Aisley's picks are forthcoming, he's busy performing up-to-the-minute analysis. 

Interesting things to note: 

There were no consensus division champions.

7 people chose 6 different WS champs; the only two-time selection was the Tigers. 

Verlander had 4 votes for Cy, Price had 3. Kershaw had 3 votes, Strasburg, Cain and Halladay one each.

The consensus (so far) playoff teams: Nationals, Dodgers, Tigers, Angels.

No MVP candidate had more than 3 votes (Trout). Longoria and Votto had 2.

Only Josh and Aisley has an NL team winning the WS.

Resident Optimist dmick89 is only second highest on the Cubs this year; AndCounting thinks the Cubs are winning 77 games!!!

The post Obstructed View Season Predictions appeared first on Obstructed View.

PECOTA percentiles are now available to subscribers.

Those of you new to BP, or to PECOTA, might wonder why we publish percentiles in addition to the weighted-mean projections for players, which we’ve already released. The answer is that forecasting is an inexact science; the future is not exactly what you'd call certain. The percentiles allow us to put a range of outcomes around a single-point forecast, to illustrate how uncertain the forecast is and what range of outcomes are most likely.

The percentiles, then, represent the spread of outcomes if we were to have a player go through the 2013 season thousands upon thousands of times. Imagine a bell curve, with the 50th percentile at the very peak. Twenty percent of the time, a player's results should fall in between the 40th and 60th percentiles—or 60 percent of the time, a player should perform at his 60th percentile or worse, while 40 percent of the time, he should play better.

The post PECOTA Percentiles are live appeared first on Obstructed View.

Steamer projects 2.4 WAR and ZiPS projects 3.3. You can see these yourself on Fangraphs. Let's just split the difference and go with 2.9.

Samardzija has 3 years of arbitrtation, including 2013, ahead of him. He settled for $2.64 million this year and we can estimate what he'll earn based on that.

• 2013: $2.64 million
• 2014: $5 million
• 2015: $10 million

I'm being generous here. I don't expect his contract will double each of the next two seasons, but I'm nothing if not generous. Matt Garza was a better pitcher than Samardzija entering arbitration and over his first 3 years he earned $18 million. The $17.6 million total over the next few seasons is close to the most he could make.

Samardzija is already 28 years old so he's at his peak. We'd typically take -0.5 WAR each year after this to get projections several years down the road. Because I'm generous, and optimistic, I'm only going to reduce it by 0.25 each of the next 3 years and then by -0.5 after that.

• 2013: 2.9 WAR
• 2014: 2.65
• 2015: 2.4
• 2017: 1.9
• 2018: 1.4
• Total: 11.25 WAR

A first year arbitration eligible player earns about 40% of his free agent value. The next year it's 60% and then the third year is 80%. Since we already know what he's earning in 2013 there's no reason to estimate his salary this season. I'm using a $5.5 million per win rate in 2013 and increasing by $0.5 million each year.

• 2013: $2.64 million
• 2014: $9.54
• 2015: $12.48
• 2016: $13.3
• 2017: $10.5
• Total: $48.5 million

Teams generally get a 10% discount on contracts 3 years or longer so that makes it a 5-year, $43.65 million contract.

However, there is no chance he's going to see an increase of nearly $7 million between 2013 and 2014. None. There's also no chance he'll finish the third year of arbitration with $12.5 million. 

Over 5 years Samardzija is probably worth between $35 and $40 million. Call it $37.5 million, but that doesn't factor in the additional risk the Cubs would be taking by extending a player already under contract for 3 more years. Teams who have done so have done it with a tremendous bonus in their favor. If they signed a 5/37.5 contract, there would be no bonus for the Cubs. 

So consider a 5-year, $37.5 million contract the upper limits of what Samardzija is worth at this point. Realistically, it's probably much closer to $30 million so good for the Cubs for not offering too much.

The post How much is Jeff Samardzija worth? appeared first on Obstructed View.

An awful lot has been written about Starlin Castro over his young career. It seems that most of this has been at the two extremes. We've heard and read countless times about how Castro is a future superstar. There have also been a lot of words spilled over what Castro can't do, some of that by myself.

While I do believe that Castro is and likely will be what you have all seen to this point in his career, there's no denying that he's a very good player. He more than earned the 7-year, $70 million contract that begins in 2013 and should easily be worth what he's being paid. He's a valuable player to any team and the Cubs are fortunate to have him for the next 7 years.

Castro has had 1912 plate appearances in his career. He doesn't turn 23 until next month. Here are the only players since 1980 that had more plate appearances than Castro through their age 22 season: Adrian Beltre (1918), Roberto Alomar (1959), Alex Rodriguez (2271), Edgar Renteria (2395) and Ken Griffey Jr. (2422). One of them is already in the HOF and two others should be.

Just behind Castro is Andruw Jones, Elvis Andrus, Ruben Sierra, Jason Heyward, Justin Upton and Miguel Cabrera.

Since 1980, only Griffey, A-Rod and Renteria have more hits than the 529 that Castro already has.

This isn't related to Castro who doesn't rank highly in home runs among these players, but I saw something that surprised me. A-Rod has the most home runs through age 22 of this group with 106. You might have guessed Griffey was next, but it's Giancarlo Stanton with 93. Oh yeah, Stanton has done that in 1498 plate appearances. Among players 22 and under since 1980, nobody has had the power that Stanton has shown so far. Albert Pujols has a higher slugging percentage, but Stanton has the highest ISO and he's done it in a pitcher's park. I didn't realize that.

Castro has been in the league a long time at this point in his career and the names around him are generally very good players.

2013 Cubs Projections

ZiPS is projecting 4 WAR in total while CAIRO is projecting 2.5. PECOTA projects 3.1.

Below are his percentile forecasts, but ignore the PA at the higher end. Castro is projected for so many plate appearances that the spreadsheet I'm using spits out an unrealistic number of PA.

Other 2013 Cubs projections

• Welington Castillo
• Dioner Navarro
• Steve Clevenger
• Anthony Rizzo
• Darwin Barney
• Ian Stewart
• Luis Valbuena

The post 2013 Cubs Projections: Starlin Castro appeared first on Obstructed View.

Junior Lake with 3.2 WAR? A .314 wOBA? 3rd highest WAR among position players? That's not even the strangest projection. Not even close.

That honor just might go to the .308 wOBA for Jorge Soler who hasn't played a game above low A. He didn't even play that many games in A ball.

2.1 WAR for Christian Villanueva and it's not even primarily from his defense? 2.8 WAR for Luis Valbuena?

I understand that the playing time for some of these players is way higher than they'll actually get, but even the rate stats are silly. So is the WAR.

That's the 2008 Cubs and those are the only players who had more than 0.7 fWAR.

I realize this isn't really an apples to apples comparison. The Oliver projections include more than 1 player at the same position (Castro-Lake, Valbuena-Villianueva, etc), but you get the point. Even the best offensive Cubs team I've seen in my life is barely better than the 2013 Cubs Oliver projections.

My first thought was that maybe they had everyone projected to be way better than they really are. That doesn't seem to be the case. Starlin Castro is projected by Oliver to have the 10th best WAR among position players. He's tied with Robinson Cano at 5.4. Joey Votto is only at 5.7 WAR.

The Reds' Billy Hamilton has just over 200 plate appearances above A ball. He's projected to be worth 4.4 WAR. I can buy the +20 runs fielding and baserunning for him that Oliver is projecting if he was to play a full season, but I don't buy he's going to be among the league leaders in WAR in his first season without a full season above A ball.

This isn't the first time I've wondered what the hell was wrong with the Oliver projections. Last year, early on, they had the Cubs winning 82 games in the 2012 season.

You can compare the 2013 Cubs Oliver projections to their Steamer projections.

The post What’s wrong with the 2013 Cubs Oliver projections? appeared first on Obstructed View.

I wrote a little bit about Ian Stewart a couple weeks ago when wrote about the four most likely to exceed expectations. Instead of rewriting what I already did, I'll just quote what I wrote then.

In 2003, Ian Stewart was picked in the 1st round by the Rockies (10th overall). After posting a .959 OPS in rookie league at the age of 18, Baseball America ranked him the top Rockies prospect, as well as ranking him 57th best in baseball.

The future only looked brighter for Stewart after the 2004 season in which he hit .319/.398/.594 in A ball at the age of 19. Baseball America rewarded him by ranking him the 4th best prospect in baseball. Only Joe Mauer, Felix Hernandez and Delmon Young were ranked higher in 2005.

Colorado hasn't had a hitter like Stewart in its system since Helton. Stewart punishes good fastballs and has the strength and hand speed to wait back and drive offspeed stuff. He has good plate coverage and learned to use the whole field during the season. He adjusted when SAL pitchers began throwing him junk, and did damage at both Asheville's cozy McCormick Field (.621 slugging percentage) and on the road (.568). Stewart has average speed, and he's a savvy and aggressive baserunner. While he fell short of his goal of a 30-30 season, he did steal 19 bases in 28 attempts. Defensively, he has an above-average arm. Along with his tools, Stewart has strong desire. He wants to be an all-star and a Gold Glove third baseman, and he's willing to do what it takes to get there. The Rockies rave about his work ethic and focus on team goals.

Stewart remained in Baseball America's top 50 propects each each year through 2008. He never fell off the map by performing poorly, but his OPS's the next three years in the low to mid .800s forced us to drop the high expectations earlier in his career.

His first three years a the big league level he had respectable wOBA's. The wRC+ was better than league average in his rookie season, but slightly below the following two years. He then hurt his wrist in 2011 and was horrible in nearly 150 plate appearances. He wasn't too good for the Cubs last season either.

He's now had surgery to fix the wrist and is reportedly healthy. We could easily see Stewart return to the .330-.340ish wOBA we saw before the injury. There's also the possibility of him even being better than that. He's always had tremendous talent and is an example of a highly ranked prospect who simply did not work out. Maybe the Cubs could get lucky.

CAIRO seems to think that he might be somewhat useful while ZiPS has him projected only slightly better than Alfredo Amezaga. He's projected to be average to slightly below average on defense and just slightly below average on the bases.

Here are his percentile forecasts.

I had said that it's fairly easy to see him having a wOBA in the .330 range and that would be hist 65th percentile. I would not expect it. I'm thinking something around .300, but who knows how it ends up?

I don't want to spend too much time on Luis Valbuena's 2013 Cubs projections because he may not even make the team. I did find it interesting that both CAIRO and ZiPS project Valbuena to be the better player.

To be fair, both PECOTA and Steamer project Ian Stewart to be better. I'd guess the average of their pojections if we included as many as possible would be about equal to one another. It would probably favor Stewart a bit, but not by much. Here are Valbuena's percentile forecasts.

It's kind of too bad that both of these guys hit right-handed. They'd probably make a pretty good platoon if one of them hit left-handed

Other 2013 Cubs projections

• Welington Castillo
• Dioner Navarro
• Steve Clevenger
• Anthony Rizzo
• Darwin Barney

The post 2013 Cubs Projections: Ian Stewart and Luis Valbuena appeared first on Obstructed View.

I'll quote SG's title here:

CAIRO 2013 v0.4 and Still Slightly Early and Somewhat Useless 2013 Projected MLB Standings

So don't put a whole lot of weight into them yet. Same with any other projections at this point.

The post 73 win Cubs appeared first on Obstructed View.

He did to some extent. He hit 7 home runs, which was 5 more than the previous season. He had a few more doubles too. His ISO was up from .078 in 2011 to .100 last year, but his overall slugging percentage remained the same. That's becasue his batting average took a hit last season.

Barney isn't much of a hitter. He had an 80 wRC+ in 2011 and last year it was just 75. He's not going to wow anyone with his bat and is best left in the 8th spot in the National League and if he's to play in the AL, the 9th spot.

He does do two things very well and those things are what make him valuable. It's his defense and baserunning that leads Jed Hoyer and other Cubs front office executives to talk about Darwin Barney, not as an afterthought, but as someone who is going to help build the Cubs into a contender.

And his defense is good. Really good.

In 2011 his UZR was 6.1 and it was 13 last year. That's a bit misleading. He didn't get much playing time in 2010 and if you add his +4 UZR to last year, you get a more similar 10.1. He played 1164.2 defensive innings in 2010 and 2011 combined and last year he played in 1270.1. UZR likes Darwin Barney a lot, but not as much as Baseball Reference's fielding.

BRef had him worth +7 in 2010 and 2011 (combined) and then a ridiculous 29 last year. Baseball Prospectus' FRAA had him worth 8.6 over 2010 and 2011 and 11.3 last year. It's safe to say there was something wrong in the way BRef was evaluating Barney's defense. Maybe it was the positioning. I don't really know, but it's very safe to say he wasn't worth 30 runs defensively last year. It's rather absurd to suggest it.

He's essentially been a +10 defender per season over his two full seasons (including 2010's small amount of playing time). That's a full win defensively, which he needs because of his bat.

He didn't only add value in that way though. He added more than 6 baserunning runs from 2010 to 2011 and added over 4 last year. He's adding nearly a win and a half in ways that his bat cannot.

It's not exactly exciting looking at his 2013 Cubs projections, but here they are anyway.

ZiPS projects +10 runs defensively and CAIRO projects an average defensive runs saved of +9 (13 DRS, 7 UZR and 8 ZR). We'll call it average of 10 because, as you know, I'm an optimist.

We can probably put him down for about 5 runs on the bases.

Offensively, he's worth about half a win, Add in the 10 runs defensively and 5 runs on the bases and you get about 2 WAR.

Below are his percentile forecasts using CAIRO.

Other 2013 Cubs projections

• Welington Castillo
• Dioner Navarro
• Steve Clevenger
• Anthony Rizzo

The post 2013 Cubs Projections: Darwin Barney appeared first on Obstructed View.

2013 PECOTA Projections for Cubs Batters

PECOTA is projecting the Cubs only score 664 runs so it's not a powerhouse offense or anything. Castro is expected to have the most value at 3.4 WARP and no one else, using the depth charts section of Baseball Prospectus, is projected with more than 1.9 WARP.

2013 PECOTA Projections for Cubs Pitchers

PECOTA loves Kyuji Fujikawa and still really likes Carlos Marmol, but there's still going to be a closer controversy there if both perform as PECOTA expects. As for Jeff Samardzija, I'd not put a whole lot of weight in these forecasts. He beat them all last year because it was clear he had improved. The projections are still weighting the seasons prior to 2012 in which he mostly sucked. PECOTA doesn't think much of Arodys Vizcaino.

PECOTA likes the Cubs pitching. Only the Reds in the NL Central are projected to allow fewer than the 706 runs the Cubs are projected to allow.

Overall, PECOTA is projecting the Cubs to finish in 5th place in the NL Central with 77 wins.

The post 2013 PECOTA Projections appeared first on Obstructed View.

For more than half a decade the Cubs got a .385 wOBA out of their 1st baseman. Derrek Lee was traded midseason in 2010, but from 2004 through 2010 he posted a .385 wOBA, put up a couple MVP caliber seasons, helped the Cubs to multiple playoffs and was generally one of the better 1st basemen in baseball. Lee wasn't a great player, but he was a very good ballplayer for the Cubs and not too surprisingly, they've yet to fill those big shoes.

The Cubs are hopeful that Anthony Rizzo can do it. In 2011 Rizzo showed that he was simply overmatched. In 368 plate appearances with the Cubs in 2013, he hit .349 with a 116 wRC+. Those aren't great numbers, but for someone his age they're awfully good. However, we can't just ignore 2011.

His career wOBA is .320, which is league average (99 wRC+). He hasn't been able to figure out left-handed pitching. He has only a .265 wOBA vs lefties over 140 plate appearances. That's 38% worse than league average (62 wRC+). This can't be blamed on an awful 2011 season. He was actually better vs lefties in 2011 than he was in 2012.

He's a good candidate to beat his projections below, but he also has a couple holes in his game that will need to be fixed in order to do so.

If Rizzo hits 31 home runs like ZiPS projects, I'm going to be thrilled.

There's a rather small sample available for Rizzo's defense, but CAIRO projects +1 run saved. My guess is that he's better than that defensively and it's only +1 due to the regression. I don't know for sure, but scouts seem to rave about his defense.

ZiPS projects 3.7 offensive WAR (oWAR) while CAIRO projects 1.7. If you're curious, the Steamer projections have the same exact .362 wOBA projection as ZiPS, but I'm not sure what the league average of either system is. It's clear CAIRO is weighting the minor league seasons less than ZiPS and Steamer. It also might be because they're weighting the most recent season differently. I'm not confident in either of the WAR projections. I'd be surprised if he's as good as the 4 WAR ZiPS is projecting and I'd be equally surprised if he's only worth around 1.8 WAR like CAIRO is projecting.

Using only his CAIRO projections, the percentile forecasts for Anthony Rizzo are below.

You can see from here that ZiPS and Steamer are more comparable to the 65th percentile forecast using CAIRO.

There's a lot we don't know about Rizzo. He started off really well in 2012, but then the pitchers made some adjustments. He struggled against lefties, which could prevent him from being as good as any of the projections.

Other 2013 Cubs projections

• Welington Castillo
• Dioner Navarro
• Steve Clevenger

The post 2013 Cubs projections: Anthony Rizzo appeared first on Obstructed View.