Projecting Giants Hitters with Marcel

by xanthan on Nov 18, 2008 8:56 AM PST

H/T to Baetown, who alerted me to the fact that these were out already.

I took the Marcel projections for Giants hitters and converted them into wOBA and Batting Runs scores. RV700 is just how many batting runs above average a player would add if he accrued 700 PA's in a season.

Marcel is a fairly simple projection system but it makes for some good talking points.

Pablo is projected to be our best hitter.
Rowand stays the same but gets a little boost because scoring in '09 is projected to be down
Ochoa and Bocock are still horrible
Gillaspie got a very favorable projection in Marcel, I was kinda interested to see that result. Though, it comes with a very low reliability score.
Talking about favorable projections, Burriss' projection looks really optimistic to me. It's pegging him to be an average hitter in '09. Marcel also had him hitting 5 HR's in his allotted plate appearances, so take that with a grain of salt.
Marcel also thinks Lewis will have pretty much the same season in '09 that he did in '08. His BABIP was knocked down the the .340 range, and his power slips a little, but he still posts an OBP in the area of .350

What do you guys think of these projections? I did some work on my site with these but I wanted to share them here as well.

Hooray for color-coded tables!

e: You can find the Marcel projections on FanGraphs on the player pages.

This FanPost is reader-generated, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of McCovey Chronicles. If the author uses filler to achieve the minimum word requirement, a moderator may edit the FanPost for his or her own amusement.

4 recs | Comment 42 comments

Story-email Email Printer Print

Comments

Thanks for posting these, Xanthan.

Proud adoptive parent of Tim Alderson.

by Anticon23 on Nov 18, 2008 9:13 AM PST 0 recs

I don't get it..

Are some hitters more like lava and some hitters more like grass than others?

The Basil Fawlty Moderating Strategy:
"We could run a nice blog here if we didn't have all these members getting in the way."

by WalrusMan on Nov 18, 2008 9:23 AM PST 0 recs

Lava = bad

Just like the tiles on the floor at the supermarket

Giants! Giants! HELP US GOD!

by j14 on Nov 18, 2008 9:37 AM PST up 0 recs

It would probably help to have the reliability scores listed too

Pablo’s can’t be that high I imagine since he’s got so few PA to work with. I do like the braa conversions though, do you have a link to the formula/how you did it? Thanks.

Can't get enough of the Oakland A's or Golden State Warriors? Visit Oaktown Awesomer's and Golden Stat Hoops

by iamawesomer on Nov 18, 2008 9:30 AM PST 0 recs

BRAA is:

(wOBA – League wOBA)/1.15 * PA’s

I used .338 for my league wOBA.

And on 2nd look, it looks like some of my wOBA numbers aren’t matching up. Some look overly high, I might have glitch in my spreadsheet somewhere, let me re-run things.

#1 JUDY STEFFES FAN
My favorite pie is (name of pie flavor)
Bay City Ball

by xanthan on Nov 18, 2008 9:40 AM PST up 0 recs

I just made a correction, I’m now using .332 as the league wOBA.

#1 JUDY STEFFES FAN
My favorite pie is (name of pie flavor)
Bay City Ball

by xanthan on Nov 18, 2008 10:28 AM PST up 0 recs

Tom Tango

has the full marcels at his site too. He’s the creator and caretaker of the Marcels (or the original one anyway. these projections are pretty simple to do).

Adopted Giant: Aaron King

Wearing the crown by 2011. Or at least the LOOGY hat

by baetown415 on Nov 18, 2008 9:33 AM PST 0 recs

though I guess the Marcels on fangraphs are easier to sort out

Adopted Giant: Aaron King

Wearing the crown by 2011. Or at least the LOOGY hat

by baetown415 on Nov 18, 2008 9:49 AM PST up 0 recs

Also

if Marcel doesn’t know a lot about a player (i.e. doesn’t have that much major league data on the player), then the player is likely to be projected close to an average batter. Tango explains it better on his site

Adopted Giant: Aaron King

Wearing the crown by 2011. Or at least the LOOGY hat

by baetown415 on Nov 18, 2008 9:36 AM PST 0 recs

Doesn’t Marcel ignore minor-league performance? That would explain the silly projections for Burriss and Gillaspie.

by Evan on Nov 18, 2008 10:37 AM PST up 0 recs

I also included reliability scores, Conor’s projection got a 3% rating, so take it with a grain of salt.

#1 JUDY STEFFES FAN
My favorite pie is (name of pie flavor)
Bay City Ball

by xanthan on Nov 18, 2008 10:40 AM PST up 0 recs

Interesting that Burriss>Frandsen.

by rotorueter on Nov 18, 2008 9:46 AM PST 0 recs

That doesn’t terribly surprise me. Frandsen doesn’t have an approach that tends to work in the majors: make a lot of contact with no power or discipline.

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized God doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and prayed for forgiveness. - Emo Philips

Neglectful father of David Quinowski

by marcello on Nov 18, 2008 10:39 AM PST up 0 recs

That's true

but I’m not sure how much it differentiates him from Burriss. In not terribly dissimilar number of minor league ABs (979 for KF, 820 for MB), Frandsen’s BB/AB was .06 and Burriss’ was .08. In the majors both upped their rates slightly, KF to .07 and MB to .095. Frandsen’s minor league IsoOBP was .075 to Burriss’ .062.

And of course Frandsen can’t even compare to Burriss’ stunning lack of power. Kevin had an XBH in 10% of his minor league ABs and 7% of his major league ABs, while Burriss had XBH in only 4% of his minor league ABs and 3% of his major league ABs (for stunning SLG% of .338 and .329). In fact, I’d say Burriss’ approach could be summarized as make lots of weak contact with little discipline, so again I’m not sure how that’s an improvement over Franny.

Get the hell out the way Bengie, Pablito's hit the show!

by Roger on Nov 18, 2008 12:25 PM PST up 0 recs

I’m not sure where your numbers are coming from, as I see different numbers for them. Burriss hasn’t had a BB% lower than 7% anywhere, except for ~60 ABs at Fresno last year. Frandsen’s BB%:

2005
A+: 7.8% in 335 PA
AA: 2.8% in 142 PA
AAA: 2.0% in 98 PA

2006
AAA: 3.7% in 327 PA
MLB: 2.9% in 102 PA

2007
AAA: 10.8% in 83 PA
MLB: 7.1% in 296 PA

His spike is 2007 is interesting, but I’m not going to assume that will continue going forward given his past. Obviously, Burriss has less power than Frandsen, but he has a better approach that isn’t almost entirely based on BA. Also, Burriss is 2.5 years younger.

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized God doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and prayed for forgiveness. - Emo Philips

Neglectful father of David Quinowski

by marcello on Nov 18, 2008 12:56 PM PST up 0 recs

Might just be my lack of formatting; as I didn’t suggest Burriss had a BB% lower than 7. I said it was 8 for his minor league career and 9.5% so far in the majors. So I suppose the question is how much you value the roughly 2% difference between Burriss and Frandsen’s career BB%, as neither are particularly OB machines.

And the other question regarding Frandsen is what you call his spike in ‘07. What’s interesting to me about that is that it corresponds quite neatly to his early pro experience (9% in 109 in Salem Keizer, 7.8% in 335 PA in A ball) before he began his rapid promotions. It could well be that we’re talking about a context related drop in the second half of ’05 and ’06, more than a spike in ’07.

And lastly, watching Burriss at both the minor league and major league levels, I’m struck by his inability to make good contact left handed. I just have trouble believing he’s not going to be completely overpowered by pitchers who have nothing to fear by treating him like a particularly weak hitting pitcher. No kind of approach is going to help you if pitchers don’t feel the need to pitch around the edges of the zone to get you out. And if he becomes a starter and teams start scouting him that seems the inevitable result at this point (at least left-handed). Also, you’ll probably start to see infielders playing in near the grass to try to cut off those “singles” of his.

Get the hell out the way Bengie, Pablito's hit the show!

by Roger on Nov 18, 2008 1:17 PM PST up 0 recs

Yeah, looking back over what you originally wrote, I think I just misread it. I’m curious what Frandsen’s true talent level is, in regards to walk rate. He has some garbage rates bookended by some slightly below average ones.

Fangraphs just added some interesting stats to their pages.

Burriss
Frandsen

O-Swing% is the percentage of pitches, outside the strike zone, that a player swung at. For their MLB careers, admittedly a small sample for both, Frandsen swung at ~50% more pitches outside of the strike zone than Burriss. He also made contact on those less (O-Contact), 76.8 to 72.2. Also, looking at all their Swing and Contact% numbers, basically, Burriss swings at less pitches and makes contact more often when he does. To me, that implies that Burriss has better discipline overall.

Again, Burriss has shown basically zero power, and Frandsen has shown a bit more than that, but I’ll take the more disciplined approach as I think it will have the better chance of sustained success.

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized God doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and prayed for forgiveness. - Emo Philips

Neglectful father of David Quinowski

by marcello on Nov 18, 2008 1:36 PM PST up 0 recs

Let’s relive this awesome moment for a sec.

Might be a while before we see another.

The Denker bus is now bound for San Diego. Those who were passengers on it are now angrily stranded at a gas station in Modesto, CA. Not much about baseball here .

by oldjacket on Nov 18, 2008 1:55 PM PST up 0 recs

Yeah, in general I agree with you on that. Sadly, it’s quite possible that in this particular instance, we’re just dissecting two different ways to wash out at the major league level.

Get the hell out the way Bengie, Pablito's hit the show!

by Roger on Nov 18, 2008 2:01 PM PST up 0 recs

Hahaha, so true. I really have hope for Burriss, but I won’t be surprised if he doesn’t pan out.

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized God doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and prayed for forgiveness. - Emo Philips

Neglectful father of David Quinowski

by marcello on Nov 18, 2008 2:17 PM PST up 0 recs

I don't like his approach either

but I don’t think Burris’ approach works in the majors too well either (having literally negative power with the bat). There’s lot more players like Frandsen that have made it than Burris I feel.

Do you Wazzel?

by NeifiChicken on Nov 18, 2008 12:29 PM PST up 0 recs

Um

Since the Marcels only use major league numbers, Burriss is being projected based on 263 PAs last year where he hit .283/.357/.329, while Frandsen is worse in the majors. It totally ignores their minor league stats. Also, it’s going to assume “missing” years are ML average years.

What this means is that the projections for the guys who do not have 3 full years in the last 3 are going to be heavily weighted towards the average player. Which, in aggregate is probably fine. Just useless for any given player (one could argue that using minor league stats isn’t even better than this… but that doesn’t make the Marcel accurate)

FIRE BRIAN SABEAN... UNLESS HE KEEPS DRAFTING WELL. .. AND SIGNS UNDERRATED PLAYERS LIKE AFFELDT OR PHELPS. .. OR ALRIGHT WHO'S PLAYING WITH THE ALIEN MIND-SWITCHING RAY?

by zenbitz on Nov 18, 2008 2:15 PM PST up 0 recs

Hmm, I did not know that. Nevermind then, what I wrote doesn’t make a lick of sense in regards to these projections. I still stand by my assertion that Frandsen’s approach won’t work in the majors though.

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized God doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and prayed for forgiveness. - Emo Philips

Neglectful father of David Quinowski

by marcello on Nov 18, 2008 2:20 PM PST up 0 recs

OK, I changed the charting some. Most everyone on the team saw a reduction in their wOBA scores, I’m not sure where the discrepancy came between my scores and Tango’s, but I’ll defer to his. Overall, the scores are a little more pessimistic now.

#1 JUDY STEFFES FAN
My favorite pie is (name of pie flavor)
Bay City Ball

by xanthan on Nov 18, 2008 9:59 AM PST 0 recs

why would anyone think that Bocock will ever see another MLB at bat?

Fairley odd parent to Wendell

by WTF on Nov 18, 2008 1:10 PM PST 0 recs

if injury occurs to just about everyone

by silentearth36 on Nov 18, 2008 8:13 PM PST up 0 recs

Marcel

Just a quick note. Marcel, by default, gives everyone 200 PA, if he had 1 PA in any of the last 3 years.

No minor league performance is in included.

If you see a reliability number of under 0.60, the forecast is basically useless.

by tangotiger on Nov 18, 2008 2:03 PM PST 0 recs

Thanks, for the clarification Tango. I should have mentioned that no minor league data goes into the projections.

Great projections, by the way.

#1 JUDY STEFFES FAN
My favorite pie is (name of pie flavor)
Bay City Ball

by xanthan on Nov 18, 2008 2:10 PM PST up 0 recs

I know it defeats the purpose...

but what if you used translated minor league stats? Do you think Marcel would improve (at least for these guys who don’t have any MLB PAs)

FIRE BRIAN SABEAN... UNLESS HE KEEPS DRAFTING WELL. .. AND SIGNS UNDERRATED PLAYERS LIKE AFFELDT OR PHELPS. .. OR ALRIGHT WHO'S PLAYING WITH THE ALIEN MIND-SWITCHING RAY?

by zenbitz on Nov 18, 2008 2:16 PM PST up 0 recs

Thanks, good to know.

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized God doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and prayed for forgiveness. - Emo Philips

Neglectful father of David Quinowski

by marcello on Nov 18, 2008 2:25 PM PST up 0 recs

Some other notables

Furcal: .336 wOBA in 346 PA , .02 reliability
Hudson: .346 wOBA in 488 PA ,.85 reliabilty
Renteria: .336 wOBP in 528, .86 reliability
Phelps: .346/236/0.43
Cabrera: .314/665/0.88 (ouch)

FIRE BRIAN SABEAN... UNLESS HE KEEPS DRAFTING WELL. .. AND SIGNS UNDERRATED PLAYERS LIKE AFFELDT OR PHELPS. .. OR ALRIGHT WHO'S PLAYING WITH THE ALIEN MIND-SWITCHING RAY?

by zenbitz on Nov 18, 2008 2:26 PM PST 0 recs

What about Texieira, Dunn and Burrell?

Yes we did!

by Goofus on Nov 18, 2008 2:39 PM PST up 0 recs

Teixeira – .386/600/.87
Dunn – .372/589/.87
Burrell – .369/582/.86

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized God doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and prayed for forgiveness. - Emo Philips

Neglectful father of David Quinowski

by marcello on Nov 18, 2008 3:16 PM PST up 0 recs

thanks marcello

But I didn’t need a spreadsheet to say “better than anyone we got”

FIRE BRIAN SABEAN... UNLESS HE KEEPS DRAFTING WELL. .. AND SIGNS UNDERRATED PLAYERS LIKE AFFELDT OR PHELPS. .. OR ALRIGHT WHO'S PLAYING WITH THE ALIEN MIND-SWITCHING RAY?

by zenbitz on Nov 18, 2008 3:51 PM PST up 0 recs

Interesting that Lewis’ power is projected to dcline. He strikes me as a guy who has the potential for more power than what he’s demonstrated to this point.

Yes we did!

by Goofus on Nov 18, 2008 2:40 PM PST 0 recs

Maybe his foot problems last season weren't factored into the projections for next season.

by AmorVincitOmnia on Nov 18, 2008 4:33 PM PST up 0 recs

The agony of da feet

Yes we did!

by Goofus on Nov 18, 2008 5:09 PM PST up 0 recs

ba dum bum

I see the future, and it is Pablo

by CB30 on Nov 18, 2008 5:41 PM PST up 0 recs

they aren’t

The Denker bus is now bound for San Diego. Those who were passengers on it are now angrily stranded at a gas station in Modesto, CA. Not much about baseball here .

by oldjacket on Nov 18, 2008 6:29 PM PST up 0 recs

Who the hell would trust a mime to scout baseball players?!

by Lars The Wanderer on Nov 18, 2008 8:17 PM PST 0 recs

I was waiting for this.

There amass been plenty of articles written this spring about the stud shortstop Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum , as well as the fluid young outfielders and thirteen basemen Kevin Frandsen.
comics | art | Nattowear | McFAQ I & II

by Natto on Nov 18, 2008 8:53 PM PST up 0 recs