Projecting the 2009 A's

CapgrasDelusion — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 03:17:39 -0000

Some of you are probably aware that the folks at Beyond the Box Score have organized a community project aimed at projecting the 2009 season. The basic idea is to make use of statistics such as w O BA, UZR, FIP, then adjust for position to get a figure representing Wins Above Replacement (WAR). Tallying these WAR figures up gives us an estimate of the number of wins expected for each team.The spreadsheet utilized in making these projections comes from Sky Kalkman at BtBB.

Now that Russ Springer is officially in the fold, I'd like to unveil my projection for the 2009 Oakland A's. My wOBA, defense, and ERA figures come courtesy of CHONE (for ERA I've used park adjusted FIP), and base-running figures are from Baseball Prospectus.

I have the A's tabbed as an 85 win team in their current incarnation (of course, I've had to make my own subjective predictions about who will fill out the roster, and how playing time will be distributed). The good news is that's already accounting for about 150 innings of replacement level pitching, which is a possibility given the inexperience and fragility of our staff.

So, feel free to take a gander, scrutinize, critique, lambast, etc. This is, after all, a community project. For those who don't like numbers: don't be intimidated. Just follow the links above for detailed explanations of what each figure represents. If you're more comfortable with the traditional ba/obp/slg line, just use this shortcut method of getting wOBA: ((1.75*obp + slg)/3).

It's up to you guys how you want to proceed with this. If you'd like, we can produce a set of community projections for each player like Brew Crew Ball is doing. I may not be the ideal candidate for heading up such a project, but I would be more than willing to open the spreadsheet for editing.

2009 Oakland A's projected WAR

One interesting tidbit: I decided to compare the effect of adding one of Orlando Cabrera/Nick Johnson to the roster. To do this, I plugged O-Cab's projected .318 wOBA in for Bobby Crosby's 600 PA; this bumped the team's projected win total to 85.9. If instead we replace Barton's 250 PA with Johnson's .399 wOBA. we get almost an identical result - the projected win total is bumped to 86.1. So, even in a measly 250 PA, the brittle-boned Johnson has the potential to make a real impact.

SB Nation User Blog: CapgrasDelusion

Projecting the 2009 A's