Baseball Prospectus has updated their player pages to show the PECOTA percentile forecasts. PECOTA percentiles are now available to subscribers. Those of you new to BP, or to PECOTA, might wonder why we publish percentiles in addition to the weighted-mean projections for players, which we’ve already released. The answer is that forecasting is an inexact science; the future is not …
2013 Cubs Projections: Ian Stewart and Luis Valbuena
Our 2013 Cubs Projections series continues with a look at 3rd base. The starting job is Ian Stewart's according to Dale Sveum, which leaves Luis Valbuena as a back-up, but even that job may be in question. It's hard to see both Valbuena and Brent Lillibridge making the roster. I wrote a little bit about Ian Stewart a couple weeks …
2013 PECOTA Projections
The 2013 PECOTA projections are out and I thought I'd post some of the Cubs below. Since you have to be a subscriber in order to download the spreadsheet, I'm only going to include PA and wOBA, which I calculated using the basic formula. For pitchers I'll only show IP and FIP (I calculated this too). 2013 PECOTA Projections for …
How much is Ryan Dempster's Trade Value?
Ryan Dempster entered the 2012 season in the final year of his contract. He was coming off season in which his ERA had ballooned to 4.80, but his FIP and xFIP were in line with what he'd done as a starter since 2008. His FIP was 3.91 and he had an xFIP of 3.70. The projections had him at a …
No Love For Jeff Samardzija
I was checking out the stats for most of the Cubs players today (and some other players too). When I was looking at what Jeff Samardzija had done so far this year it wasn't how well he's pitched (at least by FIP standards anyway) that stood out to me, but how no rest of season projection expected a damn thing …
Updated End of Season Projections
Using Baseball Prospectus rest of season PECOTA projections I figured it might be fun to see just how many games the Cubs are expected to lose at this point. Since this is OV and we're Cubs fans we do things in reverse order. We're more focused on the 2013 draft order and which slot the Cubs may be picking from. …
5th worst start for the Cubs ever
Chris Jaffe looked at the Cubs worst starts and found that this 15-31 bunch ties for 5th worst with the 1962 team. Jaffe's article is worth a read. It's a brief article so it won't take you very long. Last night I became curious how well the Cubs would have to play the rest of the season to reach certain …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs: Michael Bowden
Yesterday the Cubs traded Marlon Byrd to the Red Sox for Michael Bowden and a player to be named later. Bowden was drafted in the 1st round (47th overall) in 2005. He was the last of the 5 draft picks the Red Sox had in the 1st round that year. In 2006 Bowden established himself as one of the best …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs: Backups
We've already published the projections for some of the backups along the way. Jeff Baker's was posted with the infield backups and the two possible back-up catchers were published in another article. Without commentary, the others are below. Projection Name PA H HR BB SO avg obp slg wOBA Guru Blake DeWitt 351 82 5 26 55 .256 .313 .376 …
Projecting the 2012 Cubs: Chris Volstad
It looks like Chris Volstad has the last rotation spot locked up. If you looked up "serviceable" in a dictionary there would probably be a picture of Volstad next to it. He's been in the bigs for most of four seasons, and made 87 starts in his last three years with the Marlins. Perhaps one of the reasons that Thoyer …