This is the year that WAR has entered the baseball discussion. Not every baseball fan is going to understand how to interpret WAR, of course, but we're getting to the point where commentators in the professional media are quoting it to make arguments. That opens up a lot of possibilities for the annual community projections project that we haven't seen before. With the numbers collected here, I'll be able to do a number of things-- total team estimates, position by position comparisons from 2011 to 2012, projection comparisons by position around the NL Central, and a heck of a lot of neat graphs and charts. It should be exciting.
First, though, we need some numbers. For each day this week I'll be your guide. I'll provide some base-line numbers and projections from other systems for each of the players I'm asking you to project, and it's up to the community average to decide our projection. Use your best judgement, and remember to account for the unlikely scenarios in your playing time projections. For example, if you think there's a 90% chance that Greinke throws 200 innings, and a 10% chance he gets hurt and throws 50 innings, don't project him for 200, project him for 185 (mathematically that's (200 * .9) + (50 * .1)). That lets us get a much more realistic projection than if everyone assumes complete health, which will tend to make our projections too optimistic.
Today we cover the starting rotation. I'm only going to ask for projections of the top 5 starters for a couple of reasons: there's really no way to estimate who will be the first injury replacement option at this point, and even if there was a clear #6, there's not really a need to project that when we're doing this mostly for purposes of comparison and not necessarily to try to formulate a total team projection for WAR, for which there are way too many variables involved to get a specific number. So we're going to stick to the primary starters this year and not worry too much about the reserves.
When you're projecting the "True Talent ERA" for each pitcher, it's best to think of that number as FIP or another measure of pitching talent, because we will be accounting for fielding elsewhere. Just use the ERA scale and go from there.
With that being said, the form is below the jump. Please check to see that your numbers make sense, decimals are placed correctly, and the like because it is a real pain to go through 200 rows of projections and fix problems that mess with the average. Feel free to post your projections in the comments as well if you want to discuss, and I should be around to answer questions if the need arises. Happy projecting, your data is below, and the form is after the jump.
Zack Greinke
2010: 220 innings, 3.34 FIP, 3.51 tERA, 4.17 ERA
2011: 171 innings, 2.98 FIP, 2.56 xFIP, 3.54 tERA, 3.83 ERA
ZiPS: 199 innings, 2.98 ERA
RotoChamp: 195 innings, 2.95 ERA
Yovani Gallardo
2010: 185 innings, 3.02 FIP, 3.69 tERA, 3.84 ERA
2011: 207 innings, 3.59 FIP, 3.57 tERA, 3.52 ERA
ZiPS: 195 innings, 3.46 ERA
RotoChamp: 215 Innings, 3.47 ERA
Shaun Marcum
2010: 195 innings, 3.74 FIP, 3.77 tERA, 3.64 ERA
2011: 200 innings, 3.73 FIP, 3.92 tERA, 3.54 ERA
ZiPS: 151 innings, 3.5 ERA
RotoChamp: 200 innings, 3.74 ERA
Randy Wolf
2010: 214 innings, 4.85 FIP, 4.96 tERA, 4.17 ERA
2011: 212 innings, 4.29 FIP, 4.9 tERA, 3.69 ERA
ZiPS: 178 innings, 4.04 ERA
RotoChamp: 190 innings, 3.74 ERA
Chris Narveson
2010: 167 IP (28 starts), 4.22 FIP, 4.21 tERA, 4.99 ERA
2011: 161 innings, 4.06 FIP, 4.57 tERA, 4.45 ERA
ZiPS: 141 innings, 4.32 ERA
RotoChamp: 155 innings, 4.35 ERA