Last Player Picked

I’ve got three rather significant updates to mention today. Other than adding year-to-date dollar values once the season starts, these will probably be the final changes for this draft season.

1. Steamer projections have been added.

Steamer is a set of projections produced by Jared Cross and co., who have also done some recent forecast evaluations. I’m not adding it into the Composite projections for this year, but I probably will next year (especially if I can get my hands on it earlier).

Unlike most of the projections which aren’t expecting Aaron Hill to repeat his very good 2009, Steamer has him at $19 in a standard league. Other Steamer sleepers: Nolan Reimold ($17), Colby Lewis ($16), Brett Anderson ($21), and Stephen Strasburg ($17).

It has no interest in Jair Jurrjens ($1) or Matt Cain ($1), however. I’ll try to remember to check back in October to see how the picks played out.

2. The composite projections have been updated with the final community forecasts.

Voting closed today on the Community Forecast project. In fantasy terms, there hasn’t been a whole lot of change since Monday, but a few players have seen a small increase or decrease:

David Murphy -$7 (+5)
Chris Davis $5 (+4)
Aaron Hill $11 (+3)
Jose Reyes $15 (+3)
Coco Crisp -$6 (+3)
Juan Uribe -$8 (+3)

Landon Powell -$11 (-3)
Ryan Church -$12 (-3)
Carlos Santana -$9 (-3)
Corey Hart $0 (-4)
Jesus Flores -$14 (-5)

Oakland, Texas, and Washington were still low on votes last time, so their players were some of the bigger movers on this update.

It looks like Mets fans are feeling more optimistic about Jose Reyes‘s maladies, as he climbed $3 in the past few days. Corey Hart, on the other hand, is shedding value (down $4) after a terrible spring could cost him a starting job. Although Chris Davis has gained some ground, I’d wager that if voting continued he would probably end up where he started. The Rangers’ acquisition of Ryan Garko means Davis might be losing some AB.

There are a few new names showing up as well, most notably:

Aroldis Chapman -$3
Hisanori Takahashi -$7
Jim Edmonds -$15

3. You can now enter keeper prices without saving stats.

One of the most common questions I am asked is how to enter keeper prices. That’s because that feature has been hidden in with “Let me edit these projections.” But things have changed:

Also, some of you had asked about entering keeper prices without saving the stats as well. Up until this point, it couldn’t be done. Now, you can actually transfer a keeper list across projections to compare, for example, what CAIRO and ZiPS think of your choices.

There have also been a few minor Price Guide bugs cleaned up, like QS and E showing up incorrectly on the Composite projections and inflation prices being left off of Excel.

There’s another projection already here: The CAIRO projections courtesy of SG from the Replacement Level Yankee’s Weblog. I am admittedly no lover of the Yankees, but I certainly cannot complain about the quality of these projections. In this case, I’ll even refrain from making any snide remarks about the fact that CAIRO puts a conspicuously high $6 value on Yankee’s catcher prospect Jesus Montero. (CHONE, for comparison, has him at -$3.)

Of course, RLYW is a valuable site even for us non-Yankee fans. For example, each year SG shows that his projections are much more than a fantasy tool by simulating the season in advance. (See 2009′s blowout.) Taking the CAIRO, CHONE, Marcel, ZiPS, THT, and PECOTA projections, he simulates the upcoming season 1000 times with each to generate predicted standings for each division.

Anyway, two projections is enough for me to call it a quorum and to fire up the composite projections — currently just an 50/50 mix of CHONE and CAIRO. Still no saves, but it’s only January.

The first projections for 2010 are here!

Sean Smith of BaseballProjection.com has graciously allowed me to include his 2010 CHONE projections on the Price Guide.

CHONE is a computerized projection system that has year-after-year produced some of the most accurate predictions.  In addition to CHONE, Sean is also recognized for the development of his historical Wins Above Replacement (WAR) data, statistical measurements for comparing players (1871-2009) across positions and eras.  It’s not fantasy-related, but it is very impressive and a testament to some of the hard work Sean has done in baseball research.

As usual with projection systems, there are no saves projected in CHONE, but we’ll be discussing save candidates a bit later.  (Of course, since the Price Guide lets you customize the projections to your own liking, it’s pretty easy to add your own save predictions.)

Please let me know if you notice any problems.  Thanks again to Sean for making this happen.

A couple of quick updates regarding the Price Guide:

• Errors, holds, and quality starts are now all available for 2009 stats.
• You now have the ability to force a custom hitter/pitcher split instead of using what the Price Guide determines as optimal. If you know that owners in your league will only spend 30% of their budgets on pitching, you can force a 70/30 split to mimic your league’s behavior, even if the Price Guide is recommending a 64/36 split.

As you may have noticed with the posts trailing off as the season started this year, this blog will primarily be a seasonal feature. I’m hoping to focus on content and Price Guide updates from January through March, and then slow down as the draft season finishes up.

I appreciate all of the comments that everyone posted this season, and I’m looking forward to continuing that discussion next spring.