James Win Shares

[exsubmariner]

I have been looking at Bill James win shares this offseason to see if we could use this tool to project how the Sox will look in 2007. My latest post about this shows that we now have a team that will need some career years to get to a 95 win season no matter who we get as a closer.

 

So the question is whether win shares present a good tool for projections or should we use other tools to try and get a feel for our projections. What do you think? Leave me a note at my post and I will try to get a feel on our team.

 

As a caveat, I am looking harder at this calculations because it looks to me like it really punishes your pitching. When your high in closers win shares are 17, 16 and 18 (atta boy P-bot) that appears to me to down grade their importance.

[ORS]

A 3-year average for Youkilis drags his number down because last year is the only year he started. The previous years he was a bench player. I think Papelbon and Matsuzaka will be better than league average of the top-90. I'd look at their ZiPS projections and estimate their Win Shares from there.

[exsubmariner]

A 3-year average for Youkilis drags his number down because last year is the only year he started. The previous years he was a bench player. I think Papelbon and Matsuzaka will be better than league average of the top-90. I'd look at their ZiPS projections and estimate their Win Shares from there.

 

True it will drag his numbers down, but last year he was 8th in the Majors for first basemen. Can he sustain that? Plus the numbers I used for Pedroia even though it is the top 30 average is almost Loretta type numbers, is he better than Loretta? In a previous post I used just last years averages and it was only slightly better 171 vs 162 or 3 games.

 

Will look at zips and see how that compares to other projections