Did the O's improve this off-season? (WAR Analysis)

[bluedog]

This is going to be the first part in a series of 2 posts discussing whether the 2016 version of the O's are an improvement over the 2015 team.

2015 Assumptions

- Using historical WAR for 2015

- Values are approximated, I didn't add in every player at each position who had a handful of games

- I erred on the side over overestimating WAR at each position (actual Positional WAR for the team was 17.8 across all positions)

- For players who played the bulk of their games at a single position (Davis, Machado) I didn't split their WAR into their minor positions. Whether its credited at one position or another is not that meaningful

Positional Players

2015 Approximated WAR by Position:

C : 2.7

1B: 4.9

2B: 1.1

SS: -0.8

3B: 6.8

DH: 0.4

LF: 0.7

CF: 3.5

RF: -1.1

Total: 18.2 (Actual WAR for all positional players was 17.8)

2016 Assumptions

- I took each players career WAR and divided by Games played to get an average WAR per game (aWAR)

- I predicted the number of games each player would get at their position if healthy and multiplied by aWAR

- In the case of Chris Davis, I used only his last four years, as his early years in Texas don't fairly represent his value

- I used Nori Aoki's 2015 campaign (.287 avg, .733 OPS) as a comp for Joey Rickard

C: 3.1 (+0.4) Weiters is healthy and performs better than last couple of years

1B: 4.2 (-0.7) Davis comes back to earth a bit

2B: 2.1 (+1.0) Full season of a healthy Schoop

SS: 2.5 (+3.3) 120 games of a healthy Hardy

3B: 6.4 (-0.4) Machado is about the same as last year

DH: 2.0 (+1.6) Alvarez & Reimold >> Jimmy Parades & co.

LF: 1.5 (+0.8) Joey Rickard >> Snider / Lough

CF: 3.6 (+0.1) Adam Jones is Adam Jones again

RF: 1.9 (+3.0) Trumbo trumps Parra & Young

Total: 27.3 (+9.1 wins)

At first blush, this seems like a lot of additional wins. The big boosts come from;

+3.3 wins from Hardy at SS

+3.0 wins from Trumbo in RF

+1.6 wins from Alvarez at DH

I'm fine with RF and DH, but the Hardy number seems really high, so I'm tempted to take 2.0 WAR away there just to be cautious.

Everything else looks good to me assuming the O's stay healthy (which is a big if every season).

The major stats sites are not this optimistic. Fangraphs thinks the O's positional players are worth just 21.0 WAR and they predict that Machado, Davis & Jones will all have worse years than 2015 and that Scoop will only bump his WAR by 0.2.

I think they are being too conservative at almost every position for the O's. For example if you simply assume that Scoop plays 50% more games than last year and doesn't improve his performance at all, he's a 2.1 WAR player. I think that many of us on OH expect Schoop to exceed that value. I also think that several other players, including Machado, Rickard and Hardy have the potential for additional upside.

So I'm going to say the positional players were improved by as much as 7 wins this season. I don't think that's overly aggressive, but I'd love to hear input from others.

Pitching Staff

2015 WAR

Starters: 7.6 (Chen, Jiminez, Gausman, Tillman, Wilson, Gonzalez, Wright, Norris)

Relievers: 10.1 (O'Day, Britton, Brach, Givens, Matusz, Hunter, Roe, Drake, Garcia, Johnson, McFarland, Rondon)

Total: 17.7

2016 Assumptions

- I took each players career WAR and divided by IP to get an average WAR per IP (WARip)

- I predicted the number of innings each player would get if healthy and multiplied by WARip

- Bundy in particular suffers from small sample size, which resulted in a far higher WAR than I deemed reasonable, so I used Givens from 2015 as a model

- I assumed that Worley and Wright will split the #5 innings for the year.

- I assumed that there will be a lot less innings for AAAA guys than last year with Givens, Bundy & Wilson in the pen and Drake likely the next guy up.

Starters:

Jiminez 2.5 (-0.1) - 180 IPs at similar effectiveness to 2014

Gallardo 2.4 (-1.4) - 180 IPs replacing Chen

Tillman 2.1 (+1.3) - 180 IPs at his career average

Gausman 1.3 (0.0) - 180 IPs at his career average

Worley 1.1 (+0.5) - 110 IPs at career average replacing Gonzalez

Wright -0.4 (+1.1) - 80 IPs at 2014 rate replacing Norris

Total: 9.1 (+1.5)

Relievers

Britton 2.5 (+0.0) - 70 IPs at career average as closer

O'Day 2.1 (-0.7) - 65 IPs at career average, slight reduction from career year in 2015

Brach 0.9 (-1.1) - 80 IPs at career average, slight reduction from career year in 2015

Givens 1.7 (+0.7) - 65 IPs at career average, value increase due to 2X IP over full year

Matusz 0.6 (-0.4) - 50 IPs at career average, slight reduction from strong 2015

Wilson 1.1 (+0.3) - 50 IPs at same value as 2015

Bundy 1.5 (+0.9) - 50 IPs replacing Tommy Hunter

Drake 0.4 (+0.2) - 30 IPs at same value as 2015

McFarland 0.2 (+0.5) - 60 IPs at career average, slight uptick from poor 2015

(Also gets rid of -0.5 of players like Rondon, Johnson & Garcia)

Total: 11.1 (+1.0)

Pitching Total: 20.2 (+2.5 over 2015 totals)

Again, this assumes a healthy season from all of the above. Big increases come from;

- Assuming Tillman's 2015 was an abberation and he'll return to form.

- Replacing horrible seasons from Norris and Gonzalez with career average Worley and a slightly below replacement Wright

- Capturing about 2/3rds of Chen's value from Gallardo

- Full seasons from Bundy, Givens and Wilson offsetting slight regression from O'Day, Brach and Matusz

I don't see much that scares me here. I'm just reminded how awful Tillman, Gonzalez and Norris were for us last year and that we only need average performances from our starters this year to pick up a couple of wins. I actually think we should expect a 2.0 WAR increase from our starters and maybe 1.0 WAR from the pen, so let's call the O's staff +3.0 WAR better for 2016.

The good news, is there's room for some upside from Gausman, Wright and potentially Bundy if he jumps into the rotation late in the year. We might actually grab 1 - 2 more WAR if those guys (particularly Guasman) progress this year as expected.

Conclusion:

Positional Players: + 7 WAR

Pitchers: + 3 WAR

Total: +10 WAR (+ / - 5)

I'm going to say the O's as currently constructed are a likely 92 Win team this year with an downside of 87 and upside of 97 wins.

I know that's very optimistic relative to most projections, but that's what the data suggests to me assuming the team stays relatively healthy this year.

[JayThomas]

Thanks for this. Yes I see serious upside to this offense. I would not be surprised at all if we lead MLB in scoring this year. All it would take is a few base-runners. Rickard, Reimold, and Kim (if he ever plays) will clearly help our OBP. If Manny's selectiveness from last year continues and spills over to Schoop, we could actually be pretty good in terms of OBP this year.

[sportsfan8703]

Schoop and Manny are only going to get better, maybe by a lot. Rickard looks to be everything Lough was supposed to be, and Lough had a nice WAR in KC. The bullpen is nasty with at least three +2WAR relievers(Brach, O'day, Britton).

[25 Nuggets]

Also, IF we get close to a full season out of our infield (Hardy has already missed a game), we're going to see a bump in our defensive runs saved, back to what we're used to. Games from Everth Cabrera, Chris Parmalee, Steve Pearce and a subpar Ryan Flaherty dragged the scores down in 2015.

[bluedog]

Just added the Pitching analysis to the original post if anyone is interested. Net result - I think the O's are a 92 win team.

[Orioles4Life21]

Sounds good to me.

[Crabcakes]

"A whole lot, I say, a whole lot of 'Assumin' gone on there" ~ Foghorn Leghorn

But, then again, you have to do a lot of assuming when you're dealing with WAR

Good job bd!

[Rene88]

This is more uplifting than reading 30 seconds of the game thread, Geesh. For a team that is undefeated, you would have thought it would be less, umm, insane.

Thanks for your efforts Bluedog. Good stuff!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Barnaby Graves]

I think the offensive numbers are mostly fine, I think the rotation is a black hole from which no hope can escape and which could make this a very long summer. How their potential downside impacts the bullpen is not a huge concern of mine because the pen and minor league relief depth is super deep I just think it's gonna be a whole lot of "get through 5 innings and pray to god someone is hitting dingers."

You use Gallardo's career average when there's little justification for doing that given his current stuff.

This whole projection puts a lot of players near the top of their upside. Givens at 1.7 WAR... really aggressive. Yeah you back off on Davis a bit but this sounds like a lot of exuberance.

The assumption of health and basically nobody imploding can make a lot of rosters look like .500+ and playoff teams.