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Here’s the thing about projections: we always want them to get better, but we never want them to be perfect. Not that perfect is anywhere within our grasp, but in the hypothetical reality where we knew for sure what was going to happen, sports would be ruined. We don’t want to know the future — we just want to think we do, so we can talk about and analyze things that haven’t fully played out. With that in mind, hey look, we have complete combined 2014 data for Steamer and ZiPS!

We have combined 2014 season projections, and we have author-generated team-by-team depth charts. So what we have is an idea of the projected upcoming standings, an intelligent declaration of how things will go that we know will look kind of silly in six months. Reality always deviates from the projections, but that doesn’t mean the projections are valueless, and I thought it could be worth looking at which teams appear the most and least improved from last season.

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The non-appendix portion of The Book is 367 pages long. Chapter 9, “To Sacrifice or Not” is 50 pages long and represents nearly 14% of the entire book.  The math within may not be for everyone to read, but the information is simplified with the addition of several “The Book Says” callouts that would be easy for any reader, say a manager, to find.

Ron Washington tells us to take those “analytics on that and shove it up our [bleep][bleep]”

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Ben and Sam preview Arizona’s season with azcentral sports Diamondbacks beat writer Nick Piecoro, and Nick Wheatley-Schaller talks to FOX Sports Arizona’s Diamondbacks TV play-by-play voice, Steve Berthiaume (at 27:47).

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

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Nelson Cruz got tired of unemployment and signed a one year, $8 million deal over the weekend, taking nearly half of the salary he turned down when the Rangers made him a qualifying offer back in November. However, according to agents Scott Boras and Bean Stringfellow, fellow remaining free agents Ervin Santana, Kendrys Morales, and Stephen Drew aren’t particularly interested in following in Cruz’s footsteps, and are even openly talking about waiting until after the June draft — when they will no longer have compensation picks attached — before signing a new contract. The theory is that, without the encumbrance of draft pick tax, teams would be lining up to sign these players.

There’s a problem with this theory, however; the math simply doesn’t work. Over at MLBTradeRumors, Tim Dierkes did a great job laying out the picks that each team would have to surrender if they signed any of the remaining qualified free agents. He also helpfully included the pool amount allocated to each pick, so we can see that the exposed draft pick “values” range from $2.8M down to $600K.

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It was back during the winter meetings when major league baseball made headlines by announcing their intention to eliminate home plate collisions. On Monday, MLB and the players’ association announced that a new rule will take effect in time for the 2014 season. The rule will be reviewed and possibly tweaked prior to the 2015 season.

The impetus to make a change is obvious, many teams count their catcher as one of their best players. In an otherwise non-contact sport, catchers get knocked off the field all too often. Baseball is a bit behind the curve. Other sports have been protecting exposed players for over a decade, like quarterbacks and kickers in football or goaltenders in hockey. Players like Buster Posey and Yadier Molina have been injured in recent seasons, as these two videos show (video one, video two).

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In Part One of this series, published yesterday, I ranked the projected 2014 Opening Day payrolls, estimated the number of pre-arbitration players on each Opening Day roster, and calculated the percentage of each team’s payroll attributed to the highest paid player.

Today, in Part Two, I break down the payrolls even further, into four component parts: the starting rotation, the starting lineup, the bullpen and the bench. In so doing, I made a judgment on who was likely to slot into these roles to start the season. FanGraphs’ Depth Charts and MLB Depth Charts were my go-to sources, but I made a deliberate decision to exclude all non-roster invitees from Opening Day rosters, as those players’ salaries aren’t included on Cot’s Contracts. Invariably, some of my judgment calls will be wrong. Feel free to note those in the comments, as many did yesterday in Part One.

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So we’re agreed: it’s interesting to see where different projection systems disagree. After all, the projections are based on the same information, for the most part, so it could be telling where there might be significantly different interpretations. Monday, I compared and contrasted 2014 Steamer and 2014 ZiPS for position players. This is the natural and obvious follow-up, for pitchers.

You’d think this would be just as simple as the position-player version. In truth, it’s more complicated, and analysis required a few more judgment calls. I’m okay with them — I’m the one who made them — but if you’re dissatisfied, you’re free to go into the spreadsheets and run the numbers the way you’d prefer to. One of the neat things about our hosting the projection data is that it’s all so easily exportable. Now then, let’s walk through the process so we can get to the end of walking through the process.

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