Projected Standings

In preparation for the 14 + hours of planes, trains, and automobiles (Itinerary: Bus to Subway, Subway to Plane, Plane to Car, Car to Ferry) I thought I would waste my last day of work projecting the standings for the rest of the season. I took everyone's current accumulated statistics and added 57% (remaining portion of the season) of the Baseball Prospectus projections.

BP subscribers can click here for the article that inspired all of this.

A couple of things immediately jump out in these projections. The inability to predict injuries and the dynamic nature of your lineup are not accounted for. People don't play same pitchers each week and who knows who may end up on the DL. In any event, I think the BP projections are probably the most respected out there and this seems the best way to get an estimate of the final standings. Trades, injuries, free agent pickups not withstanding.

Projected Standings
	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	W	SV	K	ERA	WHIP	Total
Berkeley Hoboes	2.0	3.0	4.0	4.0	1.0	6.0	4.0	4.0	6.0	6.0	40.0
The Pete Rose Legacy	1.0	1.0	1.0	5.0	5.0	5.0	6.0	5.0	5.0	5.0	39.0
Licker Store AllStars	6.0	6.0	6.0	6.0	2.0	1.0	3.0	2.0	3.0	3.0	38.0
Marginally Effective	3.0	5.0	5.0	3.0	3.0	2.0	5.0	3.0	4.0	4.0	37.0
Warning Track Power	4.0	4.0	3.0	2.0	6.0	4.0	2.0	1.0	2.0	2.0	30.0
YOOOUUUK!	5.0	2.0	2.0	1.0	4.0	3.0	1.0	6.0	1.0	1.0	26.0
Projected +/-
Berkeley Hoboes	1.0	2.0	3.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.5	-0.5	0.0	0.0	6.0
Marginally Effective	0.0	2.0	2.0	0.0	-1.0	-2.0	1.5	1.0	0.0	2.0	5.5
YOOOUUUK!	1.0	-2.0	0.0	0.0	1.5	0.5	0.0	1.5	0.0	0.0	2.5
The Pete Rose Legacy	-1.0	-1.0	-3.0	0.0	0.0	2.5	0.0	2.0	0.0	0.0	-0.5
Licker Store AllStars	1.0	1.0	1.0	0.0	-0.5	0.0	-2.0	-4.0	1.0	-0.5	-3.0
Warning Track Power	-2.0	-2.0	-3.0	0.0	0.0	-1.0	0.0	0.0	-1.0	-1.5	-10.5

In these projections, Mr. Bill squeaks out the title with 40 points... A lot of regression towards the mean is going on here as the current 3 top teams all lose points while the bottom 3 teams all gain points. The biggest loser is Caleb who is projected to fall all the way down to 30 points. Caleb will need A-Rod and Sheffield to hit well above their projections to prevent this tumble (only 26 more HRs projected between the two).

Bill's offense on the other hand takes off as Konerko, Gordon, and Wells belt 50 homeruns. Beltre's numbers are very similar to Gordon's so either option should produce. On the mound, the pitching holds steady with no projected points drop in ERA or WHIP.

I'll redo these as the season progresses... Especially when key guys go down, players come back from the DL, or a trade is made.

Trash Talk Weekend

Looking forward to doing all of our trash talking IN PERSON this weekend, with the assumed exception of poor Luke, although maybe it's a good thing that he's not there. Luke, we'll have nothing but nice things to say...

Is my offense this bad?

I thought I'd throw out a correlary to Spencer's post about whether or not my pitching is this good. To start out, I never thought my staff could sustain a sub-3.00 ERA. That would mean I had all Cy Young candidates. But I do feel like my staff (especially in terms of WHIP, ERA, and wins) is the best. Of late Schilling has fallen off (and now he's going back to Boston for an MRI on his shoulder, which is bad news for the Sox. Fortunately if he's out they have Lester ready to step in) and I don't expect Haren to keep his sub-2.00 ERA going, but Sabathia and Schilling are both actually underperforming their expected ERA's.

Now to the title of the post. Is my offense really this bad? After a horrid start the team has slowly worked itself into contention in HR and to a lesser extent average and RBI. And of course, by contention I mean I'm within striking distance of second to last place. On the whole my team is in last place in four of the five offensive categories. Konerko and Wells have significantly underperformed, but other than that I don't have any absoulte dogs on my team. I think part of the problem is that I don't have a slugger to fill my utility spot - which is a pretty big disadvantage when 1/3 of the teams in the league sport David Ortiz and Travis Hafner there.

2 things

1) Chone Figgins is a god

2) Rocco Baldelli re-aggravated his left hamstring. That guy is hilarious.

More on Cano/Baldelli for Dye/Iguchi

In 3 weeks and 1 day since this trade took place, Baldelli has done nothing obviously, Cano has been a starter for two weeks, Spencer has started Dye every week, and started Iguchi for the first week and for this current week. Here are the numbers each player put up only during the weeks that he was started, including yesterday.

Dye (3 weeks and 1 day): 14/67, 5 R, 1 HR, 7 RBI, 2 SB, .209 AVG.

Iguchi (1 week and 1 day): 4/26, 2 R, 0 HR, 1 RBI, 0 SB, .154 AVG.

Total (4 player*weeks and 2 player*days): 18/93, 7 R, 1 HR, 8 RBI, 2 SB, .194 AVG.

Cano (2 player*weeks): 16/53, 8 R, 1 HR, 7 RBI, 0 SB, .302 AVG.


So far so good. We'll see what happens in the rest of the season and with the other trades I've made recently. Will it be enough to bring me out of last place? I highly doubt it.

The team log feature is where I got those numbers, it is really handy.

Question of the day: Is Bill's pitching this good?

I've been waiting for a while now for Bill's pitching to fall off the wagon, but yesterday his team posted 2 starts, 2 complete game wins, 12ks, a WHIP of 0.62 and an ERA of 0.50.

For the year, Bill is winning in every pitching category except for saves. Other than his lead in K's which is not that large (especially when factoring in innings pitched), he is actually crushing the competition. He has 35 wins (6 ahead of 2nd), a 3.07 ERA (0.47 better than 2nd) and an absurd 1.14 WHIP (0.08 ahead of 2nd).

After not following baseball super closely other than the sox for the past few years, I wasn't blown away by Bill's staff when first looking at it: Sabathia? Escobar? Haren?

But what's scary is that these pitchers still have some upside - Sabathia's ERA and WHIP are actually worse so far than last year's - only Haren has really been pitching much better than his prior stats would indicate, and it's difficult to write his performance off as just luck.

So for the nay-sayers out there - I'm thinking Mark might have something to say here - is Bill's pitching this good?

Interesting tidbit...

Since May 3rd, Dustin Pedroia has swung at 139 pitches and missed 4 of them.