skyking162

The Hardball Times will be updating Marcel forecasts on a weekly basis throughout the season. Now, when someone asks what we can expect from a player going forward, we have a pretty good answer. As usual, Marcel’s main weaknesses are with players without much playing time, players who switch leagues and/or ballpark, and predicting playing time.

Here are the Rays’ Marcels as of July 30:

Last    	OPS
Pena 	 	.870
Longoria 	.860
Upton 	 	.819
Gomes  		.787
Crawford 	.786
Hinske  	.786
Floyd 	 	.769
Aybar 	 	.764
Gross 	 	.761
Ruggiano 	.761
Iwamura 	.739
Johnson 	.733
Navarro 	.732
Riggans 	.715
Haynes  	.703
DiFelice 	.688
Bartlett 	.687
Zobrist 	.662

(The difference between “Rest Of Season” and “True Talent” projections is just that the True Talent projections pro-rate every player’s line to 650 plate appearances. The AVG/OBP/SLG line is exactly the same.)

Popularity: 7% [?]

I’ve been out of town for the past few days, but if you’re fiending for more content, check out these two articles I wrote for other sites:

1. I wrote half of a point-counterpoint for YES about whether the Yankees should make more trades after dealing for Xavier Nady. This is now pretty much a dated fluff piece, but I’m proud to say that I included a Marcel in-season projection and some advanced fielding data.
2. I was the guest blogger for the World Famous Stats Speak Roundtable.

Popularity: 6% [?]

If you haven’t used Baseball-Reference’s Play Index feature, you need to go try it out — it’s free through Friday. I didn’t use it or know what it could do until I tried it for free last year, and now I’m hooked.

Basically, you can slice and dice historical baseball data in almost any way you can think of, without needing ANY programming skills. Here are some random examples of functionality:

• Least hits by a shortstop with at least 30 homeruns from 1975 through 1985.
• Career OPS+ leaders for Cubs catchers.
• Jason Giambi’s splits against finesse, regular, and power pitchers.
• Most consecutive games with a walk by a National Leaguer.
• Manny Ramirez’s career line against Pedro Martinez (not that it means anything).
• Gamelogs for any hitter or pitcher.

Seriously, check it out.

Popularity: 6% [?]

I was going to write a post with the above title, but Sal Baxamusa beat me to it over at The Hardball Times.

Not only does he lay out the argument that first half stats are merely a sampling of each player’s underlying skills, but he includes some nifty spreadsheets that will spit out a current Marcel projection for any pitcher or hitter just by copying and pasting data from the Hardball Times’ player pages.

Moral of the story: don’t just quote a player’s first half stats as proof of how he will perform during the second half.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Sal Baxamusa recently wrote a great article on the hierarchy of baseball knowledge and regression (there can never be enough written about regression). It’s worth reading — and even has nice pictures — but the reason I mention it is because of a question left in the comments. I can’t figure out if the poster is being sarcastic or not, but either way, it’s hilarious. What do you think?

I have heard it said that all teams win sixty and lose sixty [and] it’s the remaining 42 that determine who goes to the playoffs. So all this number crunching over pitching, batting, defense etc is the tail wagging the dog. Figure out which games are the most important. Is a win or loss in April more or less important than one in September? Why risk injuring your best players on a meaningless loss or meaningless win [and] save them for the important 42?

Popularity: 35% [?]