Will 2009 Be A Better Year — Despite the Carnage?

The Rockies have lost Matt Holliday, Brian Fuentes is gone, and Todd Helton Has Seen More Glory In His Rear View Mirror Than He Can Expect On the Road Ahead.  Will 2009 Be  A Better Year? What Does “Marcel the Monkey” Have to Say? …

If I am reckoning correctly, the Monkey thinks  things will be looking up in ’09 and the Rockies will do better than .500 .  “Marcel the Monkey” tells me that the Rockies will go 83-79, with a .512 winning percentage.

Here is how I got there:

1.  I started with the 2009 player projections published by TangoTiger, using  The Marcel the Monkey Forecasting System, available at http://www.tangotiger.net/marcel/. 
2. I then selected the hitting projection stats for what I thought would be the likely roster of position players for the Rockies for 2009.  To get there, I excluded Holliday and substitued in Carlos Gonzalez, the one position player that I saw the Rockies get in the trade with the A’s.   I also knocked out Taveras, Herrera, and Bellorin. (I excluded hitting stats for all pitchers, an easy choice since Tango Tiger’s Marcel 2009 projections excludes pitcher hitting stats.) 
3. I then selected the pitcher projection stats for what I thought would be the likely roster of starters, middle relievers and closers for 2009. With Fuentes effectively gone, here is the list I selected:  Starters — Francis, Cook, Jimenez, Reynolds, DeLaRosa, Greg Smith; Relievers – Embree, Buchholz, Corpas, Huston Street, Grilli, Vizcaino.  I also included the predicted stats for Hirsch, Morales, Register, and Speier. 
4. This basically got me to a roster of 37.
5. I then used these stats to calculate an overall projected James’ Pythagorean Winning Percentage  for the 2009 season, using the following formula: RS^1.82/(RS^1.82 + RA^1.82). Where “RS” is the team projected Runs Scored for the season, and “RA” is the projected Runs Allowed for the season.
6. How did I get to the projected 2009 RS and RA for the team?  This may be overly simple — and comments are welcome here — but I simply aggregated the predicted runs column (R) for each of the position players and the predicted runs column (both earned and unearned) for the likely pitching roster, as published by TangoTiger for each of the players.
7. Using the Pythagorean Winning Percentage, I then calculated projected wins using the 162-game season.
8. A similar approach has been used elsewhere by others  — http://sabermetrati.blogspot.com/2008/08/welcome-to-sabermetrati.html  –  to compare predicted and actual performance as a season progresses.

 So here is the bottom line that I got and how it compares to the Rockies’ overall team 2008 performance:

	W	L	WPct	RS	RA	PythWPct	Pyth W	Pyth L
2008 Actual	74	88	45.68%	747	822	45.66%	74	88
2009 Marcel	-	-	-	841	820	51.15%	83	79

Is this the best projection for 2009? Is it the best way to calculate predicted RS and RA for 2009?

If so, what accounts for the projected improvement over 2008? Holliday is gone but Helton, according to his Marcel projections, should contribute more — assuming he goes a whole season?  The predicted improvement is to the offensives side, if you compare the projected RS and RA for 2009 with actual runs scored and allowed for 2008? How can that be? Can a full season of contributions by Helton be the sole explanation? Not likely, but what else?

My thoughts on this in future posts.  Comments and Critiques welcome!

WELCOME, COLORADO ROCKIES FANS & SABERMETRIC ADHERENTS

COLORADO ROCKIES 2009 PROJECTIONS & PREDICTIONS USING SABERMETRIC PRINCIPLES  — WELCOME:   This Blog is dedicated to attempting to apply rudimentary Sabermetric principles to assess the performance of the Colorado Rockies in their upcoming 2009 season.  I am new both to Sabermetrics and Blogging, so please have patience.  I welcome your constructive comments on the upcoming posts.