Since ChuckPirate isn't around today, I'm putting up the prediction thread for the day. As always, a brief description of the rules for posting your predictions:

[ A ] Please put your prediction in the title line which should begin in the format: Team1 Team1Score Team2 Team2Score

e.g. Pirates 5 Giants 0

[ B ] Please make the full prediction, instead of a “+1” to someone else whose prediction you agree with

[ C ] Don’t worry about minor spelling mistakes, like “Piartes” or “piratas”. We can handle those.

So, will Matt Cain be the guy a frustrated Pirates offense beats up on? I think so :)

This is something I've been thinking about writing to find out what this community thinks of these issues in general. In recent times, we've been bombarded by a plethora of advanced statistics, and it's safe to say most of us understand only a small portion of it. That's still fine though, since the marginal benefit of being able to understand the nitty gritties of SIERA over FIP/xFIP may not be worth it, for back-of-the-envelope calculations. However, there have been times when I did want to look at SIERA, and I realized I didn't know where to find it. Of course, a web search solved that, and I realized that Fangraphs carries this information in the batted ball data portion-- I'd never had reason or occasion to scroll down there before, or I'd just not paid attention.

Nonetheless, this got me to thinking about whether there were other, potentially useful statistics that lay hidden where we never saw it, or whether there were things people would like to see that they never saw.

One of my gripes in the latter case is that I'd like to see WAR for pitchers based off of ERA. I understand the reason for using a defense-independent statistic for this, since we'd like to be able to understand value provided by the pitcher in isolation from his defense. Nonetheless, as a retrospective tool, I'd also like to see WAR based off ERA, since the measurement of defensive value is so shaky at present. I'd also like to know if using that correlates better to team win totals. In today's age, I wouldn't be at all surprised if such a study has already been done, and I'm simply unaware of it.

Finally, with respect to minor league stats, are there things that are currently not easily accessible, that any of you would like to see. To me, splits is a major issue, and since minorleaguesplits.com went offline, I don't know where to look for these anymore.

In general, feel free to post any interesting links to statistical information that may be under the radar currently, whether or not I covered or thought of it in my post above. In general, I wanted to know people's thoughts on:

[ A ] Major League stats -- are there things you'd like to see that aren't apparently available? (WAR off of ERA, in my case).... are there things you found not available on fangraphs/BBref that might be of interest?

[ B ] Minor leagues -- splits information? Other interesting statistics to track?

[ C ] Anything else that you'd like to share...

EDITED to add (08.09): State College has actually been playing well as of late, and today's game is no exception. Here's some lines from today:

Pitching:

Michael Jefferson: 5IP | 4H | 2BB | 3K | 0R

Jordan Cooper: 3IP | 1H | 0BB | 4K | 2R | 0ER

Hitting:

Freeman: 2-4, 1K

Sosa: 1-4, double

Dickerson: 0-2, 1BB, 1HBP

Everyone except Freeman, Sosa, Gourley (who's having another awful season) has walked.

They've won 8 of their last 10

-------------------------

Since today and tomorrow will be late start times, I thought it might be worth having a Fanpost to discuss the minors while we wait for the game to begin.

Today, so far:

Ryan Hafner has gone 5IP | 1H | 0BB | 0R | 4K, with the lone hit being a GB single to CF. Everyone in the SC lineup has a hit except Samuel Gonzalez, Dickerson has a double.

West Virginia just put up a 6 spot against Lakewood, and Mel Rojas Jr has a hit. Eliecer Navarro is pitching and has given up 3 runs so far. with 4K and 2BB in 4IP.

A Ramon Cabrera HR scored Chase D'Arnaud (rehabbing in bradenton) even as Nathan Baker has pitched to a line of 5IP | 1H | 1BB | 0R | 4K, and at his age, probably needs moved up.

Way back, in early July, I made a set of predictions in a comment on how the rest of the season would likely play out. Given that the July games are gone, here's the rest of it:

August:

7 against Cubs and Pads: prediction 5-2
6 against Giants and brewers: prediction 2-4
17 (!!!) against Reds, Cards, Brewers, Astros: ????

Sept:

7 against Dodgers, Cubs and Astros: prediction 4-3
10 against Marlins, Cards, and Dodgers: prediction 5-5
9 against DBacks, Reds and Brewers: 3-6

I know there have been a lot of posts on how our season is on the line, and how the next stretch of games are the key ones, etc, but here's the stretch that I think is really going to determine the fate of the team-- the 7 games against the Cubs and the Padres. How the team rebounds from the beating they took (both physically and record wise) from the 10 games against Atlanta, Philly and STL will tell us a lot about this team. Their chances for contention are all but gone, and .500 is a realistic target at this point, but a big step-down from heady post-season contention aspirations. At the same time, they could easily have won 2 of the 7 games they lost in the last 3 series, and we'd be feeling very different.

The losses, however, are in the books, and the only way out is to put the Ws up. They won't get a better chance than the next 7 games, and to harbor any remote hopes of contention the team needs to go 5-2 or better.

If the above predictions hold overall, we are looking at a 73-72 record, with the 17 games against the Reds (3), Cards (7), Brewers (4) and Astros (3) in the balance, and we'll need to win 9 to finish with a winning record. I think we could do that, although if the team doesn't do well in the early part of the month, we could start to see a lot of players (Hanrahan, Lee, Ludwick, Veras, Resop) be talked about for August trades (I doubt Hanrahan clears waivers, but we should still be trying), and that can have an effect on the team down the stretch.

August should be, at least, somewhat interesting with the draft pick signing deadline coming up and Cole and Bell still up for grabs. Tim reports that the Pirates have signed 7th rounder Jake Burnette, though. And the Bucs will, hopefully, come up with a big effort with their 2011 season on the line.

EDIT: Curious to see where people now think this team will end based on their current record and upcoming schedule-- my prediction is 83-79.

I know its late, but I figured I might as well put one up, since there's nothing else going on. If this doesn't get buried under a plethora of trade idea posts, we can continue to use for MiL game discussions for the rest of the week.

The GCL Bucs played in the afternoon, with Yhonathan Barrios hitting a HR, that put his slash line at .375/.474/.604, in all of 48 ABs. Jonathan Schwind had a HR too, and Jodaneli Carvajal had a 3B. Carvajal and Barrios are all potential SS, along with Hanson, who I havent seen much the last week in the box score. Orlando Castro had a good start too, going 5 innings with 3K, and 3H, 0BB, 0R.

WV and Hagerstown are locked in a pitcher's duel, with Zac Fuesser going against AJ Cole. No score through 4, and both pitchers have 6K, 0BB!!!!

Bradenton going against Cardinals High A team, having beaten them in game 1 of a DH (Carlos Martinez was pitching), and lead 4-0 in the 4th

Altoona had a bad start from Colla, and Jordan Cooper imploded for State College.

Justin Wilson turned in 5 solid innings for Indy.

There was a nice post on BrewCrewBall comparing the strengths of the teams contending for the NL Central. That post is here. The author considered putting the Pirates in there, but didn't (which is a stance I can't help but agree with, even if my rose-colored glasses see a contender). However, it is a good job, and it provides us with a place where we can go check out the Bucs relative strengths and weaknesses, which made me decide to write a fanpost after quite a while.

Here's my breakdown of where the Pirates players slot into the rankings provided on that list:

C: Molina > Doumit > Lucroy > Hanigan

1B: Votto = Fielder > Replacement 1B/ Pujols >> Bucs

2B: Weeks > Phillips > Walker > Schumaker

3B: Rolen > Freese > Alvarez/D'Arnaud > Mcgehee

SS: Cedeno, Theriot, Janish > Betancourt

LF: Holliday, Braun > Gomes > Presley/Tabata

CF: McCutchen > Rasmus > Stubbs > Morgan/Gomez

RF: Bruce, Berkman > Hart > Bucs

Please note that I haven't included the exact rankings provided by the BCB guys-- the projections are my own, and are based only on what I think the projection will be for the rest of this year.

Also, does someone want to take a shot at doing the equivalent for SP? I found it very hard to decide how to rank the Bucs starters among themselves. We have, essentially, a bunch of #3-#5s who are easily bottom in the #1 starter, possibly above Arroyo for #2 starter, and our strength might be in the #4/#5 area.

However, the position player comparison was interesting to me, in that we weren't blown out by the other teams for the most part. What really hurts us, though, is that we don't have those big bats-- Fielder, Weeks and Braun are so significantly better than anyone we have that even a huge trade splash isn't going to get us there...

Still, if we stay in the NL Central race, it might be worth checking back to see if this list rearranges itself...

Wonder if a middle of the inning thread may turn the luck around?

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