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.

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.

I just got a heads-up that the Greasemonkey script for ESPN is currently out-of-order.

ESPN switched around all of their player IDs, which broke the script that inserts dollar values onto their league pages.

I’ll need to update the IDs for a thousand or so players to get it back up and running. So if anyone happens to have already compiled a bunch of ESPN player IDs, I’d love to know about them.

I’ll let you know when everything is fixed.

I’m still getting the details worked out, but I’m looking for some people who would like to try it out. If you are interested in testing this out, leave a comment below or email me (mcopeland@lastplayerpicked.com), and I will send you the link to access it.

I also had a request for a fantasy category of saves + holds, and that is now available. Keep in mind that no one projects holds, so what you are seeing is just the past year’s stats.

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.

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.

Here at Last Player Picked, the wheels are beginning to turn again after a quiet and restful offseason.  That means that the Price Guide will start being updated with 2010 projections very soon.

The regular schedule of posts will return next Monday and continue on through the start of the baseball season.

I’m looking forward to having some excellent discussions on draft strategy and player valuation.

• 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.

• The scripts to add dollar values to ESPN and CBS leagues have been updated to show values on pages after ajax updates.

  If you have been using these scripts in the past, you may have noticed that the dollar values didn’t show up when you clicked on certain links. I think that has been corrected, now.

  If you haven’t tried adding dollar values to your league homepage (and it works for Yahoo leagues as well), the scripts to do that are available on the Price Guide.

• To date, I’ve been updating the previous day’s stats the following morning, whenever I happen to wake up. (Sorry, I can’t stay up for west coast games…) The stats update process has now been automated and scheduled for 3:00 AM EDT each morning.

• It will be interesting to watch Brett Cecil’s first major league start today. He projected as surprisingly decent (low 4.00’s ERA; WHIP in the 1.30’s; pretty good K/9), comparable to guys like Gil Meche, John Maine, and Jeremy Bonderman. With his good projection and a very strong spring performance, he’s someone I would have targeted in drafts if he had opened the season in the Jays’ rotation.

  Cecil’s AAA stats so far this year have not been impressive, but some of that is the product of the environment. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Cecil do well if he gets a long enough look in the majors.

• With about a month of the 2009 season now in the books, I’m going to start looking at some of the players who have the biggest gaps between projected dollar values and value to-date. Should we be trusting one price over the other?