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The Crawfish Boxes

Astros Community Projection Project: The Infielders

As apart of the continued effort over at Beyond the Box Score, I'm still hoping to get some more reader tailored views on how our players will perform and then incorporate them into the spreadsheet.  To help stimulate that effort, we'll go area, by area through the line-up and hopefully get enough discussion to tweak the baseline CHONE figures I currently have plugged into the spreadsheet

Here's a link and a list (for the lazy among us) of the infielders I currently have plugged in and the stats their wOBA's are based on.

  1. Lance Berkman: .289/.403/.528
  2. Kaz Matsui: .266/.325/.382
  3. Drew Sutton: .256/.333/.395
  4. Miguel Tejada: .285/.337/.441
  5. Edwin Maysonet: .235/.291/.330
  6. Geoff Blum: .240/.301/.377
  7. Aaron Boone: .243/.309/.383
  8. Chris Johnson: .253/.290/.377

Off the bat, I'm willing to give Boone a boost in all three departments because of his supposed health coming into 2009.  I'll throw out something along the lines of .265/.325/.400.  I'll save the rest of my corrections until the fray has started, but that's essentially what we're looking for.  If you want to get bold, throw about positional playing time.  Also, feel free to throw out players you think will see action that I don't have listed.

Currently, my plan is to weight the community arrived projection, with the CHONE Projection, then ZIPS, then PECOTA (when it's released).  Hopefully we'll be pretty spot on.

0 recs  |  9 comments

Comments

I would say that Matsui's stats look low to me.

The projected OPS is 50 – 80 points lower than he actually achieved in each of the last two years. The CHONE OPS is also lower than both Bill James and Marcel. Matsui had his highest career OPS (ML) with the Astros last year, so I can buy some regression, but not that much. I would guess something more like .280, .340, .400. That is still below his performance level in each of the last two years, but not as huge a decline as projected. I think we are seeing a kind of NYC effect early in Matsui’s career, which biases his projections downward. I think he changed his career by leaving the pressure of the Big Apple and playing in Colorado.

I think your adjustment upward for Boone is optimistic, but plausible.

Good thoughts on Matsui

Perhaps a bit more conservative on Boone then? Maybe directly in the middle?

Yeah, I would think splitting the difference on Boone would work.

Having looked at Boone’s stats again, he seems hard to predict. I might lean toward the more conservative “split th difference” version, but I can see an argument for the adjustment you first put out there.

Do you have a typo on Blum’s projection? None of his projections are that low. CHONE, Bill James, and Marcel range from .671 – .687 OPS. Blum did reach a .701 OPS last season.

I did

I undersold him in SLG by 40 points.

Bill James tends to be really optimistic and Marcel is using Matsui's Colorado time without knowledge of park factors.
I just have a hard time going with an OPS that much lower...

than his actual numbers in the last two years, including a year at MMP. I also feel more comfortable with that position, after noting here that he underperformed his expected BABIP in 08 …using the model discussed in this post:http://www.crawfishboxes.com/2009/1/20/729402/more-on-babip-and-player-p#comments

.

repeat the link to the post...

here.

All fine points, not disagreeing.

I was just making a point about Marcel and BJ, not about Kaz. I’m no Kaz expert.

OK, I understand.

I sort of used BJ and Marcel to see if my proposed alternative slash lines seemed out of the ballpark, so to speak.

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