Fan Projection Targets: 12/2/2009
Today’s targets are: Kelly Shoppach, Josh Johnson, Jake Peavy
Yesterday, our three targets were Jay Bruce, Ricky Nolasco and Edwin Jackson. Let’s see how they fared:
Jay Bruce ended the day with some 200-plus ballots cast and it seems everyone is pretty optimistic about him having a much improved season with a .358 wOBA and somewhere right around 3 WAR. The interesting thing here, though, is that there are apparently only eight Reds fans who visit FanGraphs, and they expect him to have a considerably better year with a .373 wOBA and 4.4 WAR! They project his defense to continue at high levels with an UZR of 7.4 compared to 3.2 for non-fans.
However, fans are not expecting a repeat for Edwin Jackson and instead have projected him for a healthy dose of regression. Everyone thinks the walks will go up, the strikeouts will go down a bit, and the ERA will jump back over 4. Tigers fans think he’ll fare slightly better than non-fans, but everyone seems to be on the same page.
And finally Ricky Nolasco, who is always a hot subject for debate, continued to be controversial in the collective fans’ minds. Now, we don’t have really enough data to run a full study, but generally, fans are torn between two buckets when filling out their ERA selection. Nolasco’s ERA voting was 24% for 3.00-3.49, 46% for 3.50-3.99 and then 25% for 4.00-4.49. Everyone thinks he’ll continue to strike out over 8 per 9 innings and nearly everyone thinks he’ll walk under 2.5 per 9, so no one is questioning his peripherals, but his actual results continue to be a big question mark.
David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.
At three per day there will only be about 241 more days to go until all of the MLB regulars are complete 😛
Most of the big stars already got projected, so it’s probably a good amount less.
Everyone thinks he’ll continue to strike out over 8 per 9 innings and nearly everyone thinks he’ll walk under 2.5 per 9, so no one is questioning his peripherals, but his actual results continue to be a big question mark.
So a lot of people just think his BABIP will remain sky high?
Speaking of BABIP, interesting to see that even with the change in Jackson’s peripherals, the community ended up projecting his BABIP to jump from .281 to .333.
Don’t put too much stock in the projected BABIP. I still need to mess around with the hits a little bit.
Honestly, since we’re asking for ERA and not H/9 or anything, it doesn’t really even matter what his BABIP is from a projection point of view. It’s really just a gut check on hits.
jake peavy is going to get some interesting projections. i have him falling flat on his face.
Dumb question, but where are you getting our projection averages when you are simply asking us to pick out of a certain range (i.e.: Jay Bruce getting an average of 3.2 when we all select 1-5, 6-10, 0 etc…)
2.5+2.5+7.5=12.5
12.5/3=4.13
It’s a pretty rough approximation but as the number of votes increases the assumption is that it will lead to a natural consensus.
Thanks, that’s helpful.
Love that two Marlins pitchers have already gotten suggested. If we can have a Marlin a day, maybe the team won’t have five ballots for every player after all!
So far, the Reds fans’ average wOBA for Bruce matches Bill James’ projection exactly (.373).
I’m one of the Reds fans, and I did project Bruce better than the average. Mostly, I just tried to regress his BABIP significantly toward the mean and adjust the counting stats to a full year of play (I’m assuming he won’t break his wrist). I also gave him a tiny bit of extra credit for being young and thus, improving as he ages. Doing those things it’s hard not to project a season that looks a little ridiculous. It will be interesting to see what he actually does.
I also am one of the Reds fans who projected Bruce and my logic was similar to Jason:
– The power is real
– The AVG (and thus OBP) will regress in a very positive way
– He was considered a legitimate CF in the minors and often compared to Larry Walker in terms of defensive prowess.
– He is really young (2010 is his age 23 season) and was quite impressive when he returned from his wrist injury in September, particularly in regards to his BB rate.
In short, in my estimation, Bruce is essentially Longoria in RF. He’s a very young, franchise-caliber talent who suffered from injury and bad luck in 2009 and still put up 2.3 WAR/600 PA. All signs point towards a very big 2010.
Admins,
It appears that you have HBP projections for the fans, but not for Bill James. Hence, the Shoppach OBP projections are not apples to apples.
It is interesting that James projects Shoppach’s K rate at 32.5%, well under his rate of the last 3 years or of his career rate, while the fans have him right where he has always been. My money’s on the fans projection of his K rate, and consequently batting average.
Well, we’re only displaying the Bill James projection system and really have nothing to do with the calculations. Though, you should know that we’re not calculated OBP ourselves off the raw Bill James projection stats and it’s been provided separately as part of the projection.
Fair enough. I had thought that the entire contents of the “Advanced” section of the player cards was fangraphs’ work, for comparative purposes.
When the projection owners provide an actual stat, I don’t like to recalculate it on my own, just for consistency sake and so people don’t start wondering why it says .358 OBP on FanGraphs and .350 OBP in the spreadsheets they downloaded directly from the source.
Jake Peavy should see some all over projections. I think people need to remember he is moving from the most pitcher friendly ballpark to one of the more hitter friendly ones in baseball.
Also from one of the weaker offensive NL divisions to the AL.