Last Player Picked

You may have noticed that I’ve been slowing down my posting schedule as the start of the baseball season approaches. That’s because I see Last Player Picked primarily as a preseason site, running full-speed during the months when people are focused on draft preparation. Once the games start and dollar value analysis isn’t quite as important, I’ll probably only be posting my thoughts on strategy once or twice a week.

So while there won’t be as much to read here after April 4th, I have decided to fill up this last week of the draft season with a full slate of posts. Here’s what the schedule looks like, including the rest of the LIMA pitcher series:

Monday: LIMA, Part IV: Truly Low Investments
Tuesday: Draft Deflation
Wednesday: LIMA, Part V: Avoiding Garza, Wainwright, and Wandy
Thursday: Draft Inflation
Friday: LIMA, Part IV: Conclusion

For those of you who have clamored for an infield position (i.e. any of 1B, 2B, 3B, and SS) added to the Price Guide: Your pleas have not gone unanswered.

As expected, adding an IF slot will typically give the same results as just adding an extra CI.

A couple of other recent changes:

• Teams and positions have been added for lots of minor leaguers.
• Stats for any hitter who has never played in the majors are reduced by 25%.
• Replacement levels have been tweaked a little bit for CI, MI, Util, etc.

My policy in the past has been to leave the projections untouched — they are objective evaluations of players, and I have wanted to avoid adding my own subjective thoughts. The Price Guide lets anyone tweak the results to their own liking, so I’ve left the subjective changes up to the users.

However, there are a few cases where there is valuable information about a player’s particular situation that the projections are unaware of. Typically, this involves retirements, injuries, and closer precedence. With those things in mind, I’ve made the following adjustments to the composite projections:

Removed
Jeff Kent
Mike Mussina
Greg Maddux

Reduced Playing Time
Ben Sheets 50%
Shaun Marcum 50%
Dustin McGowan 50%
Curt Schilling 50%
Matt Wieters 25%
Alex Rodriguez 10%

Added as SP (only affects positional adjustment)
Kelvim Escobar
Kenshin Kawakami
Koji Uehara

Changed Save Totals
Jonathan Broxton +10
Heath Bell +10
J.J. Putz -15
Takashi Saito -15

There are a couple of other injury situations that could also affect playing time (Chase Utley, Ervin Santana, etc.). I’ve held off on modifying their projections without a clear idea as to how much time they will miss. I’ve also avoided making any predictions for the trickier save situations (Rangers, Mariners, Cubs, etc.).

My intent was to make conservative adjustments on the most obvious players. Are there any further changes you think should be made? Are there any on the above list you disagree with?

I had mentioned it as a possibility before, but I’ve added quality starts and holds as options in the Price Guide. With no 2009 projections for these categories, they will always display the 2008 totals.

It’s certainly not a perfect way to do things, but I think it’s better than nothing at all.

Just up: ZiPS are now included in the composite projections for the Price Guide, equally weighted with everything else.

Also, Manny is now updated in the Price Guide as a Dodger. And, based on a slew of corrections that Tim sent me, I’ve updated the teams for tons of lesser players who have signed with someone else this offseason.

Let me know if you notice anything unusual.

Some of the most common stat requests I get for the Price Guide involve categories that aren’t typically included in projections — quality starts, holds, and errors.

Although I can’t do anything to update the projections, I wondered if adding something would be better than nothing. For those of you who are interested in these categories: Would it be helpful to include 2008 stats for these categories that aren’t projected?

How about a multi-year average? Maybe weighted 3-2-1 Marcel style?

Also: Courtesy of Dan Szymborski of Baseball Think Factory, ZiPS projections are now available in the Price Guide. Wow, look at Ryan Braun!

Some of you have already noticed, but there are a couple of updates with the projections on the Price Guide:

• CHONE projections are now updated to the 02/23 release. Not a big change for most players, but I think it will update the park factors for players that have switched teams since December.
• I have added a Composite projection as the new Price Guide default. This is my own brew of the various projections that should knock some edge off the occasional extreme prediction. It’s mostly CHONE and CAIRO with a little bit extra thrown in.
• I finally decided to list Matt Wieters as a catcher. The Price Guide previously went strictly by games played in 2008 to determine qualifying positions. Since Wieters hasn’t hit the majors yet, he was being counted at Utility. Counting him as a catcher significantly changes his value.
• The Price Guide results now show the league average in each category for your league. Currently that’s more helpful for counting stats than for rate stats, but I’ll try to get them all working soon.

Please let me know if you have any opinions about these changes.