The stat-heads over at Beyond the Boxscore (SBN's sabermetrics blog) are embarking on an endeavor to project out the season for all 30 MLB teams. They've asked each team's fan community to come up with a projection, and they'll eventually put them all together and wacky fun will ensue. Anyhow, Ed asked me to "volunteer" to oversee a Federal Baseball effort to come up with a Nats projection--that's where you come in. Find out how to help us figure out the 2009 Nats' Wins Above Replacement (WAR) after the jump! (Did I use the possessive apostrophe correctly, Ed? Remember, I'm a numbers guy.)
So, here's the deal. The guys at BtB have developed a spreadsheet. You put in a list of players and how well you think they'll play, and it spits out how many Wins Above Replacement value (WAR) your team will have (that is, how much better would your team be than a roster of 25 Brad Wilkersons, or whatever his equivalent is at each position).
You job is to help me predict who's playing what position, how many PA they'll have (or how many IP for pitchers) and how well they'll do (OBP and SLG for position players, plus adjustements for fielding and baserunning; ERA and rotation spot/role for pitchers). We'll enter them in the on-line master spreadsheet (and by "we" I mean "me") where everyone can look at the numbers for debate, and other teams can look on our stats and despair (possibly the other way around).
Consider this your call to arms! (And stats!) What do you think the lineup and rotation are going to be? What's Willie Harris' OPS going to be next year, really? Will "Cool Hand" Lannan pitch 180 innings with a sub-4 ERA? Between now and the start of the season, I'll be bugging you to make predictions so we can put the "wisdom of the crowd" into our projection. I'll probably have something up in the next day or two that we can start spitballing over, but it'll be open to change as people make their arguments.
Keep in mind I'm open to suggestions on how to do the projections, as well as what the projections should be. There are a number of systems that project future performance. So far, I've looked at Marcels (which covers batting) and CHONE (which covers batting, fielding, and pitching). I figure what I'll do to create our projection is take some sort of weighted average of those projections with the vastly-superior wisdom from the Nats fans here.
To get the ball rolling, what do you think our starting lineup should be? Here's what I'm calling:
- Guuuuuzman (SS)
- AndyHands (2B)
- Zim! (3B)
- NJ (1B)
- SooperDooks (CF)
- Hammer (LF)
- AK (RF)
- Flores (C)
- Pitcher
PH: Young (also 1B), Milledge (also CF/RF), Belliard (also 2B), "General" Gonzalez (also SS), Harris (also 2B/SS/3B/LF/CF)
(Keep in mind the order isn't important, but who do you think the starters will be? Who do you think will be backing up at each position? Who'll get the most PH chances? If we don't come to a consensus, we can always split PA among players.)
