Projecting the Milwaukee Brewers' Position Players

Everybody wants to know what’s going to happen next year. Well, obviously we can’t know, but we can guess. I’ve combined the 2009 Marcel’s with Sean Smith’s defense projections to make some bare-bones Brewers projections for next year.

This is assuming no new signings. As the Hot Stove truly heats up, I will begin adding the Brewers’ FA signings to this table, and hopefully we can develop a good idea of where the Brewers will sit in April.

First, some assumptions for the projections:

Each position must get 700 PA. Therefore, over 162 games, the number of PA/G is 4.32.
Every 700 PA is worth 2.0 WAR.
Positional Adjustments can be found here (see the bottom of the post).
Average wOBA = .329, found from the Marcel projections.
A replacement player is defined as average defensively.
Also, I’ve included each player’s open market value. This is based on trends over the last few years of free agency. 1 WAR = 4.84 million.

Finally, here’s the table.

PLAYER	POS	REL.	mPA	wOBA	RAA	WAA	WAR	xG	G/POS	DefRAA	PosAdj	DefWAA	TotalWAA	TotalWAR	MarketValue (M$)	Salary
Gwynn, Tony	OF	0.46	238	0.306	-4.76	-0.45	0.23	55.09	39 CF 13 RF	-2.95	0	-0.28	-0.73	-0.05	-0.26	0.4
Gamel, Mat	3B	0.01	201	0.344	2.62	0.25	0.82	46.53	46 3B	0	0.71	0.07	0.32	0.89	4.32	0.4
Nelson ,Brad	1B	0.03	204	0.338	1.6	0.15	0.73	47.22	20 1B 27 PH	0	-3.63	-0.35	-0.19	0.39	1.89	0.4
Rivera ,Mike	C	0.42	236	0.329	0	0	0.67	54.63	36 C 18 PH	0	1.39	0.13	0.13	0.81	3.9	0.45
Hall, Bill	3B	0.84	474	0.325	-1.65	-0.16	1.2	109.72	110 3B	-0.68	1.7	0.1	-0.06	1.29	6.26	4.93
Cameron, Mike	CF	0.85	519	0.333	1.81	0.17	1.65	120.14	120 CF	2.24	1.85	0.39	0.56	2.04	9.9	10
Weeks, Rickie	2B	0.83	531	0.343	6.46	0.62	2.13	122.92	122 2B	-6.84	1.88	-0.47	0.14	1.66	8.04	2.3
Kendall, Jason	C	0.85	545	0.295	-16.11	-1.53	0.02	126.16	126 C	10	9.72	1.88	0.34	1.9	9.2	4.6
Hardy, J.J.	SS	0.84	578	0.344	7.54	0.72	2.37	133.8	134 SS	0.83	6.2	0.67	1.39	3.04	14.71	4.5
Fielder, Prince	1B	0.87	615	0.382	28.34	2.7	4.46	142.36	142 1B	-7.09	-10.96	-1.72	0.98	2.74	13.25	9
Braun, Ryan	LF	0.81	581	0.384	27.79	2.65	4.31	134.49	134 LF	1.67	-6.2	-0.43	2.21	3.87	18.75	3.05
Hart, Corey	RF	0.84	585	0.345	8.14	0.78	2.45	135.42	135 RF	1.68	-6.25	-0.44	0.34	2.01	9.73	2.4
Replacement	C	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	0 C	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Replacement	1B	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	0 C	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Replacement	2B	-	169	-	-	-0.48	-	-	40 2B	-	-	-	-0.45	-	-	-
Replacement	3B	-	25	-	-	-0.07	-	-	6 3B	-	-	-	-0.07	-	-	-
Replacement	SS	-	122	-	-	-0.35	-	-	28 SS	-	1.3	0.08	-0.24	0.08	-	-
Replacement	LF	-	119	-	-	-0.34	-	-	28 LF	-	-1.3	-0.08	-0.4	-0.08	-	-
Replacement	CF	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	0 CF	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Replacement	RF	-	58	-	-	-0.17	-	-	14 RF	-	-0.65	-0.04	-0.2	-0.04	-	-
Totals	-	-	-	-	-	4.47	21.05	-	162 ALL	-1.14	-4.23	-0.49	4.07	20.56	99.69	42.43

Some observations

With most of the Brewers’ lineup back, we have mostly good things to look forward to. You’ll notice that most of the PA projections are low for many players. Marcel tends to be pessimistic on playing as a general rule. Basically, if you think that somebody is going to get more playing time, you can simply scale their WAR values up to whatever the appropriate PA value is.

A note on WAR:

A replacement level team would win 50 games in a 162-game season. We see here that the Brewers position players are projected at 20.56 Wins Above Replacement. If these projections would hold, and the Brewers were playing with a pitching staff composed completely of replacement level pitchers (basically, a bunch of Tim Dillards), we could expect to see a 70-92 team (or, last year’s Atlanta Braves).

What do the Brewers need? Clearly, we need a fourth (and maybe even a fifth) outfielder. Tony Gwynn will not cut it in a fourth OF role, and so we need to go out and get another bat (as has already been stated by Melvin).

Also, another thirrd baseman would be useful. Gamel’s data here is almost useless, since he’s had very few ML PAs, and we don’t really know anything as far as his defense either. Hall would be a solid half of a platoon, and I’m still a fan of Russell Branyan.

We can also see that the Brewers are doing a good job of keeping their costs per marginal win low. For more on this, check out this post from Fangraphs.

Expect the same thing for pitchers as well as some Free Agent projections later in the week. With the numbers for pitchers, we’ll be able to make some more sense out of the WAA/WAR numbers, too.