Please

and now I realize that I haven’t done any park adjustments…

BTW, I’m revising the runs allowed to 745 because I forgot to factor in the defensive projections. The difference in pythag and WAR could be the missing PA and IP, but if anything those are going to exacerbate the problem since adding 600 PA of replacement level hitting is going to drive down the offensive number, and 40 innings of replacement level pitching will increase the number of runs allowed.

I think the most likely scenario in the difference is the rounding and aggregation that occurs.

hopefully jinaz is reading and has an answer. One guess is something that Tango said here.

You don’t want to use positional averages, because this will force the average player at each position to be equals.

If you’ve been reading my stuff on the matter, you will see that I think it’s ridiculous to presume that the average 3B = average 2B, when considering hitting and fielding. The avg 2B is very close in fielding to the average 3B, but the average 3B is a much better hitter. To equate them each and every year is sloppy work. These players aren’t paid the same, and we shouldn’t pretend that they are the same.

Or look at the DH. Case closed right there.

Our job is to model reality. Making the average quarterback = average offensive tackle is not reality. And neither is all the gobbledygook that the avg 2B = avg 3B forces upon us.

I don’t know if that answers your question, but I think that might be what you are looking for.

In practice, they pretty much produce the same results. However, DHs hit worse than 1Bs, LFs, and RFs. Do we really think a player is more valuable as a DH than an average-fielding 1B, LF, or RF, though? No way. Any sucker without any fielding skills can DH.

The other current position where defense-based and offense-based adjustments don’t agree is 3B. Defense-based adjustments claim it’s just as important as 2B, and there’s more overall talent at 3B than 2B, because they are better hitters. Offense-based adjustments define the talent at every position as equally productive, so 3Bs are the same as 2Bs.

There are some excellent links in the article at BtB. I recommend the one where I say I favor defense-based adjustments. It’s a nice sandlot team example.

The other example I like is a high school baseball team. All the best players play SS (or pitcher). Every team MVP is a SS. They are the best hitters and the best fielders. But if you go by an offense-based adjustment system, the average shortstop is equal in value to the average 2B, which we KNOW isn’t right. Simply moving a SS to 2B will bump his value up by a TON. But he’s still the same player and should have similar value at either position, as he’s a similar fielder at both and exactly the same hitter.

On the replacement-level thing… Compare MLB to AAA. Obviously, in MBL-terms, the WAR of AAA teams is like -20 (they suck). But AAA teams still average 81 wins (or whatever half the number of games they play is) because they play each other. NL teams aren’t quite as good as AL teams as a whole these days, but they mostly compete against themselves, so they average out to pretty close to 81 wins each. Let’s say it’s 82 for the AL and 80 for the NL. If all teams were mixed together, “NL teams” should win like 78 games each and “AL teams” should win 84 games.

Another way you could think about it is to still use the 2.0 replacement-level for individual players, but realize that a replacement-level team will win more than 48 games in the NL, because the level of opposition is a bit lower than MLB-average. So add up all the WAR and add it to, say, 50 or 51 wins instead of 48.

As for pitcher hitting, I have no idea. I’m sure it makes a difference of at least a couple wins between the best and worst pitcher-hitting teams looking backwards. But I don’t know off the top of my head where to find that data or even if we have enough data to project any team’s pitchers as significantly better than another’s. I’d ignore it.

Some hints on making it more friendly to lay-fans:

• cut down on the decimal places (one significant digit for each piece of WAR and two for the overall WAR)
• provide one table of just the WAR numbers sorted in descending order and combining pitchers and position players.

Also, have you included leverage for the bullpen? Doesn’t appear so. I’d go with 1.8 for the closer, 1.3 for the main setup guy, and then 1.15, 1, .9, .8, .7 down through the 7th spot. Since more than seven guys are projected to pitch, split the spots in the bullpen between multiple pitchers.

just trying to give a baseline for performance in LF to maintain his value. I think many are afraid to move him because (1) He doesn’t hit like a LF and (2) he might still be bad defensively. Personally, I think it’s okay to have an average LF on the cheap until the minor leagues sort themselves out. I think it’s a lot better than having really bad defense in both spots on the left side of the infield.