We’ll start with the players who have been the biggest fantasy disappointments so far in 2010:

I’m noticing a trend here…Lots of SP and an injured Ian Kinsler at the end. I don’t think this is cause for alarm for all of these guys just yet, though: Last year, this list was headlined by CC Sabathia, who ended up as one of the top fantasy pitchers. (Beckett also appeared in about the same spot.)

How about overperformers?

As with the previous list, there are quite a few SP. Which tells you what you already knew — there’s a lot of variability with pitchers.

Ubaldo has been fantastic, but it was pretty clear before the season that the projections were too low on him. (They all penalized him heavily for playing in Colorado, but his groundball tendencies make the thin air a lesser factor.)

I have the most faith in the prospects on the list — Ike Davis, Austin Jackson, and David Price, especially — to maintain their strong start. It’s not unusual for a young player to improve, and the projections had much less data about these players. I’m much less optimistic about Alex Gonzalez and Livan Hernandez.

At this point in the season, I’m still putting more faith in the preseason projections than on 1+ months of stats. Keep watching the Price Guide, though. Things will start to even out as the 2010 fantasy stats accumulate.

C – Mike Napoli
C – Geovany Soto
1B – Lance Berkman
2B – Kelly Johnson
3B – Chris Davis
SS – Erick Aybar
OF – Matt Diaz
OF – Ryan Ludwick
OF – Magglio Ordonez
OF – Jayson Werth
OF – Brad Hawpe
MI – Howie Kendrick
CI – Billy Butler
Util – Vladimir Guerrero

Notice that there are several guys on that list that are looking to bounceback from a poor 2009: Geovany Soto, Kelly Johnson, Chris Davis. Don’t forget that these are players with a track record (including the minors) that can outweigh one bad year, and there’s a good chance they wind up in between their 2008 and 2009 values this year.

I’ve found that fantasy owners tend to shy away from serviceable veterans in favor of the latest hyped rookies. Magglio Ordonez, Vladimir Guerrero, and Lance Berkman aren’t the players they once were, but they are still solid buys at the right price.

P – Roy Halladay
P – Chris Carpenter
P – Dan Haren
P – Ted Lilly
P – Erik Bedard
P – Hiroki Kuroda
P – Heath Bell
P – Trevor Hoffman
P – Rafael Soriano

I tried to pick some value pitchers from across all tiers. The projections really like Roy Halladay switching from a rough AL East to the more-manageable NL East. Ted Lilly isn’t exciting, but he’s been a reliably above average pitcher for several years now. And Hiroki Kuroda is a LIMA pitcher and could put everything together in 2010.

Chris Carpenter and Rafael Soriano fit in the category of “back from injury,” which means their price tag is a little lower in most leagues. Erik Bedard is a little different: He’ll miss the first part of the year, but 100-120 IP at his previous levels would be valuable. Ideally, you can stash him on the DL and combine his contribution with a replacement-level pitcher for the first few months.

Vladimir Guerrero $20
David Ortiz $10
Hideki Matsui $5

I’ll admit, seeing an Andrew Jackson beside Vladimir Guerrero’s name surprised me a little. After a horrific 2009 (valued at $1 according to the Price Guide), I had tempered my expectations.

And apparently I wasn’t alone: Just to compare a couple of other sources, Fantasy Ball Junkie calculates the average auction price for Vlad as $8. Tim Dierkes values him at $9. Yahoo also suggests $9, but the Yahoo mock-auctioners are bidding an even more cautious $5.

In reality, when Vlad played last year, he played great. He hit for average and for power, he walked plenty, and even nabbed a couple of bases. His skills aren’t diminished, he just couldn’t get healthy. If we assume a healthy 2010 as the Rangers’ DH, he should be a lot closer to his 2008 ($25) than 2009. And that would make Guerrero a great bargain for 2010.

David Ortiz’s fall from grace is a little more worrisome. Whereas Guerrero was still batting around .300 in his down 2009 year, Ortiz couldn’t top .240 (after hitting .264 the year before). I don’t know if Ortiz is done or not as fantasy contributor, but I think the risk is much higher for him than for Guerrero. (Interestingly, Dierkes puts Ortiz at $8, just one buck below Guerrero. The Price Guide thinks there’s a much wider gap.) One redeeming feature for Ortiz is that he at least qualifies at 1B in leagues that requires 6 GS or fewer (like Yahoo).

Just like there’s an unquantifiable bonus for qualifying at multiple positions, there’s also a monetary penalty for a player who locks up your utility spot. I’d say that fantasy drafters take that into account when they are bidding, potentially to the tune of $2-3 below the true value.

Which brings us to Hideki Matsui. Matsui never had the power that the other two guys had, and that means he’s a notch below both of them. He’s valued at $5, and the DH inflexibility takes off a little of that value. Honestly, I think I’d rather have a slightly inferior hitter who can play a position and who doesn’t have as much age/injury risk. Even somebody like Mark Teahen (3B,OF) — valued at -$2 — seems like a more attractive option to me than Matsui.

J.R. Towles (C – Hou)
Erick Aybar (SS – LAA)
Mike Napoli (C – LAA)
Matt Diaz (OF – Atl)
Gregg Zaun (C – Mil)
Chris Iannetta (C – Col)
Jorge Posada (C – NYY)
Elijah Dukes (OF – Was)
Rickie Weeks (2B – Mil)
Ryan Doumit (C – Pit)

On average, these players saw their fantasy values jump by about $14 after the playing time adjustment!

In fantasy baseball, a player’s value is based not only on his skills, but also on his opportunities. A relief pitcher gains tons of value when he moves from an 8th to 9th inning role and starts accumulating saves. Pitchers on good offensive teams will get more wins, and hitters will get more RBIs.

And a playing time opportunity will give some players a chance to find fantasy value this year. A couple of names on the list find themselves unexpectedly at the top of the depth chart for 2010 — J.R. Towles, Matt Diaz, and Gregg Zaun especially.

Others on the list missed significant time last year due to injury. That is true for Ryan Doumit, Elijah Dukes, and Rickie Weeks. The projections all downgrade their playing time, but they get quite a boost if we assume they will be healthy in 2010.

Notice also the unusual number of catchers on this list; I’ll come back to them in a minute. On the other hand, you have to go down a ways to start finding pitchers. Chris Carpenter and Billy Wagner get big boosts after injuries, and Mat Latos gets a depth-chart jump.

Here are the players whose value decreases after adjusting for projected playing time:

Chris Fetter (SP – SD)
Carlos Alvarado (SP – LAD)
Brad Brach (RP – SD)
Jon Jay (C – StL)
J.R. House (C – KC)
Matt Miller (2B – Col)
Matthew Way (SP – Phi)
Juan Francisco (3B – Cin)
Kelvim Escobar (SP – NYM)
Eric Farris (2B – Mil)
Oscar Salazar (OF – SD)

Who? I’d say taking these guys off the list is a definite positive. Once again there are a few factors that are evident:

First, apparently Petco can make several guys buried in the minors look like decent pitchers for fantasy. If they played anywhere else, we wouldn’t be seing Chris Fetter or Brad Brach on this list.

Others are just too far down on the depth chart and blocked by other players at the major league level. J.R. House looks like a decent catcher from his minor league stats, but he’s unlikely to get ahead of Jason Kendall and Brayan Pena on the Royals’ depth chart.

As mentioned above, catcher is the position with the most movement (in both directions) from the playing time adjustment. Real baseball teams determine playing time based on more than just fantasy production, and — for catchers especially — defense matters. So guys who have an above replacement bat might not figure to get any time in the majors, while several fantasy-irrelevant catchers will get plenty of starts. I think this shift is also responsible for pushing higher the dollar values of the top-tier catchers on the adjusted projections.

Dan has graciously allowed me to include the ZiPS projections as an option in the Price Guide, where they are available individually and mixed in with CHONE and CAIRO (Composite projections). If you find the ZiPS projections useful, I encourage you to donate a little to Dan to help keep these free. A ton of work goes into making these, and the only credit I can take is as a middle-man.

I’ve also recently updated the CAIRO projections to version 0.4 and CHONE to the freshest 2/28 spreadsheet. Throwing ZiPS in a blender with those two new releases gives a new look to our composite projections that admittedly makes me a little uncomfortable: Joe Mauer has moved into the #1 spot as the projected most valuable hitter for 2010. I think this is due to not only the quality difference between him and the last catcher picked, but also to a difference in quantity. The playing time adjustments indicate that good catchers play more often than bad catchers, even starting at DH or 1B on days they aren’t catching.

In a 1-catcher league, the difference is not as pronounced. But with two starting catchers, the combination of qualitative and quantitative advantages puts a huge gap between Mauer and guys like Ivan Rodriguez and Nick Hundley. I’d be interested if someone has any suggestions for making these rankings stick a little bit closer to reality.

How might that be done? My first choice for predicting playing time would be Tom Tango’s Community Forecasts, where he recruits large numbers of fans to predict the playing time for players on their favorite team. Unfortunately, when that survey is opened up in late March, it will be too late for lots of fantasy drafters.

So I’ve attempted a different approach in the meantime. I started with the average playing time that resulted when SG simulated 100 seasons using the CAIRO projections. I then made some manual adjustments based on my own guesses for teams’ depth charts (e.g. putting Alcides Escobar as the Brewers’ primary SS over Craig Counsell). I added estimated PA and IP for free agents. Finally, I knocked 10% off of pitchers’ IP and 5% off of hitters’ PA, which scaled them pretty closely to match the existing projections.

If that sounds like I’m just making stuff up as I go along…well, I sort of am. But I think it’s possible to improve on the wisdom of the computers with some subjective (but commonsensical) knowledge. For those who may be concerned with my meddling, I plan on keeping the unadjusted numbers around, as well.

You can see what the composite projections look like with playing time adjustments by selecting 2010 Composite (Adj.) on the Price Guide. I would love to hear input on where these can be improved. My initial concerns will probably be dropping PA for catchers a little bit and seeing about inflating the top tier a little bit.

After only one year in the minors, Porcello managed this MLB line in 2009:

14 W, 3.96 ERA, 1.37 WHIP, 89 K, 170.2 IP

That’s pretty good for a 20 year-old rookie, good enough for a $5-6 value last year. But the predictions for 2010 are…pretty divided. Let’s take a look at the negatives first:

Rick Porcello takes a step back in 2010.
(CHONE: 5 W, 5.08 ERA, 1.52 WHIP, 69 K, 124 IP)

Someone recently pointed out to me that Porcello’s projection wasn’t showing up on the Price Guide. After a little digging, I found that that wasn’t quite true: Porcello is on the Price Guide for 2010, but he doesn’t rank in the top 250 pitchers that are shown by default. The reason why is nicely illustrated by CHONE’s projection above.

With a 5.00 ERA, Porcello winds up in the -$16 range for standard league. Why the pessimism for a pitcher who finished 2009 with an ERA below 4.00? Most likely it comes from Porcello’s very low strikeout rates over his two professional seasons. With so few strikeouts, there will be lots of balls put in play. More balls in play means more hits and more runs, and that’s going to show up in his WHIP and ERA.

Even without the impact on ERA/WHIP, it’s hard for a pitcher with so few strikeouts to be valuable in 5×5 fantasy. That projected line above presents no redeemable qualities for fantasy.

Rick Porcello takes a step forward in 2010.
(Fans: 12 W, 4.10 ERA, 1.43 WHIP, 110 K, 180 IP)

What the projections don’t know, however, is that Porcello is a somewhat unique pitcher. He’s a first round pick who has shot straight to the majors, which means he’s at least impressed some people — bad pitchers don’t jump from A-ball to the majors.

Mike at THT Fantasy makes a comparison with Ben Sheets. Like Porcello, Sheets was a 1st round pick who wasted little time in the minors. Although he started off his major league career with middling K/9 numbers, Sheets’s strikeout-rates improved and he turned into a very good MLB pitcher. It’s not an exact comparison, but it shows that it’s possible for Porcello to improve.

That’s the sort of thinking that is influencing the fan projections above. There’s a little bit of decline in rate stats, but that’s compensated by an improved K/9.

So what can we expect from Rick Porcello in 2010? I’m not making any bold predictions, but I will say that the potential downside makes him a risky pitcher to draft this year.

Here are the correlations they observed in fantasy (SGP) terms:

1. Averaged Projections
2. Fantistics
3. The Sporting News
4. Marcel
5. Steamer
6. ZiPS
7. CHONE
8. PECOTA
9. 2008 Stats

Averaging all the projections together produced the best results, but the next best options were the Fantisticsand TSN projections.

For projection rate stats, it was the completely computerized CHONE and ZiPS projections that did the best job. However, for fantasy, it is even more important to have accurate playing-time projections than to just forecast a player’s ability. So the systems that had human-created playing-time forecasts (Marcel and Steamer used community playing-time projections) ended up on top in fantasy rankings.

Unsurprisingly, predicting 2009 stats based on 2008 ended up at the bottom, but PECOTA did pretty terribly, as well. Rumor is that Baseball Prospectus has done some work to get it back in shape for 2010.

The Fantistics projections are new to me, but that’s because they cost money ($40). It could be something worth looking at for people who are willing to pay for a fantasy resource, though.

It looks like our idea of “composite” projections is on the right track for accurate fantasy values. And combining the free, computer-generated projections with human-developed, playing-time forecasts looks to be ideal.

After throwing out the obviously good pitchers (Lincecum, Halladay, Sabathia, Santana, etc.) who wouldn’t come cheap, I found 17 LIMA pitchers for 2009, and I broke them down into categories based on the 2009 projections. Here they are again, with their 2008 actual values, 2009 projected values, and 2009 actual values:

Already Good, Could Be Great

True LIMA Pitchers Projected to Improve

LIMA Pitchers with No Projected Improvement

LIMA Pitchers Projected to do Worse

With hindsight, we might split them up like this, instead:

Better than Expected

Met Expectations

Worse than Expected

On the whole, that seems like a very good performance. Almost half of the pitchers did significantly better than projected. Another five met their projections, which was still an improvement over what they had done in 2008. Only 5 out of 17 players did worse than projected, and really only 3 (Meche, Burnett, and Chamberlain) would count as disappointments.

Those results are both surprising and pleasing. I really expected the projections to recognize that pitchers with solid peripherals would improve, but they still undersold most of these guys. And it’s exciting to think of what can be applied for fantasy drafts in 2010.

Tommorrow: What lessons can we learn from 2009?

These are players who have two main questions marks surrounding them for 2010: The first question is what their situation will be like on the team where they sign. Will they be an everyday starter or just a bat off the bench? And the other concern is age. Most of these guys are well into their 30’s, and some decline is expected. There’s a possibility, however, that they’re in for a nosedive instead of a gentle decline.

Both of those risk factors make these five players worth watching as the season gets closer:

Johnny Damon ($14)
Now that it looks like the Yankees have moved on without him, I’m very concerned about Damon’s fantasy value. He managed a revival last year launching homeruns into the short RF porch at New Yankee Stadium, so leaving New York looks like bad news for him.

(CHONE and CAIRO both try to adjust for park, but Yankee Stadium as a whole was not that favorable for homeruns. Damon, however, seemed to particularly exploit its dimensions in a way that aren’t accounted for in the park factors. I think the HR’s projected are way too optimistic.)

Then there’s age: Damon is 36 years old. He’s a lock to sit out 15-20 games. Basically, I’m not betting that Damon manages to repeat anything like last year, and I’m not going anywhere near the $14 the Price Guide suggests for him.

Erik Bedard ($12)
The Price Guide has an unhealthy infatuation with pitchers who don’t pitch many innings, so of course Bedard with his projected 106 IP is a Price Guide favorite.

He is projected to strike out over 9 batters per nine with a solid ERA and WHIP, so there’s definitely something to like here. If he puts together most of a full season in 2010 he’ll be a steal at $12.

Jermaine Dye ($10)
Somehow Jermaine Dye is a player who had completely fallen off of my radar: I never would have guessed he was projected as a double-digit player, and I was even a little surprised that he was valued above replacement ($7) last year.

I think I must have been burned on him in 2007, when he followed up a 44 HR, .315 BA year in 2006 with 28 HR and a .254 average. Since then, he’s maintained his 25+ HR power, but the average has varied tremendously.

The Reds look like they could be a good fit for Dye, if he’s still up for playing OF everyday, and Great American Ballpark seems like a good fantasy location. I’m not finding a whole lot of teams that have a regular spot open for an OF/DH, though.

Orlando Cabrera ($10)
Cabrera has seemingly been a fantasy mediocrity for years. I think part of that reputation is that he doesn’t stand out in any category: He hits a few homeruns, but not too many. He steals a handful of bags, but is never among the league leaders. His batting average is decent — not a killer but nothing special, either.

If he can find an everyday job, then I expect Cabrera will put up another unremarkable (but still valuable) fantasy season.

Felipe Lopez ($6)
Felipe is looking for potentially his sixth team in five years. Despite being continually passed around by real teams, he’s the kind of player who can provide a cheap boost for a fantasy team if you stick with him.

In previous years, Lopez has added some fantasy value by qualifying all over the diamond — playing some 2B, 3B, SS, and OF. This year he will initially only qualify at 2B, although (depending on where he signs) he may gain another position quickly.

A few other names worth keeping an eye on:

Darren Oliver
Orlando Hudson
Jarrod Washburn
Garret Anderson
Kevin Gregg
John Smoltz