Fan Projection Targets – 12/4/2009
We have over 100 position players already with 30+ projections, but the pitchers are lagging behind. So, with that in mind, today’s targets are: Aaron Harang, Scott Feldman, and John Lannan.
Looking at yesterday’s targets, you guys think Gregg Zaun will regress a bit but still remain a quality player, Dan Uggla will bounce back with a better season than last year, and that Rich Harden will stay relatively healthy and pitch quite well. If the consensus is correct on those three, then the acquiring teams should be quite satisfied with the results they get in 2010.
Dave is a co-founder of USSMariner.com and contributes to the Wall Street Journal.
29
I think John Lannan has a breakout year. He had one stretch where he had like 15-20 starts of under 3 ERA before a tumble in August most likely due to fatigue. After that, he finished the season strong. The Nationals are going to have a lot defense so that will improve his numbers. I think he finishes with a solid 3.50 ERA. One thing not talked about him is that in Mid-Season, he basically abandoned trying to strike out guys and tried to get guys to hit in play and let the defense do its job. That helped him a lot. He does a good job of controlling the ball to make it go his outstanding 3B.
it would seem the fans are significantly more bullish on Lannan and agree with your assessment more than mine (which had him only throwing in the 100 IP range of replacement level innings). I don’t trust his smoke and mirrors routine to have the polish to hold up at his young age.
I will say, I am trying very hard to make my projections independent of numbers. If we all use some variation of 5/4/3 weighting then we’re not using wisdom of the crowds at all, just a back of the envelope calculation averaged over 200 people.
It doesn’t seem to me that the fans are properly assessing injury/collapse risk.
And to clarify, I used “smoke and mirrors” to replace 5 paragraphs of personal analysis. If you want to have that discussion, we can.
Re: Harden’s fan projection…how can 210 voters put a .330 BABIP on him? He has a career BABIP of .284 and never posted a BABIP higher than .304. His “stuff” is textbook “nasty” and if anyone should be able to maintain a below average BABIP it’s a guy with a huge K/9 who gives up lots of fly balls (because fly balls results in fewer hits than ground balls).
What am I missing? Thanks.
We, the fans, do not directly project BABIP. If his BABIP is screwy it’s because we’re doing something wrong.
Are the fans projecting AVG? And then AVG plus the ratios combine to generate BABIP automatically?
They selected a .249 AVG, which is also very high considering he strikes out one guy per inning. His career AVG is .221, with last year’s .235 being a career worst.
I believe they are projecting the AVG and BABIP numbers based on comparing the projected ERA (as provided by the fans) to the projected K/BB/HR rates. In other words, if Harden was to have that ERA with those K/BB/HR rates he would need to give up that BABIP (leading to the projected AVG).
Haze nailed it. In one respect, it’s strange to ask for both numbers. But given that David/Tango will be doing some behind-the-scenes adjustments, asking for fans to project the numbers both ways gives them more flexibility and more possibilities for research.
Fans are not asked to project BABIP. They project W, K, HR and ERA within ranges. I would assume that fangraphs then infers BABIP from typical runs/earned runs rates, strand rates (are league-wide or pitcher-specific strand rates used?) and TTO rates from the fans’ projections.