FG on Fox: 2015 Could Be a Good Year in Seattle
Let’s get this out of the way as quickly as we can: my favorite team is the Mariners, which means I want them to win more than I want other teams to win. Been that way for a long time. That perspective comes with certain biases, which I sometimes can’t even help, but in this instance, understand that I have nothing to do with the numbers you’ll see. As a matter of fact, I was taken by surprise, and so it feels only natural to write this up, because who doesn’t love discussing surprises? I should clue you in on what I’m talking about.
It’s the offseason now, you’ve noticed. Joe Maddon’s changed teams. Hank Conger’s changed teams. Cesar Ramos has changed teams. Right now, teams are reaching out to connect with free agents and with other front offices, as groundwork is laid for future transactions. Eyes have turned to 2015, with 2014 entirely in the books, and wouldn’t you know it, but we’ve already got 2015 player projections. You can find them at FanGraphs, and they go by the name Steamer. It’s not the only projection system around, but all of them are pretty similar, and with Steamer, we can start to get an idea of how things look for the moment.
Now, a small group of FanGraphs authors maintains depth charts for all 30 teams in the majors, updated on a regular basis. Those same depth charts have been updated to prepare for the offseason, with free agents gone and with certain minor leaguers showing up. Steamer provides individual player projections. However, when you combine player projections with team depth charts, you end up with team projections. I’m always interested to see how things are looking, so recently I glanced at the order of team projections with the offseason getting under way. Who has the most work to do? Who’s already sitting pretty?
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
“FG On Fox: 2015 Could Be a Good Year in Seattle” by Dave Cameron – I followed the link because Dave talking up the Mariners is something I would have to see to believe. Then I realized that he didn’t actually write it. Order is restored.
LOL, me too, couldn’t believe DC penned this.
I can’t believe he even let Jeff post it at JABO. Even if it’s a very objective piece, everyone’s still gonna make fun.
Uh oh. Here we go again.
This is Steamer’s opinion. It’s Steamer! Nobody pounce!
http://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=Team
So you don’t like Steamer? Because now everybody is going to think it’s the 6th best projection system.
Of course the Mariners are the best team in the AL you dingbat! How could anyone believe otherwise?
I’m not as rosy on Zunino (lack of any appreciable progress in season) or the idea of Saunders getting close to 600 PA (since the FO inexplicably hates him), but I think the projections are underselling the young pitchers. I actually wouldn’t be surprised to see Paxton out pitch Iwakuma next year. Walker is a wild card, but if he really has the shoulder issues behind him, look out.
Zunino just has to pull his BA up to the .210-.220 range and walk more than twice a month and he would be a solidly above average catcher, his power and defense provide a lot of value. As for Saunders, 600 PA in a Mariners uniform might be a pipe dream with his injury history and rumors that he is being shopped hard.
Do the Steamer projections account for league/park, or are they neutral?
Almost certainly neutral. They wouldn’t make any sense if they weren’t.
What are you talking about? Steamer projections are league and park adjusted. To wit: Yasiel Puig, playing half of his games in Dodgers Stadium, is projected for a .376 wOBA and a 145 wRC+. Paul Goldschmidt, playing half of his games in Chase Field, is projected for a .386 wOBA and a 144 wRC+.
Oh, okay. I can see what he’s asking now, although it reads as an oxymoron. Typically, “neutralized” stats, or stats that are put into a “neutral context”, have been adjusted for things like park, league, sometimes strength of schedule, etc., to put everyone on a level playing field. That is almost assuredly what the projection systems do.
How did the Mariners get a neutral rotation WAR last year?
The Mariners starting rotation was 16th out of the 30 teams in terms of WAR. That makes them just about average. Jeff used 0.0 as average and not replacement level.
By Felix being amazing, Iwakuma being really good, Paxton being briefly good, Elias being decent, with Chris Young and Erasmo Ramirez being, at least by FIP-based WAR, dreadful.
WAR hates Chris Young, even though he was okay.
fWAR hates Chris Young. Versions based on R/9 (such as bWAR) see him as a pretty good starter last year.
M’s have a lot of available cash on hand from their TV deal. Imagine what the projections will look like if they go all in on somebody like Victor Martinez. Just replacing Hart/Morales with Victor could be worth 3-4 more wins. He could be worth the overpay in this case.
Well we don’t know if they have a lot of cash on hand. We know very little about how the deal is structured or how they financed the acquisition of Root Sports. They almost certainly have more than was available to them from two years ago, and we’ve seen them increase payroll two years in a row (reportedly, they’re set to have an increase this year), but we can’t assume they now have a big pile of cash ready to put toward payroll. More than likely, they’ll continue to see increasing amounts of cash available to them over the next few years, rather than having a bunch of it on hand right away.
Not only did Mariners DH’s hit .189 with .302 slugging, their DH’s hit most of the time in the middle of the order. Just bringing DH up to league average would add a bunch of runs to the offense. If the Mariners can plug the 2014 black holes at DH and CF, they should be right in the mix.
But wait… On the article it put the Mariners down for 7 or 8 WAR? That cannot be a league leading figure. Some math has got to be off. A single player can best that, never mind a whole team.
As stated above, Jeff normalized to league average WAR for this, not replacement level. It had me doing double takes for a minute too.
OK so then 3WAR here really means 5WAR? Why even bother making that change then?
it’s Wins Above Replacement above the Average Wins Above Replacement. That’s just confusing. Especially because he used league average by position, then different positions have a different baseline average. Which (even though we know 3Bmen suck league-wide right now) doesn’t make much sense to me.
Not sure why he did that. He should’ve just stuck with WAR, or (with a bit of math) wins-above-average.
As it is, I have no idea what the 7.8 “WAR” represents. Is it 7.8 wins above average, 88.8 team wins? Because of the weird way he got there, I’m not comfortable with that conclusion.
Nothing weird about it, he just stated in kind of an odd way. It’s wins above/below average, nothing more complicated than that. So, yes, a projected 7.8 wins above average for the team would be around 88.8 wins.
My time machine worked!
LOL at the Pirates getting 1.2 WAR from their DHs next year!!! hahaha