As of this morning, the Depth Charts and Player Forecast Manager (which ultimately rely on the same sources) are up and running.

That’s not to say that all is done, no no no. I’m going to be your executive guide this year, and I expect to follow an update schedule that will be pretty close to daily (I’m setting 9 PM eastern, as my target) throughout the fantasy draft season – allowing that there will be days when nothing significantly chart-changing happens. And we all know that the fantasy season doesn’t end with the draft, so I’m aiming to keep these updated throughout the season – dropping to weekly – where they will also serve as improved inputs to our playoff odds reports.

"Chart-changing events" are primarily going to be clear and obvious – a player signs, or gets cut, or gets injured. I am not going to be changing somebody’s playing time because he went 3-3 in a spring training game; that’s a severe over-reaction. I’m a fairly serious fantasy player, in contrast to some of the other BP writers, and I’m approaching this as exactly as I would one of my own drafts (I have my first one on 2/21, less than two weeks from now – got some open spots if you’re in the DC area. Play against someone who’s giving you his entire draft prep!).

A lot will depend on spring training games, though – I really don’t see a clear choice between Gaby Sanchez and Dallas McPherson in Florida, nor do I see any obvious answers as to how the Yankee center field situation will shake out. In situations like that I’ve often split the baby, knowing that one of them is likely to push close to 100% while the other drops down near zero. The numbers that I’ve put down are meant to be big averages – as if we had a large number of universes with their own baseball seasons, and in some of them they went with Melky Cabrera again, some with Nick Swisher, and some with Brett Gardner. I have not tried to capture any effects of trading personnel or signing free agents – the depth charts are based on allocating reasonable amounts of time to the players they have now. Minor league callups, however, are included, albeit subject to big(ger than otherwise) error bars.

As I write this, the appearance of the cards is the same as last year’s. There are some changes coming, like getting comments onto the individual team cards. I’d like to be able to explain my thinking on specific cases, and I want to hear from people who, frankly, know more about most of these teams than I do. I am quite sure that the best way to do that is to contain the discussions to each team – else the Giant and Twin comments will have a hard time cutting through the expected New York/Boston flood. The downside is that it gives me 30 threads to read.

Most of the software that we have to run the depth charts was already in place, and I’m admittedly still learning to use it. I made several "fixes" over the weekend, only to realize that it was already covered and had to fix it right back. I’m seeing some of this output for the first time as I type this, and like a freshly painted wall, I can see several places where I need to touch up. The batting/onbase/slug numbers are only going to two significant digits – that looks like a copy/paste artifact, and at least is easy to fix. There are a few players who are in my data but aren’t showing up – Kenji Kawakama and Koji Uehara, I’m looking at you, but I’m not seeing you. You guys need to be added to our master registry. The games started figures are so far out of whack that I must have made a serious mistake somewhere, and the way the PFM hands out saves is something I’ve grumbled about before – I’ll be revisiting both of those topics. No, I don’t really think Mark DeRosa will bat ninth for the Indians; add "double-check all lineup orders" to the to-do list. There are a number of players, maybe a dozen, who did not have a PECOTA projection, and I subbed in what was basically their three-year average DT; those should get fixed when we get the next PECOTA run from Nate, possibly with a very different forecast.

So please, don’t tell me about those problems, I already know about them. Do let me know if you spot something else, particularly any players on a wrong team – I really hate it when I do that. Enjoy, debate, use, criticize; I’m looking forward to having you help me make these the best depth charts available on the web.

Clay

For what it’s worth, I’ve tried to use Davenport’s VORP- and WARP- projected values for my fantasy drafts for 3 years in a row now. I haven’t won any of my leagues and only finished in the top 3 once.

Of course there’s luck and skill involved in drafts too. I’m not going to stop using the spreadsheets or the awesome Player Forecast Manager, I don’t think my drafting skills will ever get much better than they are now, so I’ll just have to keep hoping my luck improves ;).

For Shits and Giggles:

Matt LaPorta:.240/.320/.440
Mat Gamel: .260/.320/.320
Michael Brantley: .260/.330/.330
CC: 210, 3.43, 1.19, 183 K
Branyan: .250/.360/.520 (!!!)

AL:
Boston: 98-64
Yankees: 96-66
Tampa: 92-70
Cleveland: 84-78
Oakland 82-80
Toronto: 81-81
Minnesota: 79-83
Angels: 79-83
Detroit: 78-84
Baltimore: 76-86

Seattle comes in at 70-92, and has them scoring 726 and allowing 839. Runs allowed seems quite a bit high.

More NL teams:

Reds: 79-83
Giants: 79-83
Marlins: 74-88

More fun:

Pujols: .340/.440/.610
Nelson Cruz: .260/.330/.480
Jenkins: .270/.340/.450

I’d be happy with an above .500 record this year, considering how wonderful this off-season has been.

There are worse places to start the season.

"UPDATE 2/11/09

OK, we’ve got a few more bases covered. In the PFM, all the fielding data should be up-to-date, so Ryan Braun is back to being an exclusive left fielder. There was a pretty big problem with the players I added manually, as a temporary patch – Moyer, Uehara, and a few more. We got the programs to read their data, and so now they show up in the PFM and in the depth charts – trouble was, "WHIP" wasn’t one of the fields I initially entered, and when the PFM saw guys with 100 innings and a zero WHIP it gave them all Sabathia-sized contracts. That is fixed. These players still don’t have entries in all fields, though, and if your league uses one of the un-entered fields those players could still have strange results.
On the depth charts, the batting/onbase/slugging digits problems has been broken, fixed, re-broken, and re-fixed, and I think I know where I made the mistake that re-broke them so it should (fingers crossed) not happen again, unless I come up with a third way to break them. The quality start numbers have been largely repaired, but more in the sense of a field dressing than a proper fix; I’ll revisit them shortly.

What else – I’m going to redo the way saves are handled tonight, so expect the PFM pitcher results to look a lot better tomorrow morning. Braden Looper signed with the Brewers yesterday, so I had him displace some of the spot starters on their roster. I fixed a typo that had Josh Willingham drawing 5% of left field time instead of 75%. I’d like to get the PECOTA-based Playoff Odds report up and running in the next couple of days, and play around with some of the remaining free agents."