A's 2009 Marcels Out

by iamawesomer on Nov 18, 2008 9:19 AM PST Comment 29 comments

Tango released the 2009 Marcel projections yesterday, you can download them over at The Book blog. For those who don't want to weed through two large Excel files, I've consolidated any of the A's on the 40 man roster who had projections into two tables below. I only took the main categories for the pitchers and hitters, if you want to see individual triple or wild pitch projections you'll have to consult the spreadsheets.

A's Hitters

name	reliability	mPA	wOBA
Suzuki	0.77	519	0.33
Bowen	0.57	268	0.3
Barton	0.71	470	0.33
Ellis	0.85	518	0.31
Crosby	0.83	540	0.29
Chavez	0.76	285	0.32
Hannahan	0.73	467	0.3
Petit	0.09	212	0.34
Pennington	0.33	258	0.32
Baisley	0.16	224	0.32
Dillon	0.39	253	0.33
Patterson	0.39	275	0.3
Buck	0.65	319	0.34
Cunningham	0.27	244	0.33
Cust	0.81	550	0.36
Davis	0.63	335	0.3
Denorfia	0.37	236	0.33
Holliday	0.87	583	0.4
Murton	0.71	263	0.32
Sweeney	0.67	421	0.33

A's Pitchers

name	reliability	mIP	ERA	mHR	mSO	mBB
Duchscherer	0.66	113	3.31	10	80	33
Eveland	0.67	141	4.47	11	104	61
Gallagher	0.58	110	4.66	12	90	49
Braden	0.57	89	4.6	10	62	31
Outman	0.22	61	4.35	6	46	21
Gonzalez	0.28	67	4.84	10	56	30
Devine	0.38	49	3.03	3	43	19
Blevins	0.31	44	4.09	4	36	16
Ziegler	0.4	55	3.27	4	35	20
Brown	0.43	47	3.93	4	38	20
Casilla	0.49	55	4.42	6	46	22
Gray	0.05	27	4.67	3	20	10

I want to highlight that for A's infielders the two highest wOBA belong to the catcher and the (hopefully if the A's don't sign a free agent) SS. That's fine when those guys are Joe Mauer and Hanley Ramirez, but when their Kurt Suzuki and Gregorio Petit, you have a problem. Petit's reliability score (how much stock to put into the projections on a scale form 0-1) is only .09 so it's not all that useful, but still, the A's could probably use some help at the corner IF spots and SS (one to two of Rafael Furcal, Jason Giambi, or possibly an Adrian Beltre trade would be great)

The OF looks solid, with plenty of options available. Considering how often A's outfielders go down with injuries this is pretty important. Just please don't let one of those happen to Matt Holliday this year.

As for the rotation, none of the reliability scores are very high so it's hard to glean too much from them. They should all hopefully surpass the IP listed, hopefully by a lot. Eveland's HR rate looks very good, Gonzalez's (don't think he'll be in the rotation but listed him there) is very bad, but again the reliability is very low since most of these guys don't have much major league pitching history. It wouldn't hurt the A's to sign a free agent pitcher to a short deal (1 year of Randy Johnson perhaps?) to shore up the rotation.

The bullpen is the same with regards to major league experience, but they all posess good K/BB ratios. I don't think the pen needs any work. All in all not a bad looking bunch, and with a free agent signing or two at key positions and I think this team can contend in a weak AL West next year.

Thoughts?

EDIT: It appears Tango's file only rounded to two decimal places for wOBA as opposed to the usual 3. I'll try and fix that later, I heard Fangraphs has the full projections out too.

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One year SP

I would love to see Maddux if he’s not retiring since he’d be a second pitching coach.

RIVER CATS: AAA CHAMPS!

by niallmack on Nov 18, 2008 9:41 AM PST reply actions 0 recs

Free Gregorio Petit

RagingHarden: Yeah if you get 20 starts out of me I'll be shocked. Like, I'll wreck my drawers.

by walk off bunt on Nov 18, 2008 10:08 AM PST reply actions 0 recs

Agreed. We know Crosby and Pennington are terrible, but we've no idea what Petit is going to do.

It's not the results, it's how you look going about those results -- Tim McCarver

by WaddellCanseco on Nov 18, 2008 10:14 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah

It’s not that Petit is some horribly unappreciated entity, but, like, there is the off chance he might not suck. Such is not the case with Pennington and Crosby.

I mean I think there’s a 1 in 3ish chance he could put up a .700 OPS and play great defense. There’s value in that.

RagingHarden: Yeah if you get 20 starts out of me I'll be shocked. Like, I'll wreck my drawers.

by walk off bunt on Nov 18, 2008 12:55 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

He looked good in his 20 ABs with the A's

It’s too bad about those 2000 minor league ABs.

by Danny on Nov 18, 2008 2:40 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Important to keep in mind, from Tango's Site

To give perspective on wOBA ranges:

When you look at wOBA numbers throughout the book, just think OBP, and you’ll be fine. In other words, an average hitter is around 0.340 or so, a great hitter is 0.400 or higher, and a poor hitter would be under 0.300.

You’ll notice two hitters above .340 (Cust and Holliday), with Holliday being the definition of a great hitter.

"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want" -Bill Watterson

by nevermoor on Nov 18, 2008 10:09 AM PST reply actions 0 recs

The A's do have enough hitters in the average range (I think in today's slightly lower run environment, 3.3 is about average)

And with the margin of error, I can see a couple of them (Suzuki, a healthy Buck, Swooney, and Ellis) being a bit above average.

by thejd44 on Nov 18, 2008 10:54 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

(.332 according to Tango)

by thejd44 on Nov 18, 2008 10:55 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Comforting to know that the average dropped

I just read his wOBA description and saw a pretty ugly picture.

"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want" -Bill Watterson

by nevermoor on Nov 18, 2008 11:02 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Should that .332 be lower for those who played at the Coliseum the past few years?

It's not the results, it's how you look going about those results -- Tim McCarver

by WaddellCanseco on Nov 18, 2008 4:57 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Yes

It is not park adjusted

"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want" -Bill Watterson

by nevermoor on Nov 18, 2008 5:01 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

In that case it's really only Crosby who's horrible and Ellis is below average.

Suzuki, Chavez and even Barton! look average. Buck looks good enough if he has a backup, Cust is very good and Holliday is awesome. That’s not the unbelievably bad offense that we saw last year.

It's not the results, it's how you look going about those results -- Tim McCarver

by WaddellCanseco on Nov 18, 2008 5:55 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

At the site Tango did request that we not "repost or redistribute" but rather send

readers to his site. Should we change anything in this post to encourage traffic to his site to get these numbers?

It's not the results, it's how you look going about those results -- Tim McCarver

by WaddellCanseco on Nov 18, 2008 10:13 AM PST reply actions 0 recs

Well, taking down all the numbers would help.

"As always, don’t repost or redistribute. Just be nice enough to send whoever wants them to my site. Bandwidth is not an issue. "

I’m not sure if talking about a select few really counts as “reposting” or “redistributing.”

by thejd44 on Nov 18, 2008 10:48 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

To follow up

Tango says in the 2nd post of that thread:

"I should have been clearer. You can repost whatever you want, except the file in its entirety.

Also, you can repost with bells and whistles, like Fangraphs and Hardball Times do.

Basically, the only thing you can’t do is simply upload the exact file you just downloaded. Hard to believe, but some people actually did that. "

So this thread is perfectly acceptable.

by thejd44 on Nov 18, 2008 10:52 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Great. I didn't see that last thing.

It's not the results, it's how you look going about those results -- Tim McCarver

by WaddellCanseco on Nov 18, 2008 4:55 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah I read over Tango's rules a couple times and the comments to make sure

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by iamawesomer on Nov 18, 2008 6:37 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Marcels are basically useless for the A's roster

Those reliability numbers are pathetically low.

Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.

by PaulThomas on Nov 18, 2008 10:32 AM PST reply actions 0 recs

For the pitchers sure, but the starting lineup reliability numbers are mostly over .7

It's not the results, it's how you look going about those results -- Tim McCarver

by WaddellCanseco on Nov 18, 2008 10:38 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

The thing is

Marcels aren’t really intended as projections. They’re just a simple regression of past major-league stats to the mean, with no adjustment for home ballpark, league, or age, and no use of minor-league performance. So they’re intentionally less accurate than projections that do take those things into account (PECOTA, ZiPS, Chone), and pretty much useless for players changing to a radically different run environment (Holliday) or players with short major-league track records (about half of the current A’s roster).

Thanks for tomorrow 'cause I've had enough

by andeux on Nov 18, 2008 11:03 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs