"What is the evidence, and what does it mean?" Bill JamesThe projections in this article were posted to the alt.sports.baseball.tor-bluejays newsgroup April 1, 2001, before the Blue Jays' first game. Some of the explanatory text was not written or posted to the web site until April 8, 2001.
Welcome to my 5th-annual "Blue Jays Projected Record" article, where I add up individual player projections for each Blue Jays player to project a win-loss record for the Jays *before* the season starts. (See disclaimer below on accuracy.)
For each player, I projected his Equivalent Average (EqA). For those new to EqA, an average major league hitter will have an EqA of .260, while an EqA of .300 represents excellence. Because of the DH rule, the average American League hitter has about a .264 EqA. EqA is directly related to how much the player helps the team score runs.
Last year, I described the method used to project most of the EqAs. This year, I didn't have time to integrate the Baseball Almanac Database (which included the year 2000 stats) with my projection program before the season started, so I wasn't able to automatically calculate as many of the projections as I wanted to. So most of the projections are hand-estimates of what my computed estimates would have been. For some players with limited or no major league playing time, I considered their minor league performance before picking a projected EqA out of the air.
For projected Plate Appearances, unlike last year I normally didn't take the time to look up the STATS projection, so these are my own guesses.
The individual projections are
Age ProjEqA
Stewart LF 27 .282 640 PA
Gonzalez SS 28 .243 570 PA
Mondesi RF 30 .277 556 PA
Delgado 1B 29 .324 673 PA
Fullmer DH 26 .280 612 PA
Batista 3B 27 .271 627 PA
Fletcher C 34 .264 415 PA
Cruz CF 27 .270 582 PA
Bush 2B 28 .220 475 PA
----
.273 5150 PA
Backups:
Age ProjEqA
Simmons OF 27 .245 262 PA
ACastillo C 31 .206 239 PA
Frye IF 34 .247 187 PA
Woodward IF 25 .220 100 PA
RThompson OF 33 .240 96 PA
Freel IF 25 .230 50 PA
VWells OF 22 .250 48 PA
Izturis SS 21 .190 33 PA
----
.231 1015 PA
That suggests an overall EqA of .266, which is just 2% above average for the A.L. That actually would be a slight improvement on last year, when the team's home run binge was muted by its low on-base percentage and subpar bench. Put in words, the projection is for most of the young players to improve, but for Delgado to slip back from his monster season, and for the bench to still be a liability.
For the pitchers, I mostly picked the numbers out of the air, figuring they would perform similarly to how they had the past few years, with bigger changes for pitchers who were injured or will be recovering for injury. In a few cases I consulted STATS' projections too.
Note that IP is Innings Pitched, RA is Runs Allowed per 9 innings (which is like ERA except unearned runs are included), and GS is Games Started.
Starters:
Age
ELoaiza 29, 201 IP, 5.55 RA, 32 GS (me)
SParris 32, 171 IP, 5.50 RA 29 GS (stats for cin * 1.08 for dh)
Hamilton 30, 155 IP, 5.60 RA, 25 GS (me)
Carpenter 26, 177 IP, 5.23 RA, 28 GS (me)
Escobar 25, 164 IP, 5.39 RA, 24 GS (IP include some pen)
Sirotka 30, 60 IP, 5.75 RA, 12 GS (me)
Coco 23, 45 IP, 7.00 RA, 9 GS (me)
Michalak 30, 12 IP, 7.50 RA, 3 GS (me)
--- ---- ---
985 IP, 5.56 RA, 609 R
Pen:
Age
Koch 26, 80 IP, 3.75 RA
Painter 33, 66 IP, 5.50 RA
DPlesac 39, 50 IP, 5.07 RA
Quantrill 32, 86 IP, 4.68 RA
Borbon 33, 45 IP, 5.35 RA
Beirne 27, 52 IP, 6.30 RA
Frascatore 31, 32 IP, 5.75 RA
File 24, 25 IP, 6.65 RA
DeWitt 23, 22 IP, 7.00 RA
--- ---- ---
458 IP, 5.22 RA, 266 R
From IP and RA you can estimate runs allowed (R), and the above adds up to 875 runs allowed.
This year I assumed the league average runs scored per 9 innings would be 5.23, based on the average of the past 3 years. From that, a .266 EqA suggests 855 runs scored. Combined with the projected 875 runs allowed, that suggests a .489 winning percentage, or 79 wins. For the details of the calculation, see last year's article.
So that's my official projection this year: 79 wins. This is the first time I've projected the Jays to have a losing record, and unfortunately, my projection has never ended up below the actual record. However, I believe the "quality" of this year's projection is lower than the past few years, because this year I was in more of a hurry, and especially because most of the pitcher projections this year are based on my own guesses rather than from objective formulas. Hopefully I was too pessimistic about the pitching, and the Jays will find a way to make the playoffs.
Jays:
offense: 855 runs scored
defense: 875 runs allowed
--> .489 wpct -> 79 wins
Toss a fair coin 162 times, and your best bet is to predict 81 heads, but there's a less than 6% of chance of that happening, even though it really is the best bet.
So this method probably has a less than 6% chance of producing the actual win total, and that's assuming the errors in the individual projections all cancel out, which they probably won't.
Previous year's articles are on the web at
Only the '98 projection produced exactly the right number of wins (88). Last year's projection was 3 wins too high.
STATS Major League Handbook 2001, http://www.stats.com/.
This book contains projections for many hitters and pitchers, though I depended on it less this year than in previous years.
Baseball Prospectus 2001, http://www.baseballprospectus.com/.
Baseball Prospectus contains EqA projections for many hitters, though I didn't consult these for this article.
Baseball Almanac Database, http://baseball-almanac.com/database.shtml
-- Stephen Tomlinson http://www.stephent.com/jays/ mailto:stephent@ottawa.com Ottawa, Ontario "What is the evidence, and what does it mean?" (Bill James)
Last Updated: 2001 Apr 8
Comments are welcome at comments@stephent.com.