The Curse of... oh, let's say, Clay Bellinger:



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The Curious Case of Robinson Cano’s Defense in 2008
(64 Comments - 9/6/2008 12:22:32 pm)

NY Post: ‘FRAUD’ IS ‘JOBA’ THE NUT
(31 Comments - 9/5/2008 4:56:42 pm)

MLB Team Defense by Zone Rating through September 4, 2008
(99 Comments - 9/5/2008 2:51:47 pm)

Yankees (75-64) @ Rays (84-53), 7:10pm **Game Chatter**
(89 Comments - 9/5/2008 9:40:32 am)

Yankees (74-64) @ Rays (84-52), 7:10pm **Game Chatter**
(170 Comments - 9/4/2008 8:39:38 am)

tRA and the 2008 Yankees
(83 Comments - 9/4/2008 12:40:22 am)

Yankees (73-64) @ Rays (84-51), 7:10pm **Game Chatter**
(133 Comments - 9/3/2008 11:17:45 am)

Newsday - O’Brien: Chamberlain back today, will work out of bullpen
(33 Comments - 9/2/2008 5:26:24 pm)

NY Daily News: Yankees’ Minor League Report
(18 Comments - 9/2/2008 4:47:20 pm)

Yankees.com: Joba to face hitters in next rehab phase
(189 Comments - 9/1/2008 10:25:06 pm)

Player

 Current Projected
Brian Bruney
11 G
15 G
12 IP
16 IP
Dan Giese
11 G
15 G
21.7 IP
29 IP
Damaso Marte
5 G
7 G
4.7 IP
6 IP
Edwar Ramirez
37 G
49 G
40.7 IP
54 IP
Mariano Rivera
44 G
58 G
48.3 IP
64 IP
David Robertson
14 G
19 G
16.3 IP
22 IP
Jose Veras
38 G
50 G
38.7 IP
51 IP
Total
274 G
364 G
328.3 IP
435 IP
Look what people have to say about Larry Mahnken's commentary!

"Larry, can you be any more of a Yankee apologist?.... Just look past your Yankee myopia and try some objectivity."
- Bernal Diaz

"Mr. Mahnken is enlightened."
- cordially, as always,
rm

"Wow, Larry. You've produced 25% of the comments on this thread and said nothing meaningful. That's impressive, even for you."
- Anonymous

"After reading all your postings and daily weblog...I believe you have truly become the Phil Pepe of this generation. Now this is not necessarily a good thing."
- Repoz

"you blog sucks, it reeds as it was written by the queer son of mike lupica and roids clemens. i could write a better column by letting a monkey fuk a typewriter. i dont need no 181 million dollar team to write a blog fukkk the spankeees"
- yan

"i think his followers have a different sexual preference than most men"
- bob

"Boring and predictable."
- No Guru No Method

"Are you the biggest idiot ever?"
- Randal

"I'm not qualified to write for online media, let alone mainstream media."
- Larry Mahnken

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Disclaimer: If you think this is the official website of the New York Yankees, you're an idiot. Go away.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Revising Projections In-Season

As most of the regular readers and commenters here know, I make extensive use of projections on this blog, but I also try to make it clear that projections are inherently limited. Projections are basically an estimate of the talent of a player at the time they are run, but player talent is not a constant. Injuries, conditioning, adjustments and aging are all factors that can change a player's talent, for better or for worse.

So with that in mind, let's look at the projections for the Yankee starters coming into 2008 and compare them to how they've performed to this point. We can also use this to try and figure out what we can expect from the player in question going forward. I'm using Dan Szymborski's in-Season ZiPS projection tool for this, but I've updated the 2008 projections to be an average of five different systems (CHONE, Marcel, PECOTA, ZiPS, and CAIRO).

So here's a look at each of the nine primary starters. BR/650 are non-position adjusted batting runs using linear weights compared to zero, not average. Since we are comparing each player to their expectations I figured it was best to just look the raw batting runs on a rate basis.

Damon,Johnny AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO HP SB CS AVG OBP SLG BR/650
Projection 521 59 146 27 3 14 65 57 75 3 18 4 .280 .355 .423 87
YTD 263 44 86 20 3 6 31 29 35 0 12 5 .327 .394 .494 107
Rest of Year 337 44 100 20 2 9 42 37 47 1 13 4 .297 .370 .448 94
Year End Total 600 88 186 40 5 15 73 66 82 1 25 9 .310 .380 .468 99


Johnny Popup is killing his projections so far. While that's good, it also means he's probably going to regress some. His revised projection for the rest of the year gets boosted by his performance to this point, so a line of .297/.370/.448 is forecast for the rest of the year, and expectations are that Damon will be about 12 runs more valuable at the end of the season than he was originally projected.

Jeter,Derek AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO HP SB CS AVG OBP SLG BR/650
Projection 593 66 182 32 3 13 74 60 100 10 16 5 .307 .381 .438 94
YTD 261 36 71 9 3 4 32 16 30 6 4 1 .272 .329 .375 71
Rest of Year 335 40 99 16 2 7 41 30 51 6 8 2 .297 .366 .420 88
Year End Total 596 76 170 25 5 11 73 46 81 12 12 3 .286 .350 .401 80


Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera are rightfully getting a lot of the grief for the poor offense the Yankees have shown so far, but Derek Jeter is also hitting poorly compared to expectations. Over a full season, Jeter would be 23 batting runs worse than projected if he continues at his current pace. The good news is we should expect a slight bounceback, but overall Jeter looks to be 14 runs worse than expected entering 2008.

Abreu,Bobby AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO HP SB CS AVG OBP SLG BR/650
Projection 530 79 147 33 2 16 88 90 114 4 22 6 .277 .386 .439 97
YTD 269 37 76 16 3 8 43 26 55 0 6 3 .283 .346 .454 89
Rest of Year 345 50 96 21 2 10 56 50 73 1 12 4 .279 .372 .439 93
Year End Total 614 87 172 37 5 18 99 76 128 1 18 7 .280 .361 .445 91


Bobby Abreu's slugging better than expected but his walk rate has dropped quite a bit. In theory his walk rate should go up a bit and his SLG should go down a bit over the rest of the year, but he should be a little bit more valuable than he's been to this point, although overall down from expectations (by around 6 runs).

Rodriguez,Alex AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO HP SB CS AVG OBP SLG BR/650
Projection 564 114 169 28 1 41 127 89 126 13 18 4 .300 .407 .574 123
YTD 189 37 62 16 0 13 38 24 38 4 6 1 .328 .415 .619 134
Rest of Year 339 68 104 20 0 24 75 51 74 8 12 2 .306 .409 .578 125
Year End Total 528 105 166 36 0 37 113 75 112 12 18 3 .314 .411 .593 128


Alex Rodriguez can play ball. He was projected to be very good, and on a rate basis he's exceeding that. The missed time with his quad strain will end up hurting his counting stats, but on a rate basis he came into 2008 expected to be worth about 123 BR/650 PA and is in a good position to be better than that.

Matsui,Hideki AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO HP SB CS AVG OBP SLG BR/650
Projection 483 78 139 28 3 20 87 61 67 3 3 2 .287 .370 .477 97
YTD 240 36 77 13 0 7 34 30 28 3 0 0 .321 .403 .462 101
Rest of Year 308 48 92 17 1 11 51 38 40 2 1 1 .298 .379 .468 97
Year End Total 548 84 169 30 1 18 85 68 68 5 1 1 .308 .390 .466 99


Hideki Matsui is a pretty consistent performer when you look at his full seasons performances, although he's pretty streaky in-season. He's traded some power for average this year, but the net result looks to make him about as valuable as he was projected to be. Taking him out of LF most of the time also helps by preventing his negative defensive impact.

Giambi,Jason AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO HP SB CS AVG OBP SLG BR/650
Projection 321 56 79 13 0 20 62 65 81 10 1 0 .245 .389 .474 101
YTD 190 37 51 11 0 17 40 35 33 10 1 1 .268 .409 .595 124
Rest of Year 292 53 75 13 0 22 58 57 64 12 1 0 .255 .397 .525 111
Year End Total 482 90 126 24 0 39 98 92 97 22 2 1 .260 .401 .552 116


I've been writing quite a bit about Giambi and his resurgence so there's not much need to go into more detail here. He should be expected to fall off some, but his YTD performance boosts our expectations for the rest of the year, from the .245/.389/.474 he was projected to hit entering to 2008 to .255/.397/.525. Add that to what he's already done and he's looking to be about 15 runs better on a rate basis than expected.

Posada,Jorge AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO HP SB CS AVG OBP SLG BR/650
Projection 469 70 134 29 1 18 78 67 94 6 2 1 .286 .382 .469 99
YTD 89 12 29 7 1 3 17 12 16 0 0 0 .326 .406 .528 113
Rest of Year 285 42 84 18 1 10 48 41 56 3 1 0 .294 .386 .477 101
Year End Total 374 54 113 25 2 13 65 53 72 3 1 0 .301 .391 .489 104


Posada's another player who is hitting better than expected, but he's missed so much time that it's tough to say if it's a small sample size fluke or the continuation of a possible change in approach that led to him having a career year in 2007. My guess is the truth is in the middle, and we should probably expect the projected falloff, which still makes him one of the top offensive catchers in baseball. His overall value will be hurt by significant missed time but hopefully he can stay healthy for the rest of the year.

Cano,Robinson AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO HP SB CS AVG OBP SLG BR/650
Projection 561 77 173 38 4 17 86 32 74 5 4 3 .308 .350 .482 94
YTD 261 28 60 14 0 4 24 14 24 3 1 3 .230 .277 .330 51
Rest of Year 335 43 95 22 2 8 45 19 40 3 2 2 .283 .327 .436 82
Year End Total 596 71 155 36 2 12 69 33 64 6 3 5 .260 .305 .389 68


Robinson Cano makes me cry. I know he's better than he's played this year, but I had high hopes for a breakout this season. Instead, he's gotten worse and projects to be close to three wins worse offensively. He's improved defensively to the point where he may get a win of value back (projected to be +5 defensively, on pace to be around +13), but that's still a major disappointment for one of the few young Yankee position players. We all know he has the talent to blow away that going forward projection, but at this point it's going to be tough to salvage his 2008 numbers.

Cabrera,Melky AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO HP SB CS AVG OBP SLG BR/650
Projection 502 59 141 25 5 9 65 47 65 3 12 4 .282 .348 .406 81
YTD 240 24 61 8 0 7 31 21 34 1 3 1 .254 .317 .375 69
Rest of Year 308 34 84 14 2 6 40 29 41 2 6 2 .272 .339 .393 77
Year End Total 548 58 145 22 2 13 71 50 75 3 9 3 .264 .329 .385 74


If Melky Cabrera is your worst hitter, you've got a pretty good team. He's not a good hitter, but he's still pretty young and his defense is solid in center. He's shown flashes of offensive adequacy at times but his droughts tend to be too long for me to expect much more than a league average upside. That's really not that bad.

So let's see, we have Damon, Rodriguez, Giambi and Posada playing better than expected. We have Jeter, Cano, and Melky underperforming. Then we have Abreu and Matsui doing about what we'd expect.

Update: Yankees sign Sidney Ponson. I'd thank yankeemonkey for the link, but this is not the type of news worthy of a thanks.
--Posted at 1:46 pm by SG / 30 Comments | - (79)


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