Cardinals 19th Best Team in Baseball?

by tarakas on Apr 3, 2009 2:39 PM EDT Comment 40 comments

Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus predicts the Cardinals to finish the season at 79-83, and as the 19th best baseball team in 2009 (Requires subscription).

He is highly critical of the team defense, faulting Schumaker at 2B and Duncan in LF as a poor idea for a pitch-to-contact pitching staff. He also views the pitching as over its head last year and is "skeptical of a Chris Carpenter comeback."

Among the teams he ranks as (albeit marginally) better: The Brewers, Giants, Marlins, and Reds.

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i like sheehan, but he's wrong a lot.

christina kahrl, and pecota itself, picked the cards to scrap with the brewers for second place in the central. pecota projects the cards for 83 wins – sound familiar? – and that’s with carpenter pitching just 110 innings. sheehan is also giving credit for duncan being the starting lf, when it’s really going to be more like a shared time situation with rasmus, a rasmus-ankiel-ludwick trio makes the of defense at least above average, if not in fact excellent.

they both seem to focus on the two real questions, though – the weaker defense, and carpenter’s comeback. if both of those things turn out ok for the home team, they’ll be better than expected; if not, then not.

Look, I don't ask for much. All I want from the 2009 season is for Carp and Adam to combine for 420 IP and go 1-2 in the Cy Young voting, and for Albert to win the MVP again. Oh, and for the Cubs to never win another World Series as long as I live. I really don't think that is too much to ask.

by nycbirdo on Apr 3, 2009 2:58 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

sorry

jaffe did the projection i mention above – christina projected the al side.

by nycbirdo on Apr 3, 2009 3:00 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

PECOTA Projections

with playing time now now have them at 82 wins, and still include 354 plate appearances for Glaus, which may be a bit generous.

PECOTA doesn’t predict there will be a Cardinals starter with an ERA under 4.00:

Carpenter: 4.02
Wainwright: 4.13
Lohse: 4.41
Wellemeyer: 4.52
Pineiro: 4.87

It also predicts 105 spot start innings from Boggs with a 5.97 ERA.

I’d predict most of the starters to beat those projections a bit, except for Pineiro.

by tarakas on Apr 3, 2009 3:44 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I'd also be nervous about how Welley responds.

I guess he did have a pretty rough Spring last year, if I remember right, too. Maybe he’ll straighten it out when the games count.

by etp_stl on Apr 3, 2009 10:30 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

He's wrong

Really wrong. I don’t know what he is basing his defensive production on (I sure hope that it isn’t BP’s metric), but our defense should be fine. Here are CHONE’s defensive projections for our starters based off Total Zone:

Pujols 1B: +10
Schu 2B: -10 (my own projection)
Freese 3B: +1
Greene SS: +2
Ludwick RF: +2
Rasmus LF: +10
Ankiel CF: -4

So our starting lineup is projected to save 11 runs next year. Depending on how good or bad Schumaker really is or how much playing time Duncan, Barden and Ryan get, that number could go up or down, but we are clearly above average on defense.

As for Carp, I know reason why he couldn’t come back. He was great in limited time last year, and is pitching great in spring training. All reports are that his stuff and command are back to 05/06 levels and the numbers back that up. Health is another issue, but he is healthy right now. Even if he only pitches 100 innings, he would be extremely valuable.

As for the pitching staff, Lohse and Wellemeyer are due for regression, but improvement from Piniero, and more innings from Carp and Waino should make up for that. Our bullpen has improved tremendously simply by getting rid of Izzy, Villone and Flores. I see an 85 win team, with a lot more potential.

vivaelbeñsheets

by vivaelpujols on Apr 3, 2009 4:12 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Buko's point:

Screw him. Numbers are good, stats are better – but at the end of the day, there are 162 games, 9 innings, and 27 outs per team. To predict a win/loss record is at best a scientific wild ass guess.

I have discovered in twenty years of moving around a ball park, that the knowledge of the game is usually in inverse proportion to the price of the seats. ~Bill Veeck

by bukowski on Apr 3, 2009 4:49 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Past predictions

in looking at this and other 2009 predictions I was wondering how close the various systems come to actual results. The only info I could find after a short search of VEB archives was in 2008, PECOTA predicted 74 wins and CHONE predicted 75 wins.

VEB community predictions for 2008 were higher than either system with 78 wins, but still missed the 86 win mark. I’ll take a +10 win differential on the 2009 pecota prediction.

by ubeddie on Apr 3, 2009 5:40 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Incedentially

the standard error of projection systems is usually around 10 games. Meaning that around 30% of the time, a given team will miss it’s projection by 10 or more wins. For a team like the Cardinals, who have so many young players or guys coming off breakout seasons, I would bet that the standard error is probably closer to 15 games. so you can take the cardinals projections with a grain of salt.

vivaelbeñsheets

by vivaelpujols on Apr 3, 2009 5:59 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

The thing with predictions...

is they are sort of like insurance acutwhatzit tables. Based mostly on past trends continuing on into the future.

But in baseball, that’s not always the case. The Cardinals got pretty lucky with Ludwick and Lohse both having big career years basically from out of nowhere.

This year has even more unknowns, I think. Will Lohse go back to being the Lohse of old? (lots of home runs given up) ST looked that way, but ST isn’t worth much. What will Rasmus and Freese do? Will Skip be a total disaster defensively, or merely bad? I’m not sure you can even make halfway decent guesses about any of those.

But I think 19th has to be a pessimist’s view.

Felipe Lopez - next year's Joel Pineiro (on another team, thank you Mo!)

by DiscoJer on Apr 4, 2009 6:44 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

this is the same guy that's on WWLnews all the time right?

yeah, he’s wrong all the time. i mean, all the time.

BEN MOTHERHUSHYOURMOUTH SHEETS

I'm going to go try to find a puppy and kick it. - Brad Thompson

by gdm426 on Apr 3, 2009 6:08 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

sheehan has some good articles sometimes

but he’s also a cubs fan.

- So, to ease his pain, you're supposed to take him to a ball game?
- Yes.

by SleepyCA on Apr 3, 2009 11:50 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

i did not know that. that explains so much

BEN MOTHERHUSHYOURMOUTH SHEETS

I'm going to go try to find a puppy and kick it. - Brad Thompson

by gdm426 on Apr 4, 2009 12:11 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Will Carroll's a cubs fan

and so is Nate Silver. Are you sure Sheehan is as well?

by chuckb on Apr 4, 2009 4:18 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yankees

Sheehan is a Yankees fan, and very smart. But even if he were a Cubs fan, I’d be certain he’s just going from his own projection. As a Cardinals fan who writes about the Mets for NY Magazine, though, I assure you: No one ever believes people when they’re saying they’re writing from the own projection. I had no idea Mets fans still had such animosity toward Cardinals fans.

by williamfleitch on Apr 4, 2009 5:04 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

ah, thanks for the knowledge

btw, your take on Adam Kennedy in the Maple Street Press still has me laughing.

“Actually, before you say anything…I’d like to be traded to another plant. Make that happen please. I’m unhappy here.”

great stuff man, freaking great stuff.

BEN MOTHERHUSHYOURMOUTH SHEETS

I'm going to go try to find a puppy and kick it. - Brad Thompson

by gdm426 on Apr 4, 2009 10:21 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

whoops

guess i got him confused with someone else.

- So, to ease his pain, you're supposed to take him to a ball game?
- Yes.

by SleepyCA on Apr 5, 2009 6:57 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

good

I like being the underdog, we usually do better when that’s the case. it’s not as if anyone picked us to do well last season… I’d put us 10th in all of baseball if I’m throwing guesses out there

4B - beer baseball bands blog
cmon and let the games begin
confusion will be my epitaph
I think I have more sigs than gdm now, hah!

by Cards Fan in Chitown on Apr 3, 2009 6:34 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

It's interesting to me that this year

everyone went from not trusting defensive statistics at all, and somewhat disregarding defense, to considering UZR to be IRON CLAD TRUTH. The error bars on defensive runs saved have to be somewhat broader than the error bars on offensive runs gained.

They say that it's never too late, but you don't get any younger...

by Valatan on Apr 3, 2009 10:25 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Yeah, good point

It seems like the collective trust of defensive stats still has to settle into some middle ground.

by mattybobo on Apr 3, 2009 10:35 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

UZR is better than whatever BP is using

They use FRAA which isn’t even based off of play-by-play data. Also, there are almost no error bars in offensive runs gained, so it isn’t really a good comparison.

vivaelbeñsheets

by vivaelpujols on Apr 3, 2009 11:41 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

but there are large error bars

on offensive projections.

- So, to ease his pain, you're supposed to take him to a ball game?
- Yes.

by SleepyCA on Apr 3, 2009 11:54 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yes

But I don’t think that’s what Valatan was saying.

vivaelbeñsheets

by vivaelpujols on Apr 4, 2009 12:09 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

There are error bars in ANY measurement

And I was talking about the projections, since that is, in fact the topic.

Taking this much stock in projections based on already shaky defensive statistics is silly. The defensive runs should not be weighted equally with the offensive runs.

They say that it's never too late, but you don't get any younger...

by Valatan on Apr 4, 2009 1:11 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Also, there is, in fact, error in offensive runs

or else, we could just sum up the number of wins/runs a teams players are worth, and we would have a result exactly equal to the number of wins/runs that that team scored/won.

We don’t, and there are your error bars.

They say that it's never too late, but you don't get any younger...

by Valatan on Apr 4, 2009 1:12 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

What measure is used to determine the quality of UZR?

by ol Pete on Apr 5, 2009 8:49 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

none

well, the less year to year variance there is, the better the metric is. UZR is pretty good, but not perfect.

vivaelbeñsheets

by vivaelpujols on Apr 5, 2009 9:49 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Unless there is real varaince in the player performance

if you wanted to test the robustness of the system, you’d have to look for some correlation between what the model says and actual runs prevented.

They say that it's never too late, but you don't get any younger...

by Valatan on Apr 5, 2009 11:14 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

No

There are a lot of factors in preventing runs. Things like timeliness of HRs and strand rate are defense independent but have a huge impact on scoring.

vivaelbeñsheets

by vivaelpujols on Apr 6, 2009 1:12 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Of course, your model would have to include pitching

you would need a model of run prevention, and look for the strength of the correlation between your defenisve metric and the actual runs prevented. A simlistic model would be something like a multilinear regression including things like pitcher FIP, LD/GB%, and the defenses’ UZR. You would get correlation coefficients out of this, which you could then use to asses the strength/validity of the various associations.

They say that it's never too late, but you don't get any younger...

by Valatan on Apr 6, 2009 2:24 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

That sounds like a bitch to do

vivaelbeñsheets

by vivaelpujols on Apr 6, 2009 2:28 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

If the inherent flaws produce a result one year and repeat it, I wouldn’t conclude that that implies accuracy.

by ol Pete on Apr 6, 2009 8:26 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I would argue that there aren't that many inherent flaws in UZR

The main questions is if the data correlates year to year.

vivaelbeñsheets

by vivaelpujols on Apr 6, 2009 8:33 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Again, having the results correlate could also mean that it is consistently bad.

by ol Pete on Apr 6, 2009 2:31 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

But UZR is pretty good

not great, and we don’t know how much it differs from reality, but we do know that UZR is a pretty good fielding metric.

vivaelbeñsheets

by vivaelpujols on Apr 6, 2009 2:53 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

i'm confused as to how you could ever actually assess the value of a defensive system.

do we have a definition of what constitutes “good defense”?

I guess as valatan says you would look at runs prevented. so you would want to test the same other defenders and the same pitchers with and without the defender, and see to what extent runs were prevented.

but you would need to get a huge sample size and you would need to have everything else controlled just right. those kind of controlled trials just don’t happen in baseball. i don’t see a likely model for how you could ever really test a defensive metric well.

i think until somebody really smart comes up with a good test, we’re just going to have to settle for a metric that seems to make sense.

by tom s. on Apr 6, 2009 1:20 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

your initial question

could lead to a long and salty debate. I think the whole thing will go away as they start using cameras for hit ball data the way they do pitching.

by ol Pete on Apr 6, 2009 2:34 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

These ‘experts’ also predicted the Mets and Tigers to walk all over them in ’06, the next year predicted Detroit and Seattle to score 1000 runs and the Cubs to win it all.

by CardFan@theLake on Apr 5, 2009 9:43 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

What?

If you’re talking about Joe Sheehan, he didn’t project Detroit or Seattle to score 1000 runs or see Seattle as a winning team.

If you’re talking about Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA projections, they didn’t even see Detroit scoring 850 runs or Seattle as a winning team, and they (and pretty much they alone) predicted Tampa Bay would be competitive last year.

Both BP and Sheehan were wrong about the Cardinals last year, but much of the Cardinals’ success last year involved Ryan Ludwick coming out of nowhere to be one of the best hitters in baseball. I’m not sure if you can hold it against someone for not predicting someone who was a 29-year old backup outfield with a career high of 14 home runs the day the season started would end up with 37 HR and 113 RBIs. In fact, if before the season started someone did accurately predict the 2008 Cardinals’ final runs scored and record, they probably made some horribly inaccurate assumptions, because unless they saw Ludwick coming, they had to assign a whole bunch of production incorrectly somewhere.

Sheehan and BP are not perfect, and they never claim to be. In fact, Sheehan runs a column every year that explains his worst predictions of the previous year. Part of what makes baseball great is that it is so hard to predict—a Ludwick can come out of nowhere in a way that is without precedent. It is part of why we love baseball.

But that does not mean that studying baseball systematically does not offer some value.

by tarakas on Apr 7, 2009 3:25 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs