ESPN Magazine simulations project the Marlins to finish...
by craig on Apr 1, 2010 6:51 AM EDT
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ESPN the Magazine ran 100 simulations and concluded the Marlins would finish dead last in the NL East. Good luck with that. If the stat heads want to comment about how their range was 93 to 62 wins, knock yourselves out. But the fact remains, that isn't projecting, anyone could've done that. If your projection range is that large, you are next to useless. And it is time to close the spread sheet and go back to playing "God of War III".
In the simulations the Marlins never won the division once, not that I have a problem with that. However the Nationals did, once. ESPN average number of wins was 74.5 for the Marlins. Woo Hoo!
Thankfully, the magazine didn't just end the story there, it asked one of its reporters to assess the outcomes.
Here is what he had to say in MAN VS. THE MACHINE part of the story:
TIM KURKJIAN SAYS: The Machine needs to learn a thing or two about the NL East, most notably: Never underestimate the Marlins. Despite having the lowest payroll in baseball the past two seasons, they won at least 84 games per year.
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The Fish will win 85 games, and they won't finish behind the rebuilding Nationals or the aimless Mets.
Don't know if the Marlins will finish with 85 wins, they most certainly could. But at this juncture in the season 85 wins sounds a lot closer to the outcome than the Marlins finishing dead last in the division.
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Seems par for the course
We’ve compiled a bunch of projections for Marlins Diehards, to be released later today. ESPN had the lowest projected win total, but most have the Fish as a .500 team, same as last year’s projections.
Baseball America had the NL east at
Braves 89
Phillies 84
Marlins 80
Mets 78
Nationals 72
the wildcard going to the: Diamondbacks/Rockies (both tied with 87 wins for the NL West lead)
Garbage
there is no reason that marlins should not improve over last season. Everyone is picking the braves as the feel good story because it’s bobby cox last year. Yes, their pitching is projected to be great. But Chipper is 800 years old and the rest of the team is suspect. So much has been placed on Heyward’s shoulders as well as McCann’s. I’m not on the Philly bandwagon. Halladay is awesome, but the rest of their pitching staff has serious inconsistencies. When everyone is picking you to win, usually that team doesn’t win. I’m saying the Marlins win the division. I see no reason the Fish don’t improve upon last year. Especially with Nolasco at full strength and a more veteran rotation and bullpen. what about Coghlan coming off his ROY performance? Mets, whatever. Nationals, too many problems to solve this soon. Go Fish.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but
I see plenty of reasons why the team won’t be better than last year.
1) It would be a stretch to suggest that Coghlan could repeat his hitting performance from last year. Most projections have him reasonably regressing a bit. He could make that difference up on defense, of course, and having him for a full season will be nice.
2) This is more or less the same group of players from last year, and none of the additions project to be improvements.
3) Last year we probably outperformed our true-talent by about four wins.
And I think your reasons for selling the Braves and Phillies short are suspect. The Braves have a decent lineup, not as good as ours, but decent, and the Phillies’ lineup is better. The Braves have a better starting staff, while the Phillies and Marlins are more or less even. It’s at best a three-horse race, and more likely that we’re a bit behind them.
We could win it, but it would take a few more balls bouncing our way than I’d be comfortable believing in. The WC is a lot more likely, but still difficult. I’m going into the season with cautious optimism, but not too much more than that.
Marlin Maniac, a Florida Marlins blog
Writer, Beyond the Box Score
Writer, Baseball Propsectus Fantasy Beat
Writer, Heater Magazine
not sure i agree with all of this
“This is more or less the same group of players from last year, and none of the additions project to be improvements.”
- if bonifacio isnt batting 1st/2nd for most of this season then were automatically getting an upgrade there
- volstad had a 5.21 era last year… no one knows how he’ll do this year but doubtful he gets any worse than that
- nolasco had a 5.01 era last year… pretty sure he’ll do better this year
- lindstrom had a 5.89 era last year on his while losing the closer’s role… no way we get worse there.. leo very well could improve on his numbers in his 2nd year
- cantu had 16 HRs & only 9 HRs after april …. pretty sure he improves on that
- hopefully no spot starts for koronka & taylor which were automatic losses & killed our bullpen
yeah we may have “outperformed our talent” with some clutch hits, a good overall bullpen, & good pinch hitting, but the team also had horrible years from bonifacio, lindstrom, volstad, miller; & inconsistent years from cantu, sanchez, nolasco
Fair enough
I think the only legitimate improvement we’re bringing in is losing Bonifacio’s 400+ PA. I think we can both agree on that.
- Cantu was as good last year as he was in 2008, he just did it in different ways. In 2008, it was home runs. In 2009, it was more singles and walks.
- Nunez will not likely be very good, though he will regress to normal HR levels. But don’t forget that we’re losing Kiko Calero and replacing him with (what is likely) a nobody in the pen. That bullpen will be worse this season.
- Agreed on Koronka/Taylor/Penn. Agreed on Nolasco, but in the method I used to find out our “true-talent” win level (adding up FanGraphs’ Wins Above Replacement to a replacement level team of 48 wins), Nolasco pitched really well. Like 3.28 ERA-type well.
- Volstad should regress down to normal HR levels too, agreed there. But unless we’re lucky, we probably won’t get the same monster year we got from JJ last year too. Won’t be the same level of regression on either side, but expecting another 3.00 ERA-ish year from JJ is not likely (might happen, but odds are against it).
Basically, you have to look at the regression on either side. Some guys, like Hanley and Uggla, you can more or less peg for a certain amount of production. But JJ will be a little worse this year, Coghlan will be worse this year, and the pen should be worse this year. That should offset some of the gains of not having Boni, getting a full season of good Ricky, and improvement from Volstad. Lop off those extra clutch/one-run wins and you’re closer to even than you think. And even was about 83 games.
Not that I’m not cheering. Cautious optimism people, that’s what I’m saying.
Marlin Maniac, a Florida Marlins blog
Writer, Beyond the Box Score
Writer, Baseball Propsectus Fantasy Beat
Writer, Heater Magazine
But
- If Nick Johnson isn’t batting 1st/2nd for the other half of the year, aren’t we going to lose his crucial contribution to the team?
- We don’t know what Volstad will do…. I’d optimistically guess a low-4 ERA, but we don’t know.
- Cantu batted .290 — no way that happens again. He was an .800 OPS guy last year and an .800 OPS guy in a different way the year before. He’ll be an .800 OPS guy this year somehow… that’s his talent level.
- Our bullpen, Lindstrom and Nunez aside, overachieved drastically last year. (And I’d argue Pinto as well… he’s been the same guy for 4 years. And Badenhop played up to his talent level, most likely.) Granted, we had early-season relief issues last year, but Calero, Sanches and Meyer were about the best you could expect them to be. One of them is gone, the other two have no guarantees.
- We’re going to have to bite the bullet on Maybin, right? Last year, he was awful, we sent him down, we put in more effective guys. I think this is the year when either he’s all right, or we have to keep giving him the shot until he is. Same deal with Sanchez — we have no concrete reason to believe he’s going to be good. (Note I’m optimistic about Maybin, and cautiously optimistic about Sanchez. Just saying either or both could backfire.)
Bass is a kind of fish.
As marlins fans
Isn’t this what we sort of expect?
They front office doesn’t have the money to field a playoff team. That’s the case year in and year out. What we do have is young guys and unknowns who will probably be competitive for most of the year. We just have to hope we get a couple of lucky bounces and that some of these guys pan out. Like every year, this team has a chance to surprise people. I think that’s the most we can expect. Given the payroll limitations, I’m happy with that.
Details
I know I started this off by looking at the details of the other teams. However, I think that we can’t do that with the Fish. The core of the team is the same. And while a lot of them may have overachieved (I don’t think Hanley or JJ overachieved), I think you need to look at the squad as a whole. I wholeheartedly believe that the team as a whole will be better. One extra year of seasoning never hurts.
ESPN sim also predicts the Pirates to win the Central
Obviously, I was pleased to see the Pirates finish in first in three of our simulations (and tie for first in another).
Shows how accurate those are.
That was 3…out of 100.
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Dan Szymborski
BTF
Dan on ESPN Insider
by D.Szymborski on Apr 2, 2010 11:11 AM EDT up reply actions
If the stat heads want to comment about how their range was 93 to 62 wins, knock yourselves out. But the fact remains, that isn’t projecting, anyone could’ve done that. If your projection range is that large, you are next to useless. And it is time to close the spread sheet and go back to playing “God of War III”.
Hahaha that is amazing! I think trying to work out which handful of teams WON’T finish between 62-93 would be a bit more worthwhile!
Anyway, another ‘addition’ we should have is Hanley actually producing from day one. I remember back at the start of last year most of his hits and RBIs were redundant (e.g. we’re already losing big). Remember all those strike outs in clutch situations? It wasn’t for a month or two until he really started winning games for us.
Nick Johnson’s a big loss for us, he seemed to get on base every single at bat. Who’s in the 1 and 2 slot this year? Coghlan will be one of them presumably??
Those are the extreme ranges, not a particular confidence level. For example, if something is expected to happen 77/162 of the time, you’d expect 62/162 to happen 1.6% of the time by random chance.
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Dan Szymborski
BTF
Dan on ESPN Insider
a few reasons why the marlins always do better than projections
is because we usually get contributions from young players that aren’t factored into our projections or can’t be projected accurately.
last year obv there was coghlan, and JJ was legitimately one of the three best pitchers in the NL for a large part of the season.
this year we have potential major contributions from gaby, maybin, stanton (after the first month i’d imagine), cousins + nolasco is all but certain to have a better year, and i see no reason why JJ can’t have a better year
plus last year we wrung solid contributions from guys like sanches & gload & kiko — two of those guys are gone & sanches might regress, but the point is that the front office just has shown… a knack for this kind thing
by rayrayrayrayrayrayrayray on Apr 2, 2010 11:29 PM EDT reply actions
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