The following changes/fixes/additions were made:

1. We now have projections for Jung-Ho Kang and Yasmany Tomas. Kang checks in with a .249/.307/.399 (.312 wOBA) line and Tomas with a .252/.292/.433 (.317 wOBA) line.

2. We tweaked our projected league offensive level. We were projecting an average ERA of 3.88 and are now projecting an average ERA of 3.83 (for comparison, MLB pitchers had a collective ERA of 3.74 last year and 3.87 the year before). Before, we projected an average wOBA of .319 and now we’re projecting an average wOBA of .317 (non-pitchers had a wOBA of .315 last year and .318 the year before). In short, we’ve moved from projecting an offensive level like that of 2013 to level between those of 2013 and 2014.

3. The levels that low minors pitchers stats are regressed towards were adjusted to reflect the fact that they are, in fact, low minors pitchers. Will Locante is a good example of this change. Previously, Locante projected to a 4.43 ERA with the thinking that, if he does pitch in a Major League bullpen this year, he must be better than his low minors numbers indicate. With our new regression mean, Locante projects to a 5.19 ERA. This is in some sense wrong, since if he does pitch in the Majors he’s probably better than that, but it’s also a better estimate of how good Locante is right now since this projection is not conditional on his pitching in the Major Leagues. Where we have a fastball velocity for a low minors pitcher (from a scouting report) his projection will now take into account both his velocity and the fact that he’s only pitched in the low minors.

4. Projections are adjusted to better take into account changing league offensive levels. This primarily affects minor leaguers and foreign players who have been pitching in other leagues (and we wanted to make this adjustment before projecting Kang and Tomas) but will also have a (muted) effect on pitchers whose past MLB data is from longer ago. To explain why we felt that this is necessary, in 2009 MLB pitchers struck out 18.0% of the batters they faced while pitchers in Japanese leagues stuck out 18.9%. Last year, however, MLB pitchers struck out 20.4% of batters and JPL and JCL pitchers continued to strike out 18.9% of batters. If we use the same translation in 2014 that we used in 2009 we would be underrating pitchers from the Japanese leagues. A similar phenomenon holds when translating minor league statistics to MLB levels. Our change would have helped Masahiro Tanaka if we had implemented this last year and it still helps him a bit: dropping his projected ERA to 3.37 from 3.44. This change is a boon to Noah Syndergaard, however, dropping his ERA all the way down to 3.61 from 3.91. Cuban batters also get a significant boost: Jose Abreu is up from a .385 wOBA to .394 wOBA and Rusney Castillo jumps up from .317 to .328.

5. You may also notice higher BB/9 projections and, accordingly, higher ERA projections for MLB relievers who haven’t thrown many innings in recent years. Joel Hanrahan’s BB/9 jumps from 3.2 to 3.7 and Daniel Hudson’s from 2.2 to 2.8.

6. Batters’ projected lineup slots were updated and R and RBI projections were adjusted accordingly.

We’re hoping that these mid-off-season adjustments don’t catch you off guard. Our thinking is that when we see ways in which our system is falling short, we should fix them as soon as we can. That said, we fully expect that this will be the last update to the underlying algorithm this off-season. Playing times and roles may well change but the system for producing player rate projections will not.