Not really. Not even close, but I think I have the next best thing. I finally have a semi-easy spreadsheet to fill out that predicts a team's winning percentage knowing the underlying talent on the team. I have been wanting to do this for a while and now I think I have it ready.
Knowing the projected stats for the pitchers and hitters and their possible playing times, the number of wins the team is expected to win will be calculated. I would love to give a big thanks to The Book Blog for supplying the needed information for the calculations.
Here is the LINK to the spreadsheet and it is filled out with a basic predicted Royals lineup for reference. The spreadsheet can be downloaded to your computer by opening it, selecting File → Download and selecting the format you prefer to use.
I am sure I have an error or two or haven't explained everything in the instructions so let me know when have any questions.
Here are the instructions
- The formatting, by going to Google Docs and back, gets stripped off (e.x. The wins go to 10 decimal places, 1 would probably do). Feel free to format all the columns for easier readability.
For projection information, Fangraphs.com will have them available as soon as the data is available. Since they are not available yet, one decent method to get a close value is to weight this past year's stats as 1/3rd of the 2011 projection and the 2010 projection data as the other 2/3rds.
Fill in the data in the yellow and/or orange boxes. The rest of the boxes have formulas in them and if one is changed or deleted, all the values could change. From uploading and downloading it a few times, the color formatting doesn't transfer so you may need to compare the online and downloaded sheets to see which columns need to be filled out.
Fill out the lineup section with name and projected OBP with what you think will be the most common lineup. This information is used to generate an approximate number of PA for the team.
The next section is used to determine the amount of WAR from the position players. In this area, you can either fill in the player's OBP and SLG -or- the players wOBA. For handling multiple players at a position, just make sure that that the number of games add up to 162
In the UZR/150 cells put in the players lifetime UZR/150 for that position. Sometimes the UZR/150 can be extremely high for the position and a value of 20, positive or negative is league leading or lagging value, so the values may need to regressed towards 0 quite a bit. Here are my 2010 projections for reference and I hope to have the 2011 ones done by Christmas.
Catcher defense can/should be set to zero.
To account for inter league play, the pitchers will bat in 9 games during the season for AL teams and NL teams will need to account for DH.
Once the data in the second section is filled out, go back to line 7 and 8 and make sure the Projected and Calculated number of PA are the same. Adjust the individual player PA as needed.
In the pitcher's area, the player's Name, Innings Pitched and projected ERA/FIPs/xFIPs/SIERA need to be entered. I used FIPs with a 1/3 weighting for 2010 data and 2/3 for 2010 projections.
The total innings in the past 3 seasons have 1444, so the total innings from the pitchers you have need to equal this number.
Now the Leverage Index column need to filled out. This column can be filled out will all 1s and the total win values will remain close to the same final value compared to if pitcher's values are filled out. If you want to fill out each value, here are some general rules 1) Ace closers has an LI of 2 usually 2)Main setup men usually has an LI of 1.3 3)Your decent starters will have an LI of 1 4)Bad starters will usually have an LI of .9 as they will be pitching from behind in quite a few games. 5)Mop up relievers will have values less then 1.
If you put in LI values for each pitcher, the value labeled Total LI needs to be as close to 1444 (the total innings pitched) as you can get.
If you want to do a NL team, you will need to swap the data in cells C71 and C73 and also in cells L71 and L73
Have fun and try not to get to depressed about next season already.
