Baseball Prospectus 2016

Description

The 2016 edition of the New York Times Bestselling Guide

Welcome to The Show! After 20 All-Star seasons, the creators of this, the 21st edition of the industry-leading Baseball Prospectus annual, could have been content to rest on their laurels. Instead, Baseball Prospectus 2016 contains significant improvements along with the usual key stat categories, player predictions and insider-level commentary that readers expect from Baseball Prospectus’ annual guide.

Baseball Prospectus 2016 once again provides fantasy players and insiders alike with prescient PECOTA projections, which Sports Illustrated has called “perhaps the game’s most accurate projection model.” Still, stats are just numbers if you don’t see the larger context, and Baseball Prospectus brings together an elite team of analysts to provide the definitive look at all thirty teams—their players, their prospects and their managers—to explain away flukes, hot streaks, injury-tainted numbers and park effects.

Nearly every major-league team has sought the advice of current or former Prospectus analysts, and readers of Baseball Prospectus 2016 will understand what all those insiders have been raving about.

In a book that sports personality Ken Tremendous calls “The tip of the nerd spear,” the team at Baseball Prospectus is proud to bring the following improvements to the 2016 Annual:

Two full years of projections­—PECOTA lines for 2016 and 2017

Historical Peak MPH added for major-league pitchers

Deserved Run Average (DRA) added for major-league pitchers

cFIP added for major-league and minor-league pitchers

Pitcher WARP redesigned, utilizing DRA and cFIP for all pitchers

Revised cFIP-driven PECOTA pitching projections

Catcher-specific defensive stats for all catchers Double-A and above

Outfield assists and catcher defense integrated in FRAA and WARP

Ballpark schematic and wall height study for every stadium

Hit List, finance, and farm system ranking graphs for each team

Every organization’s key front office personnel and Baseball Prospectus alumni identified

Sujets

• Sport
• Baseball
• Sports collectifs
• Béisbol
• Ligue majeure de baseball
• Sports Illustrated
• Recreation
• Major League Baseball
• Baseball Prospectus
• Grandes Ligas de Béisbol
• Sports

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 09 février 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781681622668
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

Edited by Patrick Dubuque, Sam Miller, and Jason Wojciechowski
R.J. Anderson, Nick Ashbourne, Paul Boye, J.P. Breen, Ben Carsley, Ken Funck, Brendan Gawlowski, Mike Gianella, Craig Goldstein, Bryan Grosnick, Wilson Karaman, David Lee, Kate Morrison, Chris Mosch, Jeffrey Paternostro, Tommy Rancel, Daniel Rathman, Dan Rozenson, Mauricio Rubio Jr., Bret Sayre, Matt Sussman, David Temple, Doug Thorburn, Matt Trueblood, Bradley Woodrum, Will Woods, Geoff Young
James Walsh and Dave Pease, Consultants
Turner Publishing Company
424 Church Street Suite 2240 Nashville, Tennessee 37219
445 Park Avenue 9th Floor New York, New York 10022
www.turnerpublishing.com
Copyright 2016 by Baseball Prospectus, LLC. All rights reserved
This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Team logos and trademarks used with permission of Major League Baseball.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
ISBN 9781681621180 (pbk); 9781681621111 (hbk); 9781681622668 (ebk)
Project Credits
Cover Design: Maddie Cothren
Interior design and production: Bryan Davidson
Layout: Misty Horten & Colleen Cunningham
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword
by David Forst, GM, Oakland Athletics
Statistical Introduction
2016 Teams
Arizona Diamondbacks
Atlanta Braves
Baltimore Orioles
Boston Red Sox
Chicago Cubs
Chicago White Sox
Cincinnati Reds
Cleveland Indians
Colorado Rockies
Detroit Tigers
Houston Astros
Kansas City Royals
Los Angeles Angels
Los Angeles Dodgers
Miami Marlins
Milwaukee Brewers
Minnesota Twins
New York Mets
New York Yankees
Oakland Athletics
Philadelphia Phillies
Pittsburgh Pirates
San Diego Padres
San Francisco Giants
Seattle Mariners
St. Louis Cardinals
Tampa Bay Rays
Texas Rangers
Toronto Blue Jays
Washington Nationals
The Average Within
by Jonathan Judge
The Psychology of Scott Boras
by Jeff Passan
Dear WAR
by Russell A. Carleton
Top 101 Prospects
by Jeffrey Paternostro and Wilson Karaman
Team Codes
PECOTA Leaderboards
Contributors and Acknowledgements
Index of Names


Foreword
by David Forst, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics

T here was a time, not all that long ago, when Baseball Prospectus wasn t a website that had traffic in the hundreds of thousands of fans; rather, it was a hidden little corner of the internet for hardcore sabermetrics. And it certainly wasn t the book you re holding in your hands (or reading on a tablet) that lands on the New York Times bestseller list every year; it was something more akin to a yearly pamphlet that, by one of its own writer s admission, was pretty terrible.
When I started working for the A s in January 2000, followers of BP were in something of a limited club. BP was a place where smart, interesting people wrote smart, interesting things about the game, but the Baseball Prospectus brand wasn t something you casually found on ESPN.com or stumbled across on Twitter because someone retweeted it. You had to be someone who thought about the game in a certain objective and insightful way, and you had to actively seek out that type of content. Baseball Prospectus was an attempt to see the game differently. It was trying to quantify and explain what had been happening on the field for decades, beyond the accounts and daily reporting of beat writers and columnists. It hoped to give voice to those fans who, for years, advocated for a smarter way of accounting for the results of every outcome on the field but never had a forum in which to do it.
That wasn t an easy thing to accomplish. Baseball has been around for 150 years and has been viewed through mostly the same lens for all that time. There were, of course, exceptions inside the game (Earl Weaver comes to mind) and outside the game (Bill James s writing deserves credit for paving the way for just about everything in this book)-individuals whose intelligence and passion allowed them to break through with a different perspective. But they were outliers. BP s success made this outside-the-box vision of the game accessible on an infinitely larger scale, using the reach of the internet to help create a generation of fans and hopeful GMs-in-training who were hungry for such information and to find others who viewed the game on this level.
So, how did BP separate itself and become the model for numerous other sites and blogs that were and still are trying to replicate its success? Like any great company, it relied on great people. Just look at the people who ve been under the BP banner at one time or another and the work they ve gone on to do since. People like Gary Huckabay, Joe Sheehan (SI) and Christina Kahrl (ESPN) founded this book, and almost 20 years later are still writing some of the best stuff out there on baseball. They gave way to the likes of Will Carroll (SI), Keith Law (ESPN), Jonah Keri (ESPN) and Nate Silver (FiveThirtyEight), all of whom continue to influence baseball and its decision makers with their writing today. (And, in Nate s case, seem to have had powerful insights into things far greater than the outcome of a baseball game.) In many cases, former Baseball Prospectus authors have gone on to become those decision makers and work for clubs, most notably Law (Blue Jays), Kevin Goldstein (Astros), Keith Woolner (Indians) and James Click (Rays). I have, out of necessity, left many names out; there are countless others who have taken that path.
The job that I was lucky enough to land in 2000 would look about as different today as this book does from those early BP pamphlets. While the game itself has changed in very visible ways in those 16 years on the field-infields shifting, relievers throwing ever harder, strikeout rates steadily increasing, homers going up and then down and then back up again last summer-it has become even more different off the field. Those of us tasked with making the decisions on 25- and 40-man rosters, on player development systems and on drafting and signing amateur players have access to so much more information than we did when I first walked in the door. We have the ability and freedom to dissect that information and implement it in ways that would never have been understood or accepted by a different generation of fans. Today, there s no end in sight to the intelligent, thoughtful and diverse voices out there looking to discuss, debate and deconstruct every nuance of our game. That avid discourse is a big part of what makes this job so much fun and so interesting on a day-to-day and year-to-year basis. The year-round passion of baseball fans is fueled in the winter months by the writing within these pages, but luckily for us all, it s just about time for another offseason to come to a close as we inch closer to Opening Day. I, for one, can t wait for the 2016 season to start.









Baseball Prospectus 2016


Statistical Introduction


W hy don't you get your nose out of those numbers and watch a game?
It's a false dilemma, of course. We would wager that Baseball Prospectus readers watch more games than the typical fan. They also probably pay better attention when they watch. The numbers do not replace observation; they supplement it. Having the numbers allows you to learn things not readily seen by mere watching and to keep up on many more players than any one person otherwise could.
This book doesn't ask you to choose between the two. Instead, we combine numerical analysis with the observations of a lot of very bright people. They won't always agree. Just as the eyes don't always see what the numbers do, the reverse can be true. In order to get the most out of this book, however, it helps to understand the numbers we're presenting and why.
Offense
The core of our offense measurements is True Average, which attempts to quantify everything a player does at the plate-hitting for power, taking walks, striking out and even "productive" outs-and scale it to batting average. A player with a TAv of .260 is average, .300 exceptional, .200 rather awful.
True Average also accounts for the context a player performs in. That means we adjust it based on the mix of parks a player plays in. Also, rather than use a blanket park adjustment for every player on a team, a player who plays a disproportionate number of his games at home will see that reflected in his numbers. We also adjust based on league quality: The average player in the AL is better than the average player in the NL, and True Average accounts for this.
Because hitting isn't the entirety of scoring runs, we also look at a player's Baserunning Runs. BRR accounts for the value of a player's ability to steal bases, of course, but also accounts for his ability to go first to third on a single, or advance on