Unfortunately, now that FanGraphs has projections for everyone, some of the projections are already becoming dated. (38 saves for Joe Nathan is seeming optimistic at the moment….) Nothing major, but their numbers would still have to be tweaked.

Without one authoritative source, I’ll probably keep pulling from as many as I can and encouraging Price Guide users to utilize the “customize projections” feature.

I’m not sure how to do something like this without going back manually and looking for potential matches.

I think I better understand your reasoning behind the projections now. Certainly, the situation does dictate much of the results in terms of saves. However, I’d argue that this is already the reason why we’re giving large save totals to these pitchers in the first place (even in cases where they aren’t the best reliever on their teams).

I do think that Marcel’s does have a bit too much regression in this stat – and I would imagine they would have very conservative estimates on new closers in particular, although I haven’t looked into that. But at the same time, I don’t think the outlook needs to be quite as positive as the aforementioned numbers. Let’s take Rivera for instance. You have him at 40, and Marcel’s has him at 28. Over 13 years as a closer, he’s had 40+ 7 of those times, so it’s pretty much 50/50, historically.

My recommendation in the previous comment was to put him at 35. I think that leaves some room for the possibility of regression in the stat due to injury, ineffectiveness, fewer opportunities, etc. If we were purely thinking historically, I’d put down probably 38-39 (depending upon seasonal weights, etc.). However, I do think we need to temper the predictions a bit, just as would be done with other categories (even if not quite as much).

Nathan would be similar, I would probably have him down for about 39-40, without any regression, and 35 sounds fair using a modest amount of consideration for potential problems.

That’s great to hear that there are already some saves added for those non-closers. My main concern on this point isn’t whether Mark Lowe gets those 2 saves and fraction of a dollar added to his projected valuation, but rather, that the reality that there will be a certain amount of additional saves available can keep the value of the current closers in check.

All this said, I really don’t intend to be picky, and am thankful to be able to use your service (and the ideas behind it as well). At this point it essentially is nit-picking, but I do think if the values can be improved by even a dollar here and there, it would be another positive.

Josh

Fernando Rodney
Kevin Gregg
Takashi Saito
Matt Lindstrom
J.P. Howell
Jim Johnson
George Sherill
Brad Ziegler
LaTroy Hawkins
Ryan Madson
Joel Zumaya

I like Matt Thornton a lot and probably should have added him to that list. Brandon League is in a good situation in Seattle, but I’m concerned from his time in Toronto that he wasn’t trusted with closing duties even when the job was wide open.

Even so, the projections won’t match reality (with lots of pitchers picking up a handful of saves each). I’m just guessing at what could be expected before the season, and I’d argue that saves for most of the sub-fifteen-save relievers couldn’t be expected in January.

You’re also right that my initial projections are coming in a bit higher than the Marcels, and I’m still not fully convinced my way is best. My thinking was that saves might not need to be regressed as strongly as the Marcels do, since they are such a situation stat.

That is, Marcel doesn’t understand the situation, and so it is trying (through regression) to account for what looks like a great deal of variation year-to-year. If we know the situations, then we understand some of the variation (e.g. Hoffman leaves SD and Heath Bell goes from 0 to 42 saves) and we can be more aggressive in making predictions.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/are-saves-predictable/

Basically, save opportunities are very slightly correlated with wins, but not with anything else he tried (e.g. runs scored). In my rankings, I’ve put little or no value on team quality on offense or defense, and I’m not sure how much doing so would help.