2009 Fantasy Baseball Projections Are Up!
December 08, 2008
Category: 2009 Fantasy Baseball Draft, Rudy Gamble
Now that all talk of 2008 Player Raters are complete, it’s time to move on to 2009.
See below for links to our 2009 Projected Point Shares for MLB 10 team and 12 team leagues (they can also be accessed in the menu on top of the page):
Razzball Fantasy Baseball Projected Point Shares – MLB 10 Team
Razzball Fantasy Baseball Projected Point Shares – MLB 12 Team
These are based on the Marcel projection system which is considered a baseline by which other services compare themselves. If you want to read more on it and/or download the 2009 projections, click here. If you do download the stats, you’ll see that they are very conservative. Don’t worry about this in regards to Point Shares as our methodology adjusts for this (so in a conservative projection system, 30 HRs are going to be worth more than in an aggressive projection system).
We will post additional versions of Projected Point Shares when other established, free projection systems (CHONE & ZIPS) publish their data and, eventually, create the ‘official’ Point Shares spreadsheet in the Feb/March timeframe.
Please post any/all feedback in the Comments section…
Tags: 2009 CHONE projections, 2009 draft rankings, 2009 fantasy baseball, 2009 fantasy baseball player rater, 2009 fantasy baseball projections, 2009 Fantasy Baseball Rankings, 2009 player rater, 2009 ZIPS projections, marcel projections, point shares, projected point shares, razzball point shares, razzball projected point shares
December 9th, 2008 at 7:00 am
You know when Sabathia is drafted in the 1st round of your 2009 draft that the owner is a Razzball reader who doesn’t understand how to use rankings correctly!
I’m not sure how often Marcel is updated to reflect off-season transactions, if it’s updated at all, because I doubt Holliday would still be the 5th hitter if Marcel knew he was now an Athletic.
Wow, the first closer rankd 21st?! That’s pretty shocking.
@Mike Podhorzer: Ha! Are you razzing Razzball nation? I think we can agree on one thing, though – Adam Everett to Detroit is going to be RAZZTASTIC!
Marcel doesn’t take league or team into account and we didn’t fiddle with any of the stats (e.g., Chase Utley is presumed to play full season). Agreed that Holliday is out of the first 1-2 rounds as an Athletic.
I’m not surprised by a closer being at #21. Mariano finished #8 last year! But that was less driven by saves and more by ERA/WHIP which can come in freakishly low for a closer – Rivera’s 70 IP of 0.67 WHIP was the 2nd most valuable WHIP of all pitchers next to Halladay. (the craziness of that WHIP being that you could have thrown 130 IP of bleh WHIP (1.33) and still had a composite 200 IP of 1.10 WHIP.)
Will be interesting to see how much the rankings change with CHONE or ZIPS data. Those are considered the next step up from Marcel (although that doesn’t mean they’ll statistically prove more accurate).
December 9th, 2008 at 11:44 am
some one might want to call the tigers because according the point shares they have vastly overrated adam everett. Great job as always
December 9th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
@Rudy Gamble: This is one of the reasons your site’s motto should be, “RAZZBALL: The Most Above Average Fantasy Baseball Blog You’ll Ever Find.” Nice work.
You’ll be like five bucks cooler if you eventually combine the Marcel, Zips, Bill James and PECOTA projections into one master projection, sort of the way Nate Silver does it for polls at fivethirtyeight.com.
Cheers.
December 9th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
K-Rod to the Mets… he just signed. 3/$37
@IowaCubs: Thanks Iowa. We’ll definitely be doing a composite one although TBD if we shell out for BP. We may just average all the #s together. After looking at ridiculously detailed comparisons of Marcel v. BP v. CHONE v. ZIPS, my guess is that there’s very minor benefits of creating an average of them all.
@IowaCubs: That’s a good deal for the Mets. I thought he’d go for 4 or 5 years. He’ll still probably be hurt for 50% of the contract but those aren’t my dice that Minaya is rolling…(except for my tax dollars going to build that new stadium)
December 9th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I miss Tony Kubek……..who did he piss off?
@Rudy Gamble: Wright number one, eh? I smell a controversy! Oh, wait, I just farted.
@IowaCubs: Yeah, you gotta do composites. Rudy will.
@Doug Ault: What are you talking about?
December 9th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
wieters now becomes the 3rd catcher off the board ?
@ rudy
am beginning to dig your player rater analysis .
a bit over my head , but am sure i’ll learn something .
@big o: Wieters does get a huge boost in value. For sure. Not 3rd catcher off the board though.
@big o: Hoping CHONE and ZIPS will project Wieters stats. The Bill James stats for him on FanGraphs.com are way too optimistic (but all James’s projections seem to be). Jeff Clement on Seattle was awesome up through AAA and had a big adjustment – why wouldn’t Wieters? I think Clement might be a dark horse this year….
@Rudy Gamble: I was just doing my 2009 catcher rankings and I had Clement pretty high up. Or at least higher than I though he would be.
December 9th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
@Grey: @Rudy Gamble:
Been waiting on these rankings to talk me out of going so pitcher heavy with my keepers. Upon further review: 10 team league
Hamels-12
Webb-13
Halladay-14
J Shields-54
Bills-57
How can I not keep them? Curious as to why Halladay projects lower than Hamels and Webb after last years #1 finish. Thoughts?
December 9th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
@ hippo
went to camden yards last summer and saw halladay pitch .
came away with the impression that he appeared smaller of presence/stature than was his actual size …. and we had good seats , too .
a couple of rows away was this strikingly attractive woman of about half of my age . next to her was a companion piece ….almost equally beautiful (if you like blondes) , maybe a few years younger .
found myself thinking ….. if i wasn’t with these 2 clowns , i might just go over there and engage in conversation .
anyway , those are my thoughts on halladay .
hope it helps .
December 9th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
@big o: Haha!
What’s not to like about blondes? Especially half your age. Unless you happen to be 25.
You know what Charlie Harper says, “You’re only as old as the women you feel. Right now I’m feelin about half my age.”
Don’t know what all this says about Halladay, maybe Grey can put it into perspective.
@BigFatHippo: Those guys are nearly a push at 12, 13 and 14 but Halladay’s a bit lower from where he ended up last year because so much of his value was predicated on Ks that weren’t his norm. Now in 2009, his Ks may stay up, but these projections are saying he’s going to come down a bit in Ks i.e. split the difference between his 2007 and 2008, which makes sense.
Or you can go with Big O’s anecdotal evidence.
December 9th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
@Grey: To paraphrase David Byrne – “Stop making sense.”
Does make sense though, I can see his Ks taking a hit. Doesn’t stop me from keeping his tasty era and whip.
@BigFatHippo: Nor should it. Now back to those ladies Big O was talking about…
December 9th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Not to mention his innings pitched. I think that is a highly overlooked stat when dealing with a #1 pitcher.
220 innings of Halladay is much better than 150 of Peavy, no?
@BigFatHippo: Sure, but why are you saying Peavy’s only getting 150? WBC? Which, btw, was being advertised on my local Hip-Hop radio station. I couldn’t think of more bizarre place for them to advertise. I have no idea who’s in charge of marketing over there, but they may need a change at the top.
December 9th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
@Grey: He had 173 IP last year.
If he’s dealt to the Cubs it’s bound to be the new curse, he misses a month with jockular sphincteritis. Call it the Hippo Hex.
I’m lookin at you, Jake Peavy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Re: WBC? Hip-Hop radio station? What are these foreign things you speak of?
@BigFatHippo: World Baseball Classic — The tournament that was blamed for Peavy’s subpar 2006 and the same tournament that is coming again this March.
December 9th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
@Grey: Ah, that WBC. Thought it was a radio station advertising on a radio station, duh.
Sorry, between working on my business plan and discussing baseball and watching The Mentalist my mind is fried. Worse than 85 maybe! Nah, couldn’t be.
I could have easily interjected 2008 tire gross profit of 22.8% into Peavy’s innings pitched and none would be the wiser. Even me.
December 9th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
@ grey :
just secured my tickets for wbc/miami …….PUMPED .
@ hippo :
gotta love charlie .
watch 2 episodes every night .
December 9th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
@big o: Sweet, A rod will be there. Will Madonna? Don’t forget your obligatory man tit cones.
Do me a favor and click on that IQ test thingy and tell me what town it says. My home town came up and I’m telling you, the IQ is not that high here.
December 9th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
@Grey: The play by play Kubek,too bad he stopped calling games
@Doug Ault: I see now, he just won the Frick. Gotcha…. Yeah, he was probably the last decent Yankees broadcaster. The trio of Kay, Singleton and O’Neill must be stopped.
December 9th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
@BigFatHippo: Are you saying that profits in the tyre business this year will be slightly inflated?
Boom-tish!
December 11th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Awesome! Somehow I missed this post until today. Not sure if combining projections would actually yield a better system, even if you adjust the league average levels for each system. I think it’s more interesting to see the differences in point shares for each system. For instance, according to Marcel Pedroia is ranked #38, whereas by PECOTA he’s 21 or whatever. Analyzing these differences might give us some insight into the differences between the various projections.
December 11th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Rudy, I’m curious as to why you use 5 OF positions, but no MI or CI. Most leagues that I play in that have 5 OF have MI & CI positions, or if not they only use 3 OF.
I’m curious as to how point shares would be different if you included these, because with MI especially, the average at the position would go down considerably I would think. I know it’s a ton of work, but any plans to do something like this? Or make your methodology available (I’ll totally pay) where we could just plug in our own projections? Think maybe you were considering this in the past but I could be confusing you with Derek Carty.
@Nick: i do use MI and CI. Just forgot to put that in the headers. good catch. adding them now…
@Nick: Agreed on the combining of projections. We’re going to do it anyway, though. The ‘league-average’ issue – which comes into play when comparing the raw stat projections – doesn’t factor in for Point Shares since everything’s been converted into a league-relative stat (the point shares). I can take stats from crazily different eras and still calculate comparable point shares.
The one big improvement I can see to the Marcel and ZIPs data will be to multiply their projections against a projected playing time percentage. This would factor out issues like Putz’s save projection, guys who won’t have a starting position anymore, etc. Know any sources for this?
No plans just yet to allow a ‘fill-in-your-projection’ system but this can be done. I’d probably require using the playerID system used in Marcel & others to make it easier to match players up (fuckin’ Chris Youngs, Tony Penas, etc.). Hanley Ramirez = ramirha01.
Rudy
December 13th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
@Rudy: I see what you’re saying about the different league averages for different systems. As long as you calculate the Point Shares individually for each system, and then average, it should be fine. The problem would be if you just averaged the various projections for each player first, and then computed the Point Shares, as projections with different averages would have greater influence over the average, and one outlier could really skew things.
I agree about improving the projections with projected playing time. One of the things I like about PECOTA & BPro’s PFM is that they continue to do updates on playing time/roles through Spring Training up to Opening Day. I remember a couple years ago when it came out that Cory Hart was going to play full time and they prorated his projections and he shot up the rankings. So I would say that they’re a good source (it’s in the depth charts), but they do miss stuff sometimes and it might be nice to have another source to cross-check with. And as far as I know, they don’t use a batting lineup spot component, which we know can have a large effect on R and RBI.
December 19th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
[...] quite during this past week, but Rudy announced the addition of Marcel projections for their 2009 Point Shares. I hope to be taking a closer look at the Point Shares methodology soon. [...]
January 9th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Hi Rudy. This is says much better what I was trying to convey about averaging projections http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/the-projections/#comments
But yes, as your system already takes averages into account, you’re okay as long as you average the point shares as opposed to the raw numbers.
On another note, is there any way to make the marcel point shares projections available for download as an excel file or whatever? It’s kind of hard to navigate and sort all the ways I’d like to when its inside that little box here on Razzball.
Thanks.
January 9th, 2009 at 10:24 am
@Nick: I turned them into .PDFs if you want those. Give me an email address (PM me in the forums if you like) and I’ll send ‘em to you.
Here’s a public link to the Google Spreadsheet:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=piCDkhc7lgqVf96Npvk7cfg
@Nick: Thanks Nick for the link. I’ll be posting CHONE Point Shares this weekend. The biggest issue w/ those is that they overproject Plate Appearances as a whole so I had to remove certain players that weren’t good bets for enough PA’s to be fantasy-worthy.
Will correct for that in the late-Feb release of the official Razzball Point Shares which will adjust their projections based on more realistic playing time projections…
January 9th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Awesome! Thanks for the spreadsheet and I look forward to the CHONE projections. Haven’t been able to find a single file with all the CHONEs yet (seems like it would take forever to look at every player on FanGraphs), but if I do I’ll post a link here.
January 9th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Okay, wasn’t as hard to find as I thought. They’re available at Rally’s website
http://www.baseballprojection.com/
On the right side of the page there are spreadsheets available for hitters and pitchers. You probably already found them, but in case someone else was looking…
January 9th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Sorry to be spamming up these comments, but I thought it was interesting how CHONE projects some of these rookies/2nd year players (CHONE takes minor league numbers into account, while MARCEL does not – read: MARCEL is not good for rookies)
Matt Wieters 419 AB, 15 HR, 64 RBI, 59 R, 3 SB, .274/.352/.439
(similar to Soto, Doumit, VMart, Molina, minus some RBI)
Jay Bruce 493 AB, 27 HR, 77 RBI, 78 R, 10 SB, .276/.334/.509
(studly)
Evan Longoria 452 AB, 22 HR, 80 RBI, 71 R, 5 SB, .265/.346/.476
David Price 79 IP, 4 W, 59K, 4.90 ERA, 1.49 WHIP
(obviously the IP is off but the rate stats don’t look great)
Clayton Kershaw 115 IP, 6W, 102K, 4.23 ERA, 1.34 WHIP
(meh)
Not really sure how the minor league numbers are used when computing the projections, but it was interesting that Bruce looks better than Longoria. Note too, that I’m not sure how CHONE assigns projections for lineup dependent stats like R and RBI. And on the pitching side, I know he does do defensive projections, but I’m not sure if these are considered when projecting things like ERA & WHIP that are dependent on team defense. CHONEs are, however, park adjusted.
On a side note, it doesn’t look like CHONE projects saves. Which is understandable. Just will make assigning fantasy values a bit more tricky.
@Nick: good stuff. i’ve done some comparisons already b/w Marcel and CHONE that i’ll post over the weekend or early next week. Marcel’s creator is pretty upfront about its blind spot on young players. It’s meant to be a baseline projection system that should be hurdled by more advanced systems like BP and CHONE. There’s also some interesting cases where Marcel is more bullish than CHONE…
January 9th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Whoa, here’s another rater I just found via Tango’s blog
http://www.lastplayerpicked.com/priceguide/
Pretty cool. You can use 2008 stats, or 2009 Marcels, CHONE, and CAIRO (?). Looks like it operates off of replacement level, but it does include averages and what the replacement level is for each position, which is a first and very cool. Doesn’t break down the value by category like Point Shares or the RotoTimes rater though. I emailed the author to ask some questions about what the iterations mean a few other things.
January 17th, 2009 at 3:56 am
Is Matt Kemp in the 12 Team file? And does anyone really think that Longoria will put up numbers at such a rate as to leave him out of the top 150? I know this is based on past stats, and rookies and second year player are what they are, but let’s ground this in reality… or at least something resembling a best guess based on circumstances to date.
January 17th, 2009 at 4:02 am
Sorry about that, just spotted kemp at number 31. My fault for not looking high enough. (but who could blame me with Kemp?)
@Joe Garrison: Welcome to the Razzball comments board! Yeah, Kemp is tempting b/c of the power/speed potential. But he couldn’t clear 20 HRs last year in 600 ABs and Marcel + CHONE have him falling short again.
Compared his stats with Sizemore and they have similar K rates (20+ % of ABs – not good for AVG) and Home Run / Fly Ball rates (about 11-14% of fly balls which is good).
The big difference, though, is that Sizemore hits a lot more fly balls than Kemp. Kemp hits 35% fly balls / 45% ground balls while Sizemore is 45% fly balls / 35% ground balls (the rest are line drives). This also explains why Kemp has hit for a better average despite his K’s.
So if Kemp is going to be valuable, he’s going to have to keep up the steals and I’m not sold. He’s not a leadoff hitter. He’s not super fast. I think the best bet for him is 17 HR / 25 SB w/ okay AVG, R, RBI. If he played 2B/SS, I’d draft him in first 3 rounds. Otherwise, he’ll be that same overrated pick like last year’s Alex Rios (sorry Grey).
@Joe Garrison: As for Longoria, his K rate is really high which means he’s going to be a negative on average (think Troy Glaus type). His power is for real and the AB projections in Marcel and CHONE are low. I could see a line of .265/90/30/100/7 which is good. Have a feeling he’ll go sooner than I like in drafts though…
January 17th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Kemp is also one of those weird guys with insanely high BABIPs. With his strikeout rate (and lack of BB rate) he should be a threat to hit .260, but for some reason, he doesn’t. Or at least hasn’t for the past three years. Still haven’t figured that one out.
@Nick: It’s the high ground ball rate + line drives + speed. If he ever hits more fly balls, he’ll sink down to Sizemore territory (.270). So you’ll either get .260/30, .270/25, .280/20 .290/15….something like that…