Well, the rest of you had better hope that my projections are wrong, otherwise it could be a long season for everyone but the Berkeley Hoboes. A few caveats before the charts. I used Baseball Prospectus' projections for the season. Also, Andrew and I simply made our best guesses as to how the starting lineups would shake out. If there was a certain projection that was really killing one team or another, I tried to swap in another player with a more reasonable line. A lot of players, especially players who don't have a definite job, get docked playing time. Similar things happen with older players. Obviously if someone if hurt or isn't starting, they won't be in a lineup, but I can't easily account for that. Also, the BP projections regress pretty heavily to the mean. Extreme performances are hard to come by, so small differences are pretty insignificant. However, I am projected to be far enough ahead in homeruns that Mark could hit Jim Thome with a bus, AND I could continue to start him, and I'd still win HR.
I decided to run two projections - one with Brian Roberts in the AL, and one with him in the NL. Mark had better hope that the trade to the Cubs falls apart, otherwise it could be a grim season for "Don't Trade Roberts".
With Brian Roberts
| Name | Score |
| Bill | 47.5 |
| Caleb | 35.5 |
| Andrew | 35 |
| Mark | 33.5 |
| Spencer | 30 |
| Luke | 27.5 |
Without Brian Roberts
| Name | Score |
| Bill | 47.5 |
| Andrew | 38.5 |
| Caleb | 39 |
| Spencer | 33 |
| Luke | 28.5 |
| Mark | 23.5 |
Here are the full standings, for those who are interested.
Without Brian Roberts
| R | RBI | HR | SB | AVG |
|
| SV | W | SO | ERA | WHIP |
| Bill | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 3 |
| Bill | 1 | 3.5 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| Mark | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
| Mark | 3 | 3.5 | 4 | 1 | 2 |
| Spencer | 4 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 6 |
| Spencer | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| Andrew | 5 | 5 | 4.5 | 3 | 5 |
| Andrew | 6 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Caleb | 2 | 3 | 4.5 | 4 | 2 |
| Caleb | 4.5 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 3 |
| Luke | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Luke | 4.5 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 5 |
With Brian Roberts
| R | RBI | HR | SB | AVG |
|
| SV | W | SO | ERA | WHIP |
| Bill | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 3 |
| Bill | 1 | 3.5 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| Mark | 5 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| Mark | 3 | 3.5 | 4 | 1 | 2 |
| Spencer | 3 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 6 |
| Spencer | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| Andrew | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| Andrew | 6 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Caleb | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 2 |
| Caleb | 4.5 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 3 |
| Luke | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Luke | 4.5 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 5 |
19 comments:
guess we shouldn't even bother playing out the season..
Bill probably had the best draft last night. I think he definitely established himself as the team to beat this year.
However...
Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Or, in this case, in the projections file you care to look at. I used the Baseball Prospectus' weighted means spreadsheet and came up with a different story. Like Bill, I tried to come up with the lineups that would produce the best results for each team. This does cause some variation between the lineups I used and he used.
TOTAL
Bill - 43
Mark - 42
Caleb - 33
Spencer - 33
Luke - 28
I won't get into the hit my team will take if Roberts is traded to the NL. It will suck to say the least.
Looking each team, I tried to break down some of the areas of strength, (defined as 5 or 6 points projected for the category) and weakness (1 or 2 points). I also came up with a Opportunity and Threat number, which is the average percent chance of a breakout or improvement minus the chance of a collapse. Keep in mind that it is much likelier for crappy and unproven players to improve and veteran, established guys to collapse. I then listed the top two and bottom 2 guys in each category on your team.
The final table is the attrition level for you team, which is the average percent chance at a player will fall short of his projected number of at bats or innings pitched.
Bill:
Strengths - HR, R, RBI, SB, SO, WHIP
Weaknesses - SV, AVG
Opportunity/Threat - 46.4% (Johjima, Asdrubal Cabrera / Hafner, Thome)
Mark:
Strengths - HR, R, RBI, SV, ERA
Weaknesses - SB, WHIP
Opportunity/Threat - 34.4% (Delmon Young, Bonderman / Todd Jones, Polanco)
Spencer:
Strengths - WHIP, AVG, SV
Weaknesses - HR, R, RBI, W
Opportunity/Threat - 16.4% (Street, Kotchman / Percival, Weaver)
Caleb:
Strengths - W, SO
Weaknesses - AVG, SV, ERA
Opportunity/Threat - 41.4% (Saltalamacchia, Fields / Jeter, Ortiz)
Andrew:
Strengths - SB, W
Weaknesses - SO, ERA, WHIP
Opportunity/Threat - 25.8% (Daric Barton, Adam Jones / O-Cab, Nathan)
Luke:
Strengths - AVG, ERA, WHIP
Weaknesses - HR, R, RBI, SB, W, SO
Opportunity/Threat - 16.3% (Melky, Reyes / Ichiro, Jeter)
Attrition:
Mark - 12.0%
Luke - 12.0%
Bill - 12.5%
Caleb - 13.0%
Andrew - 13.3%
Spencer - 15.2%
Bill has the best team. Not only do the projections favor him, but his team is stacked with guys poised for improvements.
On the other hand, the reigning champion has the weakest team in terms of opportunity to improve and the greatest chance of missing at bats and innings. There is some good upside on the roster, but not much this year.
sigh....already writing my team off again before opening day. has a familiar ring to it...
I guess I left andrew off the total... He is projected to get 31 points.
also can you post the Opportunity % and the threat % separately? My team has a ton of old veterans and a ton of young people so I'm curious to see if my team represents at on of opportunity and a ton of threat (thus resulting in only slightly a net positive) or if I really have less opportunity than others.
Ok, I just imported the latest projections file from BP, so the opportunity/threat might be slightly different, but the overall standings remained the same.
Opportunity Level / Threat Level
Spencer - 47.1 / 30.8
Mark - 59.4 / 24.9
Bill - 68.2 / 21.8
Andrew - 54.0 / 28.1
Caleb - 64.6 / 23.2
Luke - 46.2 / 29.9
Ouch, well that certainly didn't help...the highest threat level and one of the lowest opportunity levels. I need a few more Magglio and Posada like years from my veterans and some jered weaver like rookie seasons...
One thing to keep in mind with the "Opportunity / Threat" calculations is that the "breakout" percentage is included in the "Improve" percentage, so it doesn't really make sense to add them together. So if a player has a 20% breakout and a 50% improve rate, the chance that they'll improve on their projections is 50%, not 70%.
I'm surprised that the weighted means were very different than the Player Forcast Manager data. I think the weighted means tend to be more conservative in playing time.
Out of curiosity, what were the differences in starting lineups between my projected starters and yours?
Too bad there's no one to trade A-Rod to you this year.
Good point on the Breakout and Improvement. I didn't think of that. I will correct.
The main difference for my team was that I used Harden and Longoria, which is a vast improvement over Slowey and Cust. Even though Harden is only projected to pitch 100 innings and 6 wins, it moves my ERA from 1 point to 5 points. Longoria is projected to hit 25 homeruns, which might be a stretch.
Your team and Spencer's team were the same lineups. For Andrew, I used Adam Jones at UTL instead of Frank Thomas. For Caleb I used Saltamacchia instead of Pierzynski and luke was the same.
That seems to make sense. I doubt that Harden gets to 100 innings though, and I don't even need to threaten to run him over with a bus.
Longoria over Cust is a definite upgrade, not sure how I missed that one. Adam Jones is projected to be a lot better than Thomas, but I went with the sure playing time. As for Saltalamacchia, I'm not sure he is in the big leagues to start, so we'll see how it works out.
Harden is definitely a risk, but his attrition rating isn't as high as I would have thought (14%). True, he's only played in 13 games over the last 2 years but he is so freaking good. So far so good in Spring Training so we'll see.
One of my weaknesses is saves? How's that work?
Saves is a close category. Spencer and I have 3 closers. Andrew has Nathan and Mo, Luke has Paps and Ryan.
Here are the projected Saves:
SV
Spencer - 104
Mark - 103
Andrew - 96
Luke - 89
Caleb - 84
Bill - 66
Interesting.
The perception that A-Rod somehow won me the title last year is actually a bit skewed, given that I traded Ortiz and Ichiro for him. A-Rod didn't out produce Ortiz for the month I had him, I believe. It was really more the Adam Jones for Ortiz trade that started my incredible come from behind fairy tale season.
I started to do some messing with last year's stats to see how much of a difference that trade actually made, but I got distracted and gave up pretty early on. I don't know if it made a difference in the final standings, but A-Rod out-stole Ichiro after the trade and otherwise wasn't a huge change over him and Papi. Johjima outperformed IRod to a slight extent.
I actually think it might have been the Jeter for Tejada trade that might have won it for me, as a juiced Tehada had a sweet September. Thanks Mark.
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