Evan Brunell’s 2010 MLB Predictions: Does Boston win it?

As the advent of spring training games are upon us, I thought I’d kick off everyone’s favorite little exercise by providing my own personal predictions as to how I think the season will shake out. Now, before I do so, a word of caution: predictions can change daily based on events. Heck, my predictions change multiple times a week. But I’ve gotta make predictions at some point, right? Point being, I might disagree with my own predictions a week from now. Most of the time, these kind of predictions are an exercise in fallacy, but it’s not going to stop me from trying.

I don’t know why I made things harder on myself, but I set out to present an exact record. This means I had to go into a spreadsheet and make sure all the wins and losses totaled the correct amount of games while also balancing out to a .500 record. Took me a while, but dadgum it, I did it. One thing I did not control for was the unbalanced schedule (in a total record sense), but I already strained my tenuous math skills, so I wasn’t about to complicate it further.

Click “read more” or the headline to find my predictions.

The early returns on SIERA

For those not following the sabermetric updates Baseball Prospectus has attempted to create a new pitching statistic that improves on all those before it. This new stat is called SIERA or Skill-Interactive Earned Run Average. This takes the work of Nate Silver who created QERA to attempt to fix the combined issues in FIP and xFIP. So far the sabermetric community has put in lots of work reviewing, but what are the early returns?

Matt Schwartz and Eric Seidman are the main authors on this work and attempt to describe first why this new stat is needed. The biggest reason is that while FIP, xFIP and QERA are all very instructional they do have a problem. That problem lays in a potential weighting of the three factors pitchers control strike outs, walks and groundball rate. In this case QERA is the worst for that failing as stated here:

Verducci effect uses more circumstantial evidence

I have always been critical of the “Verducci Effect” or “Year After Effect” as I have yet to see the study that proves its existence. Now that it’s February again, Tom Verducci has released his top ten high-risk pitchers based on the “Verducci Eeffect”. As I was reading the article I became a bit upset by his defensive nature and use of circumstantial evidence to prove his point. I am a scientist in drug discovery and if I ever used his “evidence” to prove the efficacy of a compound I would be laughed out of a job or selling Homeopathic medicine.

So, what actually is the Verducci Effect? The general idea is a pitcher under the age of 25 who increases his number of innings by more than 30 from his highest total is at risk of injury in following years. On the surfacem the theory seems plausible; with proper evidence and data we could formulate a study to allow the theory to be critized and able to stand behind on its own merits.

My first criticism is that Verducci allows the evidence to not just be injuries, which are already very common among pitchers under 25, but also uses decreased performance as a proof of the theory. It’s even more maddening that he uses ERA to prove this decrease in skills. Being a reader of Fire Brand I’m sure you know ERA season by season is not a very accurate measure of a pitchers skill, as the eventual ERA value assigned per year isn’t solely dependent upon the pitcher’s performance. Numerous factors outside the pitcher’s control have a great affect on ERA.

Interview at Mets Paradise

Last week I answered some questions for Scott Wallace at Mets Paradise. You can check them out today. There was some good questions about the roster and a few on front office and the farm system. Of course there was also the obligatory question about Jason Bay and why the Red Sox let him go. With the Mets looking like a .500 team this year I’m glad he didn’t ask me for more thoughts on them.

Ignoring conventional wisdom

Since the introduction of Sabermetrics many concepts and terms have started to enter the main stream. OBP is now a regular on the NESN broadcast and OPS is often a common term in any presentation. That has not lead to a change in much of the conventional wisdom that we have started to be seen as not true. Just watch a few minutes of the ESPN Wednesday night game and by the third time you hear Joe Morgan call for a bunt you’ll know what I’m talking about.

One common misconception to me that would make player analysis much better is the understanding of streaks and slumps. To put it quite bluntly there is no such thing as a streak or a slump. There may be peaks and valleys in any given season, but that doesn’t mean your doing anything different.

Bill James wrote about this in one of his earlier papers Understanding the Fog. He said that there was no hot or cold streaks, but simply a cluster of events that made it appear to be on or the other. The point was the placement of them was completely random.

Jason Bay the designated hitter

There has been talk that Jason Bay has come back to the Red Sox asking if they could resign him. Obviously there are a ton of problems with resigning him, but that isn’t what I wanted to discuss here today. There are a few of things to take into account in a move like that.

The first is when we discuss designated hitters we are talking about someone who has no need for defensive value so his level of “average” and “replacement” is very different. This has been articulated many times by Tom Tango, but replacement level at DH is actually average. This should make sense as you could find someone with enough of a bat to hit, but often has poor defensive skills.

This effect is why the DH has such a large positional adjustment at -17.5. This is why a league average DH is a much better hitter than the league average player. You can also see how poor a defender needs to be before they would be better at DH.

The Red Sox’s Christmas List

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Holidays to everyone!

While I celebrate both Christmas and Hannukah, there’s no denying the holiday that stops America in its tracks — that’s Christmas. That’s why I’ve chosen Christmas as the holiday of choice to reveal certain Red Sox personnel’s holiday gift lists that were acquired in some unseemly ways. And away we go…

D.J. Short: Without Orange-and-Blue Colored Glasses

D.J. Short is a writer for Rotoworld and NBC Sports’ Circling the Bases. He is one of the original contributors to MetsBlog.

Neither the Red Sox nor the Mets announced a significant signing or trade during the winter meetings, but the latter made some ripples on Thursday by tendering contract offers to free agents Bengie Molina and Jason Bay. Most importantly for the purposes of this space, the proposal to Bay, according to various reports, is worth more than Boston’s $60 million offer, but less than $65 million. With season ticket renewals lagging in Queens, the offer was met with immediate skepticism, as fairly or unfairly, the Wilpon’s can’t shake the public perception of failing to go the extra mile for their fans.

I’m not claiming that Epstein and his staff are smarter than Minaya and his, but their public comments and respective actions don’t leave much room for doubt.

New Poll Question: Which reclamation project is the best investment for the Sox this offseason?

It’s a gamble, but which reclamation project is the best investment for the Sox this offseason?

* Justin Duchscherer
* Kelvim Escobar
* Ben Sheets

Arbitration and it’s impact on the Red Sox

The arbitration tender deadline has come and gone, and unsurprisingly, many players were not tendered arbitration contracts they had the right to accept or reject.

Also unsurprisingly, Boston offered arbitration to its two eligible players: Jason Bay and Billy Wagner. Let’s run through the implications for offering arbitration to the two, and then take a look at players who’s possible Boston future was impacted by their club’s decision.