A Saber-Slanted Baseball Community

Geniuses at work!

Clay Davenport wrote today that he plans to update BPro's depth charts on a weekly basis. Of course, he might be using "weekly" in the same sense Christina Kahrl's does for her Transaction Analysis column, but I'll go with it for now. That's good news for fantasy fans who are BPro members, as we can get updated dollar values to use in trade analysis. But it's also good news when you throw in Davenport's claim that they'll be updating PECOTA in-season starting... well, at some point. At first, they'll just do a weighted average of pre-season PECOTA and current stats, but the long-term plan is to re-calculate PECOTAs on the fly. How's the transfer of PECOTA from Excel to database coming, guys? Anyway, if that all comes together, it's pretty cool, and would be the best source of in-season projections and playoff odds, by far.

For those without a subscription, Wicked Good Sports Red Sox Blog has a screenshot of BP's projected standings up. Some surprises: The A's take the AL West with 82 wins. Their OBP also is 6th in the AL, a big improvement over the last place they sported last year. The White Sox are projected to go from first to last in the Central, and the World Series Teams are both in 3rd place in their divisions. Computers obviously have no glue about how many wins Championships add the following season. The Mets allow the fewest runs in the NL? Tim Redding makes that much of a difference from last year's rotation?

Will Carroll has an Unfiltered blog post up discussing how the Rays-Twins trade this past off-season was a win-win deal, benefitting both teams. "Both teams might end up in the playoffs, but the Rays appear to have gotten a slightly better deal. Garza became an ace-level starter with a 35.3 VORP while Bartlett was named team MVP with a 13.3 VORP. That doesn’t mean the Twins got shafted. Young (14.2 VORP) played a pivotal role, while Harris surprised many with his play at short (9.6 VORP.) Harris also benefits if you include defense, putting up a 4.3 WARP1 that outshines Bartlett’s 3.4, which might stun those that rave about Bartlett’s defense." It's a decent analysis -- but those numbers are a load of crap, both wrong and misleading. Nobody was surprised by Harris' bat -- it's his glove that's awful, no matter what BPro's poor fielding metric says. And to ignore Young's awful glove while mentioning his offense is poor form. Whereas FRAA (which isn't based on play-by-play data) says Harris is +1 at short whlie Bartlett is -6 runs, combined BIS and STATS zone ratings have Bartlett firmly ahead +1 to -11. The latter metric follows better methodology, matches most people's scouting reports, and is in line with past performances. That's a 19 runs difference between BPro's numbers and much more correct numbers (albeit still with large error bars). Here's the better analysis of the trade, in terms of overall 2008 production through September 5th: Garza: 35 runs Bartlett: 10 runs Young: 0 runs Harris: -3 runs Um, so the Rays got a stud pitcher and competent shortstop in exchange for two replacement-level players. How, then, was this trade anything more than a win-loss deal for the Rays and Twins respectively? How did the Twins NOT get shafted?