Projecting
« Albert, Scott & Company | Main | Beyond DIPS »Baseball Prospectus has made their 2005 PECOTA projections available.
So what does the Magic BP 8-Ball see for the Cardinals? A quick overview:
First off there are two players PECOTA sees as head and shoulders above the rest of baseball: Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols. Both project at a VORP of ~85, and the next closest players clock in at ~60 (this doesn't take away the fact that in some respects Sean is better).
Yadier Molina projects at just about 0 VORP, but get this: Daric Barton projects at 22.4 runs above replacement. Wow. Is Barton ready to outperform Molina this year? If so the Mark Mulder trade is looking worse than we originally thought.
Speaking of Mulder, PECOTA sees him at 30.8 VORP on 182 innings pitched. Call him half a Randy. Good enough for 25th best pitcher in the Majors. Of Course PECOTA thinks Matt Morris can pull off a 20 VORP season this year, so who knows. The interesting bits about those pitchers are their collapse rates: Morris is pegged at 20% and Mulder at 13%.
Collapse Rate is the percent chance that a pitcher's PERA will increase by at least 25% relative to his Baseline. High collapse rates are indicative of downside risk.
13% is actually very low as the values bottom out at around 10%, 20% seems high but it still means there are around 550 pitchers that PECOTA thinks have a higher chance of bombing out than Morris. Of course with a 4.72 ERA last year it isn't exactly a fall from olympian heights if he does collapse.
PECOTA thinks Danny Haren will be slightly more valuable than Jason Marquis and and Jeff Suppan this year (17.7 vs 16.6 and 17.5 respectivly).
The big story from these numbers is how advanced PECOTA sees the two prosepects the Cardinals traded away. I don't know anyone who thinks Barton could play this year, but PECOTA thinks he could, and fairly well. I've always thought Mulder was a good deal that could work out horribly, and numbers like this reinforce that notion.
Posted by Josh at January 25, 2005 01:33 PMI see that the "Sean is better" meme will be amusing us through most of the season, eh?
At least through All-Star break.
:-)
Oh, and while I'm thinking of it... does PECOTA mean something? I mean, not the definition (I can look that up in my copy of BP 2005 when it gets here). I mean, it looks like it should be an acronym, but I can't come up with a phrase that would match it.
Though maybe if I didn't restrict myself to PG13 acronyms I might have a better shot at it.
Posted by: Len Cleavelin at January 25, 2005 03:21 PMI don't know what the print source is, but I've heard that Beane is claiming that Barton has a solid chance of playing in Oakland in the 2006 season, thus his switch to 1st base. Scary.
Posted by: Robb at January 25, 2005 04:27 PMThis was the quote from Billy Beane in a recent interview at Athletics Nation (http://www.athleticsnation.com/):
BB: .....The kid Barton that we got, we're going to move him to first base. He was a third baseman in high school and his bat is just too valuable.
AN: I've read plenty about him and people mention Albert Pujols when they talk about him.
BB: In our opinion, he's the best pure bat in the minor leagues.
AN: Wow.
BB: Yeah, I know that's saying a lot because he's only 18 years old. But at this juncture, starting from rookie ball and all the way up to Triple-A, he has as good an offensive ceiling as anyone in the minor leagues in our opinion...
Posted by: salvo at January 25, 2005 04:43 PMSkip Bayless also had an interview with Beane that discussed Barton. It's still too early for a Bagwell-Andersen comparison.
Posted by: Rob at January 25, 2005 05:03 PMDarn it, the link didn't take.
PECOTA doesn't even project Gall. Kinda likes Gorecki (259/312/410) and Schumaker (253/320/353), which is nice to see. Gorecki's big AFL campaign probably bumps his best statistical projection up a tad as well. PECOTA also has Anthony Reyes second only to Isringhausen ERA-wise.
PECOTA stands for "Pitcher Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm."
Posted by: Rob at January 25, 2005 05:23 PMPeople
Enjoy (the)
Computation
Of
Thickheaded
Aggregates
OR
Pujols
Emasculates
Crowds
Of
The
Average (man)
Seriously, though, Bill Pecota was an infielder for the Royals, Mets and Braves in the late '80s, early '90s.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/p/pecotbi01.shtml
Actually PECOTA tried to go beyond simple aggregates, although it's not clear that doing so accomplishes anything. Pujols BTW probably isn't a good counter-example to the intelligence of aggregation, since regression and age-adjustment would cancel each other to a large extent.
Posted by: Rob at January 26, 2005 03:53 AMThanks, Rob, I can sleep better at night now....
Though I rather like Sean's stabs at it too...
Posted by: Len Cleavelin at January 26, 2005 07:49 AM"Pitcher Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm."
What a horrible acronym.
Posted by: Dan at January 27, 2005 12:20 PM