Fun With PECOTA

Baseball Prospectus has released their PECOTA player projections to paying subscribers in the form of a spreadsheet. I downloaded it earlier tonight, and I've spent a couple of hours now pouring through their findings. A couple of things jumped out at me, and I thought I'd share them with you.

First of all, if you don't subscribe to BP, you should. I don't live and die by all the new statistical barometers, but they are fun to look at and they can give you valuable insight into players' true value on an objective basis. Now that I have that out of the way, take a look at these projections.

Melky Cabrera (23 years-old)
Average: .283
On Base: .342
Slugging: .405
OPS: .747

Jacoby Ellsbury (24 years-old)
Average: .286
On Base: .346
Slugging: .395
OPS: .741

Carlos Gomez (22 years-old)
Average: .249
On Base: .302
Slugging: .358
OPS: .660

Coco Crisp (28 years-old)
Average: .278
On Base: .338
Slugging: .407
OPS: .745

I chose to look at those four guys because they were all rumored to be headed to Minnesota in a deal for Johan Santana. Gomez was eventually the "prize" the Twins landed, and PECOTA tells us what we already knew: The Twins are probably screwed in the short term. It's interesting, though, that Melky, Ellsbury and Crisp have such similar projections. Crisp and Melky were nominally throw-ins in the packages rumored for the Sox and Yanks, while Ellsbury was a centerpiece. Melky's also a year younger than Ellsbury.

PECOTA is only a projection system, nothing here is written in stone, obviously, but when people use statistics to attack Melky so often, I think it's worth noting that statistically, he matches up with a lot of guys who people consider better players/prospects.