Comments on: 2009 Fantasy Baseball Projections Are Up!

By: Rudy Gamble

Rudy Gamble — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:33:51 +0000

@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...

By: Nick

Nick — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 17:56:38 +0000

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.

By: Rudy Gamble

Rudy Gamble — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 17:02:57 +0000

@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...

By: Rudy Gamble

Rudy Gamble — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 16:55:18 +0000

@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).

By: Joe Garrison

Joe Garrison — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 12:02:29 +0000

Sorry about that, just spotted kemp at number 31. My fault for not looking high enough. (but who could blame me with Kemp?)

By: Joe Garrison

Joe Garrison — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 11:56:08 +0000

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.

By: Nick

Nick — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 04:13:20 +0000

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.

By: Rudy Gamble

Rudy Gamble — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 23:17:38 +0000

@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...

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:16:00 +0000

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.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:04:39 +0000

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…