ZIPS projects the M’s
In the spirit of Derek’s recent look at the team, Dan Szymborski takes a crack with his ZIPS projection system. Like all projection systems, it has its quirks, but it holds its own with more notable systems like PECOTA, and it has the added benefit of being free and currently available, so it gets its own thread.
It’s not the gospel truth, but there are some interesting things here. Keep in mind that it doesn’t attempt to project playing time, so all the statlines are based on the assumption of the player playing a full season. Obviously, Yung-Chi Chen won’t get 488 at-bats in the majors this year and we’re not giving Cibney Bello 137 innings to work with.
Richie Sexson: .246/.336/.478. For $14 million. Ugh.
Jose Vidro: .279/.344/.382. As a DH.
Jose Guillen: .260/.327/.449. With good defense in right field, this makes him a good deal.
Felix Hernandez: 199 IP, 3.71 ERA, 64 BB, 175 K.
Horacio Ramirez: 142 IP, 5.13 ERA, 50 BB, 59 K
Robert Rohrbaugh: 138 IP, 5.15 ERA, 42 BB, 76 K
ZIPS agrees with the general outrage on the blog lately – the two offseason trades have been total disasters, and this team isn’t any better than it was last year, despite being older, more expensive, and cashing in multiple young players.
Do you see Rohrbaugh as a decent back-of-the-rotation guy? He seemed to do well in Everett.
I think ZIPS is capturing Safeco more than Rohrbaugh in that projection. Lefties who can put the ball over the plate can benefit quite a bit from the park, as Washburn, Moyer, and even Woods (to an extent) showed last year.
I doubt he’d do as well as that projection shows, but it does make the point that guys that can perform about as well as Horacio Ramirez aren’t exactly hard to find.
That better be some good defense. AL right fielders hit about .285/.350/.470 last year. Even adjusting for Safeco, that’s cause for concern.
The scarey part about Vidro is that he could very likely have a 285 or 290 BA to go along with a 740 OPS. If he does that it’s unlikely Hargrove takes his job away since, hey, he’s hitting close to 300! So if he’s healthy all season (luckily an unlikely event), we get a full 700 PA of the worst DH in the AL. Plus we get to pay him $6 m a year for his efforts.
It doesn’t seem possible, but I hate that trade more and more with each passing day…
Safeco depresses offense overall by about 8 percent, so you can drop that .285/.350/.470 line to .263/.324/.435 for an average RF playing in Safeco. Guillen’s ZIPS projection has him as basically a league average offensive right fielder, which combined with his potentially positive defense makes him a valuable player.
Especially on a one year contract.
Re 4:
Dude, your GM just traded a beloved player and a decent prospect for Vidro. He would have to murder Bavasi’s puppy to lose his job.
Ive Been out of town. Who is Robert Rohrbaugh? Why does Zips have him throwing so many innings?
7:
Just read the post…
You think Sexson is going to have a drop off in his power like that. If anythink I would think his ISO would stay similar and his BA would fall off just because of the type of player he is. It basically shows no difference between Sexson and Broussard which surprised me a little. Do you think this could be a little messed up because Broussard was used in a platoon for a fair portion of his ABs last year. I’m also think a healthy Vidro would likely easily outperform his projection but his health sucks. Finally, the drop in Ibanez’s predicted power makes me a little sad but I think everybody saw that coming. With regards to Vidro and Ramirez, how well does ZIPS handle injured players coming back. One of the few bright spots…Washburn.
My first question was: has anyone done a retrospective of past ZIPS projections to see how they did?
There’s some interesting analysis on the 2006 Yankees ZIPS projections vs. actual 2006 performance at
My first question was: has anyone done a retrospective of past ZIPS projections to see how they did?
Yep. 2006 results here. I wouldn’t have linked to it if it didn’t have some credibility.
Rey Ordonez is in the M’s farm system? That’s good news if Willie Bloomquist gets hurt! All aboard the crap train!
According to ZIPS, we would be better off with Pineiro than with
Horacio Ramirez.
Is Feierabend really this far away?
Ryan Feierabend* 6.21 [ERA] 190.0 [IP] 227 [H] 76 [BB] 103 [K]
Also, look who else is pegged right next to Ramirez/Rohrbaugh:
Justin Lehr 5.16 [ERA] 122.0 [IP] 134 [H] 46 [BB] 79 [K]
One other interesting tidbit I found is how we have so many hitters projected around .324 – .336 OPB and .435 – .478 SLG: Sexson, Broussard, Johjima, Beltre and Guillen. Mmmmm mediocrity. At least Broussard and Johjima aren’t as costly, and Guillen might not be.
Willie Bloomquist cf 29 .249 .298 .309
Noooooooo Willie!
if ($SLG > $OBP && $SLG > ‘.300’) {
print “You’re losing your grit!”;
}
FWIW, I’ve done something similar to David Gassko’s DIPS 3.0 each of the last 2 offseasons. This year, I used LD% of airballs (not batted balls) as GB% * 0.584 + 0.0972 (I also did something similar for HR/F, IF/F, and ER/R, but were all VERY heavily regressed to the mean, espiecally HR/F and ER/R, but dont have my exact formulas, they all used the same regression technique and were based on GB%). I took each players BB% and K% of BFP and did a Base Runs calculation. Felix came in at ERA of 3.83 and an RA of 4.25, in a league neutral park with an average defense, good for the 4th (or 3rd, dont have the spreadsheet in front of me) best in the AL. I’m not sure what the right factors would be for safeco, since a lot fo the park factors are because of the outfield, but imagine it’d be close.
Keep in mind, this was not a projection, but rather an estimation of what he should have been based on those lines. I’m not trying to trump some system, in fact, if I still plan on tweaking it (or actually, totally redoing it), when I get my Inet back at home this week, my point is that it’s interesting that simply using this years totals, and that formula, his “expected” ERA came in so close to his ZIPS projection this year.
At least we can look forward to another homer from WFB.
Wow, Broussard projects to be about the same as Sexson offensively. If ZIPS were gospel, looks like we should have traded Sexson for peanuts when we had the opportunity.
#14, those numbers aren’t as bad if you take the park into context, and Johjima’s a catcher.
#14, those numbers aren’t as bad if you take the park into context, and Johjima’s a catcher.
Yeah, I like Johjima and Beltre’s all right with defense considered. Just pointing out the considerable number in that range (surprisingly with the “star” at a non-premium defensive position being paid the most).
Re: Guillen and great defense. I sure hope he can throw, this soon after TJ surgery, let alone throw well.
At least we can look forward to another homer from WFB.
We should have a contest. Guess which game Willie hits his home run in. Closest guest wins a prize.
FYI, here’s a link to the projections from last year
http://tinyurl.com/tjpml
I’m guessing a lot of the error in these systems is driven by players at the margins, but it looks like it did pretty well with the M’s more prominent hitters last year. Obviously not the same as running a correlation but still interesting.
It was right on with Beltre and Ichiro. Nailed Sexson’s AVG (didn’t predict the power/OBP drop), got Lopez’s walk rate and SLG right (but underestimated his AVG), and underestimated Raul.
I’m no good with formats, but here’s a few comparisons
Ichiro
Actual: .322/.370/.416
Zips: .319/.366/.429
Sexson
Actual: .264/.338/.504
Zips: .264/.373/.533
Beltre
Actual: .268/.328/.465
Zips: .269/.321/.463
Johjima
Actual: .291/.332/.451
Zips: .273/.342/.480
Lopez
Actual: .282/.319/.405
Zips: .257/.291/.402
Ibanze
Actual: .289/.353/.516
Zips: .277/.346/.440
Wouldn’t WFB have to face Zito to hit the HR? IIRC, the M’s are playing the NL Central this year, the East next year, so we’d have to wait until 09 for the next WFB HR.
are we playing the Giants this year?
I’m a little surprised it’s so optimistic about Mateo. I’d rather have Huber than Mateo for next year, but there’s a substantial difference in their performance there.
I think WFB could also homer off Washburn, but again, that’s a problem.
I think the Baseball Prospectus podcast is pretty good. They don’t talk about much of anything they usually do on BP but at least it’s listenable. Every other baseball podcast I’ve listened to sounds just like ambient noise (