2008 Brewers ZiPS Projection

[Robideaux]

I don't know that much about their projection methods, but I know some people use them as a tool. Thought some might find them interesting. www.baseballthinkfactory.org

 

Activated link - b19

[DuWayne Steurer]

Nothing too crazy, one way or the other there.

 

I think Weeks will have more than 65 walks given 500 plate appearances.

 

I certainly hope JJ won't regress to a sub .740 OPS.

 

A projection of .810 OPS for Hall, with 20 homeruns seems fair.

 

Almost an .800 OPS projected for Joe Dillon. I don't see it, but I wouldn't say it's not possible. (The projection has him at close to 400 PA's)

[TooLiveBrew]

Thanks for linking that, Robideaux. I agree with RoCo's "nothing too crazy" sentiment. Also agree that they've got Weeks projected much lower in BBs, but I also felt across the board it was a tad conservative for him. If JJ & Rickie each only post 15 HR in 2008, I'll be really surprised (I know the projections likely don't take into account Rickie's wrist feeling better). I also have a sneaking feeling that Fielder will see more than 83 BBs.

[TheBrewer]

On the offense:

-Fielder's numbers regress a little - .289-44HR-106RBI

-Hart's numbers don't improve - .289-25HR-85RBI-22SB

-Braun's numbers regress a little - .294-33HR-93RBI-15SB

-Rickie Weeks doesn't improve - .254-15HR-47RBI-23SB

-Billy Hall improves from last season - .270-20HR-69RBI-8SB

-Hardy declines a good amount - .264-15HR-54RBI-

 

I'm not sure how these work, but I've always taken a look at them to say the least. But in my opinion these numbers deffinatly regress from what the club did last season, and the improvements I thought they were making, and the improvements/experience they would have going into next season, I thought/think they'll be alot better than that.

 

While Fielder could wind up around there I don't doubt that, he's not going to hit 50HR's every season.. Hart I'm expecting he'll improve alot, Braun I think will be closer to 40HR's around there and more SB's. Rickie really did well the second half, and I'm hoping and thinking he'll be around .280/25-30HR/30-40SB. Hall I'm not the biggest fan of anymore but it's good to see better #'s than what he did this season, Hardy I don't think he'll hit 25HR's like he did this season, but I doubt his BA will decline, I think he'll be around .280-.290.

[TooLiveBrew]

I really am convinced that 2008 is going to be the year of Rickie. I agree, thebrewer - I think his power numbers that everyone's been waiting to see are going to be there like they were this past season after he got his wrist cleaned up. I'd expect JJ to take a bit of a dip, but not quite as extreme as the ZiPS project. For Hall to bounce back even slightly more than shown wouldn't surprise me one bit.

 

 

Player Spotlight - Ryan Braun

Name AVG OBP SLG G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB K SB CS

Optimistic (15%) .317 .377 .632 152 574 105 182 40 6 43 124 54 107 21 6

Mean .294 .332 .554 143 538 85 158 33 4 33 93 30 113 15 7

Pessimistic (15%) .274 .318 .505 114 430 59 118 23 2 24 62 28 97 9 6

 

I found this an interesting read, and a way to help understand the ZiPS a bit better. My guess, it seems, is that for Braun he'll be somewhere above the mean & below their "Optimistic." They don't show the "Optimistic" for Weeks, but whatever that is would probably be my guess on him.

 

Encouraging to see their projections on YoGa & some of our other pitchers, but frustrating (yet understandable) to see only 23 starts projected for Benny (27 in their optimistic projection). This team needs pitching, and badly, for 2008.

 

 

Player Spotlight - Ben Sheets

ERA W L G GS INN H ER HR BB K

Optimistic (15%) 2.93 15 6 27 27 175 155 57 16 26 166

Mean 3.72 11 7 23 23 145 143 60 17 27 125

Pessimistic (15%) 4.62 7 8 19 19 117 126 60 17 28 95

 

Top Near-Age Comps: Bret Saberhagen, Scott Sanderson

 

 

That "Optimistic" line makes me drool. Please, Ben!

 

EDIT: Sorry I don't know how to make the charts pretty. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/frown.gif

[joshjs]

Just chiming in to say I, too, have a good feeling about Rickie Weeks in 2008.

[Team Canada]

Both Weeks and Hardy seemed a bit low to me. Not that they couldn't end up with those numbers, but I'd definitely be disappointed if they did.

[SheetsCyYoung04]

Not a shocking revelation, but we arnt very close to having an even average bullpen next year. Of our only 2 average or slightly above-average relievers one had a 6+ era in the second half last season and one is rattled when he hits a guy in the face with a change-up- and goes on the DL from a salad tongs.

[dadofandrew]

Zips was very negative last year and it worked for them. However, they looked silly with Hart and Hardy's improvements.

[TerraceReserved]

So Rickie gets 78 walks in 409 AB's but they have him at 65 in 465 AB? And Prince is expected for a dropoff in walks when he consistently walked better the whole year and is more of a power threat than ever? Eh, sounds very pessimistic and a bit off.

 

And why does it have a bunch of the slugging numbers decreasing? (besides that of Hardy) It has Braun, Fielder, and Hart dropping, eccspecially those Prince and Ryan. There's got to be a reason they were docked there, regressing to the mean a bit, but 50 points for Prince and 80 for Braun? Thats seems very unlikely to me.

[Fatter than Joey]

Thats seems very unlikely to me.

 

Braun can't hit LHP like he did last year -- It is unsustainable.

[dadofandrew]

I think Robert said once Zips is usually the most pessimistic and the most accurate. I would agree on both counts, though they almost always miss the breakouts, which to me, is why projections are made.

[TooLiveBrew]

Being pessimistic (or as they term it, "Mean"-istic) would seem to inherently miss breakout seasons. As a general rule, though, I like it - as it'd be more irresponsible imho for them to be projecting better than what many players end up doing.

[Ennder]

PECOTA is the most accurate, ZiPs is generally pretty mediocre.

 

As you would expect most of them are pretty iffy on pitching but thats because the people who compare the systems always do it wrong. ERA is a very weak stat and it is the one they usually use.

[brewswinga2]

Top Near-Age Offensive Comps: Ken Keltner, Les Bell

 

There isn't a better near-age offensive comp than these two guys? They've never had a season as good as the one Braun just had and they played in the 1920s and 1940s.

[rluzinski]

I would agree on both counts, though they almost always miss the breakouts, which to me, is why projections are made.

 

Most projection systems aren't built to find breakouts. The foundation of most of them is simply a weighted average of the last three or four years, regressed and adjusted for age. Tangotiger's Marcel projection system only does that (he even ignores minor league numbers) and can hang with any projection system, including PECOTA. Maybe PECOTA is better at finding the break outs, but they don't consistently beat the other systems overall, from what I've seen at least. I don't think any projection system has proved itself far superior to the rest.

 

Projections are the good, safe bet but they can never be too accurate. A 600 AB sample of a player's true ability has a lot of error associated with it to begin with.

[danzig6767]

Projections are the good, safe bet but they can never be too accurate.

 

When you're guessing at something in large volumes, being wrong quite often is almost inevitable.

 

[Ennder]

Maybe PECOTA is better at finding the break outs, but they don't consistently beat the other systems overall, from what I've seen at least

 

Each of the past 3 years they have shown the best correlation for OPS at least and by a pretty strong margin. I haven't seen a good study done on pitching since they all focus on ERA which is the wrong stat. I spend a lot of time looking at the various projections and by far PECOTA is the most valuable for rate stats and baseballforecaster is a pretty strong one for identifying breakout players. ZiPs is just marcels with a small tweak and those are weaker for sure, especially on fringe players.

 

I don't see anything too terrible in those projections. I think the pitcher ERA's are too good unless we move Braun or Weeks to a new position but I can't really argue with it. I expect Weeks and Hardy to be a little better than those numbers suggest but given their careers so far I can understand why they have conservative projections.

[rluzinski]

I'd like to see a link showing PECOTA having the best correlations by a "pretty strong margin" for 3 years running. Am I to assume it came from BP? That runs contrary to the couple of studies I've ran across, recently. Depending on the exact test used, the "winner" changed. With respect to straight linear correlation, several were pretty darn close to each other. Can't find a link ATM, though.

[TooLiveBrew]

I expect Weeks and Hardy to be a little better than those numbers suggest but given their careers so far I can understand why they have conservative projections.

Well said. I'd imagine that, since they just crunch numbers (as in, PT-wise), the averages from recent years (small sample) will say that JJ & Rickie will miss decent portions of their forecasted 2008.

[Ennder]

I'd like to see a link showing PECOTA having the best correlations by a "pretty strong margin" for 3 years running. Am I to assume it came from BP? That runs contrary to the couple of studies I've ran across, recently. Depending on the exact test used, the "winner" changed. With respect to straight linear correlation, several were pretty darn close to each other. Can't find a link ATM, though.

 

http://lanaheimangelfan.blogspot.com/search?q=pecota

 

I finally tested Pecota vs the others. For hitters with minimum of 500 AB, Pecota had an r = .736. Very impressive, beating Ron Shandler's second place of .702. Their method of finding comparable players might just be on to something

 

I've added in Marcel, Bill James, and Ron Shandler's projection OPS to the mix. I'm only looking at 114 players who had 500 or more AB, and I had to eliminate a few (Dan Uggla and Hanley Ramirez among others) because not all systems projected minor leaguers. Kenji Johjima had to go, as only ZIPs and CHONE even tried to project him (very well I might add). I don't have access to Baseball Prospectus 2006, so I'll look at Pecota in a week or so.

 

Here's the results:

 

Shandler .702

James .685

ZIPs .684

Chone .677

Marcel .664

 

I don't have links for the other years but I know for a fact it is 3 years in a row that PECOTA has shown the best correlation for hitting. Pitching is more of a crapshoot but they always look at ERA which is such a random stat that I wouldn't expect a strong correlation.

[TooLiveBrew]

Just glanced at the ZiPS again... 2008 is probably the first year in which Rickie Weeks will have a legit shot to be a 30-30 HR-SB guy. That gave me some little goosebumps.

[TerraceReserved]

Just glanced at the ZiPS again... 2008 is probably the first year in which Rickie Weeks will have a legit shot to be a 30-30 HR-SB guy. That gave me some little goosebumps.

 

Count me in as having some goosebumps. It pumps me up just to think of Rickie playing well and healthy for a full year.

[rluzinski]

Finally found the 2007 correlations:

 <span class="statdef">[url=http://www.baseballprospectus.com/glossary/index.php?search=PECOTA]PECOTA[/url]</span> .627
ZiPS .622
CHONE .599
Marcel .591
RotoWire .582
ESPN .581
THT .579
RotoTimes .574

[url=http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=564]LINK[/url]
Trivial difference between PECOTA and ZiPS with regard to correlation and ZiPS did just as well overall, as Silver acknowledges:
<span style="font-style: italic;">"So, another good year from </span><span style="font-style: italic;" class="statdef">[url=http://www.baseballprospectus.com/glossary/index.php?search=PECOTA]PECOTA[/url]</span><span style="font-style: italic;">,</span><br style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">certainly a good year from ZiPS - Dan does excellent work. I think we</span><br style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">can call those two co-champs, but several of the other systems weren't</span><br style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">far behind. We'll repeat this exercise for pitchers at some point</span><br style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">within the next week or two."


</span> 

[Ennder]

I'd like to see those numbers run for players with a bigger sample of AB's. 250 was awfully low.

 

actually I found it while reading up on ZiPs.

 

I did the same test I did last year - its a smaller sample as I only included players with at least 500 at bats, but at least I didn't have to make up a projection for anyone to run the data. The systems I had were Chone, Pecota, Zips, Marcel, and THT. I simply deleted any player if any projection system did not have them. With a higher PT threshold, I only had to remove two - Kelly Johnson, and Adrian Beltre.

 

Results by correlation and average weighted error:

 

Chone .657, 35.5

Pecota .652, 35.8

Zips .644, 38.3

THT .639, 38.8

Marcel .633, 36.4

 

weighted error is (ops - proj ops)*PA

 

Still looks like an off year for Pecota.