Braves ZIPS Projections

zitothebrave

zitothebrave

Connoisseur of Minors
Were posted a few days ago. Sorry been behind on my baseball posting.

I'll talk about the key guys and their performance vs last season.

For hitters I'll use wOBA

Simmons is projected to have a .305 wOBA after posting a .303 last year. Pretty fair. ZIPS expects him to walk more K more hit for less power and get more balls to land. Leading to an uptick in avg oBP and remaining pretty steady in SLG.

Heyward is projected at .344 after posting a .344 They project his Ks to go back to their old levels and his power to as well.

Freddie is projected at .361 vs .387. They project a small uptick in Ks but more power. The difference is their projected .333 BABIP vs his .371 last season.

Justin like Jason projects at .344 vs his .357 last year. A fall in power and BABIP leading to the drop.

Gattis projects at .329 vs McCann's .347 from last year. Something I think is totally fair who knows what we'll get from Gattis.

Bossman projects at .315, not close to where we expect him to be when we signed him but way up from his .252 laqst season. They project less Ks, much more power, and a higher BABIP.

Struggla projects at .320 a healthy improvement from .303 and not terrible projection.

Lord BABIP is the big negative projected at .319 vs his .354 last year. They're calling for more Ks and more power but the big difference is his projected BABIP being .338 vs his BABIP last season of .394

Some others to mention, Tommy projects to .331, basically kid can hit. Bethancourt to .291 Terds .304 Pastor .290 their pick for best hitting 4th OF? Todd Cunningham at .281 beats Schafer and Georgie.

For pitchers we'll look at ERA-

Medlen projects at 88, slightly up from his 84.

Minor projects at90 slightly up from his 87

Julio projects at 90 slightly up from his 87

Beachy is projected at 100, better than Hudson or Maholms marks in 2013. They also have projections of Northcraft and Martin producing around the levels of Hudson and Maholm.

Overall they're predicting a strong rotation again. Hopefully we stabilize it a little because you konw injuries will happen.

Key pen guys

Kimbrel is projected at 38 vs his 34

Walden projected at 78 vs his 93

Venters projected at 86 vs his 2012 83

Carpenter, Avilan, Gearrin, Varvaro, all projected in the 90 range, which is a down turn for all of them but Gearrin. Zips seems to think that Shae Simmons is a better option than any of them at 88. Hard to really disagree with that though.

Anyway they're hear for discussion.
 
Wood at 87 in 112 innings.

Schafer, Constanza and Cunningham are hard to choose from. The various ratings systems vary on which one will do better in 2014. Schafer is out of options and the others aren't. That might be the difference at the end of spring training.
 
Forgot about Wood. The largest fact from this article is that the Braves last year weren't a fluke. Only CJ and Freeman are projected to have a tumble, but honestly not too insane.

If we have a healthy Jason he more than makes up the dropoff potential from Freeman and CJ. Pitching is all basically projected around the same as last year as well.
 
zitothebrave said:
Freddie is projected at .361 vs .387. They project a small uptick in Ks but more power. The difference is their projected .333 BABIP vs his .371 last season.

Justin like Jason projects at .344 vs his .357 last year. A fall in power and BABIP leading to the drop.

Gattis projects at .329 vs McCann's .347 from last year. Something I think is totally fair who knows what we'll get from Gattis.

Bossman projects at .315, not close to where we expect him to be when we signed him but way up from his .252 laqst season. They project less Ks, much more power, and a higher BABIP.

Struggla projects at .320 a healthy improvement from .303 and not terrible projection.

Lord BABIP is the big negative projected at .319 vs his .354 last year. They're calling for more Ks and more power but the big difference is his projected BABIP being .338 vs his BABIP last season of .394
Click to expand...

The net from these five is minus 0.022. The other hitters are not expected to change much. So ZIPS has us slightly worse offensively. I think that makes sense given the loss of McCann (and related loss of Gattis' bat on the bench).

Starting pitching is likely to be slightly better. Wood replacing Maholm is an improvement. Beachy replacing Hudson should be a wash, although this one has a wide range of possible outcomes.

The pen will see some regression just because it was so good last year.

I think we will win about 92 games next year, down from 96 in 2013.
 
I don't think we'll drop that much to be honest if health is on our side. I think Bossman is better than that and I think Heyward if he's healthy is better than that as well. He had .344 last year while battling injuries most of the season.
 
zitothebrave said:
I don't think we'll drop that much to be honest if health is on our side. I think Bossman is better than that and I think Heyward if he's healthy is better than that as well. He had .344 last year while battling injuries most of the season.
Click to expand...

There are always a couple players who get hurt or turn into pumpkins. We just don't know who they are yet.
 
I always think projecting AAA and AA guys whether through ZIPS or MLEs is dicey. I'm just old school (think one-room schoolhouse) on that aspect of projection. Other than that, things look reasonable.

Scary thing though--and you probably have to be as old as me to recognize it--is the ugly set of #1 comps for both the hitters and pitchers. I wouldn't mind Zoilo Versalles being Andrelton Simmons #1 comp if it's Zoilo's amazing 1965 MVP season. Other than that, probably not so much.

In other questions, does anyone know if the Braves re-signed guys like DeWitt or Tyler Greene? I know there have been a bunch of minor league signings and rico43 has reported them. Just curious about guys of that ilk.
 
50PoundHead said:
In other questions, does anyone know if the Braves re-signed guys like DeWitt or Tyler Greene? I know there have been a bunch of minor league signings and rico43 has reported them. Just curious about guys of that ilk.
Click to expand...

Haven't seen anything on those two. The only middle infielder minor league free agent that I'm aware we've picked up is Gustavo Nunez who played in the Tigers system last year. Right now it looks like he'll be our SS in AAA. I'm thinking we'll sign up someone else like Janish to improve our depth there.
 
I always like looking at the statistical comps, even they have almost no real utility. Most interesting ones (to me at least):

Heyward -- Sid Bream (wut)
Freeman -- Hrbek (my feelings... they are confusing...)
Pastornicky -- Prado (yes please)
 
Yeah the Bream comp is weird. Bream had a career 107 wRC+ and was a solid defensive 1B. Heyward currently is sitting at 119 in wRC+ and is a great defensive RF.
 
zitothebrave said:
Yeah the Bream comp is weird. Bream had a career 107 wRC+ and was a solid defensive 1B. Heyward currently is sitting at 119 in wRC+ and is a great defensive RF.
Click to expand...

The comp system probably gives a lot of weight to speed and base running. That would explain why Bream was Heyward's #1 comp.
 
I never liked Zips. Seems to me all they do is take an average of 3 years adjust for BABIP and thats the whole projection system. For prospects just subtract a certain percent off what they did in the minors with less subtracted for the higher level they played at.

That said. I would be very happy to get .275/.340/.411 from La Stella. If Bethancourt actually put up what he is projected to I would be happy with that from him and he would become a fantasy baseball darling because projected to a full season thats 15 homers and 15 sb from a catcher. Hit .260 with a .400 slugging % with gold glove defense, that is passable as a catcher. I would also love to see BJ make that projection. Atleast then he would just be bad without being historically bad. You know your organization is top notch when you have 5 homegrown starters projecting to a 3.75 ERA or lower. It also projects Northcraft/Martin/Graham as being serviceable major league starters. So add in Floyd and the Braves depth at SP looks to be 9 and thats not including Hale. I consider servicable to be a 4.50 ERA or lower. a 4.50 ERA is averaging 3 earned runs per 6 innings, thats a quality start right there.
 
cajunrevenge said:
I never liked Zips. Seems to me all they do is take an average of 3 years adjust for BABIP and thats the whole projection system. For prospects just subtract a certain percent off what they did in the minors with less subtracted for the higher level they played at.
Click to expand...

What you described is a good starting point. Then make adjustments for injuries and any other info that isn't in the model, such as changes in ballpark. Looking at what ZIPS has for our hitters I wouldn't be inclined to make much in the way of adjustment.

With the pitchers, I would quibble a bit with the projections for Medlen, Minor and Teheran. I would have them a bit higher. But that assumes good health. ZIPS and other systems reflect some risk of injury. Once you take that into account, the pitching numbers are probably reasonable.
 
cajunrevenge said:
I never liked Zips. Seems to me all they do is take an average of 3 years adjust for BABIP and thats the whole projection system.
Click to expand...

What you just described (minus the BABIP adjustment [and the 3 years are weighted, not averaged]) is the Marcel projection system, which was named after the Monkey on Friends. The implication is that the system is so simple that a monkey could put it together.

ZiPS is based on the same basic idea, this is true. But it is a little more complex:

- It uses 4 weighted years of data
- It's BABIP regression is fairly sophisticated and based on a number of factors; it's not just going to do a straight FIP-for-ERA replacement
- It doesn't use a generic growth curve. It tries to generate players with similar characteristics for each individual player and then projects growth or decline based curves generated from those players.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top