Tangotiger is conducting his 2007 community projections:

“I’ve seen the results of six forecasting systems this year. (I’m sure some of you have seen more than that.) And all were based on some algorithm with little leeway for human interaction. Why is that? Because we can’t trust any single person’s opinion. But, what if we can get a consensus, a Wisdom of Crowds? Who knows more about whether Papelbon will be a starter or reliever this year: an algorithm or a Redsox fan? Who knows more about the number of games a 2006-injured Hideki Matsui will play in 2007: an algorithm or a Yankees fan? There are certain human observation elements that are critical for forecasting. That’s where you can come in, and why you are here.”

When you have a free moment, head over there and fill in the OPS and ERA projections for your favorite team!

We’ve just added play-by-play data in the Play Log section for each game. At this time, play-by-play data includes the Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, Home Team Win Expectancy, and the Batter’s Win Probability Added (WPA) for each and every play of the 2002-2006 season.

Win Expectancy is calculated as the result of the play, while Leverage Index and Run Expectancy are calculated before the play happened.

Everything is calculated before the play happened. We’ve also added BRAA which is the difference between Run Expectancy at the start of the play and the end of the play.

If you click on the play, you’ll get the pitch sequence for each play in a little pop-up box. The playoff games pitch sequence is a little screwed up right now. It “snakes” around, so for the first line it will be “pitch1, pitch2, pitch3, result” and then for the next line “result, pitch3, pitch2, pitch1”. We’ll try to get this cleared up soon.

We’ve also moved all the Win Probability graphs out of the Team section and into the Scoreboard section. We’re just trying to make things a little more organized and it will allow us to eventually vastly enhance our team stats.

If you have any problems or suggestions on how to improve the new scoreboard or play-by-play sections, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Thought I’d show a quick preview of our new scoreboard. This way you’ll be able to quickly see all the day’s graphs in one convenient place.

You’ll also notice that the box score and play log links aren’t quite working yet. I’m hoping they will be sometime next week.

I thought I’d mention that the Bill James Handbook projections on FanGraphs have been updated with the latest and greatest.

“… many things happen during the offseason that change playing time for the coming season. That’s why we produce The Bill James Handbook: Projections Update with cutting-edge projections reflecting changes through the last couple days of February.

We adjust projections for many reasons, including:

-Playing time adjustments
-Free agent signings (including four Japanese rookies)
-Trades
-Injuries
-Ballpark changes”

I think FanGraphs has three of the four rookies in the database now with the exception of Daisuke Matsuzaka. He’ll show up next time he makes a spring training start. For those who can’t wait, the Bill James Handbook has him at 19-2 with a 3.13 ERA in 190 innings.

As always, if you’d like to dice, slice, and sort the Bill James Handbook projections to your heart’s content, you’ll have to purchase them here.

While we’re on the topic of projections, I’d like to give a quick shout-out to the new Hardball Times 2007 Season Preview. Besides the great commentary on teams from many of your favorite bloggers, it has player projections through 2009. I’m still digging in, but it’s full of fun and useful stuff.

You may have noticed the Win Probability numbers have changed slightly. Don’t panic! There have been a few changes, for the better.

First off, we’re now using Tangotiger’s updated win expectancy tables which are no longer a flat 5.0 Runs per Game environment. Instead, we’re using the home team’s league, average run environment. This now puts batters and pitchers on “equal footing” and you should now be able to accurately compare batters and pitchers using WPA.

Second of all, we’re also using Tangotiger’s run expectancy tables to calculate Batting Runs Above Average (BRAA) for both batters and pitchers. Once again the run environment is set at the home team’s league, average run environment.

Next to BRAA there is a column titled “REW”, which stands for Run Expectancy Wins. This is a replacement for OPS Wins because we no longer need to estimate wins in a context neutral environment since we’re now using run expectancy.

Finally, Clutchiness has been shortened to Clutch (Clutchiness was excessively long) and is calculated as WPA/LI – REW.

Update (3/4/2007): Clutch has been switched back to being calculated with OPS Wins. More on this later.

Typically players remain in the same order, but their values have changed slightly. Batters should be slightly more valuable and pitchers slightly less valuable based on WPA scores.

Don’t worry Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues; you have not been forgotten. 2007 Spring Training stats are now included in the FanGraphs player stats pages. Unfortunately, the stats are very basic. But, at least you can get a feel for how your favorite players are doing.

These will be updated nightly and Spring Training leaderboards should be up sometime tomorrow.

Just thought some of you might be interested in an article I did for SI.com about the four different projection systems available on FanGraphs.

It looks at which players the systems are in agreement with and which one’s they’re at odds on using OPS and ERA.

“Everyone expects [Ryan Howard] to be very good, but there’s certainly some question about how great he’ll actually be. At least CHONE and ZiPS seem to think Carlos Delgado is in for a rather steep decline next year, while the other two think he’ll keep chugging along at his .900+ OPS.”

Anyway, take a look if you get a chance; I thought some of the differences and similarities were quite interesting. You can find the article here.

As promised, the Minor League Leaderboards are up! It’s worth noting that instead of the actual minor league team, the leaderboards show the affiliated team in their respective league. Also, qualified batters are 2.7 plate appearances per game and pitchers 0.8 innings per game. Other than that, just pick a league and sort/filter away!

If you have any ideas or suggestions on how to make these better, just send us a note and we’ll throw it on the to-do list.

After some painfully annoying work, we’ve managed to integrate the full set of 2006 Minor League stats into FanGraphs. Our plan is to eventually backfill minor league stats for all major league and minor league players. We’ll also have nightly updates for Minor League stats during the 2007 season.

Our plan is to have Minor League leaderboards (in the usual FanGraphs style) up and running by the end of the week. Additionally, we’ll be figuring out the best way to include the Minor League stats in the season graphs.

As always, please let us know if you have any problems, comments, or suggestions!

Dan Szymborski was kind enough to let us post the ZiPS projections he provides to Baseball Think Factory. Here’s a bit about ZiPS:

“Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors – many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2007. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production – a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future. “

Just like with the Bill James projections, we’ve used the Batting Average, On-Base Percentage, Slugging Percentage, Runs Created, Runs Created/27 and ERA supplied in the original file instead of calculating it ourselves.

I’m fairly certain this will be the last addition to the projections this season, which leaves us with a grand total of four projections (Bill James, CHONE, Marcels, and ZiPS) to choose from.

As always, if you notice any problems or errors, please let us know and we’ll do our best to fix the problem immediately.