FWIW, Fangraphs Projects O's in Last Place in 2015

[CA-ORIOLE]

But from what I have seen relatively few pitchers can reliably suppress BABIP. Of course those that consistently induce hard contact are probably not long for the league.

I've been saying the same thing for years. I'd guess "one" of the reasons that hitter babip's vary more then pitchers is that hitters with low babip's can provide value with their defense and/or running and keep a roster spot. Pitchers the get clobbered don't provide a whole lot.

That said, it has been shown that some pitchers can get more popups than others and that is supposed to be eventually incorporated into FIP with HBP's as well. Still, you're probably talking about very little variation even if does improve the standard FIP model, which even xFIP and SIERRA haven't been able to.

Personally, I think looking at pitcher contact is probably the wrong way to go. If I had my guess, command and lower babip are probably likely to be the correlating factors for many of the outliars, even for guys that operate effectively with extreme FB/GB rates to some extent, and especially for guys that can pitch effectively to the defense and the overshifts (primarily the infield).

[DrungoHazewood]

I'm aware of many analyses of how Steamer does vs. other projection systems in making individual player projections, but not team projections. Team projections requie human decisions about how playing time will be allocated.

That's a huge issue, one that's very difficult to deal with. Some systems (I think PECOTA) just cut everyone's playing time by 15% or 20% or something to account for injuries and random benchings. Some punt on the whole thing and project everyone to 600 PAs. In the end, I think Marcel (which is basically an average weighting the last three years and applying generic aging) is about as accurate on the rate stats as anything, but there is no good solution to playing time* and that probably accounts for most of the differences in the various systems.

* I've seen team-specific crowdsourcing of playing time (i.e. get a bunch of O's fans to project the Orioles' playing time for the upcoming season) and that's a halfway solution. But it still doesn't account for injuries, and wild performance swings.

[DrungoHazewood]

I've been saying the same thing for years. I'd guess "one" of the reasons that hitter babip's vary more then pitchers is that hitters with low babip's can provide value with their defense and/or running and keep a roster spot. Pitchers the get clobbered don't provide a whole lot.

I think there's pretty good evidence that there's a wider spread in batter's hit talent than in pitcher's BABIP suppression talent. You can be offensively productive hitting .215 or .350, but if you're a pitcher with a true talent BABIP that's very high you're never going to make it to the majors. It's kind of a prerequisite for being a major league pitcher that your true talent BABIP is something like .285 +/- 0.015.

[Frobby]

That's a huge issue, one that's very difficult to deal with. Some systems (I think PECOTA) just cut everyone's playing time by 15% or 20% or something to account for injuries and random benchings. Some punt on the whole thing and project everyone to 600 PAs. In the end, I think Marcel (which is basically an average weighting the last three years and applying generic aging) is about as accurate on the rate stats as anything, but there is no good solution to playing time* and that probably accounts for most of the differences in the various systems.

* I've seen team-specific crowdsourcing of playing time (i.e. get a bunch of O's fans to project the Orioles' playing time for the upcoming season) and that's a halfway solution. But it still doesn't account for injuries, and wild performance swings.

Every year when I make my projections about team OPS, I make an educated guess about plate appearances for each player. Inevitably I'm way off. Last year, needless to say, I didn't foresee the injuries to Manny and Wieters. It never dawned on me that Pearce would earn 383 PA; I gave him 145 and Lough 420. I only gave Schoop 175 PA. I didn't have Joseph on the team. Etc. Those things have a big impact on the team OPS even if you do a good job projecting the players' rate stats.

For whatever it's worth, using my PA projections, the projected team OPS for the Orioles last year was:

ZiPS .747

Steamer .744

Oliver .752

Bill James .766

RotoChamp .764

CAIRO .756

PECOTA .728

Frobby .756

Actual, using the real PA allocations, was .734. All but PECOTA were too high. In addition to the fact that my PA allocations were off by a lot, the league-wide offensive environment changed, with OPS down 19 points league-wide.

That's not going to stop me from doing the exercise again this year, because it's a fun way to kill time when there's no actual baseball to watch. But I have no illusions that it's worth anything much.

[Slappy]

The game is changing and FG isn't keeping up. High OBP style offense wasn't especially effective last year, if you look at the last 4 teams standing.

And high K starting pitching is still vulnerable to high pitch counts and shallow bullpens.

Most of all though, in a low power environment defense becomes all the more important. And I'm not sure anyone has figured out how to properly quantify the effects of fielding, particularly with all the shifting being done today.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Frobby]

The game is changing and FG isn't keeping up. High OBP style offense wasn't especially effective last year, if you look at the last 4 teams standing.

And high K starting pitching is still vulnerable to high pitch counts and shallow bullpens.

Most of all though, in a low power environment defense becomes all the more important. And I'm not sure anyone has figured out how to properly quantify the effects of fielding, particularly with all the shifting being done today.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Detroit was 1st in OBP, 2nd in runs scored

Minnesota was 2nd in OBP, 5th in runs scored

Toronto was 3rd in OBP, 4th in runs scored

Los Angeles was 4th in OBP, 1st in runs scored

Oakland was 5th in OBP, 3rd in runs scored

I'd say there is a very high correlation between OBP and the ability to score runs. Put it this way: every team that was in the top 5 in OBP was also in the top 5 in scoring.

[DrungoHazewood]

The game is changing and FG isn't keeping up. High OBP style offense wasn't especially effective last year, if you look at the last 4 teams standing.

The median OBP in the majors last year was .314. Of the top 10 teams in the majors in runs scored, 9 were better-than-median in OBP (the one exception was the Orioles). OBP is always effective.

And high K starting pitching is still vulnerable to high pitch counts and shallow bullpens.

On average strikeout pitchers don't throw any more pitches than low K pitchers.

[xian4]

Buster Olney has blogged that the Yankees have targeted the AL East's lack of left hand starting pitchers (no Price or Lester) by producing a line up of left hand hitters to take advantage of this.

C Brian McCann (bats left-handed)

1B Mark Teixeira (switch hitter)

2B Stephen Drew (left)

SS Didi Gregorius (left)

3B Chase Headley (switch)

LF Brett Gardner (left)

CF Jacoby Ellsbury (left)

RF Carlos Beltran (switch)

DH Garrett Jones (left)

http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/buster-olney/post/_/id/9094?ex_cid=InsiderTwitter_olney_assessingyankslineuphofthoughts

[Can_of_corn]

Buster Olney has blogged that the Yankees have targeted the AL East's lack of left hand starting pitchers (no Price or Lester) by producing a line up of left hand hitters to take advantage of this.

C Brian McCann (bats left-handed)

1B Mark Teixeira (switch hitter)

2B Stephen Drew (left)

SS Didi Gregorius (left)

3B Chase Headley (switch)

LF Brett Gardner (left)

CF Jacoby Ellsbury (left)

RF Carlos Beltran (switch)

DH Garrett Jones (left)

http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/buster-olney/post/_/id/9094?ex_cid=InsiderTwitter_olney_assessingyankslineuphofthoughts

Left handed or not that isn't a fearsome lineup.

[CA-ORIOLE]

Left handed or not that isn't a fearsome lineup.

The SP isn't inspiring either. Defense and BP improvements I guess.