2016 Steamer Predictions (Latest: ZiPS, post 25)

[Outlander]

I will be really sad if Lopez ends up being that bad. I guess I'll take it though if we get another Yount in the process.

[DuWayne Steurer]

The Carter and Santana projections are nice. I see Zips doesn't think we have a single left side of the infield guy who can put up even a .700 OPS.

 

I know Josmil Pinto isn't supposed to be much with the glove, but I do see Zips projects him to hit well. Wouldn't be the worst guy to put back there for 60-70 games if Stearns did pull off a Lucroy trade.

[SRB]

Since when does Rymer Liriano have such a great defensive reputation? He's projected to be the best defender on the team by quite a bit, +10 Def compared to Arcia's +7 Def.

 

Obviously Zips projections are totally meaningless (especially the defensive rating, is that just eyeballed?) but it's interesting to see that. I would be even more excited about Liriano if I thought he was going to be an elite defender. It must be projecting him as a corner OF given the final zWAR total, but still.

[DuWayne Steurer]

I also see Zips projections are a little more kind to the pitchers than Steamer.

[Boomer5]

As an analytics guy, I wonder what kind of model Stearns uses?

 

Btw I don't see our pitching staff as bad as Steamer does. I think our issue will be offense for everyone except Davis and Braun once Luc is traded, and especially defense.

[JohnBriggs12]

The Carter and Santana projections are nice. I see Zips doesn't think we have a single left side of the infield guy who can put up even a .700 OPS.

 

I know Josmil Pinto isn't supposed to be much with the glove, but I do see Zips projects him to hit well. Wouldn't be the worst guy to put back there for 60-70 games if Stearns did pull off a Lucroy trade.

 

 

Aaron Hill has a .719 projection and I see him playing a lot of 3B at least early on. Very weak numbers for all the CF candidates especially Broxton unless you count Santana. That's the big hole in the lineup. Andy Wilkins with more projected HR and RBI than Davis? Are you serious?

 

They do like Davies.

[1992casey]

My gut says that Hill is getting extra credit for having a good season in 2013.

 

Steamer's creator says not to put too much stock in his system until he refines it more. ZiPS is somewhat more established. If I'm in a GM's position, I'd be familiar with all the systems and would look to see what they say. Being familiar includes understanding their strengths and weaknesses. At the end of the day, I'd be drawing my own conclusions with various projection systems helping me along.

[SRB]

My gut says that Hill is getting extra credit for having a good season in 2013.

 

Steamer's creator says not to put too much stock in his system until he refines it more. ZiPS is somewhat more established. If I'm in a GM's position, I'd be familiar with all the systems and would look to see what they say. Being familiar includes understanding their strengths and weaknesses. At the end of the day, I'd be drawing my own conclusions with various projection systems helping me along.

 

Do you think each team has its own system? It's not like ZiPS is something an organization with hundreds of millions of dollars in resources couldn't knock together pretty quickly (in fact, teams probably have much more advanced systems)

[1992casey]

I think teams have their own proprietary tools. But because predictive stats don't really come easily, I don't think they can simply "knock them together" without a fair amount of testing and refinement. And for the sake of comparison, I would think they'd be familiar with the information provided by the publicly available tools.

[SoCalBrewfan]

My guess would be that Hill will get a few starts a week, mostly to give Scooter and/or Cecchini a break against LHP, in the hope that he rebuilds some value and provides some stability for a youngish infield. I would also guess that they will give him a pretty short leash. If he's stinking up the joint, then we move on quickly.

 

The Andy Wilkins projection does draw the eye...I wish I believed it. He did rake in AAA in '14, and has a home run every 23 AB or so in the minors, but I think I'll take the under on that projection nevertheless. I like the Santana projection though, and Flores' and Coulter's projections seem promising.

 

I imagine that part of the difference between projections of our pitchers is based on the various assumptions about the defense and BABIP. I am a bit dubious of some of those projections, but it's sure interesting to see Hader, Cravy, and Burgos projected to be as good as Peralta and Davies ahead of him. Wily's K rate was way down, and the system doesn't see him bouncing back.

[Thurston Fluff]

Steamer is pretty good. Here are a couple noteworthy things about it if you're unfamiliar:

 

1. They predict FIP, and they pretty much assume FIP = ERA. FIP is mostly driven by strikeouts, walks, and HR rate. There are players that consistently overperform or underperform their FIP, and Steamer does not pick up on it. It's a big debate whether or not Jungmann is one of those guys, but all of the analytics are predicting he's not and that last year was a fluke.

 

2. It takes about 2 years of MLB time to get any certainty in Steamer. If Davies and Garza have 3.00 FIP/ERA at the all star break next year, Davies projection will improve drastically but Garza will not move hardly at all. Steamer doesn't know what to do with a guy like Davies but it knows Garza very well at this point.

 

3. To answer the "how they work" question, they look at fundamental stats as opposed to "luck" based ones and use those to build a predictive model, then adjust for age and level shift. For example, Davies averaged about 8 K/9 in the MiLB, so they think that will drop to about 7 K/9 with the increased difficulty. That goes in to a data model along with other numbers to predict FIP and ERA. Garza is in his 30s so they pretty much predict based on his last 3 years with a tilt towards the more recent data, and knock off a little bit for getting older.

 

4. Steamer goes bananas for strikeouts, and we don't have many high strikeout guys. Example: They are predicting a career year for Strasburg because he's been a 10 K/9 guy for a few years. On the other hand you have Edinson Volquez who started the WS tonight, good ERA but he hasn't reached 7 K/9 in the last 2 years so Steamer says he's pretty much Matt Garza. I don't disagree with this, Volquez is not good and I think Steamer is correctly calling him fluky.

 

It's important to remember that these predictions are baselines. 1-2 guys could improve their ERA by a full run through luck or mechanical improvements, but Steamer doesn't include luck or mechanical improvements. Conversely, 1-2 guys will probably get hurt or be terrible, but we can easily replace with a guy who will throw a 4.5 ERA so a lot of these predictions are kind of like the worst possible scenario in our case.

Umphry, thanks for taking the time to explain things. It helps understand the situation better.

 

Good info but does anyone know how accurate they have been? I get the luck factor can create outliers but if it is worth anything, even as a baseline, it has to get us in the ball park for the average player. (Pun intended) How well has it predicted things in the past?

[jerichoholicninja]

Steamer is pretty good. Here are a couple noteworthy things about it if you're unfamiliar:

 

1. They predict FIP, and they pretty much assume FIP = ERA. FIP is mostly driven by strikeouts, walks, and HR rate. There are players that consistently overperform or underperform their FIP, and Steamer does not pick up on it. It's a big debate whether or not Jungmann is one of those guys, but all of the analytics are predicting he's not and that last year was a fluke.

 

2. It takes about 2 years of MLB time to get any certainty in Steamer. If Davies and Garza have 3.00 FIP/ERA at the all star break next year, Davies projection will improve drastically but Garza will not move hardly at all. Steamer doesn't know what to do with a guy like Davies but it knows Garza very well at this point.

 

3. To answer the "how they work" question, they look at fundamental stats as opposed to "luck" based ones and use those to build a predictive model, then adjust for age and level shift. For example, Davies averaged about 8 K/9 in the MiLB, so they think that will drop to about 7 K/9 with the increased difficulty. That goes in to a data model along with other numbers to predict FIP and ERA. Garza is in his 30s so they pretty much predict based on his last 3 years with a tilt towards the more recent data, and knock off a little bit for getting older.

 

4. Steamer goes bananas for strikeouts, and we don't have many high strikeout guys. Example: They are predicting a career year for Strasburg because he's been a 10 K/9 guy for a few years. On the other hand you have Edinson Volquez who started the WS tonight, good ERA but he hasn't reached 7 K/9 in the last 2 years so Steamer says he's pretty much Matt Garza. I don't disagree with this, Volquez is not good and I think Steamer is correctly calling him fluky.

 

It's important to remember that these predictions are baselines. 1-2 guys could improve their ERA by a full run through luck or mechanical improvements, but Steamer doesn't include luck or mechanical improvements. Conversely, 1-2 guys will probably get hurt or be terrible, but we can easily replace with a guy who will throw a 4.5 ERA so a lot of these predictions are kind of like the worst possible scenario in our case.

Umphry, thanks for taking the time to explain things. It helps understand the situation better.

 

Good info but does anyone know how accurate they have been? I get the luck factor can create outliers but if it is worth anything, even as a baseline, it has to get us in the ball park for the average player. (Pun intended) How well has it predicted things in the past?

 

I was wondering the same thing. Does anyone go back after the season and see how accurate these predictions are? That seems like quite a task especially if you're going to take into consideration things like injuries.

[Thurston Fluff]

I'm ok with missing on injuries or the occasional oddball season of a small number of players. What I would like to know is how accurate are they overall in projecting things. I'd really like to know how close a sabre oriented projection of players gets to reality. Especially since our team is going to use more of this sort of thing to get us to the promised land.

[QuevedosTongue]

Regarding the Zips projections, I'm not buying Santana as the 3rd best position player and Jungmann as the best pitcher.