Article: Beating PECOTA: Three Sources of More Twins Wins

[Bill Parker]

So Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA has the Twins going 78-84 this season. That sounds about right to me--I can see them winning anything between 70 and 95, but something between 76 and 81 seems the most likely.

 

Moreover, PECOTA's individual projections, the things that add up to that 78-win season are, by and large, hard to argue with. I hope Joe Mauer bounces back, which PECOTA is not expecting, it could be just a touch low on Plouffe and Dozier, and it expects Suzuki to play more and Murphy to play less than I think and hope each will. But short of Mauer 2016 suddenly becoming Mauer 2013 again, these are pretty incremental differences. And if it's big contributions from the new guys you're counting on, PECOTA already has you covered -- it expects Miguel Sano to be worth 3.3 wins thanks to 33 home runs, Byron Buxton to be worth nearly 4 thanks to average-ish offense and world-class defense, and Byung-ho Park to be worth 1.5 with 20 homers from the DH spot. We might all hope that one or more of those guys does substantially more than he is projected to, but to expect it would be a bit crazy.

 

No, if you want to get the Twins substantially more wins than PECOTA projects -- without depending on conquering savior turns from Berrios/Kepler/Burdi -- I think you're pretty well limited to the following three players.1. Eduardo Escobar

PECOTA-projected 2016 stats: .253/.294/.375, -0.4 WARP

 

When he was coming up as a fringe prospect with the White Sox, I remember Kevin Goldstein (then with Baseball Prospectus (BP), now with the Astros) including Escobar among a list of middle infielders who had the defensive tools to be perennial gold glovers, but who might never hit enough to hold down a regular job in the majors. It made sense, too--Escobar was a career .269/.319/.358 hitter in the minors, which doesn't typically translate to great things at the highest level.

 

Fast forward five years, though, and the opposite appears to be true: the BP Annual's bio of Escobar says that he's "a fringy defensive shortstop, but for any kind of shortstop, he's a really good hitter." I don't know how "fringy" his defense is -- he's always seemed quite solid to me, maybe average at worst -- but over the last two years he's certainly transformed himself into an offensive asset, as middle infielders go, putting up a 102 OPS+ in both seasons (the average AL shortstop's last year was 90).

 

PECOTA seems unconvinced by his recent offensive improvement, projecting Escobar to lose 15 points of OBP and a whopping 70 points of slugging percentage from his 2015 line, while costing the Twins 9 runs defensively vis-a-vis an average shortstop. Projection systems are particularly (and probably necessarily) bad at incorporating things like major swing adjustments, like the one that allowed Escobar to crack 35 doubles in 2014 and 12 homers in 2015. That adjustment happened though, and Escobar is just now entering his age-27 season, when he should be hitting his peak. I think a repeat of 2015 or even another modest improvement on offense is likely, along with defense that's within a couple runs of average (as, per BPs FRAA, he was last year). Where BP sees a starting shortstop that costs the team nearly half a win vs. a replacement player, I think he could easily be worth two wins above replacement (which is much closer to Fangraphs' various projections for him than this one).

 

2. Glen Perkins

Projected 2016 stats: 57 IP, 3.53 ERA, 56/15 K/BB, 37 SV, 0.6 WARP

 

It's hard to blame PECOTA for coming up with that line; after all, that's more or less what his 2015 looked like, minus a few innings and strikeouts and plus a few walks, and he's 33, so a little more decline could reasonably be expected. Except: he's never actually been that pitcher, not even close. In 2015, he was two different guys: the one who saved 29/30 with a 1.37 ERA through his first 39 1/3 innings, and the one pitching through an injury who lost his job and put up a 7.64 ERA through his last 17 2/3 innings.

 

The same thing could happen again, I suppose -- two parts brilliant and one part disaster adding up to the just-pretty-good numbers you see above -- but it seems more likely to me that he's either healthy and brilliant, or unhealthy and a disaster. He seemed healthy this spring, and I think it's reasonable to expect him to get back to his 2011-13 form for another year or two, which would make him about a two-win player in 2016, not 0.6.

 

3. Eddie Rosario

Projected 2016 stats: .250/.280/.402, -1.1 WARP

 

If PECOTA doesn't like Escobar much, it hates Rosario, who it sees falling a full three and a half wins from his rookie year performance. The defensive drop is puzzling: FRAA credits Rosario with nearly 13 runs saved in 2015 (which isn't too out of line with the other measures; Baseball-Reference's had him with 11, Fangraphs' with 7.4), but PECOTA expects him to cost the team 13 runs in 2016. The math aside, I think anyone who knows this team and has seen Rosario play knows that that's not likely to happen. Give him a conservative +7 in place of that -13, and that's about two wins back right there.

 

The bat is less of a sure thing, but I think we can get some back there too. Rosario hit .267/.289/.459 in 2015, and BP likes him to lose 16, 9 and 57 points off those numbers, respectively. PECOTA is understandably weighting his 2014 and '15 numbers in Double- and Triple-A pretty heavily, and for whatever reason, those were ugly times for Rosario. What he did at the big-league level in 2015, though, is not far from the rest of his minor league career, and having maintained league-average offense over his first 474 career plate appearances, I don't see a convincing reason to expect a huge drop this season.

 

Certainly, if he's ever going to be a true asset at the plate, Rosario will have to learn to control the strike zone much better than he's shown to date. I don't think anything about what he did in 2015 was a fluke though and don't see any reason he can't be essentially league-average again, maybe with a slight improvement. If he hits .270/.300/.450, with the good defense we know he'll provide, he's at least a 2.5 win player over a full season, as he was in his 122 games in 2015.

 

So with those three (pretty reasonable, I think) individual improvements, we've added seven wins (7.4, actually) to the Twins' total, taken them from 78 wins to 85, about as many as adding a David Price or Josh Donaldson likely would. That's close to a playoff spot, close enough that a couple more big breaks get them to or over 90 and the division. That's a lot more interesting than 78 wins and it's something to dream on.

 

I still can't look at this team and think they're likely to win many more than 78 games, but I do think PECOTA missed big with these three, and it seems pretty clear from this that it's all well within the realm of possibility. And anyway, it's Opening Day. Maybe Joe's concussion issues are finally behind him and he hits .300/.400/.500 again. Maybe Park hits 45, maybe Hughes is back in 2014 form, maybe Dozier puts two good halves together and goes 30/30. Maybe they win all 162! It's a day for dreaming.

 

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[tobi0040]

I think Rosario will edge his OBP towards 300 and I think Pecota has his slugging too low.

[RedBull34]

Defense doesn't slump, so the Rosario projection is wild to me.  I can the regression, but flipping it on its head is so stupid, as to make me question the system's defensive worthiness.

[jorgenswest]

Either Rosario will continue to play well or the playing time will land with Kepler or possibly Arcia. The Twins will get better production from left field than Rosaro's projection.

 

The same probably can be said at SS with Nunez, Santana or Polanco ready. Someone will do better than that projection and emerge as the starter.

 

The Twins have too much depth at both spots. They will end up with better than replacement level production.

[markos]

 

Defense doesn't slump, so the Rosario projection is wild to me.  I can the regression, but flipping it on its head is so stupid, as to make me question the system's defensive worthiness.

Two serious and one not-so-serious thoughts about his defensive rating:

 

1) Maybe they factored into his projection their Buxton fielding ratings and just assumed Buxton would be running over and catching all the fly balls in left as well as center.

2) The vast majority of Rosario's value came from his arm. On a per inning basis, he was more valuable than basically any other outfielder in that category - even better than guys like Cespedes and Gordon. I'm guessing that level of performance isn't exactly sustainable, as either he will stop being so accurate with his throws and more runners will be safe, or runners will just stop trying to take extra bases. Either way his value from his arm is going to go down.

3) Their fielding projection system might still be factoring in his time at 2B in the minors. He was pretty bad in the infield, so it would surprise me if that extrapolated poorly to the outfield - that historically poor fielders at 2B in the minors make poor fielders in a corner OF.

[RedBull34]

 

Two serious and one not-so-serious thoughts about his defensive rating:

 

1) Maybe they factored into his projection their Buxton fielding ratings and just assumed Buxton would be running over and catching all the fly balls in left as well as center.

2) The vast majority of Rosario's value came from his arm. On a per inning basis, he was more valuable than basically any other outfielder in that category - even better than guys like Cespedes and Gordon. I'm guessing that level of performance isn't exactly sustainable, as either he will stop being so accurate with his throws and more runners will be safe, or runners will just stop trying to take extra bases. Either way his value from his arm is going to go down.

3) Their fielding projection system might still be factoring in his time at 2B in the minors. He was pretty bad in the infield, so it would surprise me if that extrapolated poorly to the outfield - that historically poor fielders at 2B in the minors make poor fielders in a corner OF.

All this is fair, but the closest person I could find to that value last year was Avisail Garcia, who is a known statue.  That's a pretty big miss on a talented OF like Rosario.

 

And while I don't know this, you'd think the projection would know to at least separate IF, OF, and C numbers for projections.  Some guys are good at one at terrible at the other.  Others suck at all three (I'm looking at you Doumit.)

Edited April 4, 2016 by RedBull34

[diehardtwinsfan]

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if we saw a repeat of last season (particularly due to the pen), but I have a tough time believing that barring injury of course, they will finish below .500.  The offense looks to be pretty good.  Buxton/Rosario should provide above average OF defense (though Sano will not obviously).  The best thing about this team compared to last season is that it's much deeper.  There's a lot more options on the 40 man or near it in the high minors should they need to replace someone bad or hurt.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Either Rosario will continue to play well or the playing time will land with Kepler or possibly Arcia. The Twins will get better production from left field than Rosaro's projection.

The same probably can be said at SS with Nunez, Santana or Polanco ready. Someone will do better than that projection and emerge as the starter.

The Twins have too much depth at both spots. They will end up with better than replacement level production.

You just hit the nail on the head why I think these projections are underestimating the team. The Twins' depth isn't spectacular but it's solid up and down the board.

 

And teams with depth tend to do well for themselves over 162 games. The Twins *should* be able to plug and play almost any position on the diamond with a better than replacement level player.

 

Pick a guy around the diamond. If that guy falters or goes down, there's somebody with promise behind him who can provide quality at-bats, defense, or innings pitched.

 

The one big question mark is the bullpen, IMO. The rest of team looks solid, though unspectacular.

 

I'm sticking with my 83 win over/under for 2016.

[HitInAPinch]

Nice write-up, Bill.

[ThejacKmp]

 

All this is fair, but the closest person I could find to that value last year was Avisail Garcia, who is a known statue.  That's a pretty big miss on a talented OF like Rosario.

 

And while I don't know this, you'd think the projection would know to at least separate IF, OF, and C numbers for projections.  Some guys are good at one at terrible at the other.  Others suck at all three (I'm looking at you Doumit.)

 

Yeah, and Rosario was an OF at the beginning of his career who was moved to 2B due to resource allotment (bad IF prospects, tons of good OF prospects). So moving back to OF isn't him learning a new position but returning to his original one.

[tobi0040]

 

Yeah, and Rosario was an OF at the beginning of his career who was moved to 2B due to resource allotment (bad IF prospects, tons of good OF prospects). So moving back to OF isn't him learning a new position but returning to his original one.

 

Further, he was a CF who is now in the corner.  So he has plus range there and showcased his arm last year.  This projection seems automated to me, without a ton of analysis or thought behind it.

[ThejacKmp]

 

The Twins *should* be able to plug and play almost any position on the diamond with a better than replacement level player.

 

Pick a guy around the diamond. If that guy falters or goes down, there's somebody with promise behind him who can provide quality at-bats, defense, or innings pitched.

 

Very much agreed. That's where keeping Plouffe actually makes some sense. The Twins can really weather almost any injury. Even (knocks on wood, throws salt over shoulder, chases down a leprechaun) Sano wouldn't create a hole as the upgrade to Kepler's defense would mitigate some of that loss. It's going to be good.

 

Also, I can't remember a Twins team where you had so much hope about starters 6-8. Yeah #5 sucks but the arms coming up are great. Not too worried about injuries in the rotation.

 

I know spring training doesn't mean much, but I'm most excited for Danny Santana this year. He seems perfect for that utility role with his speed, extra base pop and positional variety. He's going to get a ton of time this year and could be ready for a huge bounceback year.

[Mike Sixel]

I don't have a ton of faith in Perkins beating those numbers, but I love Escobar's odds to do so, and think Rosario will. However, I can't see the Twins being fast to pull the plug on either of them if they are struggling, so I don't share the "depth" argument much. Both will be given long leashes (and, imo, there is no depth at SS).

[markos]

 

Further, he was a CF who is now in the corner.  So he has plus range there and showcased his arm last year.  This projection seems automated to me, without a ton of analysis or thought behind it.

That is how projection systems work. The only human work done is to divvy up playing time among the players. 

 

Has anyone asked anyone at BP for a comment on that projection?

[markos]

 

All this is fair, but the closest person I could find to that value last year was Avisail Garcia, who is a known statue.  That's a pretty big miss on a talented OF like Rosario.

 

And while I don't know this, you'd think the projection would know to at least separate IF, OF, and C numbers for projections.  Some guys are good at one at terrible at the other.  Others suck at all three (I'm looking at you Doumit.)

I agree it is a huge miss. I think +5 is a good guess for this coming year. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

I don't have a ton of faith in Perkins beating those numbers, but I love Escobar's odds to do so, and think Rosario will. However, I can't see the Twins being fast to pull the plug on either of them if they are struggling, so I don't share the "depth" argument much. Both will be given long leashes (and, imo, there is no depth at SS).

SS is probably the weakest position of depth but I think Polanco can roll out there and not embarrass himself or the team. It's not an optimal situation but it probably wouldn't kill the team.

[nytwinsfan]

Great analysis. Really appreciate it. 

[Willihammer]

I really think when the season is over people are going to be talking about Rosario's corner defense in the same way they talk about Gordon's and Gardner's.

[Mike Sixel]

 

I really think when the season is over people are going to be talking about Rosario's corner defense in the same way they talk about Gordon's and Gardner's.

 

I think that is certainly possible. I think it is the pitch recognition that he needs to work on.

[DocBauer]

I think being down on Escobar is a mistake. What he has done when given a full time role the past 2 seasons is no longer SSS IMHO. I think the only risk could be being used too much and tiring.

 

Also frustrated by the negativity regarding Rosario. Yes, he absolutely needs better contact. But his performance last season was very encouraging despite virtually skipping AAA. And for anyone who points at his poor 2014 at AA, remember, it came after missing the first 50 games, AND he hit and performed quite well at AA to close out 2013. Not to mention some impressive seasons before that as well. I say again, while he is a regression candidate, he is also a PROGRESS candidate.

[Jham]

Rosario has the quickest hands of almost any hitter I've ever seen.  His hand-eye is spectacular as well.  Harold Reynolds compared him to Rod Carew.  As long as we're making ridiculous statements, the only other player I saw who could hit this: 

pitch out was Ichiro Suzuki.  Similar hands, speed, arm, different approach.  If Rosario ever decides he wants to do some slap hitting, he could win batting titles.  I think he'd rather hit 25 bombs, and frankly I'd rather he do that too.

[tobi0040]

 

Rosario has the quickest hands of almost any hitter I've ever seen.  His hand-eye is spectacular as well.  Harold Reynolds compared him to Rod Carew.  As long as we're making ridiculous statements, the only other player I saw who could hit this: 

pitch out was Ichiro Suzuki.  Similar hands, speed, arm, different approach.  If Rosario ever decides he wants to do some slap hitting, he could win batting titles.  I think he'd rather hit 25 bombs, and frankly I'd rather he do that too.

 

You are right about his hands, but he needs to holster them a bit.  He k'd on that pitch yesterday that was about a foot high and 6 inches inside.

 

That will be his thing, he is able to get to pitches others could not.  But he needs to show a little restraint.  The most extreme example is Vlad Guerrero.  Man he was talented but I bet he could put up even better numbers if he chased less and made pitchers come to him.  I remember he hit a double on a pitch that one hopped to the plate.

Edited April 5, 2016 by tobi0040

[gunnarthor]

I wouldn't overly worry about PECOTA projections.  Last year, they were off, on avg, by over 8 games for each AL team and only within 5 games for 4 teams.  And there were just as off on their final projected standings - 0-15 on placing the teams in their own divisions and only got two teams within one standing place of their actual, final spot.  Last year you could have drawn teams out of a hat and crushed PECOTA.  

[bird]

 

I wouldn't overly worry about PECOTA projections.  Last year, they were off, on avg, by over 8 games for each AL team and only within 5 games for 4 teams.  And there were just as off on their final projected standings - 0-15 on placing the teams in their own divisions and only got two teams within one standing place of their actual, final spot.  Last year you could have drawn teams out of a hat and crushed PECOTA.  

 

 

Based on this arithmetic, what are your projections regarding PECOTA's accuracy for 2016?

[USAFChief]

 

Based on this arithmetic, what are your projections regarding PECOTA's accuracy for 2016?

projections?  or predictions?

 

[Craig Arko]

projections?  or predictions?

 

Or wildass guesses.

[bird]

 

Or wildass guesses.

 

 

Apparently, in at least PECOTA's case, wildass projections.

[gunnarthor]

 

Based on this arithmetic, what are your projections regarding PECOTA's accuracy for 2016?

I'm pretty sure they'll be off by about 7 games per team and their final standing projections will probably get about a third of the teams in the right place. 

[jay]

2) The vast majority of Rosario's value came from his arm. On a per inning basis, he was more valuable than basically any other outfielder in that category - even better than guys like Cespedes and Gordon. I'm guessing that level of performance isn't exactly sustainable, as either he will stop being so accurate with his throws and more runners will be safe, or runners will just stop trying to take extra bases. Either way his value from his arm is going to go down.

While I agree his arm value is probably not sustainable at 2015 numbers, do note that both DRS and UZR account for runners not taking bases. If that part happens, it'd benefit his value... although probably not as much as throwing everyone out.

[markos]

 

While I agree his arm value is probably not sustainable at 2015 numbers, do note that both DRS and UZR account for runners not taking bases. If that part happens, it'd benefit his value... although probably not as much as throwing everyone out.

That is a good point. I still think he is going to have positive defensive value from his arm; I just don't think he will be 33% better than the next best outfielder.