A while back, I mentioned the BP Kings dispersal draft. Well, after spending the past couple months staring at my roster, I submitted my list of keepers on Monday.
We can protect up to 10 veteran players in this league, plus an unlimited number of rookies. The first full round of drafting is round 11, but if an owner keeps fewer than 10 veterans, he gets to start earlier (keep 9, start in round 10; keep 8, start in round 9; etc.).
Each rookie protected costs a pick at the end of the draft (keep one, lose your round 35 pick; keep a second, lose your round 34; you know the drill). Typically these picks are used on fringe players, so keeping several rookies (most owners kept 4-7 in this league; a couple kept none, and one kept 19) is a common strategy that doesn’t come with a lot of downside.
I spent much of Sunday trying to swing last-minute deals. After talking to about half the league and fielding a dozen or so offers, I made one trade, swapping Michael Cuddyer for Arizona third base prospect Bobby Borchering. Although Cuddyer is a solid run producer in his prime, I had determined he was expendable for my purposes. More on that in a moment.
As for the guy I received in return, Kevin Goldstein notes in his look at the DiamondbacksTop 11 Prospects that Borchering needs to tighten up his strike zone and may not stick at the hot corner but identifies him as a “switch-hitter with plus (if not more) power from both sides of the plate.” In other words, Borchering is someone who might help several years down the road. Okay, I wasn’t keeping Cuddyer, so good enough for me.
In the dispersal draft, I’d targeted older players because that’s where the “soft spots” were. It was easier to grab the old guys I wanted than to fight for table scraps among the more coveted younger players.
The downside to such a strategy (or any contrarian strategy) is that potential trade partners may value players differently than I do, which presents a challenge when trying to make a deal. If I spent the draft collecting players nobody else sought, then why should I expect those same owners to want them now? Survey says: I shouldn’t.
So I talked to a lot of folks (always a worthy endeavor even if nothing comes to fruition; today’s talk may become tomorrow’s trade) and made the one deal. Then I trimmed my roster to the following:
I strongly considered cutting all my veterans or at least keeping only Halladay, but after perusing the other rosters decided it wasn’t worth the risk of having another owner also drop everyone and being forced to compete for those resources (this turned out to be a wise decision, as one owner kept only one veteran; everyone else protected at least eight). As for the old guys that nobody had wanted in the dispersal draft, I figured dropping them was relatively safe because, hey, most likely nobody still wanted them. I should be able to redraft them if so desired, and with luck, there might be better players available.
So, that’s where we stand as of today. The spring draft begins on February 18. What will it bring? Stay tuned…
I’m pleased to announce that we’ve signed our friend Joe Sheehan for the first book we’ll be announcing in 2010. “The Untitled Joe Sheehan Book” is going to expand on and update a few dozen signature pieces Joe wrote for BP over the years, and will be edited by Christina Kahrl. It will be ready for the printer by this year’s playoffs at the latest.
Joe will be maintaining a production weblog for the book, and we’ll be featuring that at BP.com. You’ll be able to get more information about the book there soon. Joe will also be doing several chats at BP.com in support of the project.
Now, back to working on the PECOTA cards… shooting for end of the week with those.
As baseball season gears up, so does Baseball media. Baseball Prospectus writers have long been favorites because, flat out, we’re good at it. We’ve done everything from Fox News to ESPN, from Boston to San Diego, from Toledo to Tampa. We do TV, we do radio, we do newspapers and new media. You could call us media whores, but that’s not nice.
As you media types gear up for the season, remember that BP does have someone available to help you, but we also give preference to those that give us a regular slot. We’ve got a few slots still available, so if you’d like to book us for radio, let us know - media AT baseballprospectus.com.
Also, if you have a well-trafficked blog or newspaper column and want to talk to use about our 15th Annual book, our bold projections for 2010, the Prospect Lists, THRs, or anything else baseball, we’d be happy to consider that too! Same address works for that request, or you can go straight to the author you’d like to speak with.
There have been some good questions about the Team Health Reports and the underlying system, especially over at Dodger Thoughts. First, I’ll point everyone to this article, which explains much of the underlying system.
The bands — what you see as red, yellow, and green — always get a lot of discussion. Why do I choose to use bands and what do they mean? Yes, the system has an underlying “number,” a percentage that is both more specific and more error-prone. It’s one thing to say “Zack Greinke is a 12″ or “Darren Dreifort is a 101″ but I don’t know that it means much more than the bands. Is 12 that much better than 13? 20? By banding the ratings, I can give you much more meaning and it’s much easier to read.
The bands were initially set at 33 and 50*, but have moved off that slightly based on the changes in experience for the underlying actuarial table. They’re designed to be measuring risk, not cutting the population in thirds, though I can understand why some think that.
As I’ve said, the ratings are just a broad measure. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I disagree (with my own system!), and sometimes it confuses me. All that will be detailed in the team writeups, which is why I always say pay more attention to them and why we work hard to get them out to you as soon as possible.
(* meaning that green was 0-32, yellow was 33-49, red was 50-100)
Good news: we’ve been informed by our publisher that Baseball Prospectus 2010 will depart from their warehouse on Monday, February 8. Allowing a day or two for the trucks to roll and some more time for stores and online sellers to unbox the things and it’s possible that copies could start appearing in stores by the end of next week and in your mailboxes not long after that. We very much hope you enjoy annual #15.
In other news, our pals at Wiley are running a contest around the book: the five winning entrants will get a chance to talk fantasy strategy with the BP author of their choice (choose carefully: I am more likely to talk about Phil Rizzuto, the films of Preston Sturges, and how the 1985 Royals were like Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” than I am to offer quality fantasy advice. Still, to each their own). See the link for details, no purchase necessary, yadda yadda and so forth.
Finally, some tour dates are starting to come together. Not all details have been finalized, but here are some of the appearances we have planned:
Sunday, February 28, 3 PM: Once again, we kick off our tour at The Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center at Montclair State University, New Jersey. Kevin, Christina, Jay, and I expect to be there and other authors are possible. We’ll be filming this one, so come out, talk some baseball, and be preserved for posterity.
Monday, March 1, 6 PM, New York City: We are pleased to return to the Barnes & Noble at 18th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan. If you check their calendar of events, it says of the BP annual, “ow it its fifteenth edition,” to which I can only say, “Amen, brother.”
Tuesday, March 9, 7 PM, Washington, DC: We make our annual pilgrimage to the great Politics and Prose bookstore.
Monday, March 15, 7 PM, Boston: We once again ride the escalators to the top floor at the Boston University Bookstore. Please arrange warm temperatures, Boston.
Tuesday, March 16, Time TBA (tentatively noon), Boston: We alight at Northeastern University for a chat at the Snell Library, 360 Huntington Avenue.
Thursday, March 18, 6 PM, Chicago: Christina and Kevin return to the DePaul University Loop Campus Bookstore for windy Windy City hi-jinks.
Stay tuned for more information. We look forward to seeing you along the trail.
Not a day goes by that I don’t get an email asking about why the pace of new BPR’s has slowed, asking for a link to a specific episode, or making a suggestion for a future guest. Let me address all of those here.
First, the pace has slowed for a number of reasons, but let me assure you that BPR is coming back strong. The winter has always been a slower period for us, absent the companion pieces to the Top 11 that we did last year. This year, a couple things conspired against us. A near complete meltdown in my home studio was one problem, while a new addition to the Wochomurka family has given Brad some new priorities. Brad’s four years at BPR have been great and I can’t thank him enough for the time and effort.
We’ll be debuting a new and an old friend in Brad’s place. The original co-host of BPR was Scott McCauley, who left to take on the responsibilities of being one of the Indianapolis Indians‘ radio announcers. Scott will be re-joining us to help with the normal BPR interviews, but will also be doing a lot from the road as he did on his very popular blog. With prospects like Pedro Alvarez, Tim Alderson, and Jose Tabata slated for time in Indy, Scott will be getting to know some future Pirates along with their International League opponents.
Joining us on the backend and handling Fantasy February will be Joel Henard. Joel’s popular Fantasy Insiders show on BlogTalkRadio has been growing since starting a year ago, so his addition will give a new sound and viewpoint. In fact you can hear more from and about Joel on the BPR Fantasy February Preview that’s up now. We’re excited about having Joel as part of the team.
Finally, there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes to bring you more of the content you want. We’ve experimented with formats, never finding one that resonated with both our listeners and our team of experts. The time, scheduling, and production work that goes into BPR (or any podcast) is more than you’d imagine, about a 3:1 ratio to what you hear on air.
So we’re looking for your ideas, as always. Would you be interested in a “roundtable”-style weekly show that brought several BP writers to the virtual studio to discuss the hot topics? Do you like the long form interviews, like we’ve done with Bob Costas, Steve Stone, and Chuck Wilson? We’re always looking for the best guests, the newest ideas, and we’ll continue to do that in 2010. Thanks to the thousands of listeners who download us on iTunes or listen in right from the front page.
* I also know some of you could care less about audio content. You’re happy reading the printed page or killing some trees. That’s cool. Just please quit asking for transcripts. Until the technology to cheaply and accurately automate that exists, it’s not going to happen. We’re more likely to do some Avatar-style 3D video content before that happens.
- a lot of work has gone into the translation postprocessing of the PECOTA data, and GB%, BABIP, and defensive projections appear to have been significantly improved. There are still individual players that have interesting results, which we’ll continue to look at.
- a clarification: the column in the weighted means spreadsheet GB Out %, not GB%–that is, GBO/(GBO+AO), not GB/BIP.*
- four comparable players are now available, and their names are formatted to be easier to read.
- players have been added. Please comment on additional players we’re missing and we’ll get them in there too.
- player R and RBI now scale to the team run environment.
- a few pitchers have been assigned >30 starts, which was treated as a hard cap in previous runs.
We’ll keep you posted about additional updates… please let us know what else you are seeing in the comments.
* We would prefer GB/BIP, but for large chunks of our data, we don’t have GB info on hits, so we don’t have GB/BIP information. We can get GO data for a lot more pitchers than we can get GB data - so that’s what’s used. Once you get past pitchers with < 10 IP, the correlation between GBO% and GB% is about 0.96–pretty close to identical.
His production has waned in recent years, but for a handful of seasons Travis Hafner was a monster. Finally given a chance in Cleveland after languishing for six years in the Rangers system despite lusty minor league numbers, Hafner exploded onto the scene as a ready-to-bash 27-year-old. From 2004-2007, the Sykeston, North Dakota product put up an OPS run of .993, 1.003, 1.097, and .837, while averaging 32 home runs and 109 RBI. Hafner talked about his development as a hitter on the final weekend of the 2009 season.
Travis Hafner: I think the main thing is…first you have to be able to control the strike zone and get good pitches to hit. You have to recognize the ball early. I think that my strength helps me. It’s also being able to work hard and trying to get your mechanics as consistent as possible. But, basically you just want to go up there and get a good pitch and put a good swing on it.
DL: At what point did you become a good hitter?
TH: Probably in high A. I changed my mechanics a lot to where I started getting ready for the pitch really early. I used to have like a leg kick and would try to time the pitch, and I just changed that up to get my foot down early to where I’m able to see the ball a lot better. That year I played winter ball in Puerto Rico, where I’d take until I had a strike on me and that helped me to learn the strike zone really well. I think those were the two biggest things that have helped me as a hitter.
DL: You bio in Baseball Prospectus 2002 said, “Travis Hafner can flat out mangle a pitched baseball,” and in 2003 it said, “Now that he’s with a new organization that’s likely to give him a chance, he should be able to do great things.” That was high praise for a mostly undervalued minor leaguer.
TH: If I see a kid in Double-A or Triple-A, I think that I have a pretty good read on whether he has a chance to be a pretty good hitter in the big leagues. That was probably a similar situation there, where you could see a guy having success in the minor leagues and you were kind of projecting it out to how it might translate at the big league level.
DL: Were you ready to hit in the big leagues before you were given a chance to do so?
TH: Well, I was blocked somewhat in Texas. Rafael Palmeiro was there, and we had Teixeira in the organization, and Carlos Pena was in the organization for awhile as well. So, I spent pretty much a full year at every level. I might have been ready earlier, but you just try to make the most out of the opportunity that you’re given. I definitely had enough time in the minor leagues.
DL: Is it possible that the Rangers were guilty of looking too much at what you couldn’t do, and not enough at what you do very well?
TH: In this game, players get labeled all the time, and fair or unfair it seems like once you have that label, it’s tough to shed. So, some teams may do that, but baseball is a game where things can change so much. I mean, you can be a guy with a plain, average swing, and then you get with the right coach and something clicks, and your career takes off. I mean, it would be tough to scout baseball players, I think.
DL: You play for an organization that places a lot of value on statistical analysis. What do numbers mean to you?
TH: First and foremost, you show up to the park every day to try to become a better player and your ultimate goal for that day is to win the game. I think you pay attention…when you play other teams, you pay attention to guy’s stats up on the scoreboard to see how they’re doing. I think numbers are a big part of the game. You can’t really go out and try to put up good numbers, but if you focus on each at bat, your numbers are going to be there.
I’m excited that we got some PECOTA out to our subscribers earlier in 2010 than we’ve managed any previous year. Unfortunately, we’ve run into some problems of varying nature. Some of the problems have already been addressed, and we’ll continue to work on the rest.
We’ve been making a lot of changes to the process behind the scenes, and we don’t have all of the components working together without a hitch yet. In retrospect, we should have called this a beta release, as some of you have suggested in the comments. What we’ll be doing is releasing improvements as soon as we’ve got them, and we’ll do a better job of managing your expectations as far as the fitness of the entire system going forward.
To answer a few of your questions:
* we have no concerns about the PECOTA data shipping in Baseball Prospectus 2010. In fact, you’ll see a few improvements over what we’ve run in the book in the past. We’re looking into BABIP and GB% issues that are reflected solely in the depth chart processes (and, by extension, in the projected standings).
* PECOTA cards are coming… we’re hoping for next week on those, but we’re improving them a lot this year, and we’ve got work left to do on them, so we’re not able to guarantee a date yet.
We will get everything ironed out as soon as we can, but in the meantime, do not take the depth chart standings to Vegas. Thank you for your patience and continued support.
To close out the post, here’s a question: do you want us to push out data as soon as we have something close, with a “beta” tag on it until we’re sure about it, or would you prefer that we release data we’re more certain about a day or three later?
Reading through the comments of yesterday’s announcement that the PECOTA projections have been released, it is evident that there is a lot of concern over several aspects of the data, ranging from the projected standings to individual quirks. We understand and appreciate that this reflects a lot of passion for what we do here at Baseball Prospectus. To be blunt: we messed up, and are working to fix the issues.
One issue involves the run environment: individual player projections do not match up with the run totals on the projected standings.
Another problem revolves around BABIP, as defense was being double-counted (double-counted).
These and other issues are being worked on and we hope to have an update provided by the end of the day, to unmess up. Please stay tuned for further updates.
Future Shock: Diamondbacks Top 11 Prospects
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