PECOTAs are out! Wooooooooo!
I know this shows what a dork I am, but the PECOTA forecasts are out! Even if you’re not a fan of Steve Goldman and Dan Fox, subscribing to BP is worth it just for PECOTA season.
Fun stuff. Random notes:
* Bedard’s 2008 puts him at about +4 wins over a replacement pitcher, making him the 10th-most-valuable pitcher in baseball.
* Jones’s 2008 puts him at about +2 wins over a replacement player, and his comps are not qhat I’d expected: Steve Hosey, Chet Lemon, Larry Hisle, and Jack Clark
* Jones’ upside, which is a measure of his potential over the next five years, is 198. That’s the 19th-highest for hitters in all of baseball
* All of baseball
* It’s just behind BJ Upton and ahead of Curtis Granderson
* Bedard’s is 232, the 7th-highest pitcher number, and just ahead of Felix.
* Jones’ total contribution in 2008 is the highest of any Mariner hitter
Okay, I’ll stop with the Jones stuff. What else…hitters:
* PECOTA still hates Ichiro. I look forward to the annual “you know, I think this year it might be right” post.
* Clement comes off better than I thought he might
* Sexson bounces, but not too high
* Lopez’s line is ugly
* Wilkerson’s at .232/.326/.420, a big step back from Guillen’s 2007
* Vidro hits .282/.346/.373 which is even lower than I guessed at in the “Projecting the 2008 Mariners” post a week ago
* Balentien’s line as a major leaguer is bad
* Small steps back for Beltre, Johjima, Betancourt, Ibanez
* Bloomquist is mercifully left off
As a team, the current lineup looks like it drops 10 points of OBP and 20 points of SLG. Dropping the Ichiro forecast, it’s maybe 5 points of OBP and 10 points of slugging — so offensively, they drop a game in the standings.
Pitchers:
* Progress for Felix
* Little bit of regression for Putz
* HoRam is listed as “swing” and is bad
* Washburn and Batista both go badly (150 IP of worse than 2007)
* Silva’s line is uuuuuuuuugly. Really ugly. How bad? It’s about where Jeff Weaver’s 2008 projection is.
* Sherrill’s the third-best pitcher on the team at +13 runs over replacement (making him+Jones just shy of Bedard’s contribution)
Overall, with Bedard, it’s a low-walk, low-K staff with about a 4.50 ERA, and only one serious groundball pitcher in Felix (only one seems like an odd projection, I’ll have to think about that more). The pitching side improves, but on the whole it doesn’t improve much at all. 30 runs, maybe? I’d have to go crunch that one out — I can’t eyeball pitching stats the same way I can the offensive numbers. It might be less of an improvement, if you threw the defense in there to get to a runs-per-game number.
Anyway — yeah, check it out. I love PECOTA forecasts, and totally recommend them for your forecast needs. Nate does a great job, and I look forward to the more formal player cards. If nothing else, they’ve always served me well in thinking about comparable players, development paths, and giving me a point to challenge my own conception of a player. When the cards come out, even if you don’t normally read BP, it’d be worth a month’s subscription just to be able to browse those things.