Back for another go-round.
Once again we'll be teaming up with the folks over at USS Mariner in our effort to make our own teamwide projections for the 2008 season. Why do we do this when there are already so many other systems out there doing the same thing? Because while PECOTA, ZiPS, THT, and everyone else know a lot about each player on the Mariner roster, no equation (or series of equations) can match our collective knowledge. When it comes to the Seattle Mariners, nothing and nobody is more informed than us. So, in theory, we should be capable of producing the best projections.
Should you choose to participate (and I hope you will), this year is going to be a little different than the last. Instead of emailing out links to individual player sheets, we're going to send you a form with drop-down menus for every relevant player. It will look like this. You'll have a while to fill it out, so don't worry if you can't do everyone in one sitting. Here's how you do this: enter your data, and when you're done with each pair of players (one hitter + one pitcher), click 'Submit'. Then use the drop-down menus to advance to the next pitcher and hitter in the list. You can't do more than one pitcher and hitter at a time, so don't try. It'll bungle things up, and that won't be fun for Dave and I when we try to interpret the spreadsheet later on.
Once we have all the projections, we're going to plug the data into Diamond Mind and run some season simulations (using ZiPS data for other teams) to figure out what the community thinks of the Mariners as a team. This is the part to which I'm looking forward the most.
Want to participate? Great! Here's how:
(1) Send an email to communityprojections@gmail.com with "Sign Me Up!" in the subject line from the email address you want us to send the form to
(2) Receive the form (will happen within 24 hours of your request)
(3) Before you begin filling out the form, check out this spreadsheet as a reference. This spreadsheet includes 2007 data for every player and an area for you to input some test data to see just what you're projecting. (For example, the form doesn't have an area that automatically calculates BA/OBP/SLG, so in order to make sure your numbers make sense, run them by this spreadsheet first.) If you want player data from earlier years, everything's available in the player splits at Baseball-Reference, the greatest website in the universe.
(4) Within a week, submit your projections. If there are certain players that you don't feel like projecting, skip them.
I hope you guys enjoy this. I know it's a little different, but once you get a feel for everything, I think it'll be a lot of fun. So send your email to communityprojections@gmail.com and let's get this project underway.