Bill James Projections

by Charlie on Oct 23, 2008 12:00 AM EDT Comment 34 comments

Bill James and ACTA Sports were nice enough to allow SB Nation to use the Bill James Handbook projections for the 2009 season, so his guesses about the Pirates are posted after the jump. James projects:

-P- That Jeff Karstens will be just 15 ERA points worse than the Pirates' best starter, Paul Maholm.

-P- That Ross Ohlendorf won't be any good at all.

-P- That TJ Beam will become one of the Pirates' better relievers.

-P- That Andy LaRoche will draw 74 walks.

Enjoy. Let me know if the charts don't work on your computers; Excel isn't my forte.

PITCHERS

Pitcher	Team	Age	G	GS	IP	H	HR	BB	SO	HB	W	L	Pct	Sv	BR/9	ERA
Bautista,Denny	Pit	28	57	0	64	73	4	37	48	4	2	5	0.286	0	16.0	5.47
Beam,T.J.	Pit	28	43	0	54	54	7	20	42	1	3	3	0.500	0	12.5	4.14
Burnett,Sean	Pit	26	67	0	60	76	7	32	29	2	2	5	0.286	0	16.5	6.27
Capps,Matt	Pit	25	41	0	47	45	5	6	36	2	3	2	0.600	29	10.1	3.20
Davis,Jason	Pit	29	24	8	66	76	6	26	41	3	3	5	0.375	0	14.3	4.86
Duke,Zach	Pit	26	28	28	180	221	17	48	92	6	8	12	0.400	0	13.8	4.84
Gorzelanny,Tom	Pit	26	25	25	157	159	15	70	114	6	8	10	0.444	0	13.5	4.34
Grabow,John	Pit	30	73	0	72	71	8	32	63	2	4	4	0.500	0	13.1	4.24
Hansen,Craig	Pit	25	46	0	47	50	3	32	37	3	2	3	0.400	3	16.3	5.26
Karstens,Jeff	Pit	26	24	24	151	167	19	46	105	3	7	10	0.412	0	12.9	4.49
Maholm,Paul	Pit	27	29	29	203	216	21	69	134	9	10	13	0.435	0	13.0	4.33
Ohlendorf,Ross	Pit	26	13	13	70	89	9	24	52	3	2	5	0.286	0	14.9	5.72
Osoria,Franquelis	Pit	27	21	0	30	38	3	9	17	3	1	2	0.333	0	15.0	5.63
Snell,Ian	Pit	27	29	29	163	173	20	67	139	3	7	11	0.389	0	13.4	4.63
Yates,Tyler	Pit	31	67	0	67	66	6	36	61	2	3	4	0.429	0	14.0	4.50

HITTERS

Hitter	Team	Age	G	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	R	RBI	RC	RC27	BB	SO	SB	CS	SB%	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
Bixler,Brian	Pit	26	69	193	50	8	2	2	27	17	22	3.92	16	56	11	3	0.79	0.259	0.322	0.352	0.675
Chavez,Raul	Pit	36	52	122	28	6	0	1	11	13	10	2.77	5	15	0	0	0.00	0.230	0.266	0.303	0.569
Doumit,Ryan	Pit	28	134	534	163	42	1	20	82	87	93	6.48	37	81	3	2	0.60	0.305	0.358	0.500	0.858
Gomez,Chris	Pit	38	75	140	38	7	0	1	15	14	15	3.82	9	19	0	0	0.00	0.271	0.320	0.343	0.663
LaRoche,Adam	Pit	29	151	551	149	40	1	26	76	91	92	5.94	60	135	1	1	0.50	0.270	0.344	0.488	0.832
LaRoche,Andy	Pit	25	147	516	130	23	0	18	77	71	71	4.73	74	83	7	4	0.64	0.252	0.347	0.401	0.748
McCutchen,Andrew	Pit	22	149	557	150	29	2	10	76	53	72	4.42	59	93	35	17	0.67	0.269	0.339	0.382	0.722
McLouth,Nate	Pit	27	143	560	154	40	3	21	103	72	92	5.82	57	87	22	5	0.81	0.275	0.350	0.470	0.820
Michaels,Jason	Pit	33	85	195	50	10	0	5	27	27	24	4.27	20	43	2	1	0.67	0.256	0.332	0.385	0.716
Mientkiewicz,Doug	Pit	35	113	307	83	20	1	5	38	36	43	4.99	40	39	0	0	0.00	0.270	0.360	0.391	0.751
Morgan,Nyjer	Pit	28	71	240	70	11	2	1	37	16	31	4.53	15	36	26	8	0.76	0.292	0.339	0.367	0.705
Moss,Brandon	Pit	25	142	463	127	36	3	15	63	69	72	5.52	47	122	4	3	0.57	0.274	0.341	0.462	0.803
Paulino,Ronny	Pit	28	70	184	50	11	0	4	20	24	24	4.66	15	34	1	0	1.00	0.272	0.330	0.397	0.727
Pearce,Steve	Pit	26	51	114	31	9	0	4	15	18	17	5.26	8	19	3	1	0.75	0.272	0.331	0.456	0.787
Rivas,Luis	Pit	29	67	163	39	7	1	3	20	16	16	3.30	11	25	4	2	0.67	0.239	0.291	0.350	0.641
Sanchez,Freddy	Pit	31	148	557	163	36	2	8	73	62	74	4.87	29	64	1	1	0.50	0.293	0.332	0.408	0.740
Wilson,Jack	Pit	31	132	493	135	25	2	7	57	43	58	4.18	29	52	4	3	0.57	0.274	0.321	0.375	0.696

0 recs | Comment 34 comments

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Comments

Wow...

I can’t believe how hittable James thinks Ohlendorf is…

The internet's latest attempt at understanding the insides of baseball.

by bbdbrandon on Oct 23, 2008 12:32 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

For a guy who supposedly has great stuff...

…Ohlendorf has always been pretty hittable. That, and I bet James is bumping the hit rates up a bit across the board to account for our terrible defense.

by Vlad on Oct 23, 2008 9:10 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

yeah, why does that get a "wow..."?

by azibuck on Oct 23, 2008 10:40 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Unrealistic assessment of Ohlendorf

If Ohlendorf struggles that much as a starter, he will surely see some bullpen time. I am not up to speed on the way Bill James works, but it seems his projections simply account for the previous year’s performance. That’s not a reliable way to assess a young talent like Ohlendorf. Sure, he may wash out. But if an expert put any actual thought at all into it, he would account for at least five relief appearances.

by StickRat on Nov 16, 2008 8:04 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

well..

He has our pitchers with about 30 more losses than wins, so it seems accurate. I’d love to see Doumit have another big year, but I doubt Nyjer will hit .292.

by bolton on Oct 23, 2008 2:24 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Capps

projects to appear in only 41 games?

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST

by cocktailsfor2 on Oct 23, 2008 8:57 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

He only pitched...

…in 49 last year.

by Vlad on Oct 23, 2008 9:08 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

yeah, but

he missed a month, no?

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST

by cocktailsfor2 on Oct 23, 2008 6:30 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

That's what I was implying:

James must think that he’s going to miss a month this year, too.

by Vlad on Oct 23, 2008 9:45 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Agreed.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST

by cocktailsfor2 on Oct 24, 2008 10:37 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

There may be a projection, based on his heavy usage early in his career, that he’ll be injury-prone from here on out.

by WTM on Oct 23, 2008 9:11 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Good point!

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST

by cocktailsfor2 on Oct 24, 2008 10:38 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I like the Doumit line.

I’d take the lines for Moss, Pearce, and Little LaRoche, too.

The one that seems most unlikely to me is probably Hansen.

by Vlad on Oct 23, 2008 9:13 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I think James is a little friendly to the Buccos in calculating ERA

Hansen is projected to allow more than a hit per inning and about 6 walks per 9 innings. I don’t see how he keeps an ERA in 5s with those numbers. I think Snell and Gorzo are both 25 points too low given their projected WHIPs.

I hope our offense hits those projections. On the whole, the offense looks more potent than I expected.

by Chad Bahamas on Oct 23, 2008 9:51 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

3 HR in 47 IP

Keeping the ball on the ground helps an awful lot.

That said, I think 32 BB in 47 IP might actually be too optimistic for Hansen, as scary as that is to say.

by Vlad on Oct 23, 2008 10:06 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I do too, but

134 games? I’m not putting that in ink yet…

by KPatrick on Oct 23, 2008 9:13 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

tHoughts

No way Bixler hits .259. I think closer to .159.

If Burnett is putting up a 6.75 ERA, I hope he doesn’t pitch 60 innings.

Karstens will probably be useful in a Josh Fogg way. He’ll match up well against some teams, get pounded by others, and be somewhat below average in the end.

Disagree with bolton, Nyjer will probably hit exactly .292, but bring little else (besides excitement).

by azibuck on Oct 23, 2008 10:38 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

hmmm....

this projects to a 65-94 record (and I guess 3 rainouts?). other observations:

calculating earned runs from each individual ERA, we get 747 ER allowed, compared to 817 runs scored (and of course, the defense is so stellar that there will be no unearned runs allowed all year)…

151 HR vs. 150 HR against…

team .273 average, .333 OBA, .418 SLG, .752 OPS (not counting pitchers; and I seriously doubt Rivas, Gomez, and Chavez will be back)…

team 4.70 ERA and .268 opposing hitters average (although this includes the recently-released Osoria)…

decent rookie year from A. McCutch…

not much dropoff from Doumit or McLouth…

Maholm leads the team with 10 wins, and 13 losses…

Gorzo is almost as good as Maholm, Snell recovers somewhat, and the league hits .290 off Duke (which seems way low)…

and Burnett’s peripheral numbers are scary.

by humbucker on Oct 23, 2008 11:13 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Be careful about using aggregate totals.

We’re probably going to see some PT from guys who didn’t get projections, on top of all the guys that James checked.

by Vlad on Oct 23, 2008 2:37 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I agree

I agree that caution is in order; just as the team is bound to make at least one error (and allow at least one unearned run), there will also be contributions, positive and negative, by players not included here. (not to mention the effects of players getting hurt or traded.)

that said, it’s still kind of neat (or is ‘depressing’ a better word?) to see the projected total of the ‘core’ team, as we stare into a record-setting 17th straight losing season.

by humbucker on Oct 23, 2008 3:51 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

How Reliable Has Bill James Been Over The Years?

Just curious.

Suggest that you save these, Charlie, and bring them out again around 10/1/2009.

by thegunner on Oct 23, 2008 11:39 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Gunner

I, too, would like to know Bill James’ accuracy because he seems to have allowed almost everybody to regress to the mean by hitting .272. If you remove Doumit, Chavez, and Rivas he has everybody hitting between .250 and .274 which is highly unlikely. In addition, he seems to be very kind to both the LaRoches both in power as well as average. I hope he’s right, but I doubt it.

As far as our pitchers, I can’t believe he projects Karstens ERA to be less than 5.00. Obviously, he hasn’t seen him pitch. Plus, we are in big trouble if Zack Duke is allowed to pitch 180 innings as he projects with his abysmal Hits/IP and 4.84 ERA which we all know will materialize. I am a realist and don’t expect much for next season but James’ projections has me depressed even further.

by Illinois Pirate Fan on Oct 25, 2008 10:42 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

IPF

Bill James has produced SOME useful information, and it really disturbs the people at Elias, as well as traditional baseball people, who only want to look at the old-time statistical measures like BA, HRs and RBIs and wish that the stats that James and others have put forward had never surfaced.

But the pendulum has now swung way too far toward the sabermetrician’s view.

If Bill James were actually running a franchise rather than merely acting as a “consultant”, I don’t think that he would fare very well.

by thegunner on Oct 26, 2008 5:03 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

You underrate James's value as an observer.

Dude’s watched an awful lot of games over the years. Probably more than any two or three young GMs combined.

by Vlad on Oct 27, 2008 10:00 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

That said, I think James might struggle a bit as a GM.

But not for the reason you’re implying (i.e. that he’s a huge stat nerd who doesn’t understand the game). James understands the game very well indeed, but he’s a little bit of a crabby old man at this point, who never suffered fools gladly even when he was young, and I think he’d have problems with the media relations-type aspects of the GM’s job.

by Vlad on Oct 27, 2008 10:06 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It would be fun to know...

How much input Bill James has into the Red Sox organization and if it’s mearly a conincidence that they won two WS with him as a consultant. Theo has an excellent reputation as a young GM while the Red Sox have the second highest payroll in MLB and so I would expect them to do well. However, just how much of their success can be attributed to his presence and how much of it to Theo’s?

by Illinois Pirate Fan on Oct 27, 2008 3:06 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I don't think it's a coincidence.

But I don’t think there’s any question that Theo is in charge.

James has some kind of NDA in place that prevents him from discussing his work for the Sox in any detail, but when James was hired, Theo described James’s future role thus: “For instance, we might point out to him that there is a certain opportunity for a trade, or a certain way we can use a player. Then he comes back with an initial reaction based on a quick study. Next, we might play the devil’s advocate by giving a traditional baseball response to his commentary, or asking if there’s a general rule that we can take from this conclusion. And then he goes off and does a tremendous amount of research, after which we may end up with something very useful that we didn’t know before” (ESPN)

He’s had at least some impact. For example, he’s credited with being one of the team’s strongest voices in favor of initially signing David Ortiz. (Link. And whatever he’s been doing, they think enough of his work that they gave him a WS ring in both ’04 and ’07.

by Vlad on Oct 27, 2008 4:18 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Great interview with Bill James

Thanx for the link. I never knew the extent of his input but it sounds like they really value his opinion if they gave him two WS rings. I remembeer thinking that I thought it was a smart hire when I first learned that the Red Sox signed him as a consultant. He seems to have avoided making any major mistakes in his recommendations and that is a mark of a successful consultant. I suppose he must have thought highly of Jason Bay?

by Illinois Pirate Fan on Oct 27, 2008 4:26 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Must've.

Glad you liked the link.

by Vlad on Oct 27, 2008 5:21 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Regression is a powerful force.

It’s probable that at least a few hitters will break out or collapse, but extremely unlikely that any individual hitter will break out or collapse. Any projection system that assigns lots of performances out on the margins is going to hit on more outlier seasons, but it’ll also have some huge misses and be less accurate in the aggregate. That’s just the trade-off that you make.

The best systems try to compensate by giving confidence intervals (or something similar), so that you have some indication as to an individual projection’s level of potential variance.

by Vlad on Oct 27, 2008 9:57 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs