Friday, February 24, 2006

Tiger Projections for 2006

During the winter, I talked a little bit about projection systems used to forecast player performance in the coming year or years. Three of the most popular systems are:



Today, I entered projections for each of the systems into a spreadsheet and calculated an average projection over the three systems for each Tiger batter expected to be on the 2006 opening day roster. This method should drown out any projection by one system which seems to be overly optimistic or pessimistic for a particular player. I will only be giving you the averages and not the specific projections for each system as the Handbook projections and PECOTAs are not freely available. You can buy books containing the projections for Tigers and players on other teams at the above links. The ZIPS are public and can be found at Baseball Think Factory. They don’t seem to be in one place though so you’ll probably have to do a search for particular teams or players.


The table below is color coded. Every player projected to fall in the top 30 percent of the league’s regulars for a particular measure is coded in blue for that statistic. Every player projected to fall in the bottom 30% for a measure is coded in red. The middle 40% are in black.



Table - Average Projections for Tiger Hitters in 2006


Player

PA

BA

OBP

SLG

OPS

Ivan Rodriguez

523

0.289

0.328

0.456

0.784

Chris Shelton

504

0.295

0.370

0.503

0.873

Placido Polanco

566

0.309

0.360

0.438

0.798

Carlos Guillen

489

0.300

0.364

0.448

0.812

Brandon Inge

612

0.256

0.322

0.409

0.731

Craig Monroe

557

0.280

0.329

0.462

0.792

Curtis Granderson

563

0.276

0.342

0.467

0.808

Magglio Ordonez

466

0.298

0.362

0.479

0.841

Dmitri Young

519

0.277

0.337

0.476

0.813

Carlos Pena

531

0.255

0.350

0.469

0.820

Omar Infante

431

0.248

0.296

0.397

0.692

Nook Logan

371

0.255

0.306

0.332

0.638

Vance Wilson

197

0.235

0.297

0.348

0.645


From the table, it can be seen that a healthy Tiger line-up would be pretty solid. They would have five regulars (Shelton, Ordonez, Young, Guillen and Granderson) and one bench player (Pena) with OPS’ in the top 30% of all American League regulars. None of the regulars would fall in the bottom 30%.


Every regular except Inge would fall in the upper 30% for at least one of three statistics: batting average, on base percentage or slugging percentage. Only one regular (Inge in batting average) would fall in the bottom 30% for any of those statistics. Even the on base percentages look decent and that would be quite a feat for this team.


If all goes as projected, this would be a very good year for the Tiger's offense.

8 comments:

  1. 2 numbers that really jumped out at me are the plate appearances for Guillen and Ordonez. Both are under 500.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great stuff. Very interesting, and taking the average of the three systems is great.

    Looks like you forgot to give Shelton's SLG the blue treatment though.

    And speaking of Shelton, I was worried that the projections I'd seen were optimistic. While that could still be the case, it's nice to see that all the major projections have him having a hell of a year. Pleased to see Granderson's projections too. Nice to have some young offensive talent on the team.

    Remember when Eugene Kingsale was our starting centerfielder?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Joe. I fixed Shelton's colors. He is now blue across the board. I like the projections for Shelton and Granderson too.

    Casimir, given their past history, I'm not surprised that Guillen and Ordonez
    have low projections for PA. I think the projections work better for the rate stats than the games played though. It's harder to project injuries than performance.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Another thought on Magglio's projections:

    Most guys who miss most of two straight seasons at his age are suffering from the same injury and won't recover to a great degree. Ordonez's injuries seemed more fluky so I think it's reasonable to expect him to outperform his projections if he's truly healthy. Those are the sorts of things that numbers can't account for.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'd be really surprised if Shelton out-slugs Ordonez.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Buddha, It wouldn't surprise me. I think Ordonez can outperform his power projection but I don't think he'll hit anything like the pre-injury Ordonez. I don't think Shelton's projection is too far off.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I've heard people calling C.Shelton "Red Pop." Is this his nickname now? In addition to owning Shelton in 2 leagues, I recently traded for Mags in my 9x9 mlb 12-team league. My other league is a points league with a scoring algorithm based on Jim Furtado's work on expected runs produced. I'm one of those guys who thinks Mags is healthy and will return to 90-100% minus SB. Gotta love Verlander. Peace out, motor city. I had tickets to a DET game in OAK last week but had to cancel for work!! grrrrrrr.

    A's fan.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Shelton has been acquiring a lot of nicknames lately - Red Pop, Red Shelton, Red Bull, etc. I just call him Chris Shelton! He's been slowing down a bit lately but I think he's going to have a great year.

    I'm a little worried about Ordonez's power. He's playing in a much tougher home run park now. I think he'll hit for average and get doubles but I don't know about home runs.

    ReplyDelete

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