I realized that the first time I input the data in the spreadsheet, it didn’t take all the way, Brad Hawpe’s defense brings us down from the 86.8 number I originally input to 85. Ouch.

I’m not sure how we get all those DH plate appearances. DId you mean PH?

Although we should have about 36 DH plate appearances next year.

I also don’t think the assumption that Atkins would be traded works. We can’t project the effectiveness of a return on a trade if we don’t know what it is. The numbers would be highly altered if we receive an effective player.

It would probably be best to assume no trades.

How CHONE is calculated? the guys on Fangraphs surmise it’s just normalizing BABIP, but I don’t know.

I’ll admit that I barely understand any of the projections stuff (some of this is way over my head, and I haven’t really taken the time to really learn it), so I’m mostly looking at how you have the playing time divided. My question is how many PAs would any one player realistically have over the course of a season, assuming no injuries and a minimum of bench time? Looking at the total PAs for everyone, the person on there with the most is Spilborghs, with 700. Is that realistic? Is that because he’d be leading off, so he’d naturally get that much more? Or should we maybe throw a few more PAs to Gonzalez or even add in Podsednik?

than like 300PA for Fowler, and that’s my upper end.

I figure Spilborghs is a fulltime player, and having him batting leadoff or #2 for a majority of these PAs, I’d put him somewhere between 600-700PAs on the season. I don’t know anyone who’d supplant him in the lineup.

I’d put the 4th OF at like 250PA and the 5th at 175PA.

Barmes at about 400, Baker at 300

This thread will extend infinitely unless we break down exactly what we believe is going to happen (if our beliefs are shown to be completely off once the season starts, but the logic was sound, it can still be taken as a positive – after all, our beliefs can be wrong due to illogical managing decisions).

The Rockies have a few big messes that make this sort of task probably really trivial, but still really fun to do anyway. But every team has it’s share of messes so we’re not so different from any other club for the purposes of this exercise.

I think your projections for the bounceback season candidates are perfectly fine (maybe optimistic, but cautiously/reasonably so).

At 2b, Barmes is getting far and away the most time. Part of me thinks that Stewart might play there more because if Helton is back, Stewart will be bouncing between 3 positions or just benched (almost makes me want to see him in the minors instead of an MLB defensive position pinball). I’d rather see him in AAA than just benched. And Barmes figures to be somewhat poor offensively, so I see either Baker getting some more time, or (preferably) Stewart getting more time at 2b.

If Helton is back somewhere in April, Atkins should be playing 3b fulltime. He shouldn’t be bounced around or benched because he should be given every opportunity to boost his value for the trading (either with a hot start, or just simply not playing as poorly as he did last season). What this means is that Stewart shouldn’t really be playing much 3b if Helton is back and effective until and if Atkins is traded, thus really limiting Stewart to LF or 2b.

Having Atkins traded for prospects I think is a fine assumption here – since this entire task is based off assumption, I can’t really say why this assumption would be any more illogical than any other assumption, at best we would name this projection “Rockies 2009 season projection assuming Atkins is traded” as opposed to the same title minus the last part.

Also, how certain are we that Smith is the starting LF? I’m sold on Spilly in CF, and there’s no reason to move Hawpe, but although Smith is the logical choice to play LF, are we sure he is actually going to? It could make sense to platoon Stewart and Smith since while they’re both lefty, Stewart has shown a great ability to hit lefties – although that also seems like the type of move that could get in players’ head.

Okay, I think I’m done for now since it’s almost 2am and this post has gone on long enough. I would like to add a final point that with what I wrote above I’m not necessarily saying any of Rox Girl’s predictions should be changed, these are just some of the things I thought about that may or may not impact playing time distribution