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The Bill James Handbook for 2014 arrived recently, and one of the best things about it is that it says "2014" on it. It's the first printed baseball material I have for next year, and thus the metaphorical page has been turned.
In addition to all the stats for active players, various type of stat breakdowns and the 2013 league leaders, the Handbook has the Fielding Bible Awards, given by a distinguished panel that includes SB Nation's Rob Neyer.
But what you are all most interested in are the projections, using Bill James' methods, for Cubs players for next season. You'll note below that in addition to players who were actually on the Cubs in 2013, there are projections for guys such as Javier Baez, who have never played in the major leagues before, but might. James explains projections for players like that, this way:
Our policy is that if a young player might play, then we project that he will play. Our theory... well, my theory, actually... is that we really don't have any way of knowing which rookies will make the team out of spring training next year and, unless you are a blithering idiot, you know this. Our job is to tell you what kind of player the man is. We try to tell you, as best as we are able, how he will play if he plays. Is he a singles hitter who will steal bases and not return them, or is he a power hitter who will strike out 200 times and ask Adam Dunn for his signature after the game?
If we don't print the projection for the young player, then we're cheating you out of what we know; that's the way I see it. If we project that a young player will bat 550 times and he bats 170 times, well, that happens, and you should expect it to happen. But if a rookie bats 550 times and we haven't told you what kind of player he will be, then we haven't done our jobs.
With that in mind, here are the Bill James Handbook projections for Cubs hitters for 2014. You'll note there are big turnarounds projected for Anthony Rizzo and Starlin Castro in particular.
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO AVG OBP SLG Javier Baez 541 78 146 25 0 22 78 43 166 .270 .324 .438 Darwin Barney 521 63 131 26 2 6 44 34 59 .251 .302 .344 Welington Castillo 415 46 109 24 0 13 50 37 100 .263 .330 .414 Starlin Castro 648 75 181 37 7 11 63 35 108 .279 .321 .409 Junior Lake 508 72 140 32 2 13 48 32 124 .276 .321 .423 Mike Olt 485 65 109 25 1 24 70 66 158 .225 .318 .429 Anthony Rizzo 612 83 163 42 2 30 101 68 123 .266 .344 .489 Nate Schierholtz 470 56 122 30 4 16 58 30 92 .260 .308 .443 Ryan Sweeney 287 35 79 17 2 6 32 26 50 .275 .338 .411 Luis Valbuena 298 38 74 17 1 9 35 38 57 .248 .337 .403
The relatively low playing time projected for Sweeney likely reflects the injury that caused him to miss much of 2013. Also, I couldn't fit it in the table and still make it readable, but Junior Lake is projected to steal 27 bases, with 12 CS; Baez, 21 SB and 8 CS, and Castro, 15 SB with 8 times caught.
We'd all be pretty happy with those numbers from everyone on that list. It's notable that Olt's overall numbers don't project all that differently from the Cubs' third-base group from 2013 of Valbuena, Cody Ransom and Donnie Murphy, who did this:
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO AVG OBP SLG Cubs 3B 2013 580 70 128 30 2 30 70 70 151 .221 .314 .434
There are pitcher projections in the Handbook as well, and James thinks they are more reliable than they were in the past:
I used to be very skeptical of projections for pitchers, didn't think it could be done accurately. In retrospect, it may have been my own ignorance that I was afraid of. I used to try to project future won-lost records based on past won-lost records, and future ERAs based on past ERAs. That worked for Warren Spahn, not so well for anybody else. We now understand that to project pitchers accurately, you have to focus on lower performance indicators... strikeouts, walks and innings, rather than wins, losses and ERA. How the strikeouts, walks and innings will aggregate themselves into wins and losses is kind of a random process, but if you stay focused on the elements, you won't usually miss by too much on the outcomes.
Here, then, are his projections for some key Cubs pitchers for 2014:
G GS IP H BB SO HR W L SV ERA Jake Arrieta 20 20 117 114 53 99 14 5 8 0 4.31 Edwin Jackson 31 31 190 199 62 148 20 9 12 0 4.07 James Russell 66 0 48 51 15 34 7 2 3 0 4.50 Jeff Samardzija 32 32 211 198 76 194 24 11 13 0 3.80 Pedro Strop 67 0 65 56 32 68 3 4 4 8 3.46 Carlos Villanueva 40 14 125 116 41 107 17 6 7 0 3.74 Travis Wood 31 31 197 183 66 155 21 10 11 0 3.70
Those all look pretty reasonable, if not optimistic for Cubs fans. We'd all love to see a year like that out of Jackson -- that would be a significant improvement over 2013. The W/L records appear to be based more on past performance than on anything the Cubs might do in 2014, although they imply a record a little closer to .500. If Strop winds up the Cubs' closer, he'll obviously have more than eight saves.
If you don't already have this book, it's well worth ordering and should be part of anyone's essential baseball library for 2014. You can get yours at this link.