March 21, 2009

Amending some projections

As MB21 pointed out in the comments of my Aaron Miles post, my defensive projections for Miles away from 2b are not very realistic, especially at 3b, where he has only had 61 innings of big-league time. I'm zeroing out his numbers there (since I still feel that 3b is a *little* more difficult) than 2b, where I have him at +2 runs. I guess it's not that big a deal anyway, since he's going to get the bulk of his time at 2b. I still think it's a poor signing - I think we should have gone with a cheapo shortstop (think Alex Cintron from last year's spring training) or, if we were actually spending money on a utility guy, nabbed Nick Punto (who has obscene defensive numbers). Of course, that's not very fair to the Cubs since he signed with MIN in early December, well before the DeRosa trade. In general though, just don't feel that we should be spending much more than the major league minimum on a utility player.

Over in the Lee vs. Hoffpauir thread on BCB, a discussion with Colin about Lee's projections has made me change my mind on my projections as well. I leaned heavily towards the more pessimistic projections for Lee (especially Marcel), projecting him at a .362 wOBA. My opinion was that Lee's 2007 was an up year for Lee, and 2008 was closer to his true talent level (since it looked so much like 2006). However, what I did not take into account (and neither did Lee's Marcels, given how that works) was that 2006 was Lee's injury bounceback year, and the data point just before it was Lee's career year in 2005. This would suggest instead that 2007 was closer to his true talent, while last year was a down year for him. I'm still not as high as CHONE is (.381 wOBA), but I think bumping Lee's wOBA up to .375 would be more than reasonable. Here are the new numbers:





PlayerPAHROBPSLGwOBAUZRWAR
Lee68522.370.481.375+3.53.2
Miles3503.328.370.305+1 (2B)
-9 (SS)
0 (3B)
0.1

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