Team Projections and Last Season’s Statistics

The other day, I wrote the Chicago White Sox still don’t seem very good. Naturally, that drew something of a negative response, and that’s fine — people ought to be excited, and it was kind of a buzzkill headline. The White Sox have been active, and general manager Rick Hahn has succeeded in turning nothing into something, at least as far as 2015 is concerned. We all recognize there’s a reason they play the games. Who knows what might happen? Who knows what else Hahn might eventually do? Yet, within the comments, something caught my eye. Some people think Steamer projects too much regression with the White Sox. Which got some gears whirring: How do our current projections compare to roster projections using only last year’s stats?

Obviously, if you’re trying to predict Year X + 1, you need to look at information from more than just Year X. Different people will recommend looking at different windows, but as a rule of thumb, you want to consider at least three or four years, if the data’s there. Plus, there are still other things to take into account. But while Year X isn’t the only thing that’s important, Year X is also the freshest data set in memory. So when a projection differs from what literally just finished happening, people might be prone to thinking that something’s amiss.

The way I figure, we have projected information, and we also have perceived projected information. The former, right now, comes from Steamer. The latter, meanwhile, is influenced very heavily by what happened in 2014. So I wanted to try to find the biggest differences. There’s no right way to do this, but I decided to use our author-maintained, team-by-team depth charts. Those depth charts provide something like expected playing time. Then I opted to simply plug in 2014 WAR figures for each player, adjusting for plate appearances or innings. I set, as 2014 minimums, 100 plate appearances or 25 innings. I used 0.0 WAR for everyone else. For most of those guys, expectations will be low, since they didn’t do anything in the majors last summer. It doesn’t work for everyone — Matt Harvey, for example — but it works in most cases.

Before getting to the table, let me note this was written Tuesday night, and the Jimmy Rollins and Matt Kemp trades still aren’t official. Also, there’s talk of a Wil Myers thing? In case that’s happened by morning, it wasn’t not happening as I was writing this. So. The table. There’s Steamer projected WAR, and the league rank. Then there’s “projected” WAR — using projected playing time and last year’s statistics — and the league rank. Finally, there’s the second WAR, subtracted from the first WAR. Here, we might see differences between objective projections and expectations influenced by recency bias.

The sums don’t match up perfectly — there’s more total WAR using last year’s numbers. It doesn’t matter.

Interestingly, though this was partially inspired by the White Sox, they’re right in the middle. Granted, some of the disagreement concerns Adam Eaton, and whether his DRS or UZR defense is more correct. That’s getting too specific. It seems like, even using last year’s information, as available at FanGraphs, the White Sox don’t project as a particularly strong team. Stronger, absolutely. But the odds are still against them. Every team needs some breaks, and the White Sox need some more breaks.

The biggest negative difference, and the biggest difference overall, belongs to the Los Angeles Dodgers. A small chunk of this is just Justin Turner. Turner’s coming off way too good a year. You’ve also got Steamer projecting regression from Clayton Kershaw and, to a lesser extent, Hyun-Jin Ryu. It’d be interesting to look at this again once the Rollins and Kemp trades are factored in, since we kind of know those are happening and it’s a bit annoying they’ve been delayed. But while the perception might be that the Dodgers are incredibly strong, Steamer thinks they’re just good. The best in the division, but perhaps not the best in baseball.

Then you have to speak to the American League East. This is where I think the real meat of the table is. In my Tuesday chats, I’ve fielded questions about whether the Toronto Blue Jays are division favorites. I’ve also been asked why I like the Boston Red Sox more than the Baltimore Orioles, considering everything that just happened. Based on last year’s numbers, the current Red Sox look like a middle-of-the-pack sort of ballclub. The Jays and Orioles, meanwhile, would be a pair of top-five teams. Yet Steamer switches everything. Instead of the Red Sox being more than 10 WAR behind those two rivals, they end up several WAR ahead. And this, again, doesn’t include a non-replacement-level projection for Rusney Castillo.

The Jays look good in both columns. Yet there’s regression factored in. With the Orioles, Steamer doesn’t buy Adam Jones‘ defense. It’s not buying nearly so much of Steve Pearce, and then it’s really not fond of the starting rotation. With the Red Sox, Steamer likes Xander Bogaerts. That’s hardly unreasonable. It thinks Shane Victorino will be healthy and average. It thinks Justin Masterson will bounce back and Joe Kelly will be better and Clay Buchholz will be effective and that Wade Miley and Rick Porcello were sound additions. Steamer doesn’t think the Red Sox have holes anymore. They might have holes with their depth, but we can’t project major injuries.

Really, you could think of it like this: The Red Sox added Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval to a lineup that should have an improved Victorino and Bogaerts. Castillo last year only had a cup of coffee, and the same goes for Mookie Betts. On the pitching side, the Red Sox made a handful of unsexy but reasonable additions. As much as last season left an impression, the team’s already made a lot of progress moving away from that, and they haven’t even acquired an ace. The way I see it, the Red Sox and Blue Jays are kind of co-favorites, and right now I give the Red Sox the slight edge. I don’t think that’s crazy.

Elsewhere, Steamer likes the Rangers more than 2014 liked the Texas Rangers, which isn’t a shock. Steamer still doesn’t like the Rangers, but Prince Fielder sucked this year. Shin-Soo Choo sucked. Michael Choice had the lowest WAR in baseball. The Rangers should surprise to some extent, especially if they add an impact starter. And Steamer is lower on the Miami Marlins. Blame some projected regression in the pitching staff, and significant regression from Casey McGehee and Dee Gordon. The depth charts don’t yet include Michael Morse, but I can assure you adding Morse will do little to change the math.

Overall, it’s just something to think about in between thinking about more important things. The most interesting part has to be the AL East. Based on current rosters and on what happened a season ago, one might look for the Orioles and Blue Jays to be neck and neck in the battle for first place. Ask Steamer, though, and the Red Sox are the unexpected favorites, by a modest margin. So how heavily do you choose to weigh what happened a season ago? It’s a simple question that informs the way you understand the baseball landscape.