edmonds community projection

by lboros on Jan 27, 2006 9:19 AM EST in News Comment 19 comments

we had 46 responses to the call for edmonds projections --- that's a great turnout, thanks to everybody who took a shot at this. the mean averages of those 46 projections line up almost exactly with the ZIPS projection posted by dan szymbroski at baseball think factory:

	avg	obp	slg	hr	rbi	r
VEB community	.282	.388	.555	30	95	88
szymbroski's ZIPS	.269	.387	.542	30	95	90
bill james	.275	.391	.544	34	98	98
ron shandler	.271	.389	.543	28	91	89
PECOTA	.285	.407	.582	34	96	88

pretty amazing, no? those differences in batting avg and slugging are extremely small; about 5 singles over the course of the season. but we could hardly have gotten much closer in obp, hr, rbi, and runs. the VEB community even matched ZIPS to the thousandth of a point in projecting edmonds' isolated power for 2006; both "systems" (if you will) put his iso at .273. (for those unfamiliar with the term, isolated power = slugging avg minus batting avg.)

my calculations are slightly at variance with the ones DCRedbird posted this morning (see the comments to yesterday's thread); one of us probably made a typo entering the data. but the variance is minuscule and meaningless.

nate silver's PECOTA projections haven't come out yet, but if anybody has bill james' 2006 book, please put james' forecast for edmonds in the comments and i'll add it to the table. ditto ron shandler. i have rotoauthority's 2006 projections and will add them ASAP.

will be back later this morning with some additional information re our projections. i think this was a successful experiment and am inclined to repeat it with other players. if there's a specific player you'd like to see next on the list, post in the comments.

Update [2006-1-27 11:20:48 by lboros]: the bill james projections have been added to the table above; thank you, farley. and bschulte passed along ron shandler's totals (thank you sir) --- our figures are in extremely close agreement with shandler's, too. and tim from the roto authority was kind enough to provide PECOTA numbers --- see the table.

i've had a chance to look over the projection results, and one thing jumped out at me immediately: while 14 people projected edmonds to drive in 100+ runs, only 3 projected him to score more than 100, and nearly half of the respondents projected edmonds to score fewer than 90. those seem like low run-scoring expectations for a player who is projected, collectively, to have a .390 obp with 30 homers. as a group we are projecting that the players batting behind edmonds are going to drive him in fewer than 60 times in about 180 opportunities ? ie, fewer than 60 runs on non-homers, in approx 180 times on base via a non-homer. that?s roughly a 30 percent pickup rate; doesn?t sound very good. does that mean we have no confidence in rolen encarnacion bigbie and molina? here?s a quick comparison to previous years:

year	non-HR times on base	times driven in	pickup rate
2005	189	57	30 pct
2005	214	60	28 pct
2003	165	50	30 pct
2002	214	68	32 pct

on the contrary, our run totals for edmonds evince a high degree of confidence in the 5-8 hitters. we are projecting that scottie juan et al will drive edmonds in at least as frequently as sanders, renteria, tino, jd drew, and other down-order hitters of years past.

here?s a further breakdown of the projections:

AVG
high: .300
low .260
mean: .282
median: .280
projections > .290 = 12 (27 pct)
projections < .280 = 18 (40 pct)
most popular: .280 (5), .278 (4)
cluster: 15 projections (1/3 of entries) between .282 and .278
only one projection of .300 or above; only one projection below .270

OBP
high: .412
low: .337
mean: .388
median: .390
projections > .400 = 10 (22 pct)
projections < .380 = 8 (17 pct)
most popular: .400, .390 (4 each)

SLG
high: .623
low: .475
mean: .555
median: .555
projections > .600 = 5 (11 pct)
projections < .500 = 2 (4 pct)
most popular: .552 (4), .600, .560, .540 (3 each)
cluster: 18 projections (39 pct) between .540 and .560

HR
high: 39
low: 22
mean: 30
median: 31.5
projections > 30 = 30 (65 pct)
projections < 30 = 16 (35 pct)
most popular: 32, 33 (7 apiece)
cluster: 27 projections (59 pct) between 28 and 33

RBI
high: 112
low: 68
mean: 95
median: 95.5
projections > 100 = 14 (30 pct)
projections < 90 = 8 (17 pct)
most popular: 91 (4), 109, 103, 97, 96, 94 (3 each)

RUNS
high: 104
low: 67
mean: 88
median: 90
projections > 100 = 3 (7 pct)
projections < 90 = 20 (43 pct)
most popular: 90 (8)
cluster: 18 projections (39 pct) between 87 and 91

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Comments

interesting

the mix of a few idealists, a few cynics, and a lot of rational thinkers. Make it interesting and do one of the many 'project' players, like Spivey.

Cardinals Diaspora

by VanRam on Jan 27, 2006 9:38 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Eckstein

I'd like to see whether the community and the stats think David will repeat his performance from last year, especially in light of the analysis that showed he may not perform as well with Bigbie or Spivey hitting second instead of Walker or Edmonds...

by STLEdge on Jan 27, 2006 9:55 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Next player

I think it'd be fun to project a healthy Rolen or Molina.

by itsalemmon1019 on Jan 27, 2006 10:12 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

rolen, rollin, rollin....

i so dig that song. imho, the key to our success this year is our third sacker. i hear plenty of questions about him and his likely productivitiy this year. what we do know is that he will be the best third base glove in the bigs. that's a constant. what we don't know is what he's going to do with the stick. i'd like to see what the redbird nation feels like when it gets down to numbers.

and great, great job on this topic. good stuff, amigo.

by busch league on Jan 27, 2006 10:32 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

This was a lot of fun!

I would love to go and try this with a number of players, but maybe we should next focus on a pitcher...would love to see what VEBers think Carp will do after his cy young season!

by sdelek on Jan 27, 2006 10:42 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Edmonds 2006 Bill James Projection

James on Edmonds for 2006:

.275 .391 .544 34 98 98

by farley503 on Jan 27, 2006 10:57 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

thank you very much

appreciate it, farley

by lboros on Jan 27, 2006 11:15 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

cool exercise

i'm surprised our collective guesses were so close to the more objective projection systems, particularly because we're not exactly a random group. most of us are rabid cards fans, and i'd have expected us to be wildly optimistic on the whole (the same way that parents can become delusional about their own kids' talents). if nothing else, larry, it shows how fair-minded your readers are. the caricature of the sports fan is one who says, "jim edmonds? dude's gonna hit .400 this year with 80 yanks."

Brian Gunn

by briangunn on Jan 27, 2006 11:17 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

stat projections

Since this exercise utilizes inspired "guesses", I would be interested in perhaps making it a bit more expanded. I think it would be interesting to have two categories per player. One of which would be to provide stats just like we did with Edmonds. The next would be to adjust those stats based on how we might feel our new ballpark may effect them, overall. Since we have no idea what a player's performance is really going to equal, and we also have no idea of how the new stadium will really effect batters, I think it would be fun to toss in our own opinions on that. Of course, this may be really a topic of its own---but I'd like to see folk's opinions on it before the season starts and we start noticing some ballpark effects.

Dimensions of the new ballpark are:
336 feet down the left-field line
390 in the left-field power alley
400 in center field
390 in the right-field power alley
335 to the right-field foul pole

2 other interesting notes from artist renderings:
-Will the circle of dirt around the mound have any effect on grounders up the middle?
-It seems like there is more room in the outfield foul areas...will that have any effect?

Maybe I'm over-analyzing...this sure is a dull part of the year for baseball fans.

by cmat on Jan 27, 2006 11:34 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

oh, and

after I was done typing my post, I saw the update. Great work getting tht all together!

by cmat on Jan 27, 2006 11:39 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Based on that table

I predict that Edmonds will have 214 non-HR times on base in 2006!

by sdrone on Jan 27, 2006 11:50 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Fascinating stuff here

In case anyone missed it in the comments thread yesterday, see Perry's interesting note on the insight James Surowiecki's recent bestseller "The Wisdom of Crowds" might provide re: our little experiment w/Jed.

Lots of good options for the next player to tackle ... I'm with sdelek -- let's take on a starting pitcher and see if we match ZIPS et al. as closely as w/Edmonds. I'd choose Mulder first, since there seems to be so much debate over what his declining K rate means for this year...

Or, if we want to make ourselves really happy, let's do Pujols! :-) (Actually he might be kinda boring for this exercise, given his incredible consistency...)

by DCRedbird on Jan 27, 2006 12:02 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Re: Pujols

I'll go out and limb and say that Pu gets 591 at-bats in 2006.

by salvomania on Jan 27, 2006 12:18 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Shandler's Projection

Here's the Ron Shandler BF2006 projection:

avg obp slg hr rbi r
.271 .389 .543 28 91 89

Brett S.

by bschulte on Jan 27, 2006 12:53 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I wonder...

Given the consistency of those numbers on Edmonds, as much as all of us would like to believe we are baseball geniuses (I know that I enjoy a healthy delusion in that area), I imagine that we have been so inundated with numbers and projections already that it really would be difficult to predict anything beyond what we have seen. I think its safe to say that most people who post on this site are all baseball addicts, relatively speaking. I'm sure everyone has a relative idea of what Edmonds has done the past 3-4 years, so we expect something in that realm and probably won't deviate much. I think the range of responses on Bigbie, Spivey, Ponson and to a lesser degree Rolen would be dramatically increased compared to the variance on Jimmy.

by azruavatar on Jan 27, 2006 2:52 PM EST reply actions 0 recs