Archive for the ‘Projectioning’ Category

“When I was around the Blue Jays — major, major questions about their bullpen,” said Buster Olney during a recent appearance on Boston’s WEEI. “I think the Red Sox are going to have a good bullpen, Yankees are going to have a good bullpen, Orioles, Rays are going to have good bullpens, and that’s a real problem for Toronto and that’s why I’m picking them fourth.”

Now, let’s be clear: this isn’t a prediction that I’d make. It certainly isn’t the sort of myopic reasoning I’d use if I were making a prediction– and, frankly, I don’t think the Jays have any more “major, major questions about their bullpen” than any other club does in any other season. Olney also picked the Orioles to finish first, earning hearty praise from Baltimore, in both the mainstream media, and the blogosphere, so… perhaps he’s simply trolling. But hoo boy, some Jays fans are positively aghast that anyone might dare think such things.

Parkes experienced some of this particular brand of insanity when, in a Ten Stray Thoughts On A Friday post back in February, he dared highlight numerous questions that surround this best-in-two-decades version of the Jays.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday Baseball Prospectus released their PECOTA projections, and it took a lot of Jays fans by surprise that, in the publicly available projected standings that I linked to in the Afternoon Snack, the club came up fourth in the American League East, behind not just the Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays, but the Boston Red Sox as well.

This seems slightly less odd when we see that they’re really actually neck-and-neck with the Rays and Sox, who are projected for just one win more than the Jays, but… it’s still maybe a little bit odd.

Granted, as I say every time I do these sorts of posts, I find that projections are, on the whole, pretty much entirely pointless– hardly anything worth going damn ape goof about– but still… I figure it might be worth taking a look through the PECOTA data (while, y’know, being careful not to give away too much of BP’s hard work) to see precisely why the Jays maybe don’t stack up quite as well as we’ve been hoping. (Hint: see the picture above.)

Read the rest of this entry »

F-I-R-E-I-N-C-A-I-R-O

I’ve already taken a look at the 2013 ZiPS and Bill James projections for the Jays, but this week I kind of wanted to take a different approach to looking at some of the numbers forecast for this year’s club, and rather than go back through what we’ve already half-assedly looked at, it seemed a good opportunity to look at what some of the other number-spitting systems are telling us. Fortunately, there are several still out there, including CAIRO, available as an Excel file at Replacement Level Yankees Weblog, and quite nicely updated, formatted, and composed by individual team at RotoChamp. We can see the Jays’ team RotoChamp page here.

Now, be warned: some of these projections seem awfully light [read: mostly too scary to contemplate seriously]. So… don’t get too alarmed. Especially since, as I seem to mention every time I begin a post about projections, they’re all kind of a bit pointless anyway. Or, at the very least, hardly to be taken as the gospel. On the other hand, as you’ll see, it’s not easy to make the case that they’re terribly off target. And besides, what the hell else are we going to talk about? Let’s see what the robots are saying, concluding today with part two: the the rotation. (Sorry about the trad stats).

Read the rest of this entry »

F-I-R-E-I-N-C-A-I-R-O!

I’ve already taken a look at the 2013 ZiPS and Bill James projections for the Jays, but today I kind of wanted to take a different approach to looking at some of the numbers forecast for this year’s club, and rather than go back through what we’ve already half-assedly looked at, it seemed a good opportunity to look at what some of the other number-spitting systems are telling us. Fortunately, there are several still out there, including CAIRO, available as an Excel file at Replacement Level Yankees Weblog, and quite nicely updated, formatted, and composed by individual team at RotoChamp. We can see the Jays’ team RotoChamp page here.

Now, be warned: some of these projections seem awfully light [read: mostly too scary to contemplate seriously]. So… don’t get too alarmed. Especially since, as I seem to mention every time I begin a post about projections, they’re all kind of a bit pointless anyway. Or, at the very least, hardly to be taken as the gospel. On the other hand, as you’ll see, it’s not easy to make the case that they’re terribly off target. Besides, what the hell else are we going to talk about? Let’s see what the robots are saying, beginning today with part one: the lineup. (Sorry about the trad stats).

Read the rest of this entry »

Over at FanGraphs they’ve started rolling out Dan Szymborski’s computer-based– and generally pessimistic-ish– ZiPS projections for this year, one team at a time. I can attest that this method helps build up the anticipation, because even though I generally find projections to be pretty seriously pointless, I’ve been kind of interested in seeing what ZiPS was going to say about the Jays– even though I had mostly been expecting a long, painful wait until the project made it around to us. Turns out, though, that we’re kinda hot shit! So it’s here already– among the first ten teams previewed– which I think doubly makes sense, seeing as we’ve already seen some changes to the projected lineups of teams already previewed, like Nationals (who’ve re-signed Adam Laroche), and the Rangers (who’ve added Lance Berkman and AJ Pierzynski), and it seems as though the Jays are pretty much set.

Of course, I don’t think they’re set with Emilio Bonifacio at second base, as Alex Anthopoulos has indicated that Maicer Izturis will more likely be the guy, but since they both project to a (rounded) WAR of 1, but that’s neither here nor there if you’re going to the trouble of scrutinizing the numbers in the image above.

I’m not entirely sure why you’d worry that much– these are just projections, after all– but if you want to make a quick and dirty comparison between clubs, it’s kinda fun.

Especially this year, since the Jays actually hold their own against some of the best clubs in the game.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, well… it just so happens that today, as we’re all furiously rosterbating over the new pieces that the Jays have somewhat-miraculously added to the club, FanGraphs has added the brand new Bill James Handbook projections for 2013 to their player pages (courtesy Baseball Info Solutions).

So… uh… let’s have at it, shall we? And by “it” I, of course, mean, “a not-arbitrary but not wholly predictive look at what one might reasonably expect, production-wise, from a bunch of baseball players next season, being careful to remember that James’ numbers are usually a little bullish on hitters and that it’s ridiculous to put any stock in these numbers having anything resembling pinpoint accuracy.”

I also mean: not relievers,  because why?

Obviously the first players we’re going to want to take a look at are the ones heading to Toronto in the massive deal that was consummated yesterday, and– as of the time of this writing– has still yet to be made official. Now, seeing as I don’t really give much of a shit about projection systems, except as a larf, I have no idea if these would need to be adjusted for a move to the American League or the Jays’ cookie-cutter stadium layout. They probably would, right? Whatever…

The Newly Acquired

Jose Reyes: 39 SB, .295/.352/.434 (.339 wOBA). An ever-so-sleight improvement on his 4.5 win “down year” in 2012, but not quite the guy he used to be. I still completely love this trade, though.

Emilio Bonifacio: 45 SB, .275/.336/.350. (.304 wOBA). Closer to his injury-riddled 2012 that his three win 2011, but splitting the difference nicely enough.

Read the rest of this entry »