Beating PECOTA: Three Sources of More Twins Wins

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.