Wouldn't they have to use trend lines from players in the last 10/15/20/30 years then to derive what they would be regressing performance to?
Are the Braves as hopeless as it may seem?
- Thread starter Braves78
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Wouldn't they have to use trend lines from players in the last 10/15/20/30 years then to derive what they would be regressing performance to?
For major leaguers it compares everyone since World War II, which is something like 20 or 25 thousand different player seasons. Also takes into account phenotypic attributes.
The player comparability is adjusted for parks, league effects, etc.
Ok, fair enough. That seems like a reasonably large sample size to mitigate the noise from the past 20 years.
Analytics are not in a flux due to the post steroid era. Again, just because hitting is down and pitching is up doesn't change the way you produce offense. That's getting on base and hitting extra base hits. Just because there is less overall doesn't make this not true anymore.
Projections, especially team projections, are never going to be close to 100% accurate due to there always being players that have career years or bad years. That said it shouldn't take an expert to look at the Braves and see that they are going to be bad defensively (after losing one of the best defenders in the league) and being poor at scoring runs (after losing 3 of their 4 best hitters). Could things be different for 2015 for the Braves? Sure, stranger things have happened. But odds are it will be a bad team.
Horsehide Harry
<B>Mr. Free Trade</B>
That's the thing right there. Fans, being short for fanatics, tend to always see the best case scenario when viewing their team. It's like every fan is tied into Dumb and Dumber - 1 in a million is still a chance.
Could the Braves have won a pennant and WS this year if the re-build had not happened? Sure. But the odds of that happening were not good And they weren't going to get better next year without a talent influx at the farm level.
While you would think losing 3 of its best hitters would automatically make us a worse offense, it's simply unlikely we are any worse than last year's offense which was already 2nd worst in the league. In fact, I'd say it's more likely we are marginally better as far as runs scored, simply for the fact that it's almost impossible to be any worse.
As far as defensively, I guess it depends on how you value RF defense and just how good/bad you think Markakis will be. And we should be improving drastically at 2b and catcher, so that should help make up for the lost defense in RF.
How is the offense going to be better without monumental improvements from Freeman, Simmons, BeeJ, and Johnson?
Replaced Gattis, Upton, Uggla, Heyward with Bethancourt, Collaspo, Toscano(?), and Markakis.
We don't need monumental improvements from Simmons and CJ. Just get back to 2013 levels (or in CJ's case, somewhere in between 2013 and 2014). BJ contributing even a .650 OPS and a .240 average would be a monumental improvement in my book. Freeman was awesome last season. I'll easily take another 2014 from him.
Markakis offensively should be no worse than 2013 Jason.
Replacing the power Upton and Gattis provided clearly isn't going to happen, but we did bring in several guys who should help improve our overall team OBP and average. And our bench should be substantially better than last year's as well.
There's more than one way to skin a cat.
Markakis has been worse than Heyward, how do you explain that>
Who did we add that should help team OBP?
Bethancourt- .274
AJ -.295 OBP
Markaksi- .342
Callaspo .290
Julio3000
<B>A Chip Off the Old Rock</B>
I'm not discounting the idea that our offense could outperform (low) expectations. I am probably more optimistic than most about bounceback years from BJ, CJ, and Simmons. But let's not go crazy about our new lineup w/r/t OBP.
We lost 3 solid OBP guys (Heyward, Upton, Stella) and gained one (Markakis) and possibly another in Callaspo. Heck, throw in Jace Peterson and it's still a net loss.
We lost 3 solid OBP guys (Heyward, Upton, Stella) and gained one (Markakis) and possibly another in Callaspo. Heck, throw in Jace Peterson and it's still a net loss.
I wouldn't say improve but the offense was dreadful last year. I'm not expecting it to be better but I could see it being right around the same.
Dalyn
Fredi Gonzalez Supporter
If Freeman improves slightly, Markakis has a good season, and someone else (like the 3B platoon) steps up? Yeah. Maybe around the same offensively. Pitching is going to be hurt by the defense. Overall, we're looking at 5-10 more losses, I would say. Around 72 wins is probably a good over/under. What the team really needs is a few more losses to bump that pick up. 65 sounds good. Another reason not to like the Markakis signing.
I would say the defense improved at 2B and C. Downgrade in RF and I'm not sure in LF. I thought Upton was awful out there. I get that Heyward was fantastic but overall I'm not sure how much hte defense got worse.
Dalyn
Fredi Gonzalez Supporter
Don't kid yourself, it got a lot worse. I think you know that.
Im not sure if 2B has improved or not. Callaspo is terrible at 2B.
But how?
