talking about what a flawed team the Red Sox are, are the same people who were talking about how great this team was in the spring and July. People (and by people I include the Red Sox ownership) need to relax and stay the course with this front office. There are decisions in life, unfortunately, where you do everything right in preparation and consideration, but the outcome disappoints. ...Read More...

SABR - BBTF Chapter: Save the Date: 2012 SABR Convention in Minneapolis

Our next national convention will be held June 27-July 1, 2012, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Twins are scheduled to play host to the Kansas City Royals in a weekend series at Target Field, which opened in 2010. In addition, a trip is tentatively planned to see a St. Paul Saints minor league game.

It wasn't the weekend that I would have preferred (too close to Paula's birthday) but we'll make it work.

Transaction Oracle: Saying Goodbye to Flanny

I never got to meet Mike Flanagan. I have no stories about Flanagan, no interesting anecdotes about him, just the lingering emotional attachment that comes with rooting for a sports team when you're a little kid. I was born in 1978, so I was too young to remember Mike Flanagan at his best as a pitcher. But he was a part of the first sports team I was old enough to follow over the course of an entire season, the 1983 Orioles. It was a pretty good year to become a fan, this being the last ...Read More...

Notes in a Minor Key: Draft signings

Today's the last day that 2011 draft picks can be signed. I would expect a rash of announcements as we get close to the midnight deadline. Post 'em here.