2009 CHONE Projections

Sean Smith, who blogs on baseball and the Angels, has released his 2009 CHONE projections for hitters. He's in the process of getting this all set up on a new hosting site as his old one just stopped working (why, I'm not sure and from what I know, neither is he). The CHONE Defensive projections are what I had been using in my previous attempts at valuing a player, and those are currently gone. However, he's assured everyone they will be back when he gets them on his site.

So, go peruse the hitters tabs for your favorite team. The R150 column is Runs Above Average per 150 games based on his own custom Linear Weights system (linear weights is the best method for offensive evaluation). They are also park-adjusted, league-adjusted and there is an "expanded" tab you can click. These are only up for a few (Angels) players. However, what they give is a percentile projection, projections through the 2014 season, and incorporates a speed number which he uses to evaluate baserunning. These are fantastic projections. To see an expanded tab, here's one for Brandon Wood and Vlad Guerrero.

When the defensive projections come back, those are what I would use for defensive prowess until at leas the mid-way point of the 2009 season. Fielding data takes roughly twice as long to stabilize in comparison to offense. So 1 year of fielding data is on par with roughly a half of season of offensive data.

These are, however, the best projections on the internet that I know of (yes, I think they're better than B-Pro's PECOTA projections). And they are 100% free. Please check them out. The Pitchers projections should be up in a few weeks.

Edwin Jackson Deal; James Skelton

There have been many things written already on the Edwin Jackson-Matt Joyce swap that occurred last night. I am not a fan. Not in the least. He's similar to getting the remote control car that you've wanted for the last three Christmas' and then you finally get it. Open it up, play around with it and realize that the shiny outer-coat is just a facade and that the gift is a cheap knock-off of the name brand toy you really wanted.

In this case, the shiny outer-coat is Edwin Jackson's ERA. His command improved to a mediocre level from downright terrible, but his strikeout rate really dropped -- and essentially -- offset everything good he did in moderately improving his control.

The anguish over such a deal is less about the talents of Matt Joyce, rather on the apparent lack-of-talents of Edwin Jackson. Jackson is a trade-able commodity -- I'd pause and think about a deal involving Jeff Larish rather than Matt Joyce -- it's all just cost dependent. And I don't like the cost of this deal.

In other news, the neglect of adding James Skelton to the 40 man roster, and thusly leaving him unprotected for the Rule 5 draft, results in the Tigers losing Skelton to the Arizona Diamondbacks. Not a fan of this, either. Skelton's not a big-league ball player in 2009 based on his talents alone. However, he can project to being a competent catcher at some point and the Tigers needs at catchers span beyond the Major League Level. So long as Dane Sardinha has procured a back-up job, James Skelton should still be within the Tigers organization.

It feels like there have been a lot of swings and misses by this front office in the most recent years. Couple that with numerous questionable decisions from the medical staff, head-scratching decisions from the manager on both in-game decisions and player personnel and I'm not sure I'm liking the way the team is currently heading. 2006 feels like decades ago already.

2009 Marcels Projections

Tom Tango released his 2009 Marcels Projections a few weeks ago. I just got around to downloading them. The projections (along with projections from Bill James) can be found on each players page on Fangraphs, the best baseball site online in my estimation.

I have quickly turned the 2009 projections in Wins Above Replacement (WAR) for both hitters and pitchers, and then turned that into a runs value for next season. The Hitters spreadsheet can be found here and the pitchers sheet is here. I used the wOBA turned into Runs Above Average method to get to my WAR numbers, which I should disclose, isn't 100% ideal; wOBA is not park-adjusted. So, Matt Holliday's wOBA calculations aren't taking into account that he's playing 81 times in Coors Field, while Brian Giles is playing half of his games in Petco.

Some caveats: There are no defensive numbers in here. This is straight-up offense. To stick with the 2009 projection theme, I would suggest using the 2009 CHONE Projections.

Also, there are no positional adjustments. This is due to my laziness, as I didn't want to add the position for each of the hitters in the spreadsheets. However, this is very, very easy once you know a person's position. The positional adjustment spectrum is just this:

CA: +12.5 runs

SS: +7.5 runs

2B/3B/CF: +2.5 runs

LF/RF: -7.5 runs

1B: -12.5 runs

DH: -17.5 runs

To add in the defense and the positional adjustment in, you simply add (or subtract) those to the number in the RAA column on my spreadsheet. You divide that new number by 10.5 (the relationship between runs and wins among players) and then add 2 (replacement level is 2 wins below average).

Lets run through an example. We'll use Curtis Granderson. His RAA in my table comes out at +15.7. His CHONE defensive projection has him at +13 runs. That makes him now at +28.7 runs above average. He gets another 2.5 run boost for being a Centerfielder, which puts his RAA at 31.2. Divide that by 10.5 and you get 2.97 Wins Above Average. Add in another 2, and he becomes 4.97 Wins Above Replacement in 2009. That equates out to being $24.85 million. His 2009 salary is currently just $3.5 million, a difference of $21.35 million -- quite the bargain.

More Shortstop Evaluations

With Fangraphs adding the very lauded UZR fielding metric invented by Mitchell Lichtman, I decided to now use that into my evaluations on Jack Wilson, Cesar Izturis, Adam Everett, and with talks in the comments section on Bill's site, I'll throw in Nick Punto, as well.

To keep this short, I'll just go with the nitty-gritty method.

Jack Wilson

Marcel's 2009 wOBA: .311
CHONE 2009 defensive projection: 7 runs.
UZR Average for the 06-08 seasons: 3.235
Probabilistic Model of Range Runs: N/A (hurt; did not meet the 1000 balls in play minimum used by David Pinto).
Justin Inaz's Defense Runs: +6.7

Average of defensive metrics: +5.645

WAR: 1.855
Market Value on 1 year deal: $9.275 million.

Cesar Izturis

Marcels wOBA projection: .290
CHONE: 7
UZR 06-08: 2.59
PMR: 11.69
Justin: 14.7

Average: 8.995

WAR: +1.139
Market Value: $5.696

Adam Everett

Marcels wOBA: .280
CHONE: 19
UZR 06-08: 18.02
PMR: 4.59
Justin: -0.5

Average: 10.28

WAR: 0.769
Market Value: $3.845

Nick Punto

Marcels wOBA: .299
CHONE: 3
UZR 06-08 (just his SS numbers used): 25.275
PMR: +5.74
Justin: +0.6

Average: 8.65

WAR: 1.549
Market Value: $7.749

Some notes:

-The UZR was a weighted average. I weighted 2008 at .45, 2007 at .35, and 06 at .20.

-The WAR is calculated by giving each player 595 PA's for 2009, which equates out to roughly 85% playing time -- or the amount that a normal starting fielder plays out of a 162 game season. This is a bit of an assumption for those on this list that have had health problems in the past season or two (Jack Wilson, Adam Everett). I also included an addition of 0.5 wins for a positional adjustment of these guys playing SS.

-Market Value is just WAR multiplied by 5, as that's the going rate for a 'win' above replacement level.

This method puts the players in this order: Jack Wilson, Nick Punto, Cesar Izturis, and Adam Everett.

Wilson costs a prospect and one that should be pretty good (likely one of the Tigers top 5 not named Rick Porcello), due to the Pirates apparently picking up a large chunk of the deal. No thanks.

Nick Punto will come cheap. He fared better in this method than I anticipated and has posted wOBA's from 2005-2008 of: .282, .324, .260, .324. He seems to have a drop off after getting closer to the league average each year. If this pattern holds true, he's likely to drop into the lower .290's -- that'd put him on par offensively with Cesar Izturis.

Izturis, also would come cheap monetarily. He's more glove than bat, but has been steady with the wOBA's since 2005: .274, .258, .273, .292. He's projected for .290 but the transfer to the AL from the NL might be enough to keep him below that projection. Also working in his favor is that he's 28 and could be on another year of an upswing before decline sets in.

Everett's by far the worst bat of the four potential options. His defense has always overcome such shortcomings at the dish, but he's coming off a couple of injury-plagued seasons in which his elite defense is being questioned as a thing of the past.

These options are brutal. There's no other way to put it. I think that I like Cesar Izturis on the 1-year deal, but I say that with immense trepidation. I think I can expunge Jack Wilson from this discussion simply because he costs players rather than money. With that said, the other three aren't exactly names you expect on World Series contenders. I can get behind picking up any of the remaining three, as it's just a matter of who's the cheapest.

More SS Solutions; Everett and Izturis

Well, Billfer mentioned Cesar Izturis and Adam Everett as other options that have been linked to the Tigers. Well, lets look at how they stack up, in dollars, with Wilson and each other.

Adam Everett

The hands-down best defensive shortstop in baseball just a couple seasons ago, a couple injury-plagued seasons have left his once +40-something plays above-average defense down to just +18 plays in 2007 (he wasn't on the Fielding Bible leaderboards in 2008). As the very definition of an all-glove, no-bat Shortstop, this is not good news. Marcels has his wOBA projection at .280 in 299 PA's. On the very surface, that comes out to, using the method in my previous post, -14.3 runs above average (RAA). That then converts over to being 0.638 Wins Above Average (WAA) offensively. Again, that's just 299 PA's. If we give him just 75% of the playing time (full time starters are normally around the 85% range) because of his injury troubles, that puts him at -25 runs above average offensively, which is -0.391 WAA.

But, we know that his bread is buttered by his glove. The CHONE defensive projections have him at +19 runs defensively. We add those to his RAA over the course of 75% playing time (525 PA's; -25 RAA), and you get -6 RAA. Convert that WAR, puts him at 1.43 WAR. Add on 0.5 wins for being a SS, and his overall WAR becomes 1.93 -- close to Jack Wilson's 1.98 WAR we discovered earlier. This WAR of 1.93 equates out to being worth $9.65 million on the open market for a 1 year deal. Coming off of an injury riddled last couple of years, his asking price will be drastically slashed -- maybe even into the $4.5 range, or roughly half of his value based on his Marcels Projections.

The pros: Can be had cheap. 2008 salary was just $2.8 million. Doesn't cost anything in terms of players. No long term commitment.

The cons: Health is an issue, and his seemingly declining defense is even more of an issue. Still an above-average defender, his bat comes close to completely negating his defensive worth.

Cesar Izturis

Izturis had 414 PA's with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2008 and posted a .292 wOBA -- his highest since the .313 wOBA he posted with the LA Dodgers in 2004. Marcels projects a .290 wOBA over the course of 421 PA's, which is roughly 60% of the playing time. We'll put him on equal footing to Everett above, and give him 525 PA's -- or just 75% of the playing time. His .290 wOBA would put him at -20.54 runs above average over the course of 525 PA's in 2009. His Marcels projection puts him at just +7 with the glove -- not the projection that Everett has. Izturis finished 2008 at +19 in the Fielding Bible. Those +19 plays equate out to 14 runs saved when converted using Chris Dials conversions. That total is pretty much corroborated by Beyond the Boxscore and Dan Turkenkopf, who turned the Probabilistic Model of Range into a runs total. Dan found that over the course of 4000 balls in play, Izturis was worth 11.36 runs. With what we know and what the CHONE projection has for Izturis, I feel comfortable calling him +10 runs defensively, for a nice, round number.

So his runs total offensively is -20.54 and basically cut that in half due to his work with the leather, and you get a new RAA of -10.54, or -1.00 Wins Above Average -- which converts to being 1 Win Above Replacement. Add in another half a win for positional adjustment like before, and he's a 1.5 WAR player -- valued at $7.5 million.


The pros: Another very cheap option. He played for just $2.85 million in 2008 and likely could be had for nearly the same cost -- maybe a bit more. Either way, he comes lower than what he's worth relative to the replacement player. He, like Everett, costs no prospects at all.

The cons: Very weak bat. Not as weak as Everett, not as good as Jack Wilson's. He's kind of directly in between. He's also Wilson's equal defensively (or thereabouts), but lags behind Everett with the leather.

Jack Wilson (Again)

I figured out 1.98 WAR and a value of $9.9 million in my previous post. However, that was for 595 PA's, or 85% of the playing time. To put him on equal footing with Everett and Izturis, we'll downgrade him to 75% of the playing time. His RAA becomes -10.96 + 7 for his defense which becomes a WAA of -0.377. +0.5 for positional adjustment and 2 to get his WAR, and he then becomes +2.123 WAR. That equates out to $10.615 million.

My feelings of the entire situation: it stinks. I would much prefer Edgar Renteria, and I feel that we'll be longing for the days of E-Rent soon into the 2009 season. However, economics of the ball club (and country) dictate that Renteria was not a plausible option. As Billfer pointed out in his wrap up that was my first link in this post, Wilson costs $7.5 million -- not much of a break from what Renteria was given by the Giants today. If we get the Pirates to cover most of that salary, that does two things: (1) says a whole lot about the state of the team financially -- and not in a good way and (2) up's the quality of prospect heading the other way.

If I had to choose one, I think I choose Cesar Izturis (1.5 WAR). Wilson's (2.213 WAR) price tag, given the moves or lack of moves from Detroit this year, seems out of the question, and giving away a quality prospect for a stop-gap shortstop in the last year of his deal is not something I want to do. I give Izturis the nod over Everett simply because Everett's (1.93 WAR) declining defense and inability to stay healthy the last two season really drop down his value in my mind.

At the end of the day, though, you find yourself just trying to polish up the rotten apple in the basket enough to convince yourself it's safe to eat.

Evaluating Jack Wilson

There's been rumors that a deal for Jack Wilson was done between Detroit and Pittsburgh, and that the deal was never finalized and that they're still talking. Whether it's done, not done, or not even being talked about is only mildly important until we know the value of Jack Wilson.

So, let's evaluate him. His Marcels projection has him posting a .311 wOBA in 418 plate appearances in 2009.

First off, the 418 PA's seems rather low. That's because Marcels is built on a 3 year sample for players which are weighted at 5/4/3. He was hurt last year with a leg injury and, thusly, had just 330 PA's. From 2005-07 he averaged 589 PA's. Lets average that with his 2008 330 PA's and we get 460 PA's, which is roughly 66% playing time.

So, let's calculate his worth.

To turn wOBA into a runs number, you just have to do the following:

wOBA - league average wOBA / 1.15 * PA

Very simple. The League average wOBA will always be the league average OBP. 2008 in the AL, it was .335. For Wilson, it looks like this.

.311-.335/1.15*460=-9.6. That is 9.6 runs below average. His CHONE defensive projection for 2009 is 7 runs to the good defensively. That would make him -2.6 runs above average (RAA).

Now, 10.5 is the relationship between runs and wins, so -2.6/10.5=-0.248 Wins Above Average (WAA). Replacement level is defined at being 2 wins below average, so we add 2 to that and get his Wins Above Replacement (WAR) of +1.752.

Now, that +1.752 WAR is the not the same coming from a shortstop as it is from a 1st baseman. So, we must use a positional adjustment. Tom Tango (I'm leaning heavily on his methods for this evaluation), has positional adjustments laid out. For a SS, we ad 0.5 wins. Our total now comes to 2.252 WAR.

This offseason, the going rate for a 'win' is roughly $5 million. So, 2.252*5=$11.26 million.

However, we don't expect someone who has been so durable over his career to play just 66% of the time. Let's adjust that to 85% (the typical amount of a full time starting position player) and we get 595 PA's. His new offensive runs projection equals out to:

.311-.335/1.15*595=-12.42 RAA. Add in the +7 defensive projection, and you get -5.42 RAA. Convert to WAR and you get 1.48 WAR. Add in the positional adjustment and you get 1.98 WAR. The going rate for that would value him at $9.9 million.

Jack Wilson's contract pays him $7.25 in 2009 with an $8.4 million option in 2010 with a $600,000 buyout clause. The difference between his value and his actual salary is $2.65 million in savings. His current contract is paying him approximately like a 1.45 WAR player, and we've valued him at 1.98 WAR. Depending on the prospects going to Pittsburgh, which I can't imagine being high-end given that Wilson's coming off a bad, injury-plagued campaign in 2008, I would like a deal for Jack Wilson, contingent on the prospects heading the other way.