Baseball Projections

Go to this site for some sweet internet browsing. It's baseball projections that I believe are from the CHONE projection system which is a reliable source, not just some dude guessing stats based on some sort of feel. They are all free, and it has some need stuff like predicting future values in terms of millions. The 6 year projection for Sabathia had him being worth $140.8m, the Yankees signed him for $162m for 7 years, but originally they were right around $140m/6 years before adding on the last year. Pretty good evidence to me that this is not a fluke. The Yankees must use similar projection systems, if not this exact one. That much money for a pitcher sounds like a ripoff for the Yankees, but compared to what other pitchers make the Yankees are paying a fair price for Sabathia. AJ Burnett is another story however, and based on projections in the future, the Yankees will be overpaying him by a couple mill a year.

Kyle Lohse signed a 4 year deal for $41m to stay with the Cardinals this year. CHONE projects him to be worth $27.1m over the duration of that contract. Not that we needed CHONE to tell us this was a lousy deal, but it's fun to browse the projected bargains and ripoffs. Often your gut is right when believing a contract was stupid, but there are occasionally some surprises.

If you're not interested in that tricky stuff there's still the basics. How many RBI will Howard have next year? Easy 128. How will Pedroia do after his MVP performance? Pretty well actually, .311/.376/.464. Will Jeter continue his recent decline? Not quite, but he's not rebounding either, wonder how long he can tread water there.

Lastly, and not really lastly on that site just what I want to say here, you can compare the free agents still available. Do you want 8 years for Mark Teixeira or one of Jason Giambi for similar production, or even Frank Thomas if you're really feeling thirfty? On the pitching side, why give Oliver Perez a Boras contract when you can sign Randy Johnson and get better production with financial flexibility in the future? I think you know the answers...