2014 Baseball Forecaster: And Encyclopedia of Fanalytics

by Ron Shandler, Ray Murphy (Editor), Brent Hershey (Editor), Brandon Kruse (Editor)

Overview

The industry's longest-running publication for baseball analysts and fantasy leaguers, the 2014 Baseball Forecaster, published annually since 1986, is the first book to approach prognostication by breaking performance down into its component parts. Rather than predicting batting average, for instance, this resource looks at the elements of skill that make up any given batter’s ability to distinguish between balls and strikes, his propensity to make contact with the ball, and what happens when he makes contact—reverse engineering those skills back into batting average. The result is an unparalleled forecast of baseball abilities and trends for the upcoming season and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781623687502
Publisher:	Triumph Books
Publication date:	01/01/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	242 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Ron Shandler was the first baseball analyst to develop sabermetric applications for fantasy league play. His website, www.BaseballHQ.com, won the Best Fantasy Baseball Online Content Award from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association in 2000, 2003, and 2004. He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association in 2005. He lives in Roanoke, Virginia. Ray Murphy is the managing director of www.BaseballHQ.com. He lives in Boston. Brent Hershey is the managing editor of www.BaseballHQ.com. He was honored in 2009 by the Fantasy Sports Writer Association for the Best Fantasy Baseball Article in a Print Publication. He lives in Philadelphia. Brandon Kruse has contributed to BaseballHQ.com since 2005, is a Twins fan pinning his hopes on the futures of Buxton and Sano, and lives in the Minneapolis area with his wife and two kids.

Read an Excerpt

Ron Shandler's 2014 Baseball Forcaster and Encyclopedia of Fanalytics

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By Ron Shandler

Triumph Books

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY Sports Media Group LLC
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62368-750-2

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CHAPTER 1

Nightmare

by Ron Shandler

I drive up to the Washington D.C./Baltimore area about once a month during the baseball season. It's a four-hour trip from my home in southwest Virginia but it's worth it to catch some Nats or O's action, or occasional minor league games in places like Bowie and Potomac.

The trip is cathartic for me; windows down, radio blasting. Sometimes it's classic jazz; more often it's sports talk. I do it alone; sometimes I even take in the games alone. It helps me clear my head.

For years, I've looked forward to these outings. This year was different.

This year was a nightmare.

It started back in January 2013 when I was developing the program for the First Pitch Forum spring conference series. I had decided that the theme for the event would be "Bold Statements."

After playing this game for nearly three decades, I know that fantasy leagues are often won by the team that can uncover that season's big surprise performance. Our research has shown that the most profitable players have a disproportionate impact on who is going to win your league. In 2013, more than 50% of Jose Fernandez owners finished no lower than 3rd place, and 75% finished no lower than 5th. That's huge.

The flipside works similarly. Teams that drafted first-round busts like Ryan Braun or Matt Kemp finished in the bottom third of the standings more often than not.

Identifying these players in advance — now, that's the trick. So the spring forum program was designed to go out on a limb, string together a few conditional possibilities and make some bold statements.

As author Frank Scully once said, "Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?"

To be honest, this is probably the funnest part of forecasting for me. Running routine trend analyses and projecting that Paul Goldschmidt was going to improve or Fernando Rodney was going to fall off is, well, boring. Speculating that Chris Davis would have 40-HR upside and then watching him explode ... that is much more fun.

So the First Pitch content developers came up with a bunch of bold statements. We suggested that you stay away from Mariners pitchers (their team ERA did spike from 3.76 in 2012 to 4.31), the saves leader on the Royals might be Luke Hochevar (right idea, wrong conclusion) and the Rockies might challenge for a wild card berth (well, they were in first place as late as May 7). There were a few others.

But the opening statement that led off the conference was the one that drew the most notice. I was the one who wrote and presented this bold statement in all seven cities:

Don't Draft Mike Trout.

Yes, it was pretty bold to defy common wisdom — and simple logic! — regarding the American League Rookie of the Year and MVP runner-up, but it was not meant to disparage the future superstar. There was no question that Trout was an exceptional player. The question was about his draftability.

After one incredible season, was it reasonable to expect him to repeat that performance? He would have to come close in order to earn back his acquisition cost. "Don't draft Mike Trout" meant that the odds were too high that you'd take a loss on your investment. That investment was very expensive — a top 3 pick in snake drafts or $40+ in auctions.

It was a cost/benefit analysis, nothing more.

I presented the case first to a tough home crowd in Los Angeles. They didn't take me seriously. I then moved on to San Francisco, Chicago and then up the East Coast. As I got deeper and deeper into the conference tour, the arguments grew stronger and stronger for me.

By the end of the tour, I had assembled a long laundry list of reasons why Mike Trout was a terrible investment for 2013. I put them together in an article for BaseballHQ.com and USAToday.com called, "12 Reasons Not to Draft Mike Trout."

The reasons touched on everything from his age to his weight. I discussed his unsustainable batting average on balls in play (BABIP) and home run to fly ball ratio. I compared his performance to others in history and charted his probable ranking in a volatile fantasy draft pool. And after I wrote about the 12 reasons, I found three more and wrote another piece.

Individually, none of the reasons was strong enough to make a case on its own. But together, they created a compelling argument for a significant fall from the upper echelons of 2013 fantasy cheat sheets.

And really, this seemed like the easiest projection I could ever make. A player whose numbers were so far off the charts had to be primed for a massive regression. So I went out on a limb with my multiple arguments, but I really thought that limb was supported by solid steel struts.

Well, the articles created a media firestorm. I was invited onto numerous radio shows to back up my contention. There was a videocast with CBS Sports. Chris Liss of Rotowire.com devoted an entire column to refute each one of my points.

Several discussion threads opened up in the BaseballHQ.com forums, one of which — "Trout's value is plummeting?" — generated more than 550 responses and more than 7,500 views. That thread exploded during the period when my laundry list was growing and Trout's projections were still being tweaked.

By mid-March, Trout had gone through eight spring training games without a home run and just one stolen base. Already there were slight murmurs about the "prophecy" coming true. I received an email from one enraged Angels fan calling me the devil. Truth.

On March 14, I had tickets to the Angels/White Sox Cactus League game at Diablo Stadium in Tempe, AZ. Tied up with some family business, I arrived late, missing the top of the first inning. When I finally made my way up the stairs and onto the concourse, the very first thing I saw was Mike Trout hitting his first home run.

I laughed. I don't believe in omens.

Trout wrapped up March with just two home runs and six stolen bases, though he did hit .350. April wasn't as kind. He opened slowly, going 2 for 11 in his first two games. After 10 games, he was batting only .227. By the end of the month, he was still batting just .261 with two home runs and four steals, a 12-HR/24-SB pace.

Some people were starting to get nervous. I have to admit, I was glued to every Angels boxscore and was getting these slight, intermittent flutters of validation.

That's when things took a nasty turn.

I decided to write a piece for USA Today, published on April 30. The headline that appeared with the online version was, "Trout's early-season struggles a matter of percentages." The headline in the print edition was a bit more pointed: "Trout's drop not shocking." I don't write the headlines.

The article itself was straightforward, looking at his current performance indicators as compared to 2012. However, the fact that I chose that topic at that time blew the first rule about small sample sizes. I was too anxious to plant the seeds of victory. Given all the attention to my earlier pieces, I was too giddy to let his April stat line pass without comment.

It defied everything I've written about exhibiting excruciating patience.

And well, you know what happened next. Trout exploded, hitting .337 over the remaining five months, with 25 HR and 29 SB. In the process, he set all sorts of offensive records, particularly for someone his age.

As Trout exploded, so did the endless online and media chatter. I became a target for derisive comments up and down the Internet. A week wouldn't go by without at least a few emails or tweets that would simply say, "Nice job projecting Trout" or "Surrender yet?" And finally, even my monthly trips to D.C. and Baltimore became another knife in my gut.

For you see, every time I drove up Interstate 81 to northern Virginia, I had to pass a sign at exit 156 that always read:

Troutville

Now, I know that sounds silly, but consider:

• Troutville is what some fans call the left field section of Angels Stadium populated by manic Trout fans.

• The Trout Farm is the official moniker of that section. Up Route 311 from Troutville is, in fact, a trout farm.

• Troutville, VA is the only town with that name in the entire United States. Why did it have to be on my route?

• The population of Troutville is only 432 and the area is a mere 0.9 square miles, an absurdly small entity to merit its own interstate exit. Yet it was on my route.

As ridiculous as it seems, that green sign at exit 156 kept silently mocking my every trip last summer. Each time I was looking forward to putting the pedal down to John Coltrane, I had to face the reality of passing this tiny town with the evil name. A town that has the exact same number of residents as its namesake's on base average this season.

Karma?

Well ... maybe.

My nightmare continued to grow more intense with every home run and stolen base that Trout notched in the boxscores. By mid-season, I had privately surrendered and gone into hiding to avoid all my taunters. By the end of the season, I was completely buried.

But the onslaught never let up. On October 1, I tweeted: "So much for my Tigers-Reds World Series prediction from last March. Congrats #Pirates!" The response was immediate: "About as good as your predictions on @Trouty20."

Even as late as the World Series, people were still stumbling over my March handiwork: "Wow. I just found this gem by you. Are you gonna take a year off just out of principal?? (sic) #fail."

There is an old German proverb that goes, "Lieber ein ende mit schrecken als ein schrecken ohne ende." Roughly translated, it reads, "Better to have a horrible ending than to have horrors without end."

So can I wake up now?

Awake

For me, the 2013 season was a bad dream in many respects. Two of my expert league teams finished ranked in double-digits. The other — my experts keeper league team — had been built such that 2013 was my absolute best chance for a title run. I finished third, 14.5 points out.

Mike Trout was on none of my teams. Perhaps I was cursed.

With the season over and with the benefit of conscious retrospect, I have to wonder where I went so far wrong.

The highest goal of forecasting is to make sure the process is sound. We can't predict the future — only general tendencies — so nailing the process is the best that we can do. Looking back at my list of 15 reasons why Trout should have fallen short of earning his draft value, was the process sound? Were the individual arguments valid? Here is how it all unraveled:

1. Trout's 2012 power had to be an outlier because he was scouted as a speed prospect. Bryce Harper was the power prospect.

Sound argument? Well, it would not be the first time that scouts were wrong, but the numbers did back it up. Trout averaged 10.5 HRs and 59 stolen bases in his previous two minor league seasons. Harper had hit 17 HRs and 26 SBs in his first pro season and was given a higher ceiling by the scouts.

However, by my establishing that comparison up front, it forced me to be on target with the projections on two players. The fact that both projections failed in opposite directions made the comparison look even worse.

And even though the process was somewhat sound, the argument was flawed. Hanley Ramirez never hit more than 8 HRs in any of his four minor league seasons yet hit 17, 29 and 33 in his first three years in the Majors. (Trout: "So there.")

Of course, we can always cherry-pick isolated examples to support or refute any argument.

2. Over the past eight years, only 3% of all 30-HR hitters had fly ball rates as low as Trout's 33%. His 27% HR/F rate in the second half was also notable (Jose Bautista's was only 22% in his 54-HR year).

Sound argument? Well, at least a sound observation. The point was that this was not a repeatable feat and thus, his home run total should fade.

But failing to repeat could mean that Trout fell short of 30 HRs or saw his fly ball rate rise. In fact, both happened. Trout's HR total did drop below 30. His fly ball rate rose from 33% to 35%. His home run to fly ball rate dropped from 22% to a more acceptable 16%.

But the net result was a loss of a just three home runs (though in 30 additional at-bats). Not exactly earth-shattering.

3. Home runs are getting scarcer each year and speed is plentiful, making the big power bats more valuable. If Trout's power was not for real, then he would have less value as a first-rounder.

Sound argument? Yes, if in fact this trend had continued. As it turned out, speed became scarcer in 2013, thereby leveling the playing field all around. We could not have known that.

But as noted, I was not trying to prove that Trout wasn't a great ballplayer; I was trying to prove that he did not merit his expected market price on Draft Day. The real question was, how much did his HR output have to drop in order for this to have any relevance? It would have to be a significant drop, and it wasn't.

So, as long as he remained a 5-category player, he was always going to end up as a first-rounder, especially if he managed to hit over .300. But that .300 average was also something I did not think he could repeat. You see ...

4. Trout's .383 BABIP is typically an unsustainable level. As that regressed, so would his batting average. As his batting average regressed, so would his home run output and stolen base opportunities.

Sound argument? Yes. Solid process, bad result. This domino effect never happened because Trout managed to repeat his elevated BABIP as well as his high batting average.

Rany Jazayerli wrote: "The armies of regression from greatness and regression from luck amassed on his doorstep in the spring, and he flicked them aside as if he were Achilles."

You see, others were equally amazed.

Todd Zola wrote: "We still don't know Trout's baseline BABIP even though we now have two full seasons of data. Many will point to consecutive seasons of a BABIP north of .380 and call it Trout's established baseline. And they may be right. But the probability of sustaining a career BABIP over .380 is extremely slim."

So we're still looking for possible regression here. And that domino effect may still be around the corner.

In some ways, I see this in the same light as our analysis of Jeremy Hellickson. For two straight seasons, his ERA far exceeded his skills set. Many analysts began resigning themselves to the possibility that Hellickson had some innate quality that allowed him to consistently overachieve.

Then came 2013's disaster. The interesting takeaway from Hellickson is that, while his ERA during that three-year span was 2.95, 3.10 and 5.17, his xERA during that time was 4.58, 4.39 and 4.16. His 2013 performance was actually the best skills displayed during that period.

This is not to say that Hellickson is anywhere near the caliber of player that Trout is. It's just to note that even two seasons may not provide an accurate baseline.

By comparison, it's important to note that some of Trout's underlying skills also improved this past year. His contact rate rose from 75 to 77%. His walk rate increased from 11% to 16%. He became more patient and discriminating in the pitches he swung at. That can only lead to even better things, as incomprehensible as that sounds.

So it's also possible that — like Hellickson — Trout's skill could continue to improve even if his surface stats remain stable, or even decline.

5. Trout allegedly showed up to camp at 240 pounds. History has shown that players of that girth do not steal bases (think: Billy Butler, also 6-1, 240 lbs.).

Sound argument? I plead the Fifth.

Okay, it is true that players of those dimensions typically do not steal bases. Over the past few years, Matt Kemp and Hanley Ramirez are the only players tipping the scales at even 220 lbs who have stolen as many as 20 bases in a season. So I surmised that it would be unlikely that Trout could repeat his near-50 SB output at 240 pounds.

Of all the arguments in my articles, this was the one that drew the most ire, in good part because we could not verify Trout's actual weight. As it turned out, whether due to the weight, or batting order position, or planetary alignment, this is the projection that we beat field on.

Trout stole 33 bases. We projected he'd steal 30. All the other leading touts projected 45 and up.

In the end ... Questionable process + Good result = Dumb Luck. I'll take it, though.

6. Trout's maximum-effort style of play increases the odds that a pulled hamstring or an immovable object (like an outfield wall) could send him to the disabled list.

Sound argument? More of a sound speculation. Many max- effort players face this threat and end up spending time on the DL, but of course it's not a given.

One interesting observation involves Trout's drop in defensive skill in 2013. Some surmise that he pulled back on his aggressiveness to avoid injury, thereby decreasing the number of balls he reached. However, I don't know if that's anything more than a speculation.

7. Trout had an amazing three months in 2012, but was already exhibiting signs of slowing down as the season progressed. He batted .284 in August and .257 in September.

Sound argument? Sound observation, though not terribly predictive.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Ron Shandler's 2014 Baseball Forcaster and Encyclopedia of Fanalytics by Ron Shandler. Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY Sports Media Group LLC. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Nightmare,
Encyclopedia of Fanalytics,
Fundamentals,
Batters,
Pitchers,
Prospects,
Gaming,
Statistical Research Abstracts,
Gaming Research Abstracts,
Major Leagues,
Batters,
Pitchers,
Injuries,
Prospects,
Top Impact Prospects for 2014,
Top Japanese Prospects,
Major League Equivalents,
Leaderboards,
Draft Guides,
Blatant Advertisements for Other Products,