Same drill as before. Pitchers are a lot harder to judge. Not only are they more variable, but the formula for converting what they do into wins is a lot trickier.
I'm not going to attempt to break down the bullpen as there's far too many players involved so I grouped them by basic roles instead and collect the players in my head around what I figure their talent is. For instance here I have two middle reliever (MR) roles, one at a 1 WAR/150 and one at 0.5. In that first group goes the Dan Cortes / Shawn Kelley / Josh Lueke types who I expect to be good. In the latter group is the pitchers who get promoted out of the long reliever group because they've improved in 2011.
The chart is a little different this time but the same concept. Instead of games, it's innings and instead of WAR per 162 games, it's WAR per 150 innings thrown. Also included is the same poll. I'd like to add that if you vote for either the too high or too low option, I'd appreciate a comment as to why.
For reference, in 2010 the Mariner rotation earned 13.4 WAR and the bullpen -0.4. 12.4 rotational WAR would have ranked 17th (MLB) and 8th (AL) in 2010. 1.1 bullpen WAR would have ranked 25th (MLB) and 11th (AL) in 2010.
I might be more bearish on Jason Vargas than others, but I see a lot of his 2010 success tied up in preventing home runs. I think he regresses to between 2009 and 2010 levels of performance.
1 recs | 38 comments
Looks about right to me except Vargas seems low
Not overly so, I just see him as a better pitcher than Fister, whom you gave a higher WAR to
BaronVonBullshit - December 23, 2010
I'm a little surprised by that too
Also, the bullpen is so variable that it’s hard to say. But no matter who you stick in there, those projections could be reasonable.
Fuckmikereilly - December 23, 2010
Why do you have Fister pitching less than Vargas?
thehemogoblin - December 23, 2010
Fragility. Fister missed time in 2010
Matthew - December 23, 2010
Well this year Fister went on the DL for a fatigued arm if I remember correctly
I could see the team being more cautious on how deep they let him into games
BaronVonBullshit - December 23, 2010
So with these projections M's are projected for ~80 wins?
Is that how it works?
carstensm - December 23, 2010
I was going to say too high, but I think the bullpen will be a little closer to 2.
lailaihei - December 23, 2010
I think Pineda makes the team out of Spring Training
And throws closer to 150-170 innings before getting shut down
Flamefox111 - December 23, 2010
Between Pineda/Smoak/Ackley/Moore/Saunders, there's so much upside.
I’m loving it. If two of the five break out we could be an above .500 team. Sweet.
BigR - December 23, 2010
Pineda maybe a bit low
His Tacoma ERA is alarmingly high, especially after clearly dominating all other minor-league levels. But all of his other stats—including WHIP and K/9—fit nicely with his career totals. I have to assume that the number of runs allowed during the relatively small sample of innings do not indicate his efficacy. Also, his runs allowed and earned runs allowed are exactly the same, meaning he pitched through errors, which can be a problem in the minors.
stumptown sooner - December 23, 2010
I think he gave up a lot more home runs in Tacoma, which inflated his ERA.
kennerdoloman - December 23, 2010
Does Fangraphs have a "surrounding errors" stat for pitchers?
I’m out, can’t easily check.
THolt - December 23, 2010 via mobile
Does Fangraphs have a "surrounding errors" stat for pitchers?
I’m out, can’t easily check.
THolt - December 23, 2010 via mobile
Feels a tad low to me
-The mix of 200 IP for MR feels like more innings will go to the good guys and less to the slop guys… 100 for each batch feels low. I’m thinking 1.2 or 1.3 WAR total.
-Vargas feels low. I’d slot him in the mid-to-high 1’s for W/150, and a 2ish WAR.
seattlecougar - December 23, 2010
I thought these were very fair
A lot of the times I think people are over optimistic when projecting pitchers but I think you did a good job of intelligently regressing guys stats and coming up with reasonable playing times. Some people think the bullpen projections might be a little low but I’d expect a couple of guys in our pen to bomb and be below replacement level.
Edgar for Pres - December 23, 2010
This is why I thought that you were very close to right in you projections.
TrustBaseball - December 24, 2010
Erik Bedard's 75 IP and 1.3 WAR.
Is this about what you expect, or are you hedging between Erik being healthy for 2011 versus another injury-plagued season for him?
katal - December 23, 2010
I believe that's his average of all possible outcomes
Edgar for Pres - December 23, 2010
I think the bullpen is scored too low.
I think the young live arms we should go with this year should come in closer to the 2.7 WAR from two years ago than the has been or never was dead arms we ran out so often last year. I realize predicting bull pens is a Wild Ass Guess, but I think you should guess a little wilder.
Droid Rage - December 23, 2010
Agreed- last year's bullpen blew. I like 2011's possibilities, especially if they don't puss out and actually call up Leuke.
RustyJohn - December 24, 2010
Seems close
I’d see Vargas a little bit higher. Bedard is hard to project but I don’t see him putting up that 1.3 WAR number. I’d expect to see either a ~2.5-3ish WAR from a healthy Bedard or somewhere around 0-1 if he’s not. I’d also hope that the bullpen would produce more with the combination of Leuke/Cortes/League but they’re all young so I’m probably being too optimistic.
Is it unrealistic to to see League as a potential breakout 1.5-2 WAR reliever if he starts using the splitter more this year?
cedarA - December 23, 2010
It's easy to forget how good Felix is
until you try to place him in the context of a capable rotation and how high his WAR really is. Probably something everyone’s thought already but it frequently hits me. Consistently surprisingly amazing.
tsunamijesus - December 23, 2010
I say too high...
I look at everyone in the rotation after Felix and see an RRS meltdown. PTSD.
diderot - December 23, 2010
These are probably pretty close
To me, these look a lot more realistic overall than the hitters’ projections did. You have Hernandez too high, for sure – pitchers that performed as well as he did last season rarely maintain such a high level next year, although he will still be good (I’d say 5 WAR, although I’m no less prone to biases than anyone else). You’re probably too bearish on the bullpen, actually, although it certainly won’t be worth eight wins or something; two or three WAR seems reasonable. The remainder of the starting rotation, at least as a whole, seems pretty accurate. I’m definitely curious to see what ZiPS and other systems have to say, though.
austinh - December 23, 2010
Felix was slightly worse last year than he was the year before.
It’s not like this was an outlier/
Aaron Campeau - December 24, 2010
That doesn't mean that we can still expect him to repeat this year
Even though this year was not an outlier, he nevertheless is likely to perform worse this year than last – it’s just too unlikely that 6+ WAR is his true talent level, as we don’t really have the many years of data that we would need to support such an assertion. You also have to lower the projection somewhat for the risk of injury that any pitcher carries.
austinh - December 24, 2010
Averaging 6 WAR per year would equal 18 WAR over three years.
Pitchers who have 18 or more WAR over the past three years:
-Halladay
-Lee
-Lincecum
-Greinke
-Sabathia
-Verlander
Given that Felix’s current true talent level most certainly lies among these pitchers, it is more than reasonable to project him at 6 WAR.
Matt Erickson - December 26, 2010
No way the bullpen is as awful as last year.
So too low.
Jack Swan - December 24, 2010
Felix too high but about right overall
You’re predicting 225 IP and 6,0 WAR. That would be a third consecutive Cy Young caliber season. While that is certainly possible, I’d be a little less optimistic and say about 200 IP and 5,0 WAR.
vj - December 24, 2010
too low
But I understand the logic behind it.
Felix is about right, in line with his last two years. Not optimistic though.
Vargas is too low. Preventing hrs is what safeco is for.
Bedard’s w/150 is a shade low, but you’d be run out of town for suggesting more.
Fister and Pineda seem about right but their innings projections are conservative.
Overall a little low and a little conservative IMO.
vertigoman - December 24, 2010
After contemplating the amount of time I spend analyzing pitchers, and the quality of that analysis
I believe I will defer to your expertise
Kermit. - December 24, 2010
These projections show the importance of adding another starter
Combining the pitching and hitting projections, the M’s are looking like an 81-82 win team. It also looks like we could improve the most by removing French and Pauley’s SP innings and replacing them with a quality starter. So trading Aardsma’s salary for anything becomes huge, because then we could offer 12 million/2 years for someone like Francis. Another starter could greatly improve our playoff odds.
silverbook - December 24, 2010
PLAYOFFS BITCHES
Matt Erickson - December 26, 2010
I really don't want to give a multi-year deal to Jeff Francis unless it's absurdly cheap and Luke French just needs to throw his damn slider and he'd be a decent back of the rotation option
seattlebruin - December 29, 2010
I like these projections as well
I think Felix might be a bit too high considering that a lot of his value is locked up in IP. We might expect that to be lower due to injury and the Mariners deciding to protect his arm if he doesn’t compete for the Cy Young again. But based on what Felix has done the last 2 seasons, it’s not unreasonable to expect a 6 WAR.
I think Vargas is reasonable as well, although I am curious as to whether or not his IFFB% is a repeatable skill, since that could suppress his HR/FB rate and thus overly inflate his xFIP. If Vargas falls into the category of an extreme flyball pitcher with the ability to repeat higher than average IFFB%, then we’d expect slightly lower BABIP and HR/FB% than the league average. But I’m not sure that there’s a large enough and recent enough sample to assume that.
JLC - December 24, 2010
Almost forgot
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Pitcher/Hitter projection polls: people tend to think that the hitting his too optimistic and the pitching too pessimistic. I’d suspect a lot of that is a result of watching the 2010 Mariners. It’s interesting to see how that “bias” of our recent memory affects our projections for 2011.
JLC - December 24, 2010
Seems a mite high to me since Bedard is included.
Otherwise it looks fine to me.
I think at the start of 2010 people tended to overestimate (not the stat savvy people like Dave Cameron, Matthew and Jeff) how good or not-bad our offense would be because we were lucky to some extent in 2009.
Now it is probably the opposite. It will be easy for folks to underestimate the offense for 2011 (unlike Matthew who gave a 19.9 WAR prediction) while overestimating the pitching.
Vargas and Fister probably overperformed in 2010 and we may be in for another bad surprise if we count on them too much in 2011.
NeighborTom2 - December 24, 2010
I guess the issue that I have with these is the split btwn starters and relievers
starter IP seems a bit low, and this may push the WAR total higher. Looks like the average starter IP last year was in the 95-1000 IP range, compared to the 870 you’ve got. This means we’ve got more reliever innings and fewer starter innings. Broadly, that would tend to push the total WAR projection down, as the M’s had a terrible pen the past few years, but in this case, I think it might make things a bit optimistic.
If we’ve got another 100 IP or so to allocate between David Pauley and the Chris Seddon/Yusmeiro Petits of the world, I think it’s highly likely that we’d end up with some negative WAR, like you’ve got for the bottom of the pen. Of course, taking innings away from the pen might cancel this out… but I’m not sure. The problem (as you alluded to) is that it’s essentially impossible to forecast the pen, especially the middle relievers. Dan Cortes could lay waste to the league or he could throw up a -1 WAR and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash at either result. All in all, I think the starter WAR is a bit high, the reliever WAR is basically dead on (for what that’s worth).
marc w - December 27, 2010
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