I think the 2008 rotation for the A’s will be something like Blanton, Harden (while he lasts), Gaudin, Duscherer, DiNardo.

Sorry for being a jerk here in the comments. Believe it or not, I really didn’t mean to be. But reading back… well, I tried to make a point, but yeah… it got too personal. I apologize to Derek in particular. I’ll think my posts through more in the future.

Now here’s a legit question and forgive me is this is answered somewhere that I missed:

How does a sim like this factor in all 25 men on the team? Given that we don’t know who will fill out 4-6 of the spots yet (though your current post makes some good stabs at it), does the sim just take into account the starting nine, rotation, and key bullpen pitchers? I doubt it makes that much difference, but just curious.

Looking at just the M’s is a poor sample. Surveys of ZiPS’ overall predictions found them quite good.

There’s also an assumption there that posting a higher-than-expected result in 07 means that they should continue to produce more than expected. If you think it’s underpredicting M’s because of park effects, that might be true, but I don’t see a lot of evidence that ZiPS is missing because of park.

I think it’s completely fair for DMZ to say – “if you don’t like the results, than talk to the system.”

Well, I have ZERO sense for how accurate the system *HAS BEEN*, except for a few comments of “well, I think so and so was projected last season.” Memories are imperfect. I happen to remember almost exclusively negative pre-2007 projections – most projecting FEWER wins for the Ms in 2007 than they had in 2006. But, I didn’t log them, so maybe I just happen to remember more negative projections than their were – or maybe they were just had more interesting commentary.

But, all that aside – for ANY projection system, I want to see how it has done in the past. The easiest way to get this picture is to plug in 2007 projections and look at 2007 results.

If it projected the Ms runs differential correctly and a 79-83 record, then maybe I buy into this year’s projections a bit more. If it was off by 50-60 runs (either way), or wildly off-target for Cleveland or Detroit or Oakland, then that would be helpful as well in adjusting my personal sense of how useful the sims actually are.

I HAVE found the 2007 player projections for the 2007 Ms. Here are the actual results (OPS) – followed by ZIPs projections for 2007.
POS – Player – REAL – ZIPS (diff)
CA – Johjima – .755 – .771 – (+16)
1B – Sexson — .694 – .814 – (+130)
2B – J Lopez – .629 – .737 – (+108)
3B – A Beltre- .801 – .779 – (-22)
SS – YuBet — .726 – .697 – (-29)
LF – Ibanez — .831 – .800 – (-31)
CF – Ichiro — .827 – .779 – (-48)
RF – Guillen – .813 – .776 – (-37)
DH – J Vidro – .775 – .726 – (-49)

(ERA)
SP1 – Felix —- 3.92 – 3.71 (-.21)
SP2 – Washburn – 4.32 – 4.45 (+.23)
SP3 – Batista — 4.29 – 4.62 (+.33)
SP4 – HoRam —- 7.16 – 5.13 (-2.03)
SP5 – Weav/Piner 6.20 – 5.10 (-1.10) * Weaver not on the projection – so Pineiro was the projected primary #5.

From MY perspective, these projections paint a picture of an unreliable system, which is PRONE to underprojection (at least for Ms hitters). There were two players who each hit WILDLY under their previous norms. I understand why those projections were off, and I wouldn’t expect any system to do better.

But 6 out of the 7 “normal” hitters for the season are underprojected. I could take this as a case of park effect perhaps being too freely used – except for the pitching — the #5 slot really doesn’t apply. And HoRam was an utter disaster.

But, the thing that baffles me is Wash/Batista. Two pitchers with LONG histories, were both negatively projected (compared to reality) *DESPITE* the fact that the team DER fell from 13th to 27th between 2006 and 2007.

===

For 2008, the team has *ONE* batter at an age where there is legitimate concern of decline based on age – (Ibanez).

Age-declines typically become “significant” at age 36.

So, given the 2007 system CONSISTENTLY underprojected for players having “typical” seasons, I would expect that the 2008 projections are likely to have a similar bias. This would lead me to expect the 2008 run production projections for said system to be generally lower than what the actual will be.

I believe that the fact Seattle managed to post a 104 team OPS+ in 2007 *DESPITE* having two players MASSIVELY under projection, (and zero players massively over expectation) is an indication that inherently, the club WAS (and is) a slightly above average hitting team. They should, therefore, continue to produce slightly above average runs.

As for runs allowed – the team had roughly 350 innings from HoRam/Weaver/Baek/Fear that were significantly worse than replacement level. (280 runs in those innings). These will be replaced by Silva and Bedard. If you use NOT the 2007 numbers – but the 2006 numbers for Silva/Bedard, (when Silva posted a career WORST 5.94 ERA), they allowed 222 runs in 376 innings. That’s a 60 run improvement easily, if you shave off the extra 26 innings. That’s not optimized – that’s specifically examining worst-case scenario for Silva – and “only” using Bedard’s 2006 production.

If you use their career 162-game averages, you end up with 179 runs allowed in 365 innings. THAT would be a 100 run improvement – again – NOT optimized to paint a rosier than reasonable picture.

The only pitcher on the club with “danger-zone” age decline concerns is Batista. Of course, the club still has Morrow, who holds potential to be an excellent #6 starter and stop-gap fill-in for any injuries.

Sherill’s departure might hurt some, yes. But Seattle threw roughly 50 more RELIEF innings than most other MLB clubs last season. If they get an extra 50 innings out of Bedard/Silva (likely – given they replace the Ho-mess that were the 4/5 slots in the rotation), than whatever negative impact is realized by said departure “should” be minimized.

In the end, even if ZIPS/DMB is the “best” projection system available – it doesn’t mean it is good. But, thus far, I have zero sense for how good it may or may not be.

I honestly don’t remember this, but perhaps your definition of ‘extremely negative’ differs. I know the Hardball Times had the M’s at 82-80, I saw a number of 80-85 win projections, many at 83 wins or so (isn’t that what USSM had? I don’t remember). None of that sounded terribly pessimistic, and indeed, it wasn’t far off. Eyeballing the ZiPS numbers, they were perhaps a bit lower than that, but I haven’t run the DMB seasons.

Clearly, the drop in DER/team defense has a lot to do with the surprisingly low projections for 2008, but I don’t think there were many 75 win projections last year.

What is the estimation error of these simulations? (i.e. what is the 1 standard dev measure across all win number forecasts–that is, if you took all pre-2008 projections for all teams using the same assumption set, and took the difference between that and actual number of wins, what is the std. dev. of that set of numbers? I would assume the mean is statistically identical to zero.)

Please? Bonus beers if author answers; simulated knuckle-touch for anyone else.

BTW am I the only one to notice “whole” in right field in the OP? I had to read it three times to make sure because Derek rarely misspells.

Dave, congrats on being a delegate! This was my third caucus and it’s always fun to get involved at this level.

BUT – there’s one piece of additional information that would be EXTREMELY helpful in judging the accuracy/utility of the systematic approach.

What did the exact same approach predict for the 2007 Ms?

The biggest failure I see from many analysts is an inability (or unwillingness) to post BOTH projections and previous results.

Mind you – it’s quite possible for any system to have five consecutive “hits” and then be wildly off the 6th year. The question then is attempting to discern WHY it was off, (was it something systemic – or something organic with a team that the system simply didn’t/doesn’t account for).

I recall almost every pre-season pick for the Ms in 2007 being extremely negative. And I suspect that if you were told ahead of time that the defense would drop from 13th in DER to 27th, the projections would’ve been even more drastically negative.