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Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Looking Ahead to 2011 - Pitching and Team Wrap-Up

This is my eighth(and last) post of the day.  I think I need a nap.

Now that we have an idea of how the Yankee pitching staff will look, we can try and see what we might expect out of them this year.  I usually do a few different depth charts, but given the fact that the season starts tomorrow I’m just going to post the one I used for the projections I ran, adjusting for the news that Luis Ayala will start the year on the roster.

player	role	ip	cR	mR	oR	pR	zR	aR
CC Sabathia	sp1	220	95	87	92	87	87	90
Phil Hughes	sp2	200	98	89	89	90	98	93
A.J. Burnett	sp3	170	95	91	99	94	91	94
Ivan Nova	sp4	170	106	84	101	107	107	103
Freddy Garcia	sp5	150	82	79	80	87	86	83
Bartolo Colon	sp6	55	33	31	37	33	37	34
Andrew Brackman	sp7	30	20	14	24	21	20	21
Hector Noesi	sp8	10	6	5	6	6	6	6
starters total		1005	536	480	529	525	531	523
Mariano Rivera	cl	65	21	22	22	20	25	22
Rafael Soriano	su	70	28	26	27	23	27	26
David Robertson	su	70	33	32	31	29	29	31
Joba Chamberlain	mr	70	36	35	36	34	31	34
Pedro Feliciano	mr	60	30	27	32	28	29	29
Pedro Feliciano	mr	50	26	23	27	27	27	26
Steve Garrison	lr	20	12	10	14	15	15	14
Luis Ayala	mu	20	12	11	12	12	12	12
Ryan Pope	mu	10	6	5	7	7	8	7
bullpen total		435	204	190	207	194	202	201
team total		1440	740	671	736	719	734	724

cR: Projected runs allowed using CAIRO
mR: Projected runs allowed using Marcel
oR: Projected runs allowed using Oliver
pR: Projected runs allowed using PECOTA
zR: Projected runs allowed using ZiPS
aR: Average projected runs of all of the above

Figure a range of 30 runs in either direction to account for the error bars in the projections.  I don’t know how much the defense is accounted for in the non-CAIRO projections.  I know that for Oliver and Marcel it’s not a factor.  I have the Yankee defense projected to be around 15 runs better than average, mostly thanks to the OF, so we can probably knock 10-15 runs of those runs allowed totals.  The Yankee offense averages around 815 runs in the five projection systems I am looking at, which is pretty close to the 812 they averaged in the Diamond Mind simulations.

So if we wanted to estimate how good the Yankees are using the averages, figure:
815 runs scored
15 runs saved defensively
724 runs allowed by the pitchers
Pythagenpat winning percentage: .566
Pythagenpat W-L: 92-70

This is basically what the simulations said as well.  So the Yankees should probably be the favorites for the wild card, and with a bit of good fortune, they should contend for the division right up until the end of the season.

That works for me.

If you want, you can use this thread to make your predictions for 2011.  I’ll kick things off:

AL East: Yankees
AL Central: White Sox
AL West: Rangers
Wild card: Red Sox

NL East: Braves
NL Central: Reds
NL West: Giants
Wild card: Brewers

World Series: Braves over White Sox

AL MVP: Alex Rodriguez
AL Cy Young: Justin Verlander
AL ROY: Jeremy Hellickson

NL MVP: Albert Pujols
NL Cy Young: Roy Halladay
NL ROY: Aroldis Chapman