Author Archive

Reviewing Steamer and I: James Shields

Finally, it’s the last recap of my projections from the 2015 season! The Pod Projections are derived using the methodology outlined in my just released eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance. As usual, Steamer and I is a comparison of my projection to Steamer’s. Steamer was significantly more bullish on James Shields, who moved to the National League and joined the Padres, both of which should have boosted his fantasy value. It didn’t of course, as his ERA and WHIP both jumped, despite a career high strikeout rate.

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Reviewing The Starting Pitchers that Baffle the Rankers: Outside the Top 100

Bored yet? Oh c’monnnnn, you love making us accountable for everything we say! This is my last review of our 2015 preseason rankings. We continue the look at those players we disagreed on most that we ranked outside the top 100, and we finish off with the starting pitchers. Once again, actual ranks are courtesy of Zach’s calculation wizardry.

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Reviewing Hitters that Baffle Rankers: Outside Top 100

Phew, we’re almost at the end of my 2015 reviews. Remember when I assured you that I would review all that I predicted, projected, ranked, and said from the 2015 preseason? I wasn’t joking! So today I return to recapping the list of players us RotoGrapher rankers disagreed on the most. This time we check in on the hitters we ranked outside the top 100 that had us baffled. Actual ranks based on Zach Sanders’ top 300. Let’s see who was right…if any of us were.

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Reviewing 2015 Pod Projections: Justin Verlander

At last, we have reached our final 2015 Pod Projection review! All pitcher projections were based on the methodology laid out in my just released eBook, Projecting X 2.0. Yes, it’s the follow up to the original Projecting X, and is chock full of new research, new metrics, new ideas, and new methods for projecting baseball player performance.

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Reviewing Starting Pitchers that Baffle Rankers: The Top 100

Let’s continue where I left off before Christmas when I reviewed the hitters that baffled the rankers in the top 100 and switch things up to the starting pitcher side of the ledger. Since we had five rankers for our preseason consensus, it was only natural that there would be some players we disagreed on. Sure, we didn’t rank everyone exactly the same, but most were in the general vicinity. For these players that were part of our preseason top 100, our opinions were all over the map. Let’s find out who got it right. The original writeup is here and here is the top 300 the “Actual” ranking is pulled from.

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Reviewing The Hitters that Baffle the Rankers: The Top 100

Let’s take a short break from the starting pitcher reviews and move onto recapping something I did for the first time this year. Since we had five rankers for our preseason consensus, it was only natural that there would be some players we disagreed on. Sure, we didn’t rank everyone exactly the same, but most were in the general vicinity. For these players that were part of our preseason top 100, our opinions were all over the map. Let’s find out who got it right.

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Reviewing 2015 Pod Projections: Jacob deGrom

It’s time for another Pod Projection review and today it’s new top 10 starter Jacob deGrom. After a dominating performance during his 2014 rookie campaign that essentially came out of nowhere, we all wondered how much regression he would experience in 2015. Instead, he laughed at the notion of regression and took his performance to further heights, earning more than $24 and finishing as the ninth most valuable starter. Refresh your memory by reviewing my initial Pod Projection post.

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Reviewing Steamer and I: Zack Greinke

Today I continue reviewing my preseason posts and this time I will bravely recap how my Pod Projection fared against the Steamer projection for Zack Greinke. As we are all well aware, Greinke just so happened to lead all Major League starters in ERA, en route to a second place finish in the Cy Young voting. Sadly, Greinke wiggled his way into a Steamer and I post because Steamer was significantly more optimistic about his performance than Pod was. I guess we know how this is going to go…

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Reviewing 2015 Pod Projections: Carlos Carrasco

We finally move along to our first starting pitcher Pod Projection recap of the offseason. I will start with final 10 starts of the 2014 season breakout Carlos Carrasco, who finally made good on all the hype I sounded on him. Refresh your memory of my original projection post.

Naturally after those scintillating set of starts to end the season, Carrasco shot up preseason ranking lists heading into 2015. And he didn’t disappoint, finishing 15th among starters in value, earning about $16.

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Reviewing Steamer and I: Shane Greene & Jesse Hahn

For the previous Steamer and I reviews, I separated the two players into their own recaps, as there was simply too much to discuss for one post. However, for the motley pair of Shane Greene and Jesse Hahn, this is unfortunately not going to be a problem. You see, both of them saw their seasons cut short by injury and one of them was so bad that including his name as part of the title of an article will do little to motivate potential readers from clicking. So, combined they are.

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