Where Fans and Projections Disagree

I don’t know how many of you participate in the Fan projection process. I’m sure it’s only a small minority, because for one thing, it’s extra work, and for another, it’s not like we do a lot to incentivize mass participation. For whatever it’s worth, though, I do think they make for a valuable tool, because when you get enough people chiming in, you get to do things like compare Fan projections to other projections. That doesn’t have to be just for fun — there’s the potential for great insight there. Fans pick up on stuff. Even when they don’t, it’s interesting to see when fans think they’re picking up on stuff. In an ideal world, we’d have hundreds or thousands of people entering projections for all kinds of players, and then we could try to make something of the results.

We don’t live in an ideal world — at least not in that kind of ideal world — but I’m still going to use what we have, for what you find below. Just for the hell of it, I’ve elected to compare Fan projections for position players to Steamer projections for position players. Seems to me, it could be interesting to see where the projections don’t line up. Now, as caution, I want to tell you some of these fan projections are based on pretty small samples, so this is largely just for curiosity’s sake. But, you know, away we go. I’ve chosen to compare by WAR per 600 plate appearances. An awful lot of players aren’t going to get anywhere close to 600 plate appearances, but I’m just shooting for consistency.

My pool of comparisons includes 261 players. Because the projections are trying to project the same thing, it won’t surprise you to learn the R^2 between the sets of numbers is a fairly high 0.74. Maybe that actually seems low to you, come to think of it. Of greater note, the average difference between Fan WAR/600 and Steamer WAR/600 is 0.8. That’s nearly a full win per approximate full season, and that’s huge, but this is basically what we’ve always found when we’ve conducted fan surveys. Fans are optimistic, especially since fans are mostly thinking about their own favorite teams. You have to adjust for this in certain circumstances, but I’m not making any adjustment here because I don’t need to. Given that the average Fan projection is higher than the average Steamer projection, here are the five position players with the greatest positive differences.

Maybe this strikes you as a little underwhelming. Mahtook, if anything, will be a role player. Gutierrez will be a part-time player. Tomlinson will be a part-time player and there’s a half-decent chance you’ve never even actually heard of him. Kepler would be a part-time player. But I have to follow where the numbers lead me, and this is the destination. If nothing else, maybe I can help make you aware of some stuff that happened last year you might not have realized.

If you set a hilariously low minimum of 100 plate appearances, then last year’s highest slugging percentage was posted by…Bryce Harper. Franklin Gutierrez, though, came in second, and Mikie Mahtook was third, just one point behind Gutierrez. Combined those two batted barely 300 times, but fans remember what they just saw. Steamer is down on Mahtook because he wasn’t real good in Triple-A before getting promoted. Steamer is down on Gutierrez because he didn’t play in 2014. Gutierrez, though, has a good excuse, and for Mahtook, the fans prefer to believe in what happened at the highest level.

I shouldn’t beat around the bush, though — look at that line for Russell. Steamer thinks he’s an average shortstop. The fans, so far, see him as becoming an elite shortstop, with more power and better batted balls. It’s the biggest gap for a projected regular, and the fans also believe Russell will be a Gold Glove candidate. I personally side more with Steamer, but the fan optimism definitely catches my attention. More than the Kelby Tomlinson fan optimism, which, whatever, baseball’s weird.

I should note that, in sixth, we get Michael Conforto (+2.3). Fans prefer his power, batted-ball authority, and defense. Now, Conforto got a soft landing down the stretch in his debut, facing mostly mediocre pitchers and also facing mostly right-handed pitchers, but he flashed an awful lot of skills, and excellent exit velocity. I think a good amount of optimism is warranted.

Now for the flip side!

Two Red Sox, and presumably the two Red Sox you would’ve guessed. Also a player looking at being disciplined for domestic violence. Also a player who hasn’t been quite good enough to even make it work out on the Phillies. And a Twin, just because.

A small sample of fans thinks Reyes’ power will further erode, and it also doesn’t buy Steamer’s projected BABIP bounceback. Asche’s power hasn’t convinced the fans like it’s convinced Steamer, so here we have a guy even the fans think is below replacement level. Ramirez and Sandoval? Fans hate Ramirez’s defense, even though they agree with Steamer’s batting assessment. Sandoval, on the other hand, has a similar defensive projection but an inferior offensive projection, due to the fans expecting less power and fewer singles. Arcia is in a similar place as Asche. Fans actually expect a higher BABIP, but it’s negated and then some by less power and slightly worse fielding.

In sixth place, surprisingly, is Mike Trout (-0.6). To be clear, the fans still think Trout is the best player in baseball, but he’s received a pretty good number of Fan projections, and the fans see a higher strikeout rate and slightly worse baserunning. It’s like the Fan projection is a tiny tick worse all over the place, with the end result being about a half of a win. Nothing to fret about, but I guess you can’t be an optimistic fan when you’re dealing with a player who’s already borderline perfect. There’s no real upside left to dream on.

To close out quickly, a plot. I told you the average Fan projection is about 0.8 WAR/600 higher than the average Steamer projection. Here’s how that breaks down by team:

Among projected players, the fans are relatively most optimistic about the Giants, and relatively least optimistic about the Angels. In part this might just capture the spirit of different voting fan bases. Maybe Giants fans are just more optimistic than Angels fans. I imagine that’s a partial explanation, but there could also be other signal. The fans, for example, are a lot higher on Joe Panik‘s bat, and last year he hit very well. The fans are higher on Matt Duffy, who was real good, and they’re higher on Brandon Crawford, who was just worth about five wins. I don’t know what to do with the Tomlinson thing. As for the second-place Dodgers, the fans think health will improve Yasmani Grandal’s bat. The fans also expect huge offense from Joc Pederson, and more offense from Enrique Hernandez and Justin Turner. Steamer hasn’t forgotten what Turner used to be, and it doesn’t love Hernandez, but performance track records are there.

It’s all in fun. I don’t know how much the fans know. I do know I love to wonder. Every year, this is always delightful to investigate.