Over at The Cub Contrarian, Kyle used an estimated WAR for players to get a team win total. I thought I'd do the same thing, but I'm going to do it two ways: projections and my wild ass guesses.
Wild Ass Guess
Catchers: Welington Castillo (1.0), Dioner Navarro (negative infinity)
I could easily see Castillo being a 2 WAR player, but I'm not buying it. I could also see him being replacement level, but I think he'll end up adding some value, but not a whole lot. Dioner Navarro is a waste of a roster spot and perhaps the most overpaid player in baseball history in that he's earning infinitely more than he deserves to be paid.
1st Base: Anthony Rizzo (3.0) backups (0.0)
I think Rizzo is a very good young player, but I don't believe he's a future superstar. I think he'll make some all-star teams and provide a lot of value while being paid little. That sounds like what the Cubs need.
2nd Base: Darwin Barney (2.5), backups (0.0)
Barney isn't much of a hitter, but he's a fantastic fielder. Put him in the 8th spot (9th would be better if the pitcher wasn't batting) and let him do his thing with the glove.
3rd Base: Ian Stewart/Luis Valbuena (1.0), Josh Vitters (can't count that low)
Don't say I'm not an optimistic person because I just predicted that this horrible duo would actually provide positive value. Not much and I'm inclined to go with replacement level, but I'm just too optimistic a person for that nonsense.
Shortstop: Starlin Castro (3.5), backups (hopefully there aren't any)
Like Rizzo, I think Castro is a very good young player, but future superstar probably isn't what he'll become. Coming off his worst offensive season he'll be trying his hardest. Hopefully he can take some more pitches and walk more. If he can do that, he could become a very good hitter. As it is now, he's a bit better than average at the plate. Defense is still a big question mark.
Left Field: Alfonso Soriano (1.5)
Soriano had a pretty good season last year, but I think we'll see him drop back down this year.
Center Field: David DeJesus (1.0)
I think DeJesus declines at the plate and I don't expect much out of him in CF either.
Right Field: Nate something or other (0.5)
I just don't think Nate is very good.
Other backups (0)
I don't ever expect much of anything out of the backups. Their job is to basically hold the job down a day here and a day there. Inconsistent playing time makes it worthless to try and predict what these guys will do in my opinion.
Rotation: Jeff Samardzija (2.5), Matt Garza (2.0), Edwin Jackson (2.5), Scott Baker (1.0), Scott Feldman (0.0), Others (1.0)
I don't think Feldman will be in the rotation long. He's not all that good. The top 3 aren't anything special, but they're not bad either. Baker will probably have a worse year than projected due to returning from TJS, but he could still provide some positive value
Bullpen: (2.0)
Like the bench, I find it useless to try and predict what you're going to get from a reliever in such a small sample. I do think we'll see Carlos Marmol have a better year than last year before being traded near the deadline. I have no clue what to expect from Kyuji Fujikawa. Shawn Camp is OK and so is James Russell. As long as Rafael Dolis doesn't actually close games this year, I'll consider the bullpen outstanding.
Total: 24.5 WAR
Replacement level is generally thought to be a .300 winning percentage, which is equal to 48.6 wins over 162 games. Let's get started.
So my wild ass guess is that the Cubs win 73 games. Kyle on The Cub Contrarion got 80-82, but he was using a .330 replacement level team and was even more optimistic than the optimistic me.
Projections (CAIRO)
In table format…
| Player | oWAR | pWAR | Fld | WAR |
| Anthony Rizzo | 1.7 | 1 | 1.8 | |
| Darwin Barney | 0.3 | 9 | 1.2 | |
| Luis Valbuena | 1.0 | 0 | 1.0 | |
| Ian Stewart | 0.6 | -4 | 0.2 | |
| Starlin Castro | 2.5 | -4 | 2.1 | |
| Alfonso Soriano | 0.9 | -2 | 0.7 | |
| David DeJesus | 0.9 | -2 | 0.7 | |
| Nate Schierholtz | 0.6 | -1 | 0.5 | |
| Backups | 2.0 | 2.0 | ||
| Jeff Samardzija | *1.5 | *3.1 | ||
| Matt Garza | 2.6 | 2.6 | ||
| Edwin Jackson | 2.8 | 2.8 | ||
| Scott Baker | *0.2 | *1.6 | ||
| Scott Feldman | 1.1 | 1.1 | ||
| Bullpen | 2 | 2.0 | ||
| Total | 23.4 |
CAIRO only projected 30 innings for Scott Baker so I used the newly released ZiPS projection of 1.6 instead. For Samardzija, CAIRO was still projecting some relief appearances since he'd been a reliever in 2011 so I also used the 3.1 ZiPS projection.
The projections version (better than my wild ass guesses) makes the Cubs a 72 win team.
Comments
Watch what you say about our MVP, sir.
mikeakaleroyQuote Reply
I just don’t even…
http://mlb.mlb.com/fancave/blog.jsp?content=article&content_id=40833748#fbid=d-Fo03jwMNE
mikeakaleroyQuote Reply
dmick89 wrote:
Not sure if I did this right, but looking at players who played the majority of their games at DH. Out of this, only 5 players had more than 600 PA’s and another 3 had more than 500. The remaining had less than 400. The Position is in order from most games played at that position to least, where a $D represents more than 2/3rds of the games played and a /(position #) represents less than 10 games played there.
Name PA AB Pos
Billy Butler 679 614 $D3
Michael Young 651 611 D354/6
Adam Dunn* 649 539 D3/7
Edwin Encarnacion 644 542 D3/75
Delmon Young 608 574 $D7
Chris Davis* 562 515 D397/1
Jesus Montero 553 515 D2
Kendrys Morales# 522 484 D3
David Ortiz* 383 324 D/3
John Jaso* 361 294 D2
Luke Scott* 344 314 D/3
Jonny Gomes 333 279 D7/9
Travis Hafner* 263 219 D
Ben Francisco 117 107 D97
Jim Thome* 115 101 D
Hideki Matsui* 103 95 D/79
Nick Johnson* 102 87 D/3
WaLiQuote Reply
aside: http://obstructedview.net/projections/2013-cubs-zips-projections.html
dmick89Quote Reply
@ WaLi:
I’m not saying that every DH has 600 to 700 plate appearances per season. I’m saying that position has that many plate appearances. Depending on lineup spot, the DH will have just as many plate appearances as the 1B, C, SS and every other position because the DH must bat each time through the order.
Teams in the last few years have gone away from having one set DH and have instead used the position more and more frequently so that they can give another player a day off in the field. That’s good and it makes the DH that much more appealing. Now you can go to AL baseball and if a player has a day off on the field, it’s much more likely he’ll still be in the lineup. That’s good for the fans and it’s good for the game.
dmick89Quote Reply
@ dmick89:
Gotcha. I can agree with those points. I’m just wondering if the arguement that the “MLBPA will never agree to losing 15 high salary jobs” is truely justified. Maybe, but I’m not sure that the DH increases the overall salary in the MLB.
WaLiQuote Reply
dmick89 wrote:
It’s only 18? I could have sworn that the new interleague had teams playing a series with every team in the other league, since they were getting rid of the whole “designated rivals” thing.
BerseliusQuote Reply
@ WaLi:
As baseball teams in the AL move towards using players already on the roster as the DH rather than signing one, the salaries won’t be any different. However, the fact you still have some getting 500+ plate appearances means there definitely is additional money. Furthermore, the MLBPA would never agree to it because it cuts the job of 15 every day player. Remove the DH and 15 position players lose their jobs. Most of those will be older players and those are the ones who basically run the union.
dmick89Quote Reply
@ Berselius:
I think so, but I don’t really know. I thought I read that and I’m too lazy to look at the schedule.
dmick89Quote Reply
I just googled and it appears it’s between 18 and 20 games. So there’s not much difference.
dmick89Quote Reply
All looks pretty reasonable. If we’re using a 49-win replacement level, then I think 6.5 wins out of Rizzo and Castro is very pessimistic.
But then again, you gave a positive WAR projection to Ian Stewart, which is something I will never, ever, ever do.
KyleQuote Reply
I think I called 105 losses before any of their FA moves. Since the pitching isn’t completely shitty and it seems more likely that Garza will be around all year. I still think somebody will be traded and now I think it will be Samardzija, plus Soriano will be gone at some point too. The offense is already bad and will be putrid after he goes.
So I’ll backtrack on my early prediction that they’ll be worse this year and stick with holding pretty much steady at 64-98. A slight improvement, but not by much.
Aisle424Quote Reply
(dying laughing)
WaLiQuote Reply
@ Aisle424:
Aisley’s 2013 Cubs:
Suburban kidQuote Reply
@ Kyle:
Of the available projections (Bill James, ZiPS, CAIRO) so far, I think 6.5 between those 2 is right about average. If you add GURU into the mix, I think I’m actually a bit optimistic for those two.
Take Rizzo last year for example. In over half a season of playing time, he had 2.2 rWAR, 1.8 fWAR and 1.1 WARP. That’s a 1.7 average. While I think 2011 shouldn’t be given much weight, it can’t be ignored. It happened so it’s part of what we know about Rizzo. I’m even willing to ignore the traditional weighting of seasons and give it something like 15%. I think I still come out optimistic on him.
Castro? There’s a lot of room for improvement and he’s at an age where it could happen quickly, but I think he’s established himself at this point and we won’t see tremendous improvement. A player most improves between 18 and 21 years old. After that it’s gradual and fairly small. His average WAR last year was about 3.4.
I tried to round things to the nearest half win. If I was being more precise I’d probably bet closer to 3.7 for Castro and 2.9 for Rizzo. Both of those are very good numbers. Rizzo’s especially relative to what he’s being paid (league minimum).
I’m not saying I’m right. I have no idea. I just think I can reasonably argue why I believe the numbers will be where they are.
dmick89Quote Reply
Aisle424 wrote:
Yeah, player trades is what can really undo this team. I think Garza will definitely be traded miseason. I also think Soriano, Marmol and DeJesus will be gone. Wouldn’t be surprised to see Scott Baker dealt if he’s healthy. I can easily see 100 losses out of this group. They wouldn’t have to get too unlucky for that to happen. I think they’ll probably avoid the century mark, but it’s not because they’re a good team.
dmick89Quote Reply
It’s also important to note that I’d be lying if I said that my predictions haven’t been influenced by projections. I did my best to keep that knowledge out of it, but those projections have an impact on the opinions that I have for players.
Last year we did the over/under projections thingy that GW suggested and we’ll do it again. I tried to do it more like that, but already knowing the projections definitely affected my wild ass guesses.
dmick89Quote Reply
Thinking of highjacking this idea in the near future if you don’t mind.
MylesQuote Reply
@ Myles:
Nope. I hijacked Kyle’s idea since I don’t have much confidence in collecting the average of the projections and creating the expected win percentage that way. Things aren’t like they were a few years ago when that stuff was fun.
dmick89Quote Reply
aside: http://obstructedview.net/major-league-baseball/the-worst-first-ballot-hall-of-famers-vs-the-best-ones-not-make-a-2nd-ballot.html
dmick89Quote Reply
I can see Rant running with this Cubs.com mailbag question.
mikeakaleroyQuote Reply
But then where does Vogelbach play? He’s the 3B of the future!
MylesQuote Reply
mikeakaleroy wrote:
I think the Cubs should move him to SS so they can score even more runs!
dmick89Quote Reply
@ dmick89:
Better yet, he should pitch so that we can finally get some run production out of the 9 hole!
mikeakaleroyQuote Reply
i opened this article three times before I remembered to read it. Kind of depressing.
joshQuote Reply
@ josh:
Good morning, Josh.
mikeakaleroyQuote Reply
dmick89 wrote:
I just looked through the Cubs schedule, and they only play 17 interleague games. Several of them are two-game series, which are kind of annoying.
BerseliusQuote Reply
@ Berselius:
It was apparently the best way MLB could figure to squeeze in that one interleague series per period and make the rest of the schedule work. With even leagues and even divisions it seemed that every team has the same in-division slate, in-league slate and the same number of interleague matchups. I agree that the two-game series are annoying but they do seem to create random off-days that could be useful for rotation rest etc.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
My wild-ass optimistic guess was 75 wins.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
@ Berselius:
All 2-game series should be banned. They’re not even a series.
dmick89Quote Reply
new shit: http://obstructedview.net/major-league-baseball/poll-dh-or-8-man-lineup.html
dmick89Quote Reply