Dan Szymborski has his 2008 ZiPS projections for the Cardinals. The prognosis is pretty negative for the team overall, but I won’t get too into that. There are some farmhands and recent ex-farmhands in the mix who I’d rather talk about, here’s the highlights and lowlights.
- ZiPS thinks Jaime Garcia could post a 4.65 ERA in the majors now. That’s over 24 projected starts. Please, someone tell me his elbow is going to be OK.
- ZiPS also thinks Anthony Reyes is capable of the exact same ERA, 4.65. With Jocketty gone and LaRuncan likely to follow maybe he will. Dan also give Reyes a 15% chance to break out, posting a 3.75 ERA. Let us remember, Cleveland’s Fausto Carmona had a 1-10 record with a 5.42 ERA his rookie season and look at him now. Reyes has some pretty serious issues to work out, and I worry about his health but I still have a glimmer of hope he can turn it around and live up to his prospect status of old.
- ZiPS ain’t crazy about Colby. .245/.329/.419 line. ZiPS thinks Jim Edmonds will still be better.
- I think the projection for Rick Ankiel is a dead ringer, .241/.285/.458 with 25 homers. All kinds of power, yet still well below average RF.
- Brendan Ryan is not the starting SS of the future at .265/.315/.351.
- Yadier Molina > Bryan Anderson, for now. .654 OPS for Anderson. .656 for Yadi. And of course, Yadi plays Gold Glove caliber D.
- I happen to think Mitch Boggs will eventually make a pretty decent back of the rotation starter, ZiPS thinks otherwise but isn’t as far off as you might think. 5.49 ERA over 28 starts, not much worse then Joel Pineiro.
- ZiPS projects Chris Perez to strike out nearly a batter per inning, but walk nearly 6 batters per 9 innings, thus making him a liability and not an asset. 5.28 ERA. Mark Worrell=Chris Perez. Of course, ZiPS makes no distinctions between gimmicky soft tossers and guys who throw 96.
- Is Ryan Ludwick under team control? I hope so. Play him in CF.
- [updated 10/9, 3:48 pm] I asked Dan if he could run projections for Mather, Motte and Hoffpauir and he obliged. ZiPS doesn’t think Hoff and Mather are much to get excited about, but likes Motte.
Take the projections for what they are worth. I don’t know how Dan calculates these as well as I should. He does leave this disclaimer:
Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance.
Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors -many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2008. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production - a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.
I know there is a lot of debate on the subject of MLEs and not everyone likes them. AZ seems to know more about them then I, hopefully he’ll throw in his 2 cents on all this.
Filed under: Anthony Reyes, Brendan Ryan, Bryan Anderson, Colby Rasmus, Jaime Garcia, Mark Worrell, Projections, Rick Ankiel
erik
azruavatar
fewgoodcards
roarke49
theredbaaron
I had the opposite reaction when I saw Rasmus’ line. A 21 year old putting up MLE numbers close to league-average for his position isn’t something to slump your shoulders over.
Ludwick=Duncan but right handed, that is fairly interesting almost identical batting lines and only 1 HR difference between them in those projections. Last I heard he was under club control.
Ludwick is not only under team control, he’s not even eligible for arbitration yet. I.e. he’ll be real cheap!
Ludwick seems worth a shot at least at a platoon level. He’s had a rocky injury history, but if you look past that and his age, he had had a very impressive debut with an improving BA as he played more. Need to take some chances next year and a bunch of mid-priced risks as they have pursued in the past does not seem the best way to transition to the “new regime”. That said, I do support Piniero. He is one of the few pitchers they are looking at that I’ve seen in person and I was impressed. Bring back Mike Lincoln too!
It’s important to note that these are projections for minor leaguers rather than direct MLEs on past performance (meaning there’s additional uncertainty associated in the projection). I’m a believer in MLEs with the caveat that they’re rough measuring sticks.
ZiPS does very well as a projection system. Nothing here particularly surprises me as far as the minor leaguers go. I do like the optimistic forecast for Reyes (not that it will come true, rather that people are too willing to give up on him). Liam’s right in that the projection line would make Colby nearly a league average CF at age 21 — which is incredible.
The Mark Worrell projection doesn’t work for me at all. He’s a ROOGy in the most extreme case and I think that he could be very valuable to a pen if he was used exclusively against right-handers. I could easily see him having an ERA below 4.5 if used properly.
The other thing that concerns me is the Brendan Ryan projection. I’ve written multiple times that he definitely wasn’t as good as he was playing at times due to his high average but I wonder if I was still a little too optimistic for him next year. The Cardinals really need to find several candidates at SS because I’m not confident in any of the in house options (Eckstein, Ryan, Miles).
I doubt that whoever takes over as the new regime is going to dump Reyes simply because they will analyze his peripheral stats and realize that he has potential beyond what his ERA would suggest. I think everyone could agree that Reyes needed a change of scenery and he is about to get it if he stays. Given Reyes bad karma, Mozeliak will trade him to the Yankees a day before they hire Larussa as their next manager.
BigJawnMize,
There’s no such thing as karma. All we have are ball and strikes.
There are good balls and bad balls, and good strikes and good strikes.
Reyes needs to throw more good strikes, fewer good balls, fewer bad balls, and far fewer bad strikes and he’ll be stud.
The only bad karma a pitcher can bring on himself are certain types of bad balls, high n’ inside.
Liam - that was very Zen. I think I’ll sleep well tonight. . .
w/r/t the Hoffpauir projection, ZiPS relies on a lot of regression and since Hoffpauir really had a breakout year the previous two years are probably what’s surpressing that projection (I’m wagering a guess here). It’s been documented that he retooled his stance and approach at the plate this year and I think the results bear that out. I think he’s considerably better than that projection.
I’m a little surprised by the Motte projection. I hope that the Cardinals really shift away from importing more than a veteran or two into each years bullpen. Our relief prospects seem good enough to handle that bullpen on the cheap all by themselves.
I’ll second that, azru. Especially at this particular moment, the young relief corp this team could potentially dip into in the 2008 or 2009 seasons looks to be ridiculously talented. They may not have developed any starters yet, but the farm system certainly looks as if there will be some serious bullpen talent on the way very soon.
And hell, relievers seem to be the main demographic for Cardinal starting pitchers these days anyway, so we could have some rotation help before we think.
Liam-
I am now at peace with the world.
Az-
Gawd I totally hope so. There are postitions that teams should not be spending money on at all. The best solution for the bench and bullpen are using homegrown talent or AAAA players aquired on the cheap from other teams. If you kept your bench under $5 million, your bullpen under $10 million, and had a league minimum fifth starter; that leaves $85+ million on 13 starting players. We should be able to win with that.
This made me laugh:
Joe Mather rf 25 .227 .289 .394 117 406 40 92 21 1 15 46 28 81 4 0
Russell Branyan* 3b 32 .220 .335 .424 77 191 26 42 9 0 10 26 32 67 1 0
So Mather is a cheaper version of Branyan who is projected to get more then twice as many ABs. I think Mather will be better then this eventually but it still struck me as kinda funny.
Oh another one:
Juan Encarnacion rf 32 .264 .313 .407 106 386 48 102 18 2 11 54 24 66 3 2
Brian Barden 3b 26 .265 .310 .430 132 486 67 129 32 3 14 62 28 109 4 3
I would take Barden’s stats from a second basemen if he could field that position well enough.
I think Barden could play a good 2b from what I hear but his power disappeared this year. How they project .430 slugging after slugging about .350 this year is beyond me. As far as I know he wasn’t injured - he just lost it.