Schoenfield releases his 2015 rankings predictions for 30-25.

[h2oface]

Maybe we should let them play the games before passing judgment.

 

Definitely. I wasn't trying to pass judgement. Mostly making fun of the projection. Satire lost. So sorry.

[jimmer]

And he expects Dozier and Plouffe's numbers to collapse, as well.  Sure, some guys are bound to do worse-  Santana, Suzuki, Vargas, Shafer and maybe Escobar, are prime candidates in that category- but many others are just as likely to either stay the same, continue to improve or positively regress-  Mauer, obviously for the latter reason, Dozier and Plouffe could easily produce similar numbers to 2014, and Pinto, Arcia, and even Hicks, might go gangbusters.... plus who knows which rookies make an immediate impact?

Where does he say Plouffe and Dozier are due to collapse?  He doesn't. come close to saying that.  Here's what he says.

 

'There is potential here on offense, which ranked fifth in the league in runs. But I don't see any improvement coming there as players such as Brian Dozier and Trevor Plouffe have likely peaked and Santana regresses.'

 

All he said was that they peaked (and that Santana is likely to regress). Meaning he doesn't expect improvement from Dozier and Plouffe. Certainly nothing about collapsing or huge regression from either of them. He didn't even put them in the 'due for a worse year' part of the article. 

 

They have likely peaked as well.  They are at that age where you don't expect much more, if any, improvement.  Dozier's WAR jumped almost 2 whole wins and Plouffe jumped 3 wins.

[jimmer]

That's enough for me to call the analysis lazy.

 

Plouffe, maybe... But Dozier has been the same player for over 1,100 PAs. Breaking up his numbers by season is so incredibly lazy and inaccurate.

 

Yeah, he might regress... by .030 OPS points. There is literally nothing to indicate he will return to a sub-.700 OPS player. NOTHING.

Except he didn't say he expects Dozier OR Plouffe to collapse or even regress.  He expects they've peaked.  

[twinsajsf]

'There is potential here on offense, which ranked fifth in the league in runs. But I don't see any improvement coming there as players such as Brian Dozier and Trevor Plouffe have likely peaked and Santana regresses.'

 

 

This brings me back to my earlier post, when I said that his prediction didn't make a whole lot of sense beyond the fact that the outfield defense would be very bad (though not WORSE, which has already been pointed out by others).  To simply say that there's no offensive improvement coming because Santana will likely regress and Dozier/Plouffe will not improve is indeed "lazy" analysis. 

 

First, he had already acknowledged that Mauer likely would rebound.  Second, Hunter's season last year was miles better than the production we received out of our LFers.  And finally, many are predicting a breakout season for Arcia, including such luminaries as Bill James, who envisions him with and .800+ OPS and 30+ homers this season.

[jimmer]

I think our OF defense could very well be worse based on adding a soon to be 40 year old RF who has rated as the worst defensive RF and Arcia changing corners.

 

I don't think it's lazy to expect Plouffe and Dozier to not improve.  I think it'd be surprising if they did improve considering the jump they took and their age. Not that they are old, but that at their age players don't normally turn in yet another big jump of a season.

 

Hunter was a below average RF, considering overall game, and as he turns 40, I don't expect much, if any, bounceback. I don't see how adding a 40 year old poor defender, with average offense for the position, as being big addition.

 

I think there are many who don't like what people are saying about our chances this year so they are doing everything they can to nitpick the analysis to make them discredit the predictions and feel better about our chances.  Fangraphs projects us to be 27th, the writer of this one predicts 27th, and I doubt we're going to get anyone who says he are better than 20th. If we do better, so be it, but I doubt everyone who does predictions are just going through the motions when it comes to our team. That's too convenient.

 

We are a bad team as currently constructed. But hope is on the horizon and we'll hopefully see more of that this season.  Gonna take time though.

[jimmer]

when I wrote: 'Fangraphs projects us to be 27th' I meant ZIPs, which can be found on Fangraphs, but isn't done by Fangraphs.

[bird]

"We are a bad team as currently constructed."

 

No. This is a well-constructed team, not yet completely re-constructed, that will probably be at best mediocre in 2014. It may be "bad". But not poorly constructed.

 

I think there are some who for some reason don't like re-directing their thinking from the past to the present, with its hopeful signs for the future. One would agree with this guy if one were predisposed to believing that most, not just some, of the candidates for peaking, or for negative regression, are going to fulfill the lesser expectation.

 

Hey, Schoenfield. It's winter, OK? Get over it. Spring is around the corner. You're mostly describing January, which has come and gone.

[jimmer]

It's going to be a well constructed team, hopefully, in the future (if a good chunk of our prospect turn out), but it's not as of 2015. Having statues in the corners, possibly starting an IF in CF, having likely the worst defensive catcher, not having a proven shortstop, and not having much of a bench at all as far as quality or experience is not a well constructed team.

[gunnarthor]

It's going to be a well constructed team, hopefully, in the future (if a good chunk of our prospect turn out), but it's not as of 2015. Having statues in the corners, possibly starting an IF in CF, having likely the worst defensive catcher, not having a proven shortstop, and not having much of a bench at all as far as quality or experience is not a well constructed team.

You could say most of that about nearly every team.  

[jimmer]

You could say most of that about nearly every team.  

I don't think that's true, but okay. I think most teams have some weaknesses, but I don't think it changes anything in regards to our team though. 

 

We won 70 games and went out and got a #3 starter and a soon to be 40 year old as our major additions. A few teams in our divisions seemed to have gotten better and/or were already/still better and we seem to be playing a tougher schedule.  The young guys aren't established yet, or up yet. Our defense is very bad (and wasn't addressed in the offseason as of yet), making or not very good pitching staff look even worse.

 

Anyway, projections haven't looked good for us so far, and I don't think that means they are lazy or just blind. Let's see who projects/predicts us to do better than 20th in win-loss record.

[twinsajsf]

"I don't think it's lazy to expect Plouffe and Dozier to not improve.  I think it'd be surprising if they did improve considering the jump they took and their age. Not that they are old, but that at their age players don't normally turn in yet another big jump of a season.

 

Hunter was a below average RF, considering overall game, and as he turns 40, I don't expect much, if any, bounceback. I don't see how adding a 40 year old poor defender, with average offense for the position, as being big addition."

 

For the record, I didn't actually disagree with either of those points.  Rather, my point was that simply noting Santana's likely regression and that Plouffe/Dozier will likely stay the same and not improve enough to offset Santana, constitutes insufficient evidence (i.e. lazy anaylisis) that the Twins will be worse offensively.

 

Likewise, Hunter doesn't have to "bounceback" from a good year offensively to constitute a major improvement over what we got out of Willingham and Co. (the spot in the batting order he will replace). 

 

So, combining at least similar offensive production with the very likely rotation improvement (Santana replaces one rotation spot that combined for 33 starts at nearly a 6.00 ERA, meaning that he doesn't exactly have to maintain his run of sub-4 ERA seasons to constitute a major improvement), this leaves us with only outfield defense (from really lousy to maybe really, really lousy) as a legit likely reason for the Twins regression this season. NOTE:  He could have simply stated that the Twins might be a bit better, but the rest of the bottom half teams in baseball have improved even more, and top half hasn't regressed far enough, thus the Twins will fall fro the 24th or 25th best team in baseball to the 27th.  Even this would have been less lazy and more plausible analysis.

[gunnarthor]

I don't think that's true, but okay. I don't think it changes anything in regards to our team though.

Sure it is.  Most teams don't have ideal rosters, they never do.  The Royals went to the WS with Hosmer and Mouse at the corners and Butler at DH.  How many truly good CFers are there right now?  Maybe 7?  Padres are going with Upton/Myers/Kemp in the OF and they are trying to win the AL West.  Houston has Gattis in LF.  Last year our CFers sucked so much last year we had to put an minor league IFer into center field and got lucky when he did enough to hold it down.  Wait, sorry I was talking about Boston, not us.  

 

Suzuki isn't an elite catcher but he's not the worst defensive catcher out there, by any metric (that usually goes to Derek Norris - who was traded to the Padres.

 

I would also disagree that the Twins don't have a proven shortstop.  Again, there aren't many good shortstops out there but do you know which team led fWAR at shortstop?  Twins.  Obviously, that's because they double counted Santana's CF contribution on top of Escobar's numbers but both place among the top 12 in WAR for shortstops, ahead of guys like Simmons, Lowrie and Adrus.  Sure, there might be some regression but the team has depth there.  Most teams don't.  But the Twins do have a solid roster right now, which is why they were 7th in all baseball in runs. They don't have elite guys anywhere (yet) but they had solid or better in most places and those types of lineups tend to be underestimated.  

[jimmer]

'For the record, I didn't actually disagree with either of those points.  Rather, my point was that simply noting Santana's likely regression and that Plouffe/Dozier will likely stay the same and not improve enough to offset Santana, constitutes insufficient evidence (i.e. lazy anaylisis) that the Twins will be worse offensively.'

 

I don't think he said we'd be worse offensively. He said, 'There is potential here on offense, which ranked fifth in the league in runs. But I don't see any improvement coming there'.  That just says he doesn't see improvement, and I don't think he should get slammed for saying they won't improve on being 5th in the AL runs scored.

[jimmer]

Sure it is.  Most teams don't have ideal rosters, they never do.  The Royals went to the WS with Hosmer and Mouse at the corners and Butler at DH.  How many truly good CFers are there right now?  Maybe 7?  Padres are going with Upton/Myers/Kemp in the OF and they are trying to win the AL West.  Houston has Gattis in LF.  Last year our CFers sucked so much last year we had to put an minor league IFer into center field and got lucky when he did enough to hold it down.  Wait, sorry I was talking about Boston, not us.  

 

Suzuki isn't an elite catcher but he's not the worst defensive catcher out there, by any metric (that usually goes to Derek Norris - who was traded to the Padres.

 

I would also disagree that the Twins don't have a proven shortstop.  Again, there aren't many good shortstops out there but do you know which team led fWAR at shortstop?  Twins.  Obviously, that's because they double counted Santana's CF contribution on top of Escobar's numbers but both place among the top 12 in WAR for shortstops, ahead of guys like Simmons, Lowrie and Adrus.  Sure, there might be some regression but the team has depth there.  Most teams don't.  But the Twins do have a solid roster right now, which is why they were 7th in all baseball in runs. They don't have elite guys anywhere (yet) but they had solid or better in most places and those types of lineups tend to be underestimated.  

'But the Twins do have a solid roster right now, which is why they were 7th in all baseball in runs.'

 

Do we assume the offense will just stay that good because it was that good last year? And what about defense, or do we not look at that when talking about how solid our roster is? Isn't that part of player evaluation? 

 

Anyway, with such a clearly solid club, we should be division contenders. How did we do so poorly last year?  I look forward to seeing that happen.

[gunnarthor]

Well, with such a clearly solid club, we should be division contenders. How did we do so poorly last year?  

****ty, ****ty pitching.

 

There is certainly room for the offense to collapse.  I don't trust Vargas at DH (although if he fails, putting Hunter at DH and Schafer in right softens the blow somewhat).  Santana will regress and Hicks/Schafer is not an ideal CF right now.  But they do have depth - some of it is young and inexperienced.  So, sure, the offense could go from 5th in the AL to 10th and that would suck.  But at the same time, Arcia and Mauer should both be better.  Dozier/Plouffe/Suzuki (combined) should all roughly be the same value.  Hunter is an offensive improvement (unless age turns him into a pumpkin, which could happen).  Ryan expects Buxton up sometime during the season.  And they do have a few tradeable pieces if they need/want to.

[jimmer]

****ty, ****ty pitching.

 

There is certainly room for the offense to collapse.  I don't trust Vargas at DH (although if he fails, putting Hunter at DH and Schafer in right softens the blow somewhat).  Santana will regress and Hicks/Schafer is not an ideal CF right now.  But they do have depth - some of it is young and inexperienced.  So, sure, the offense could go from 5th in the AL to 10th and that would suck.  But at the same time, Arcia and Mauer should both be better.  Dozier/Plouffe/Suzuki (combined) should all roughly be the same value.  Hunter is an offensive improvement (unless age turns him into a pumpkin, which could happen).  Ryan expects Buxton up sometime during the season.  And they do have a few tradeable pieces if they need/want to.

Pitching that was affected a lot of defense, which is still a problem.  Defense played by position players, including one of the worst framers in the game.  Our rotation was 18th in WAR, but our defense, oh my.

[bird]

OK, I'll grant you, jimmer, that you're on solid ground, but it's mushy under your feet.

 

1. Describing Hunter and Arcia as statues is unfair.  I'll bet both are better defenders in 2015 than they were in 2014. Yes, I'm aware of last year's statistics. Also, Hunter is likely to see reduced playing time as the year progresses, and Arcia will be spelled more frequently.

 

2. Pinto, May, Vargas, Santana, Tonkin, Hicks, and maybe even others to lesser extents, are possibly going to get better. A couple of them are likely to get much better, don't you think? Maybe two or three of them have shown us their best stuff. So a couple will help us by being at least a tad better.

 

3. And the ones who don't do much will be looking over their shoulders. Rosario, Meyer, Graham, and Burdi are all more likely that not to be part of the re-constructed team in 2015. Sano and Buxton may emerge yet in 2015. I believe the naysayers like to undersell how extraordinary these two players are likely to be. Polanco and Berrios are two other candidates for arrival in 2015, and both could eventually be impactful. All this is to say that, while we may not love the team construction when we break camp, we may like it a whole lot better later in the year. And complaining about that, when we know what the plan is for the future, is pretty futile and short-sighted.

 

4. Plouffe and Dozier, Hughes and Gibson, Perkins and Fien. And Mauer. Solid blocks in the building. Suzuki isn't a pile of garbage. He was an All-Star.

 

5. Horrible OF defense, infielders playing outfield, unproven shortstop, bad pitch-framing behind the plate, Nolasco, a thin bench. These are all correctable problems. Some will be corrected before the season starts, others may linger, but the construction plans are right in front of us. With the exception IMO of catching, the plan is addressing all of them, and addressing them very well.

 

6. There are easily ten teams that could finish with worse records. I predict the Twins end up closer to 20th than 25th.

[gunnarthor]

Pitching that was affected a lot of defense, which is still a problem.  Defense played by position players, including one of the worst framers in the game.  Our rotation was 18th in WAR, but our defense, oh my.

Yeah, but you're giving too much weight to defensive numbers that fluctuate a ton, year-to-year.  The numbers said that, two years ago, Hunter was better in RF than Stanton.  There is a lot of noise in Hunter's defensive numbers and it is such an extreme it's probably wrong.  

 

And Hunter has a few things going for him.  Moving from Comerica to TF will help him. Comerica is probably the worst RF to play in the AL, esp for range.  The Tigers CFers graded out a lot worse than the Twins CFers so Hunter had little support for balls to the gap which made him play deeper (and let more stuff fall in front of him).  The Twins are more open to shifting players around then Detroit was - they did this with Orlando Hudson whose defensive numbers jumped a lot with the Twins - so that should help Hunter.  He'll probably be rested more.  Additionally, Detroit blogs said that Hunter was still dealing with a hurt leg at the beginning of the season.  I have no idea how much, if any of that is true but he did miss 9 games in the first half of the season for leg injuries and his bat picked up in the second half of the season.  And the Twins saw Hunter more in the second half and thought he looked ok in the field (although what were they going to say?  "He looked like a statue"?). So maybe his hurt legs affected his defensive numbers in the first half.

 

In any event, if his bat holds up, I think you can reasonably expect his defensive numbers to positively regress so that he's still an improvement for the Twins.

[jimmer]

I've watched Hunter play a lot over the last two years, he's a mess out there. My eyes and the metrics agree.  And, you know, at almost 40, one would expect that.

[Mike Sixel]

No one ever seems to assume the other teams improved and added new players too......just how much better the Twins are. If you think they should be ranked 15th, which 12 teams do you think they are better than the the writer or zips? 

 

They still look like the worst team in the division, though I could seem them third if things break their way. But that's hope, not strategy or analysis.

[bird]

The Twins finishing somewhere from 5th to as high as 3rd, with the much greater likelihood being 5th, is right in line with the consensus, which is based on solid analysis. We see very very few signs of any false hope for a better result. Based on the Twin's strategy of primarily re-building from within, and given the likelihood of a still-strong Detroit and KC and improved Cleveland and Chicago teams, most of us look for a young Twins team, at the very best, to be scrambling all year to get to around .500. The improvements made by Cleveland and especially Chicago have been widely acknowledged, here and elsewhere.

[Mike Sixel]

Chicago scares me, 

[Squirrel]

Chicago scares me,

Try living here

[jimmer]

Chicago scares me, 

not me.  I'm excited to see what the Cubs do this year :-)

[Dman]

If anyone out there is like me then I don't think I can take another year of being 27th.  I am looking for a 18 to 22 finish.  With built up hope for 2016.  Unfortunately I could see us falling to 27th as we typically swoon at the half way point.  

 

So I am putting the blinders on and ignoring that we could finish that low.  I am going to think happy thoughts about making it to 500 or close to that because that is the only way I can follow this team.

[jokin]

Except he didn't say he expects Dozier OR Plouffe to collapse or even regress.  He expects they've peaked.  

 

My interpretation of that statement from Schoenfeld was that, yes, he said they likely peaked, as "in the past", as in- they had their career year in 2014.  Projecting a "Peak" in the recent past suggests that Schoenfeld has dared to announce that that type of production is unlikely to occur again. If we envision the caret symbol-  ^ -as representing a career as a journey relative to the image of a mountain- there's only one direction to go after reaching the top- downward collapse/regression.  If Schoenfeld had meant to say something different, he should have said that Dozier and Plouffe have plateaued.  

 

And most importantly, as both "twinsajsf" and I stated in our previous posts, Schoenfeld hugely discounts potential improvements in production from multiple potential sources-  Arcia, Hunter, Mauer, Pinto, Sano, Rosario, Buxton, and quite possibly no regression from one or more of the obvious regression candidates. It sure seems that there will likely be more plate protection and baserunners year over year, which could serve to enhance the production numbers for Dozier and Plouffe, who are due to bat high up in the batting order.

 

Going back, the OF situation was his main argument for their last-place projected finish.  I think we all agree that this obvious area of deficiency in 2014 has not been properly addressed.  But I think Molly is his own man, thus, substandard OF defense will not be acceptable.... I expect decisive in-season adjustments in the OF, if needed.

[jimmer]

My interpretation of that statement from Schoenfeld was that, yes, he said they likely peaked, as "in the past", as in- they had their career year in 2014.  Projecting a "Peak" in the recent past suggests that Schoenfeld has dared to announce that that type of production is unlikely to occur again. If we envision the caret symbol-  ^ -as representing a career as a journey relative to the image of a mountain- there's only one direction to go after reaching the top- downward collapse/regression.  If Schoenfeld had meant to say something different, he should have said that Dozier and Plouffe have plateaued.  

 

How he said it was just fine.  You and twinsajsf chose to read into it.  Players can get to a point where they have reached their potential AND ALSO maintain that level.  If he wanted to say he was expecting them to collapse (which he never came close to suggesting) or heavily regress (again, didn't come close to saying that either), he would have said that like he did about Santana in the same sentence.  The fact that he chose not to say that at the same time he pointed out Santana's likely regression should tell you something. Even if he expects some negative regression by Plouffe and Dozier, by not saying saying it, he may just feel it would be very slight so as not to even warrant mentioning.

 

And since Dozier and Plouffe took a 2 and 3 WAR jump respectively, they would have to do what they did last year for a few years to say they have plateaued. Peak is likely the better word. As in 'they finally got to their peak and now, hopefully, they maintain it to create a plateau of performance'. You can't be said to have plateaued after having one big jump in performance which had never occurred before.

 

And did you say he didn't mention Mauer as a potential in improvement for Mauer because there was a whole paragraph about Mauer. On top of that, he only has so much room to discuss a team.  He isn't going to write a 20 page dissertation on each team, nor should he have to.  You want him to break down everybody on the probable 25 man roster and all potential callups for each team?

[jokin]

 

 

Anyway, projections haven't looked good for us so far, and I don't think that means they are lazy or just blind. Let's see who projects/predicts us to do better than 20th in win-loss record.

 

You made many good points in your post, that most can agree with. And I think of the neutral experts, there quite rightly won't be many/any that project the Twins that highly. Quite frankly, a 20th projection in the W-L record sounds too optimistic for me!   According to Schoenfeld, that would mean 79-83.... barring tons of things going right, I don't see the Twins getting there this year.  He has the Whities at #23, with a 77-85 record.  This feels like the extreme upper end range for the Twins to aspire to.

 

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/54986/ranking-the-teams-24-through-19-2

 

As was previously stated, the Twins were 4 games under their Pythag-level in 2014.  Unless Schoenfeld can make a solid case that a tougher 2015 schedule is the reason for the Twins to go backwards, and not primarily because of the same bad OF as 2014, I'm thinking we'll more likely see a small incremental improvement towards the expected W-L- in the 73-77 range.

[jimmer]

 

As was previously stated, the Twins were 4 games under their Pythag-level in 2014.  Unless Schoenfeld can make a solid case that a tougher 2015 schedule is the reason for the Twins to go backwards, and not primarily because of the same bad OF as 2014, I'm thinking we'll more likely see a small incremental improvement towards the expected W-L- in the 73-77 range.

There could be many other factors other than schedule.  Could be that he feels teams in the division got much better or were already much better.  Could feel that our projected negative regressions outweigh the projected positive regressions. He could not like the bullpen (something that seems to be ignored a lot). He could believe that the Pythag thing doesn't mean much because run opportunities are random sequencing, and things like scoring 32 runs in two games might mess that up.  I don't know. I don't know how far he dove.

 

And I'll be happy if we get to 75 wins.  I see us around  72, 73.  

[jokin]

How he said it was just fine.  You and twinsajsf chose to read into it.  Players can get to a point where they have reached their potential AND ALSO maintain that level.  If he wanted to say he was expecting them to collapse (which he never came close to suggesting) or heavily regress (again, didn't come close to saying that either), he would have said that like he did about Santana in the same sentence.  The fact that he chose not to say that at the same time he pointed out Santana's likely regression should tell you something. Even if he expects some negative regression by Plouffe and Dozier, by not saying saying it, he may just feel it would be very slight so as not to even warrant mentioning.

 

And since Dozier and Plouffe took a 2 and 3 WAR jump respectively, they would have to do what they did last year for a few years to say they have plateaued. Peak is likely the better word. As in 'they finally got to their peak and now, hopefully, they maintain it to create a plateau of performance'. You can't be said to have plateaued after having one big jump in performance which had never occurred before.

 

 

 

 

Sounds like you're interpreting some originally pretty faulty, and poorly disseminated logic, as well as lazy and incomplete conclusions, from Mr. Schoenfeld.  Your defense of him was much better than Schoenfeld's defense of himself- no "hopefullys" in Schoenfeld's analysis.  You end up in your defense of him with the same circular logic, concluding that 2014 was, in fact, their "peak" and quite possibly an outlier-  a lot of us don't see it that way.  

 

Again, somebody check Schoenfeld's track record for his predictive abilities.