Mastersball Fantasy Forum

I think there is a problem with the projection update. The dollar value for players, at least in a single league format, appear
to be wrong. Just one of many examples, Mike Aviles in the previous set of projections was at $7 in 4x4 single league. Now,
with no change to his stats he shows at $-6. I don't think that this can be correct. I didn't look at the pitching projections,
so I'm not sure whether the same problem exists there.

I'll take a look. The pool has changed and I did use positional adjustments this time so there will be some differences, but $13 is steep.

Dang, I'm sorry.

I see what I did wrong and I will send the new file to JP as soon as I can.

Long story short is with so many free agents, doing an AL only or NL only pool leaving them out would really skew things. So instead, I ran it as a 25-team mixed league. Or at least I planned to. My mistake was not changing the team number to 25 in the CVRC. I left it at 12. Obviously, once more FA sign, I will go back to running them for the individual leagues.

Again, I apologize for the inconvenience.

Todd Zola wrote:Dang, I'm sorry.

I see what I did wrong and I will send the new file to JP as soon as I can.

Long story short is with so many free agents, doing an AL only or NL only pool leaving them out would really skew things. So instead, I ran it as a 25-team mixed league. Or at least I planned to. My mistake was not changing the team number to 25 in the CVRC. I left it at 12. Obviously, once more FA sign, I will go back to running them for the individual leagues.

Again, I apologize for the inconvenience.

No problem.

hey Todd - has CVRC stayed essentially the same as last season, the methodology that is?

CVRC is the same. Over time, we will incorporate its brains into the brawn of the Zen Engine for a roided up super-tool.

I hope to be able to roll it out with the next update, with the caveat that AL and NL only leagues are a bit screwy until more players sign. What I did was run a 25-team mixed league to approximate single leagues.

I have updated the projections with the fix. So that is now solved.

As far as tools, we will be posting projections using both the MB and CS tool sets. There isn't enough time to combine them. Over the summer, we will combine the two to make a best of breed tool.

Long term? We're discussing that. We have two programmers who love fantasy baseball. What can two programmers come up with?


JP

I was curious regarding the projection for Brett Gardner. It remains low with only 261 AB. I was curious as to the rationale
behind the projection. The Yankees are saying publicly that any free agent that they pick up will probably be a right handed
hitter and would be a platoon partner with Gardner. The only name that I have heard being linked with the Yankees is Reed
Johnson, who certainly would not seem likely to take a major share of the AB from Gardner. I guess that that there is a
possibility that the prices will come down so much that they would decide to get someone like Jermaine Dye and I'm sure
that they have had contact with agents of other OF than Reed Johnson.

I know that I can make adjustments to the playing time on the CVRC, but wanted to find out the rationale behind the
projection.

Thanks.

This is discussed in the projection commentary notes we posted Jan 1 and will be updating tonight, though the comment about the Yankees LF situation remains the same -- simply put, I still do not believe Gardner will be the opening day LF for the WS Champs, I believe they will have him be a super-utility 4th outfielder.

The latest buzz has Rocco Baldelli's name associated with the Yankees but I don't see him as the left field answer either. It's not a done deal that Damon is out although unlikely. They offered him 2 years $14M which he turned down. There was a report that the Braves offered him $2M for 1 year. Brian Cashman has been adamant that they only have $2M to upgrade LF with. There's not too many people that fit that bill. Still, I think they try to go that route and if it doesn't work out do a trade later.

Part of my pause is I have a little difficulty believing there is only 2 million left in the "budget".

On the other hand, the Yankees would look pretty disingenuous, if not foolish by going public with the 2M proclamation then signing someone for more, but there is always spin control.

Once a few of the potential fits in LF sign, I may be more inclined to add another couple hundred plate appearances to Gardner's total.

All this aside, if I was running the present Yankees as a SIM or STRAT team, I would be just fine with my sticks and having a decent glove in the spacious left field.

Todd Zola wrote:Part of my pause is I have a little difficulty believing there is only 2 million left in the "budget".

On the other hand, the Yankees would look pretty disingenuous, if not foolish by going public with the 2M proclamation then signing someone for more, but there is always spin control.

Once a few of the potential fits in LF sign, I may be more inclined to add another couple hundred plate appearances to Gardner's total.

All this aside, if I was running the present Yankees as a SIM or STRAT team, I would be just fine with my sticks and having a decent glove in the spacious left field.

All in all I would tend to agree with you. The thing that gives me pause is your last sentence. Cashman and Girardi, in particular, have both said the same thing about defense and left field. They said the same thing going into last season about center field and most people (including myself) didn't think they would really go with either Melky or Gardner. My feeling is they will start with Gardner and if it doesn't work out they will look to make a trade for an OF. Dunn, Thames, Crawford, Burrell are unrestricted FA after 2010 while Kubel (5.25M) and De Jesus (6M) have options that their teams might not pick up. Then again, they might be saving their money for Joe Mauer.

One of the many things that separates the Yankees from about every other team is they don't save money back for a specific player like Mauer. If that type of player becomes available, they would just go out and bid for him.

viper wrote:One of the many things that separates the Yankees from about every other team is they don't save money back for a specific player like Mauer. If that type of player becomes available, they would just go out and bid for him.

Part of the reason for that is that they normally have a player or two coming off of a good contract. For example, this
season they had Damon coming off of a good sized contract, as well as Matsui. Unless they want to resign the player
that gives them the ability to go out and get high priced talent most years and use the money saved from the expiring
contract.

aburt19 wrote:

viper wrote:One of the many things that separates the Yankees from about every other team is they don't save money back for a specific player like Mauer. If that type of player becomes available, they would just go out and bid for him.

Part of the reason for that is that they normally have a player or two coming off of a good contract. For example, this
season they had Damon coming off of a good sized contract, as well as Matsui. Unless they want to resign the player
that gives them the ability to go out and get high priced talent most years and use the money saved from the expiring
contract.

That's not the case next year since the only 2 coming off contracts are Jeter and Mo. Jeter will definitely be re-signed and Mo will be if he wants to hence saving money for someone (Mauer?).

cwk1963 wrote:

aburt19 wrote:

viper wrote:One of the many things that separates the Yankees from about every other team is they don't save money back for a specific player like Mauer. If that type of player becomes available, they would just go out and bid for him.

Part of the reason for that is that they normally have a player or two coming off of a good contract. For example, this
season they had Damon coming off of a good sized contract, as well as Matsui. Unless they want to resign the player
that gives them the ability to go out and get high priced talent most years and use the money saved from the expiring
contract.

That's not the case next year since the only 2 coming off contracts are Jeter and Mo. Jeter will definitely be re-signed and Mo will be if he wants to hence saving money for someone (Mauer?).

I agree that next season has mostly players who they will want to resign (Jeter and Mo). But if they decide not to resign
Pettitte next year, that is certainly money that is available. That frees up $11,750,000 according to Cot's Baseball
Contracts. Also, Javier Vazquez is in the final year of his contract and that frees up $11,500,000. No on knows whether
the Yankees will have enough confidence to use both Hughes and Chamberlain in the rotation. But there is a lot of money
coming off the books at the end of 2010 that the Yankees may not resign.

My bad. You're right about Pettitte and Vazquez - I forgot about this year's signings/additions. Beckett, Halladay and Lee headline the list of potential FA for 2011 so they might not want to hang onto Javy. This year will determine a lot as far as that goes.

I have 2 position related statements/questions.

1. Jhonny Peralta and Brendan Harris are only listed at SS eligible when both should additionally qualify at 3B. I realize most will place them at SS.

2. Joshua Bell is listed as both 3B and SS eligible. According to baseball reference, he played all his games at 3B and DH last year between Chattanooga and Bowie. In fact, over his minor league career he has played 1B once, SS once, 3B 334 times, and DHed 7 times.

Thank you for the hard work!

Kelly -- I'm guessing there was a lookup and/or sort mixup when I added players to the pool, I will check on those.

I just noticed in the CVRC that Mike Lowell is not listed at all. Is this an oversight? I know that with Beltre on board, Lowell
will not play with Boston. But the time frame for his recovery was thought to be six to eight weeks. Given that Boston
tried to trade him and was eating most of his salary, I assume they will trade him when he is healthy. Of course there isn't
any guarantee that he will go to an AL team. He's almost in the category of a free agent at this point based on the fact
that it's pretty sure he'll be somewhere, just that we don't know where (like Damon, Winn, etc).

Here's the deal with Lowell. I do not believe he is going to be playing with Boston and we have a mechanism by which to total team at bats using the team designation, so I took BOS out of Lowell's cell to add up what we projected without him and obviously never put it back in.

With that said, it is a total 100% crapshoot how many plate appearances to assign him. We'll come up with a number, probably assuming the RHB of platoon plus a few more, something like that, and add his team designation back to Boston.

This is a really dumb question, but I wanted to know whether spring training/winter ball results are considered at all in the
projection process or if it is simply a process using the last three years stats weighted appropriately, age of the player,
etc.?

For example, reports are that Francisco Liriano just tore up winter ball. The finals of the Carribean World Series was
available online and according to the radar gun, Liriano was consistently hitting 93-95 compared to in the high 80's last
season. I always think that reports regarding a player "being in the best shape of his carreer", "developing a new pitch",
"working out with a new trainer", "throwing much harder than the previous season", etc. are almost always noise and not
really news.

I just wondered if reports like this had any effect on the projections at all? I'm guessing that it probably doesn't because
it would put too much subjectivity into the process. The reason that I ask is that if it doesn't, I might want to consider
it in whether to go the extra buck, kind of like a tie-breaker.

Thanks.

It is not a quantitative factor in the projections. The 3 year major and minor league track record of the player plus his age, team, etc are the only factors numerically.

What Gary said as far as projections go, but in a way, it is "our job" to let the paid subscriber know what you just related to us as far as his recent outing goes. It was actually available to watch over the Internet and talking to someone who saw it, the word is his slider was BITING.

Past that -- BUYER BEWARE!!!!

Am I willing to bet on the come and supersede the projection? Yes.

But my gut says some people read the reports and see him in the spring and place a stronger bet than me

Todd Zola wrote:What Gary said as far as projections go, but in a way, it is "our job" to let the paid subscriber know what you just related to us as far as his recent outing goes. It was actually available to watch over the Internet and talking to someone who saw it, the word is his slider was BITING.

Past that -- BUYER BEWARE!!!!

Am I willing to bet on the come and supersede the projection? Yes.

But my gut says some people read the reports and see him in the spring and place a stronger bet than me

I agree that someone will probably do that. I don't intend to change the projection. It's more a case of thinking that there
may be some upside in the projection and that I might be willing to go $1-$2 over projection as I need to take a few
chances this year since my carryover list is a little weak in comparison to a couple of teams. But if someone thinks that
he's recaptured to somewhere close to 2007, then that won't happen.

As a hypothetical, if he is lights out this spring, we may get together and decide to slightly alter the weighting of the 3 year history. But he would have to really show some good stuff.

He might be a guy to look at in salary cap type games, if his salary is determined on last year's numbers. But he would be the type of guy that EVERYONE would have. It's sort of weird, you don't take him because you think he will help you separate from the pack but rather because everyone will have him. These challenge games are a different animal.

I should probably have articulated my thoughts further.

The entirety of our system is that we basically are able to grade players out on a level playing field. We take everything we can back to a neutralized MLB environment and then re-project from there.

When you add things like post-season play, or spring training, or AFL, or Dominican/World Classic, whatever else, in essence we are taking information that is almost impossible to bring back to our neutral scale. Doing so would be entirely artwork, there isn't an objective way to do it. It's not that we aren't aware of it, we simply cannot quantify it in a way that would make our projections more helpful or more accurate.

That said, it should and does affect our perception of playing time in some ways, which we do manually control. So it's not irrelevant. I'd argue it's perfectly relevant (not that theres anyone to argue with).

We would have to give Connor Jackson 50 SB with his winter ball performance. I wouldn't want to do that. He pretty much stole a base a game this winter.

JP Kastner wrote:We would have to give Connor Jackson 50 SB with his winter ball performance. I wouldn't want to do that. He pretty much stole a base a game this winter.

I'm not suggesting that stats from winter ball necessarily reflect what they would be in the majors. In the case of Liriano
I don't pay too much attention to his strikeout to walk ratio, particularly the walk portion. There is an old saying from the
islands that says you don't walk off the island. As a result the plate patience for most players from that area is not
good.

But the increased velocity is a fact based on the online coverage of the game. It has to make a difference to a pitchers
effectiveness if he goes from throwing in the high 80s to 93-95.

Again, I'm not lobbying for a change in his projection. I just wanted to know if it was factored in at all so that I didn't
include it twice is my decision making process.

aburt19 wrote: I just wanted to know if it was factored in at all so that I didn't include it twice is my decision making process.

This was covered in last year's hypothetical questions on the board (which I LOVED). Unless something has changed (and i don't believe it has) there is almost no subjectivity added to the projections themselves. The player profiles will provide the subjectivity (upside/downside). So feel free to tweak the projection as you see fit.

My response to the hypothetical question last year was something along the lines of: "it doesn't matter whether or not the projections contain any bias so long as the user know whether or not any bias has been applied to the projection. If none has been applied the user can tweak things as they see fit. If any has been applied the user should refrain from tweaking in most cases as it will result in applying the bias twice"

I hear what you're saying loud and clear, so tweak away good sir.

Yeah, our thinking in the broad sense is if you subjectively alter a player because of "X", then all players displaying "X" should be altered, in which case it becomes part of the objective system.

That said, the only subjective touch I add is with players whose season was impacted by injury or if a young player had a season which appears to be a real outlier after neutral translation, which is usually only found in inexperienced pitching as sometimes their MLEs "over-penalize". Gary did some nice work in the off-season, eliminating much of this and that which is left I can usually smooth by altering the regression with changing the weighted average as a last resort.

I have never had to just plain overwrite something from the model. The subjective massages are all done within the variables such as % regression and weighted average.

And to sort of embellish this a little, an MLE basically takes what a player did in the minors and translates it to how he would have done if he was in the Majors.

You base it on what players have really done.

The hard part is determining the exact pool of players to use. There is a built-in bias if you compare a player good enough to make the majors with a pool of players never to see The Show. But that is the pool we have to work with so we do the best we can.

In addition, all players, MLB and MiLB are translated back to a neutral level using a global park factor. Perhaps a player is not impacted by the effect and his numbers are unfairly altered. We cannot discern this on a micro scale, so we opt to apply the factor globally.

It's not a big deal, but Gary Matthews, Jr. still shows as being with the LAA instead of the NYM.

Actually, it may be a big deal as that impacts playing time distribution.

I'll look at the main file this evening.

Octavio Dotel does not appear in the updated projections or CVRC. How many saves do you look for him to get?

Whoever had Feb 1 as the day I send out a clean projection update, you're out of the pool.

What's odd is Hanrahan is cut to 4, so an adjustment must have been made. My guess is I failed to change the team designation.

Okay I know, no one cares, just answer the question...

It looks like we will have Pittsburgh as about a 70 win team, meaning we will project 35-37 team saves. With Hanrahan getting 4, and the likelihood that I sneak 2 onto Meek and 1 onto Lopez, that leaves 28-30 for Dotel. So let's call it about 29, give or take, with the understanding that both the Pirate hitters and pitchers are likely to have some additions, which will impact the team runs scored versus team runs allowed, which will in turn impact the projected W-L, affecting saves. But at most, he might edge into the low 30s.

Some interesting things on the most current update of the projections.

Kevin Gregg shows 0 saves with the saves being split between Frasor and Downs.

Gary Matthews Jr still shows as an American League player with Los Angeles.

The acquisition of Orlando Hudson impacted Punto more than Alexi Casilla. Punto has always been a favorite of the Twins
manager (although I've never been sure why). I would have figured that Casilla might lost more AB than Punto.

FWIW, we are going to be giving the projections a complete scrub, asking the entire staff for their input for the March 1 update. I will post a separate thread requesting specific issues you guys would like discussed.

aburt19 wrote:Some interesting things on the most current update of the projections.

Kevin Gregg shows 0 saves with the saves being split between Frasor and Downs.

Maybe this is more reflective if I was the manager -- but I'm not, so yeah we should give him a token handful unless it is evident he is the primary closer.

Gary Matthews Jr still shows as an American League player with Los Angeles.

ARGHH -- found the error, I thought I corrected it but I obviously did not.

The acquisition of Orlando Hudson impacted Punto more than Alexi Casilla. Punto has always been a favorite of the Twins
manager (although I've never been sure why). I would have figured that Casilla might lost more AB than Punto.

Consider this on top of the review list. I'm still not convinced Minnesota will use Harris at 3B so this is best considered fluid. We really have to look at Harris, Tolbert, Punto and Casilla in the aggregate.

Uploaded the new file --

I remember in the past there was a "projection changes" note with each new file. Do you plan anything like this for 2010?

-C

Right now they are so fluid it would be difficult but starting for the weekly deliveries in March, we will see what we can do.

i imagine you are mostly changing playing time, but how much tweaking of the skills projections do you do?

Slim and None and Gary has Slim tied up and gagged in his basement.

UNLESS....

A reliever is in line for saves

Something slipped through that we would have changed from the beginning, but hopefully enough eyeballs will hit the numbers so there are not any.

We should note, however, that pitcher wins are tied to team runs scored, so that could change if a team betters or worsens its projected runs scored.

is Damon about the only hitter who can significantly modify a set of OF/DH projections? Of the free agent hitters, he seems to be the only one who will have a guaranteed starting position.

also, I counted up the plate appearances for each team [idle mind, devil's playground syndrome], and the team by team variation was quite high. Thoughts?

I think Dye could have an impact depending on where he signs.

With respect to the team totals, we compare to their recent totals and shoot for something logical in the ballpark. Most are there, so if there is variation, it is because there is normal variation.

Boston presently has more PA than they should because technically, Lowell is still on the team so I need to put BOS next to his name. I have no expectation he will play with the Red Sox this season. Subtract out his total, and Boston is in the expected range.

is the range roughly 5800-6300?

interesting, the 2009 range was from 5696-5398

note [wrong numbers - see later post]

The 3-year average range is 6120-6411.

We assume 300 plate appearances for a pitcher for each NL team.

Adding in that 300, we have 24 teams in that range, spanning from 6139-6437.

The missing 6 teams have

5994
5947
5937
5832
5804
5541

I feel pretty confident we will be 30 for 30 before too long.

FWIW, last season, we used a different number. I believe 600 as the PA for pitchers in the NL so the aggregate NL totals are lower from last season.

the 2009 range was 6323-5884. I forgot to add walks on my prior post. Amazing what stats are so easily findable on the internet.

Can you tell me how you calculate OBP and SLG. Am I missing something with HBP and sacrifices? I cannot get your numbers to match up exactly (like I can with BA).

I tried:
SLG = TB/AB
OBP = (H+BB)/(AB+BB) -- I can see where HBP would affect this calc, but the OBPs I am getting are already higher than what is given in the projection.

These two are only off a little bit from player to player. However, when combining the values to calculate OPS the errors (obviously) compound. I have seen as much as 0.036 in error (Ross Gload is at 0.615, but calculating using the actual projections yields 0.651).

Thanks

Kelly_Leak wrote:Can you tell me how you calculate OBP and SLG. Am I missing something with HBP and sacrifices? I cannot get your numbers to match up exactly (like I can with BA).

I tried:
SLG = TB/AB
OBP = (H+BB)/(AB+BB) -- I can see where HBP would affect this calc, but the OBPs I am getting are already higher than what is given in the projection.

These two are only off a little bit from player to player. However, when combining the values to calculate OPS the errors (obviously) compound. I have seen as much as 0.036 in error (Ross Gload is at 0.615, but calculating using the actual projections yields 0.651).

Thanks

It has to do with rounding, something I should have had the foresight to correct.

We base everything off of Plate Appearances. That is, plate appearances is the WHOLE NUMBER. The player's walk rate then determines that AB so the at bat is really a decimal, as are all the stats. We display them as rounded off whole numbers.

We calculate BA/OBP/SLP in the main projection engine, then I c/p it into the templates we post. You are calculating using the rounded off whole numbers.

What I should do, and will do going forward is set up a template to determine the rate stats from the whole numbers, to eliminate this confusion. We switched to a different engine and somewhat embarrassingly, it never struck me to fix this.

But Kelly does bring up a good point for those in OBP leagues. We use strictly BB in the OBP calculation. There are definitely some batters with a higher penchant of getting hit, increasing their OBP. You can account for this by adding in some extra BB if you want.

Hello all,
First off I'd like to say great site! Loads of information and knowledgeable people here and it has been a pleasure to read through the articles and forums.

Now, at the risk of asking a potentially dumb question with my first post... Will there be projections available for high profile prospects such as Jason Heyward and Aroldis Chapman? I've noticed that to date there hasn't been any projections for these two players in particular and I expect them to definitely get some playing time this season. I apologize if this has been answered somewhere else on the site but I've taken a look around and couldn't find anything.

Thanks.

There is now pretty solid evidence that Heyward will be with the Braves, if not break camp as their starting RF so he will be added to the set for March 4. We can use his minor league numbers as a foundation and do our own translation. We may be a bit conservative on playing time and adjust as the spring progresses, but if one uses the CVRC, they can prorate the numbers anyway they desire and get a value/ranking accordingly.

Chapman is a bit different in that we honestly have no clue as to how he will perform, similar to Strasburg. We will find whatever stats we can, which as some know is difficult for Cuban imports and translate them as best we can, but in reality, we have no idea how the player will perform.

Thanks Todd

Where's Jason Heyward? I thought he was getting added.

An initial glance of the total players projected shows a decrease of about 25 hitters and 25 pitchers. Was much of the discussion over the past weekend about dropping certain players. Chris Shelton initially sticks out as he was always the last valued player when I ran the CVRC.

He should have been, I will check the file.

Almost all of the eliminated players were free agents. We left some on, the ones whose names are still being mentioned.

There were a few players on teams we took off as their team signed other players. Sometimes signing one player leads to dropping of two, depending on the situation.

I don't have the master file with me, I know Heyward was added, I will get the corrected file to JP this evening.

I'm at a loss because JP and I talked about how many AB to give him. My guess is I did not change the team designation to ATL and he got deleted out.

The projection was actually pretty optimistic and our engine usually is conservative with rookies. His MLEs mus thave translated very well.

Todd Zola wrote:I'm at a loss because JP and I talked about how many AB to give him. My guess is I did not change the team designation to ATL and he got deleted out.

The projection was actually pretty optimistic and our engine usually is conservative with rookies. His MLEs mus thave translated very well.

No problem. Looking forward to seeing the projection for Heyward.

Two additional minor fixes.
1. Garret Anderson - signing was probably too late for this update.
2. Chien-Ming Wang's league is still blank. Needs to be updated "N".

Kelly_Leak wrote:
Two additional minor fixes.
1. Garret Anderson - signing was probably too late for this update.
2. Chien-Ming Wang's league is still blank. Needs to be updated "N".

1. Not anymore it's not
2. Gracias

the projections have a MIX15 player value. I assume this was determined using CVRC. What were the parameters used? Specifically the hitting percentage, category weights, BA and number required at various positions. Thanks

Same as we have done since Dec.

2 pools, C and non-C

hitting .69

weights as they are defaulted on the CVRC

Is there an issue with the numbers? If so, can you be specific?

no issues at all. I saw that the eligibility issues were corrected. And that Coste was missing - not being in the majors probably impacts your value.

I'm curious how the defaults batting average was identified. I'm more of a .275 guy but my guess is that it won't sway the results by much if any. Thinking in terms of tiers makes my previous efforts for precision seem like a waste of time.

Knowing how values are determined helps so much.

The default is explained amidst the supporting CVRC primer -- it is a strictly empirical formula used to estimate the last place team. It comes from the data of the player pool for each league. It has no basis in logic other than it gets the number close enough.

Changing to .275 will make a big difference. I have the BA conversion at several baselines and prefer that of the last place team.

I need to check out the BA differences.

How are the default ERA & WHIP determined? Is it last place team or something different?

All are estimates of the last place team

Garret Anderson to the Dodgers. Projected ABs tumble.

One question and one comment on the March 25th projections.

Garrett Atkins lost AB and Ty Wigginton gained AB. Is this based on comments by Orioles management or not?

Alberto Callaspo AB are too low. Rotoworld had a comment from the Royals manager in the last couple of days where he
said that he was going to try to use Callaspo in the #3 spot in the lineup because his was too important to hit sixth or
seventh in the lineup. I don't know where and at whose expense he will get the AB, but whether it's at 3B, DH or 2B, he
will play more than the 273 AB that is in the projection. You don't bat someone third in the lineup this late in ST that you
don't expect to play regularly. I'd be surprised if he doesn't get at least 400 AB and it wouldn't surprise me if it's more.

aburt19 wrote:One question and one comment on the March 25th projections.

Garrett Atkins lost AB and Ty Wigginton gained AB. Is this based on comments by Orioles management or not?

Alberto Callaspo AB are too low. Rotoworld had a comment from the Royals manager in the last couple of days where he
said that he was going to try to use Callaspo in the #3 spot in the lineup because his was too important to hit sixth or
seventh in the lineup. I don't know where and at whose expense he will get the AB, but whether it's at 3B, DH or 2B, he
will play more than the 273 AB that is in the projection. You don't bat someone third in the lineup this late in ST that you
don't expect to play regularly. I'd be surprised if he doesn't get at least 400 AB and it wouldn't surprise me if it's more.

re: Atkins -- this was simply a site decision based on what we see, nothing more

re: Callaspo -- my read is that he is filling in for Gordon and once Gordon is back, he goes back to the bench. Getz is going to play 2B and Gordon is going to play 3B when healthy. It would not surprise me at all if they got rid of Guillen and opened up at bats as DH (maybe putting Butler there and Gordon at 1B), but we cannot "PROJECT" that. So the at bats given to Callaspo reflect what we expect him to get when playing for Gordon plus the added as the fill in sub. I don't happen to agree with the sentiment that because he is being tried in teh 3-hole, he is therefore an automatic starter the rest of the season. I think Hillman is looking at the best set up of the available hitters. It isn't even a guarantee Callaspo opens the season batting 3rd. Though it is likely.

We have said all along we encourage people to season the projections with their own opinion of playing time.

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/03/24/18 ... oster.html

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd ... Id=rss_mlb

In the pitcher's CVRC, there is a Texas pitcher named #N/A. He appears to be a decnt MR. Is he a rookie or what? He was also in the 3/18 CVRC so I guess he hasn't been sent down yet.

Darren O'Day

thought I fixed that --

I'll cleanup the file(s)

This may have been brought up in another thread. You increased the innings for C.J. Wilson to show that he is a starter,
but left him with 11 saves.

aburt19 wrote:This may have been brought up in another thread. You increased the innings for C.J. Wilson to show that he is a starter,
but left him with 11 saves.

Meant to shift those to Neftali Feliz, thanks

Are you posting an updated Pitcher Projection file or should I just simply subtract the 11 saves from Wilson and give them to Feliz? Just wanted to confirm that all 11 saves were being deducted from Wilson and given all to Feliz.

I don't have FTP until later, but that is the correction, yes.

I have concerns that Francisco can make it full a season healthy.

Where do I access the projections on the site

You need to be logged into the front page with your username and p/w. Then all you need to do is click on the same menu tab you used to subscribe for either the Gold or Platinum Plan. Once you are there, it is evident where everything is.

I was curious about Mike Sweeney not having a projection. He's probably not going to play a ton, so it might not make
much difference. I had heard he was going to make the team.

aburt19 wrote:I was curious about Mike Sweeney not having a projection. He's probably not going to play a ton, so it might not make
much difference. I had heard he was going to make the team.

Dang it, I got so wrapped up in thinking about Garko in Texas I didn't do the associated fix in Seattle. We'll give him 100AB give or take, and considering he likely won't ever have anything more than DH/UT eligibility, he's only relevant in the deepest of leagues.

The Seattle infield is sort of a mess with no real backups to speak of with Hannahan hurt. Josh Wilson, Carp, Tuiasosopo...hard to say who sticks.

In the 4/1 hitters file, the Mix12 and Mix15 columns in the main hitters sheet have identical data (looks like both have Mix12). Guess I can copy/paste from the Mix15 sheet, but probably better to correct it so folks aren't misled.

thanks, will get correct file up in the morning

Just when you think that the projections might be settling down a little, it's being reported that the A's are going to
designate Jack Cust for assignment and keep both T. Buck and J. Fox.

Fortunately, I only have Cust on three of my five teams. Wait, did I say fortunately? I cannot believe he won't get a job but stranger things have happened.

I have him in both my NFBC leagues but I also have players to fill-in so I can wait a bit there. I also have him in a no-bench AL-only league. The good and bad news is that our first FAAB period will be April 11. There I have a week to let things settle.