Marcel the Projector Can See Inside Your Soul

If you thought the only benefit of the baseball stats revolution was nerdclusters emerging twice a year from their basement lairs to prop up the stripper and ear medicine industries, you'd be wrong. The real fun: projections!

Imagine the Farmer's Almanac if it were, much like the farmer and his children, on crystal meth. Take a wide range of rate stats, age curves, monkey blood stains and voila! Bill James accurately predicts Vernon Wells's slugging percentage to within 20 points! Add all the individual projections up, you can simulate the entire season! Why even bother playing??? These numbers make for good fun and the occasional fistfight, but how much stock should we place in them? More importantly, who should we believe?

The good men and women at Bluebird Banter tackled the Bill James and ZiPS projections earlier in the year. It would seem Bill James is quite the Blue Jays booster. Fangraphs also makes the Marcel projections available, and they got my attention for a number of reasons. Mostly because they differ from the other two so profoundly on two of the most important Jays in 2009: Travis Snider and Adam Lind.

Travis Snider	At Bats	Home Runs	OPS	wOBA
Bill James	448	19	.804	.351
Marcel	213	7	.820	.355
Adam Lind	At Bats	Home Runs	OPS	wOBA
Bill James	597	23	.843	.365
Marcel	374	12	.755	.326

Encouraging signs? They both agree that Travis Snider is a raking machine. Discouraging? Marcel only gives him 213 at bats, and only 374 to Lind! Does this algorithm have secret access to JP's inner sanctum? Does the mythical Marcel and tangotiger's mathematical machinations foresee a high profile DH riding into town, depriving these young studs of plate appearances? Also, why the disparity? Marcel sees Adam Lind producing 2.1 runs below average, while Bill James believes in 10 runs above! What about the 30 point difference between their projected averages on balls into play? Does Marcel believe Adam Lind will suddenly stop hitting line drives all together?


In all seriousness, this is a big year for Adam Lind. Much like Vernon Wells and Alex Rios before him, this spring presents itself as the long hyped phenom's opportunity to prove he belongs. In some respects, they all are similar hitters. Not particularly patient (though Vernon is much better at getting the bat on the ball), similar line drive and home run/fly ball rates. An outfield of the three of them wouldn't lead the league in home runs, but hardly a weak spot among them.

There is another player that comes to mind when I think of Adam Lind, a player that we can all agree would be a nice ceiling for a player like Lind: Garret Anderson. As the linked chart shows, Garret Anderson didn't really take off as a player until his 26 year old season. They're both left handed left fielders without much patience but enough pop to hold down an outfield spot. If Adam Lind can develop Garret Anderson's consistent production, I for one would be content.

So which projection do we put the most stock in? Which is the profit and which is the lunatic screaming on the streetcorner? Perhaps I will just take the optimistic route for each, project them both as 5 win players and camp out for playoff tickets. For argument's sake; Marcel projected Alex Rios as a .354 wOBA player with 18 home runs and 35 doubles. Rios actually put up 15 home runs, a not-talked-about-enough 47 doubles (tying him with Aaron Hill for the fourth highest Blue Jay total ever) and a .350 wOBA. Pretty accurate, more so than Bill James who overestimated Rios' OPS by 40 points. So we're fucked.

The Jays will sweep the leg...I mean Rays

Why? Because I fucking said so. It'd be easy to throw in the towel, admit defeat and try to re-tool for next year. Quite honestly, that is horseshit. So what if you've got the Rays, Red Sox and Yankees in front of you? That shit isn't going to change. Not unless MLB plans on re-aligning in the near future. It's July 28th, and I still fucking believe. Wishful thinking? Who knows, and I don't give a shit. These are my guys, this is my team and it's baseball, so anything can happen.

A.J. Burnett was a demon on the hill today, fanning ten while allowing just six hits in seven innings of work. JP has indicated that A.J. isn't going anywhere, and with McGowan on the shelf for the season, I actually buy what he's saying. Joe Inglett is awesome. I don't know if the rest of Toronto would show him the kind of man-love I would, but they sure should think about it. Adam Lind is batting .311 and when Wells returns, assuming he's healthy, that isn't a bad starting outfield is it?

With and inevitable Halladay victory tomorrow and a Jay shelling of Edwin Jackson on Wednesday, the Jays will only be 5.5 back of the Rays and it won't even be August. You're fucking right I'm an optimist, but what the hell is the alternative?

How can we free Johnny Mac now?

BAH!

It's likely John McDonald is heading to the DL after suffering what is being called a "high ankle sprain" last night. I suppose you could call that a good thing given how bad the injury actually looked at the time. The timing of this injury is the worst as David Eckstein was sucking just about long enough to ensure Johnny Mac of some more playing time, especially in the field. Now with Eckstein hampered by a hip flexor, the Jays may called up Jorge Velandia or Pedro Lopez from Triple-A.

Cheers to David Chalk over at bugs and cranks for pointing out my incorrect preseason assessment of Eric Hinske. It saddens me to see him tear apart Jay pitching night after night, and I long for the day he returns to being horrendous. I'm sure that isn't too far down the road.

UPDATE - Stoeten over at DJF posted an update via Wilner at the Fan that if so, is the best thing I've heard tonight.

Eff the Tee & an early overview

For a notorious slow starter, so far April has been somewhat more productive than usual for Frank Thomas. I'd have put the over under on his 3rd home run coming around July 2nd or something. 10 RBI through 7 games has me equally bonered. In fact, the Jays bats seem to be coming around which, if they keep getting quality starts, will only be a good thing.

Sure Eff the Tee is only batting .240, but that's the equivalent of .350 for him when it comes to the month of April. Aaron Hill is a fucking madman, and will prove my prophecy of a 2008 all-star birth quite correct. It would appear that Vernon Wells will more than improve on the dismal, injury plagued season of a year ago. And Alex Rios will hit .300+ without a problem.

Aside from yesterday's horrible outing, the pitching has been good, which was and is to be expected from these guys. I'm still convinced McGowan and Marcum can both win 12-15 games this season. I pray to Jebus hourly for the day I see B.J. Ryan jogging out to the mound in the ninth inning.

Although it's still early it is important to get big games early and develop some early momentum going into May, and a solid April builds confidence which can't hurt any team. Even great teams can get derailed by horrible Aprils.

I figure if the Jays can find a way to improve on their effort against sub .500 teams, October baseball may not be as far fetched as some people think.