FanPost

WAR Projections 2011 Colorado Rockies (Part 2)



Some of you may remember my FanPost from November, where I converted Bill James' 2011 Rockies projections to WAR values. However, given that several other projection systems have now released their data, I thought it was time to take a new crack at projecting the Rockies 2011 offense.

Last time I ran these projections, I didn't park-adjust the wOBA values. Given the "LOLCOORZ Effect," that was a major oversight. Also, at that time, there hadn't been the blockbuster trade for Jose Celestino Lopez or the signing of FA Ty "Chief Wiggumton" Wigginton. I included their projections and park-adjusted appropriately.

For those of you who haven't taken the WARpath yet, I recommend that you take a gander at our very own Jeff Aberle's fantastic primer on position player WAR: "WAR Lords of the Diamond (Position Players)"

For the projections, I used Bill James (again), Tom Tango's Marcels, Dan Szymborski's ZiPS, RotoChamp, and Fangraphs' FANS.

Thanks to Andrew Fisher's excellent knowledge of the online SABR world, he was able to link me to these park factors by Patriot. When park-adjusting, I made the rough assumption that half of the PA's had the home park factor, and that the other half had a neutral park factor. This isn't exact, given that higher run environments (Coors Field) also inflate the number of PA's compared to a neutral park, so we would expect more PA's at home than away. Furthermore, the aggregate road park factor isn't always neutral, but it would be nearly impossible to project the number of PA's at each park and then weight those park factors. It's just a shame that the factors were already in that form, so I doubly weighted the neutral park factor. Furthermore, the use of Patriot's factors don't mesh with most projection systems. Thus, every thing is screwed up. I adjusted the rest of the post to reflect the changes.

I showed the 2010 Rockies wOBA and Batting WAR values for reference.

So, without further babble and blather, your 2011 Colorado Rockies Position Player WAR Projections:

Ta-Da!

Observations:

  • Every single projection system sees at least some overall improvement next year. Bill "Optimist" James loves the Rockies, and Marcels (the Monkey) is a little more conservative. Just kidding. Everyone except Bill James and Fans sees a downturn. Completely purple-tinted are the TEAM FANS projections, which see the Rockies as having the best hitting since the 2001 Mariners (of 116 win fame.) ZiPS and RotoChamp find the happy middle ground.
  • 2B is projected at around 2 WAR to be worth next to nothing, except ZiPS went crazy and said it would be worth twice that slightly more than nothing.
  • Poor Todd Helton. He gets no love from anyone, even his own fans.(At least I wasn't wrong here)
  • Chris Iannetta is generally well-liked isn't completely hated (from a rebound standpoint.)
  • Troy Tulowitzki ranges from merely very good (Marcels) to elite very good (RotoChamp) to demigod (TEAM FANS.)
  • Carlos Gonzalez is treated fairly well, at around 4.5 WAR eaten alive by BABIPs. More than enough to justify his contract extension.

Overall, it seems like the projections agree with what the Rockies did this offseason: add depth and allow the young hitters to improve/BABIP's to normalize I should just leave the projections to those who do it for money. I would guess that the ZiPS projections probably are the best single guess for next season. With a few breaks and better health, the Rockies look primed to make a serious run at the NL West in 2011.

(Thanks to Heltonfan who discovered the fundamental undoings of this exercise.)

Eat. Drink. Be Merry. But the above FanPost does not necessarily reflect the attitudes, opinions, or views of Purple Row's staff (unless, of course, it's written by the staff [and even then, it still might not]).