Friday, January 18, 2008

Baseball Think Factory Loves the Red Sox

Baseball Think Factory is the group responsible for ZiPS Projections, considered by some to be the most accurate projections available to the public. On Monday they released their projections for Red Sox players. If you're interested in the full projections, they're available here.

But even more interesting than the projections themselves, were the kind words that Baseball Think Factory had about the Red Sox. They had the following to say once they analyzed projections of American League teams:
"This might not come as a great shock considering the Red Sox just won the World Series for the 2nd time this decade, but ZiPS sees the Red Sox as the best team in the AL. Well, technically, I haven't done the Orioles yet, but I'm taking a wild guess that the Orioles aren't going to look better than the Sox on e-paper.

No real suprises here. It's a deep team. While they obviously don't have spare better-than-average 1B, DH or LF/RF backups stashed away, nobody really does, and the team is very deep everywhere else. The amount of minor leaguers that project to be non-terrible at up-the-middle positions is downright staggering and I'm not even counting guys like Lars Anderson who should pop up in the 2009 projections."

Could it be that the Red Sox are actually the favorites going into 2008? If so, it would the first time that I can ever remember it happening in my lifetime. These ain't your Daddy's Red Sox.

6 comments:

Michael said...

when you say they are considered by some to be the most accurate...i'm curious...who are the people who consider them to be the most accurate?

Marc said...

Thanks.

I got to go check out what they have to say about the Rays.

raysbaseball.blogspot.com

Royal Rooters said...

I just read a story somewhere on a site that has compared the projections available to the public and they found ZiPS to be the most accurate. I believe it was on BA or BP. I'll try to find it and get back to you with the link.

Royal Rooters said...

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/newsstand/discussion/2006_projection_results/

Here's a link that compared the accuracy of PECOTA, Shandler, Bill James, ZiPS, Chone and Marcel projections. It found that ZiPS was the most accurate for pitchers. I'll keep looking, I'm sure I've read more about the accuracy of ZiPS.

Michael said...

thanks!!!

Royal Rooters said...

No problem.