Ask David Luciani: Volume 7, Number 2
published December 20, 2005

Q.  I found your first projection for Ryan Howard quite interesting.  I found the fact that he hit only .148 in 61 at bats vs. LHP and his 33/100 BB/K ratio disturbing.  Do you see him making similar progress to David Wright with regard to plate discipline?  What factors led to his strong projection?

A.  It seems that you apply more weight to some factors than I do.  For example, BB/K ratio can be crucial when it comes to forecasting playing time but the trade of Jim Thome and new Phillies' GM Pat Gillick's open commitment to Howard as the everyday first baseman make that only a minor concern.  It's not often that the reigning Rookie of the Year loses his job within one season and so, I don't think the playing time aspect of the forecast is in any way risky (149 games, 536 AB in the first set).

In fact, I talked before about my disagreement with applying too much weight to ratios like BB/K ratio.  There is no doubt a strong correlation between ratios like BB/K and, say, hitting ability or run production, but my view is that it's because the denominator of the equation, strikeouts, is key to the contact rate and thus the batting average of a player.  Howard does strike out plenty and in fact, his strikeout rate is why he hasn't often made it to the highest level on my top prospect lists.  That is, I can see him having a decent but shorter career as a good home run hitter but one who won't have the longevity into his mid thirties because his propensity for striking out will make him fade away quicker than someone like a Manny Ramirez, who still has typically struck out more than 100 times a season but not to the degree that Howard does.

Just looking at that first projection for Howard, I projected a .280 average with 38 home runs, 63 walks and 202 strikeouts in the first edition of the forecasts.  The strikeouts would be record-setting but it is entirely possible to hit .280 while striking out that many times, if your bat speed is good enough that when you do make contact, you hit the ball sharply and with authority.  Also, you'll notice I am projecting an even worse BB/K ratio for Howard in 2006 when you break down the numbers (0.31 BB/K compared to 0.33 BB/K last year).

Interestingly, another reader wrote me a question that was similar to yours in that it mentioned the BB/K ratio but made the argument that it is impossible for a player with a BB/K ratio below 0.40 to hit .280, which couldn't be farther from the truth.  In fact, just looking at 2005 numbers, Carl Crawford hit .301 with a BB/K ratio of 0.32, Robinson Cano hit .297 with a ratio of just 0.24, Mark Grudzielanek hit .294 with a ratio of 0.32 and Shea Hillenbrand hit .291 with a ratio of 0.33.  Those are just a few that came to mind when I was looking for examples and in fact, we found 44 players in 2005 alone who had at least 400 at bats and hit better than .280 with a BB/K ratio of worse than 0.40.

I was surprised at the number of people who asked about or mentioned Ryan Howard in questions submitted to this column recently as I actually didn't think I was out on a limb that much.  In 351 major league at bats, he has 24 home runs.  He hit 38 in just 522 at bats last year when you combine his big league numbers with his Triple-A Scranton-WB numbers.  In 2004, he hit 48 home runs between Double-A, Triple-A and the majors combined in fewer at bats than I'm projecting for 2006.  If he lost even 20% of his home run ability in the transition from the minors to the majors, he still comes out as a pretty safe 35-40 home run type.

In terms of his performance against lefties in 2005, he hit just .148 with 1 home run in 61 at bats against southpaws.  It's not too much of a concern for me though I did account for him facing a greater ratio of lefties in 2006 than he did in 2005 as he faced righties about 80% of the time in 2005 and that's more likely to be about 70-75% in 2006.  In other words, his being a full-timer now is only going to mean about 85 more at bats against lefties than he had last year (or about 145 of his projected 2006 at bats).  I've accounted for that and he would have had a much better home run projection if he could face right-handers as frequently as he did last year over the new projected number of at bats.

Q.  I was surprised when reading your top prospect list that Howie Kendrick wasn't listed.  Is that an accident?

A.  I still think Kendrick is going to be a good player and in fact, in the more extensive Baseball Notebook Rookie Analysis, I listed him 134th overall among the prospects.  If you look at my projected future prime ability for Hendrick in that work, you discover that I see him as an eventual .311 type hitter with 20 home run ability and 18 stolen base speed.  His huge problem is going to be a projected lack of ability to take walks (I project about 21 walks per full season when he's in his prime) and even with the excellent future projected batting average, I just couldn't rank him higher based on that belief.  You know, even in this modern more Sabermetric-oriented era, statistics like batting average get far too much attention when other sources rank their top prospects.  Yes, he's dominated when it comes to batting average in the minors but look at how often he's been taking (or not taking) walks in the minors.  He walked just 20 times in 2005 between Single-A Rancho Cucamonga and Double-A Arkansas last year and you have to keep in mind that while walk ability approves with experience, it is much easier to take a walk at Single-A than it is in the majors and when it comes to forecasting future statistical ability, the effect of improvement is often cancelled out by the adjustment for the caliber of competition.

I think he's going to be a good player and will be an annual batting title contender but his actual value in terms of run production will be questionable and it will also eventually affect his playing time in the majors and thus, his career totals.  I can think of countless examples of players who showed similar skills and who made it to the majors only to disappoint.  Kendrick's future reminds me of a better version than, say, a Chris Singleton or Randall Simon, both players who could hit for average and power (and Singleton also had the speed) but couldn't stick around because of their inability to take a walk.

As I always say, I just can't list a guy as a top prospect simply because everyone else says he is.  I have access to the same facts as other sources.  I just see him differently.

Q.  Is there any reason to believe that Oliver Perez can return to something resembling his 2004 form for a full year?

A.  Returning readers from 2005 will recall that I was quite low on Perez heading into last year and the same things I saw then lead me to again forecast him to perform poorly.  He has outstanding stuff and will remain a better than a strikeout per inning guy for a while but he's far too wild for his own good and when he misses, he often misses up in the strike zone and his fastball is one that power hitters can really turn around and drive.  I'm also not too convinced of the bullpen he'll have behind him and many of those runners a starter leaves on base as he exits end up being charged to the departing pitcher even though it's the bullpen that lets them score.

Readers of some of my minor league writings are familiar with what I have come to call the concept of "control-ERA" which to me, is the idea that if a pitcher could achieve even average major league control, we could estimate a different version of his future skills.  In Perez's case, if he could achieve average control, he would return to those levels of 2004.  Ironically, that was the year he walked the most batters but fortunately for him, he wasn't usually missing up in the strike zone.

There's a phenomenon with some hard throwers that's interesting and that is that they can fall into the positive or negative vicious cycle of success.  That is, extreme hard throwers who get off to a solid start and develop a secure reputation as an excellent pitcher start to become "positively wild" in that hitters respect them so much that they think they're going to throw a strike even when they aren't.  Randy Johnson has secured this sort of reputation and so, pitches he once would walk batters on fifteen years ago are now swinging strikes because hitters can't pick up the ball.  If you wanted a reason to believe that Perez could return to that level, then you should be hoping for this concept to take effect.  That is, if hitters respect him and even falsely believe that he's re-established himself, they will go back to swinging at many of his bad pitches again because he does have the stuff that they can't pick the ball up in time to make reliable contact.  When hitters don't respect the pitcher's control, they simply lay off and let him walk batters until the pitcher loses confidence in his fastball or tries to use some high heat and leaves an easier pitch in the hitter's zone.  Re-establishing the respect of hitters is key to Perez's eventual return to the 2004 success he experienced.  Unfortunately for him, word has gotten around the league that he can't throw his fastball for strikes and so hitters wait him out.

Q.  I noticed that you had not ranked Kenji Johjima in your first forecasts.  What type of projection do you see for him?

A.  I actually did make a forecast for Johjima but it wasn't ready when the first 2006 forecasts were published and when I said there were "rare exceptions" of players who were on a 40-man roster who didn't get a forecast, he was one of them.  On Wednesday of this past week, I made the rare effort to add his projection to the set that's currently available at the site and I'm forecasting a .262 hitter with 18 HR and 52 RBI in 393 at bats.  As with many Japanese players, this forecast is based much more on statistics than it is on scouting as I've only seen him play twice and both times it was on a poor quality videotape for a total of about six at bats, I think.  So, the confidence level in the forecast will be much lower than for established players.

I should also mention to the fantasy leaguers who ran ranking sheets since Wednesday and who still didn't see him on their lists, it's because technically, he doesn't qualify at catcher in leagues that use 2005 stats to qualify players.  He has no major league games and so he'll show only in the utility section on ranking sheets.

On a related note, we're working on a new way to qualify such players at the position they played most last year in whatever league they played in, including minor leaguers.  We're trying to have this new feature ready within the next month or two.

Q.  Where's the Mets #1 prospect Lastings Milledge in your top 100 prospects?  If Milledge ranked #5 overall last year on your projections, how is not even in the top 100 this season?  He had a breakout year and has seemingly established himself as a nearly "can't miss" prospect at  a very young age.  Is there something we Mets fans are overlooking?

A.  Like Howie Kendrick, the omission of Milledge dominated emails to my inbox this past week.  Yes, I ranked him as #5 in the NL last year (not to be confused with #5 overall as there were four different prospect lists last year, one each for hitters and pitchers, separated into each league).  Milledge preserved his high ranking as late as my mid-2005 BNRA when he was ranked #14 overall.  Since then, though, he dropped quite a bit because where I once saw him as a future .300 hitter with 30 home run power and 30+ steal ability, I now see him as a future .290 type with 20 home run ability and 25 stolen base ability.  I know it doesn't look like much a difference at first glance but over a full career, it really is as the second type of player usually hangs around baseball for a long time and has a good career but never really challenges for an MVP award or ends up as the cornerstone of a franchise whereas the first type of player often does.  In particular, my reduced ranking of him came about after I got to see him play at the more competitive Double-A Binghamton level, to which he was promoted in mid-July of last year.  Milledge hit .337 with 4 home runs and 11 steals over 48 games there, which is good but is not typical of a future 30/30 type projected player, even one who was only twenty at the time.  I'm rating his chances to appear in the majors by the end of 2007 at just 35%, which is also lower than it was previously.  Much of that is based on what I believe is a current lack of readiness for the Triple-A level which, if correct, will delay his call-up chances.  If that percentage turns out as being accurate, it means that the over/under on his big league ETA would be sometime in 2008, meaning that if all goes perfectly, he would have secured a full-time role in the majors by 2009 or 2010, at which time he would already be twenty-four or twenty-five, slightly older than the future Hall of Famer many have him as right now.

Anyway, if my projected future prime ability for him at .290-20-25 is true, then that's not a bad outlook but it's the reason why he's dropped to #103 overall and why, therefore, he wasn't listed among the top 100 prospects.  Like I said about Howie Kendrick earlier, he needs to develop better pitch selection and even with his apparently strong performance in 2005 between Single-A and Double-A, Milledge walked just 33 times in 425 at bats and that must improve before he becomes the superstar some see him as.

Q.  Can I ask why you have such a low at bats total projected for Delmon Young?  I was under the impression that he was going to start in 2006.

A.  In the projection notes/introduction, I think I explained the importance of representing all the possibilities in a projection and I gave an example that if a player has a 10% chance of being a full-timer playing 150 games and has a 90% chance of not even making the team, then I should reasonably give him a projection of about 15 games, representing the average outcome for the results (i.e. for the statistically-inclined, 10% * 150 + 90% *  0 = an average result of 15 games).

In the case of Young, you see this effect at work as I've forecasted 46 games and 181 at bats, productive at bats at that in that over that span, he would look like a 35 home run / 15-20 steal type with a questionable initial batting average in the majors. I'm trying to represent both the possibilities here and account for the current situation in Tampa Bay.  When we went to press with the first projection set, the Devil Rays had Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli and Jonny Gomes all under contract.  All reports I've received say that Baldelli is going to be ready for spring training and there you have your Devil Rays' outfield.  That means that if Young is to break in, either one of those three would have to go or the Devil Rays would have to use the DH position to play four outfielders regularly, which is possible.

Young is not guaranteed a starting spot or even a roster spot and in fact, it's going to be interesting to see how the front office responds to the open criticism Young made of the organization back in September.  Young was quoted in the St. Petersburg times as implying the Devil Rays were a second-class organization for not recalling him last September and he said "..as soon as I get my time in up there, I'll bounce out of there.  There's no reason to stay around for the long haul.  Get your six years and leave."

While the ownership situation in Tampa Bay has been in transition, I still don't think this sort of commentary is likely to earn him a quicker opportunity and I just can't see where to give him the at bats here.  Also, if I'm right that his initial ability will be a .240-type hitter in 2006 (though he remains my #2 prospect overall), that also means that even a plan to have him play regularly could go drastically wrong in spring training.  If he really is a .240 hitter right now - and I know he's going to improve quickly over the next few years - the margin of error is quite wide for him to have a terrible spring training and lose a spot on the Opening Day roster even if the team wants to give it to him.

Until things change either in the outfield situation or in terms of the open commitment the team has to Young's 2006 plans, I feel comfortable with the current projection.

Q.  On your top prospect lists, is the player listed as #30 Carlos Gonzalez the Carlos Gonzalez from Arizona?

A.  Yes, it is.  He's the outfielder who spent all of 2005 with the Single-A South Bend Silver Hawks.

Q.  To what extent will Shea Hillenbrand's comments affect your forecast for him?  How can a player bring his game to the "next level" as he calls it?

A.  I rarely put much emphasis on player comments because players often think they can do things that they can't.  A good example made it into last year's "Best of Ask David" column - check out the question about Adam Dunn saying that he thought he could steal 25-30 bases for how I would respond to Hillenbrand's notions of his new capabilities.  For readers who are wondering what Hillenbrand said, he was recently quoted as saying that he had lost 18 pounds and that he had changed his swing and though it would take his game "to the next level" and went on to predict that he "can hit 30 home runs and drive in 100."  I root for Shea Hillenbrand and it will be interesting to see the new swing but in terms of the weight loss, I can note that actually, when a player loses weight, his power typically drops rather than goes up.  I actually did an analysis in these pages on that topic which you can read at the website called "Size as a Statistical Field" which showed that the average 211 pound player (Hillenbrand's approximate 2005 weight) averaged about 18 home runs per 550 plate appearances.  Interestingly, Hillenbrand hit exactly 18 home runs last year in more than 600 plate appearances.  The analysis I talk about there shows that a drop of 18 pounds to, say, 193 pounds, would actually cost Hillenbrand about 5 home runs in power, on average.  Anyway, don't put too much emphasis on his comments until you see him playing, even in spring training.

Q.  If the least attractive player at a given fantasy position has a value significantly greater than a league's minimum bid, is it a legitimate strategy to target that position to spend only the minimum bid ($1 in most cases) to get that player?

A.  I probably wouldn't because positions can overlap.  Sometimes the last catcher, if he's above the minimum bid, could fill someone's utility spot or you could get someone like a dual catcher / first base type who fills someone else's spot.  I'd rather approach things as if I'm trying to maximize fantasy value but for me, this is getting overly concerned with one specific player rather than the types of player or value you're looking to acquire.  If a position is strong enough to have the last player as valued better than a minimum bid, then everyone's going to come away from the auction doing well at that position.

Q.  Brian Lawrence may not be the most exciting player but I saw that you projected him to put up a fairly good season ERA-wise.  I'm just curious why you project the slight rebound.

A.  Not just because he's still going to play in a pitching-friendly park, Lawrence was the victim of terrible luck in 2005 and his ERA was not representative of his performance and should have been closer to 4.00 than it was.  I believe if you took an exact replica of the 2005 Lawrence and re-played the season again, his ERA would have been lower as he pitched better than the results showed, suffered from unlucky bullpen problems that aren't repeatable and looked to me to be essentially the type of pitcher I'm forecasting for 2006.

Q.  Your top 100 prospect lists are a joke.  You've left off so many of the top players that the list has no credibility.

A.  You know, I get these emails every year and usually I don't respond to rude readers but I couldn't resist this year because a baseball writer friend of mine sent me a copied thread from another site (to which I won't give a plug here for reasons that will become clear) where there's an ongoing discussion about my latest prospect lists and the readers there, en masse, are mocking the list and making fun of both it and for some reason, me personally.  I continue to be amazed at how prospect values seem to have reached the stature of being almost self-evident, so much so that once a player graduates to the ranks of top prospect in a good publication like Baseball America (to which I remain a regular reader and for which I have great respect), that any prospect list that leaves off a so-called top or favorite prospect gets classified as a "joke" or isn't taken seriously.  One reader in the thread in question even compared my successful ranking of a particular prospect no one else had on their lists a few years ago as a "blind squirrel finding a nut" and so I've decided to do a different type of response which I think will also benefit readers who do understand what we're trying to accomplish here.

In the near future, I'm going to not only re-publish all the former prospect lists going back as far as 1995 or 1996 but I'm also going to, in all future lists, show the average eventual statistical result for each prospect position.  That is, when I rank a player as #1, I'll show you what the average eventual performance was for all former #1's on my list.  I'm not afraid to do this because I know that our prospect ranking methods have worked and I think it will give readers a better sense of whether our prospect ranking methods have merit and should be taken seriously - and if I didn't believe in them, I'd stop publishing them as the annual top 100 prospect list is a free and non-guaranteed aspect of the site.

I think we've managed to gather all the lists together except for one, which was included as a supplementary insert in the pre-Internet hard copy newsletter in the December issue of 1997, one of our last before we moved to the Internet in April of 1998.  For some reason, my copy is missing the insert so if any reader has a copy of that pre-Internet newsletter with the prospect insert, I'd appreciate that they fax a copy of the insert to us - the fax # is on our contact information at the BaseballNotebook.com web page.  While I would normally accept an email, I'd like to see the actual sheet we mailed out and produced and for some reason I don't have my own copy.  Also, we published two lists in 2002 and we'll be publishing the one that was confined to rookies only.  Our official 2005 list will also have to be modified to have a version that includes rookies only so players like Felix Hernandez don't get unfairly carried over to benefit the results.  Our 2004 list will use the consolidated version rather than that which was separated into leagues.

To make it even more interesting, I've asked my right hand man here to go through all the emails (and before the Internet, mostly letters) we have in the archives for each year of players who generated the most complaint about their ranking on the list, either too high or too low.  We're not going to hold any back, so the well-founded complaints about my ranking Roy Oswalt too low or Kirk Saarloos too high will show up, and we'll show you a clear picture about how the general perception differed from what we said and where things went right and wrong.  This exercise won't be about proving a point as much as it will be about helping readers to place current and future prospect lists in a proper and more usable context.  For me, this is research as the essence of discovery is not only trying new things but also finding out what did and didn't work and I'm looking forward to seeing what the actual results have been.

I often wonder how many of the critical readers who are hammering on our prospect lists have even once seen their favorite so-called "can't miss, unanimous, future Hall of Famer" prospect play even a single time, even on videotape if not in person (and videotape is hard to obtain from public sources for minor league games).  If they haven't, their opinions are simply either based on statistical analysis - which I doubt as most such readers seem to think statistical analysis is the weakness of our ranking method - or they're just blindly repeating what someone else says and forming no original opinion of their own.  Anyway, I think this effort to reach back to the old prospect lists will be beneficial to the readers who do get what we're trying to accomplish here and as a bonus, will serve as my general response to the "blind squirrel" accusation.  Unfortunately, it takes ten years for a prospect list to be properly rated and such readers never remember the criticism they've displayed.  I'm the first to admit that I will miss some players as all prospect lists do and I wouldn't pretend otherwise.  I give you my best estimate of a player's future and do so in good conscience.  We'll let the former lists speak for themselves and if any of those harshly critical readers want to send their top prospect lists that they published in any year from 1998 or before (we have to go at least that far back to rate a prospect list as a success or a failure as others published since still have active minor league players involved), all I need is some proof from a verifiable source that it was published or circulated and date-stamped in a way that can be confirmed.  I'll be glad to compare it to ours to see how they did and moreover, will be glad to openly advertise and/or plug a source who has comparable success because I want Baseball Notebook readers to have access to the best information.  If there's someone out there who has their own lists that are performing better, I want that person writing for me!  So, there's my response and I can't believe how it's become an annual tradition to get this question.  I had 20+ emails all with the same theme that said the prospect lists weren't to be taken seriously.  So, there's my answer.

Q.  My fantasy league requires that owners submit their keeper lists in late February.  Given that we allow off-season trades and given that I now have access to the first projection set, do you think I am safe to start making trades now?

A.  Yes, I'd say you are but be particularly careful when it comes to both free agents and players who are getting projections because of vacant team situations.  That is, I'd be shocked if my Melky Cabrera forecast holds up until Opening Day because the Yankees typically fill their gaps before spring training and I assume they will.  Also, even as the non-tender deadline has been a factor, some players will be accepting arbitration from their teams and that will fill some of these holes.

I'd recommend that on players who have clear roles and a current contract, the forecasts are unlikely to change much with the exception of team-related statistics.  Wins for pitchers can change as a team strengthens its offense and bullpen and new players can affect a starting pitcher's projected ERA but overall, the key performance categories like batting average, hits allowed, walks allowed, strikeouts and so on are all pretty stable from this point forward.

Q.  Will you be adding a 2006 forecast for Craig Hansen?

A.  Hansen's omission was not an accident.  The problem was that he didn't even round to 1 game played on the forecasts because the Red Sox pitching staff is so crowded.  When that situation is resolved, you're likely to see Hansen appear but I just can't squeeze any more appearances from this staff and when I looked at the other nineteen pitchers I listed here, there wasn't anyone's playing time that I could reduce to fit Hansen's forecast in.  As the pitching staff situation plays itself out, it's possible I could forecast him to appear, as he did briefly last year, but right now I just can't create a forecast for him until this roster situation becomes more clear.  It's rare that I don't forecast a player who is on the 40-man roster who also appeared in the majors - I think he may be one of just three - but there's no room for him right now.

Q.  I believe you strongly consider age and injury risk in your projections.  I was surprised to see John Smoltz projected for 185 innings and a 3.03 ERA.  Could you please comment on his projection?

A.  Sure.  Like I said when talking about Brian Lawrence earlier, I actually think Smoltz pitched better in 2005 than his ERA even showed (and he finished with an outstanding 3.06 ERA) and even at his age, his stuff has never been better.  The age and injury risk is accounted for and that's why you see only 185 innings projected compared to 229.2 last year.  In recent years, Smoltz has developed outstanding control, still has good velocity and exceptional movement and hits his spots as well as almost any pitcher in the National League.  I've accounted for the typical decline in performance a pitcher his age should experience and it shows you how highly I thought of the stuff we saw from him last year that I'm projecting such a good ERA.  I actually received several emails asking why I thought John Smoltz would "suddenly become such a good pitcher" (one reader put it this way) and it made me wonder which pitcher those readers have been watching as it's essentially the same ERA he had last year.

Q.  It seems you still believe in Kaz Matsui's ability.  He's projected for 291 at bats.  Is this because of the injury risk or because he won't be the Mets' starting second baseman?

A.  No, I've dropped quite a bit in my opinion of Matsui's opinion and his projected performance is comparable to his career numbers in the majors so far and essentially don't even resemble his star performance from his Japanese days.  As for the playing time, when we went to press with the first edition of the forecasts, the Mets didn't have a second baseman on their roster as Miguel Cairo was a free agent and Chris Woodward didn't look like more than a utility player.  The only player who seemed to be a possible fit other than Matsui was Jeff Keppinger, who actually got more projected at bats in the first set than Matsui did and may well end up as the second baseman.  Yes, there is also a moderate injury risk on Matsui's part as he did miss a lot of time in 2005 and that played a role in the forecasted totals.

Q.  On your prospect lists, it would help if you listed the organization a player is with on the lists.

A.  Several readers asked for this and for the life of me, I can't give you a good reason why they weren't listed but I can tell you we'll be adding these as soon as possible.

Q.  I was a little dismayed at your pitching projections for 2006.  If I read them correctly, you forecast the NL ERA leader to be Pedro Martinez at 2.99, which would be the highest since 1961 and for him to lead the league in wins at 16 would be the fewest in a non-strike year that I can remember.  Do you consider historical records in their projections such as league leading totals over the past 10, 25 and 30 years?  It also seems that (at least for the NL) that you are forecasting very few pitchers to improve over their performances for last year.  Besides Jason Schmidt, Oliver Perez and Brian Lawrence, I'm hard-pressed to find a breakout guy or someone like that while it's easy to find a number of guys who will fall short of last year's numbers.

A.  In the "frequently asked questions" section of the notes that come with the projections, there is a lengthy response to the question called "Where are the 20 game winners?" which essentially answers your question.  However, I did want to answer it here too because you mentioned the ERA aspect, which wasn't covered there.

I completely believe that there will be a pitcher who wins 19 or 20 games or who has an ERA around 2.50 or even better.  The problem is that even with all of my forecasting ability, I can't tell you which pitcher it will be and no one else can either.  Here's why.  The most extremely successful performances, while entirely deserving of respect, are also performances at the most positive range of luck too.  That is, consider that there is a hidden element of luck in baseball.  How wide the range is where luck is concerned is debatable and you can decide how wide it is but for hypothetical purposes, let's say it's +/- 1 on the ERA scale.  It may be tighter (and I don't think it is much tighter) and it may be wider but pretend then that every pitcher has a real, hidden ability.  Now also allow for that beyond their real 2006 ability, there will be a luck factor that will influence their final ERA total.  Imagine that we play one simulated season and one only.  A pitcher with a real hidden ERA ability of 3.00 if we had a luck factor of +/-1 could end up with an ERA anywhere between 2.00 and 4.00 and if he ends up with an ERA of 2.00, he's got a good shot at winning the ERA title.  He may even really be the best pitcher in the league.  When a single season is played, the luck factor does play a big role because you're talking about not 162 games but rather only 30-32 games for a starting pitcher.  The pitcher who ends up with the best ERA in that single simulated season will almost certainly have a better ERA than his real, hidden ability with the only the rarest exceptions.  Roger Clemens is/was a great pitcher, one of the greatest ever, but his 1.87 ERA was not indicative of his real, hidden 2005 ability.  That is, his hidden real ability may have been 2.50 and it may have been better than any other pitcher but there's also some luck in posting an ERA that low.

Now, taking the simulation aspect a step further.  Let's say that we could somehow psychically know the actual hidden real abilities of every pitcher in baseball and also know exactly how often they would play in 2006.  The only unknown would be how much luck would play a +/- role in the outcome.  Instead of a single season, let's say that we could somehow play the 2006 a billion times and then average the results.  If we did that, the ERA title winner would not have an ERA of 1.87 because all of those unknowns (the luck aspect) would have cancelled each other out in the long run.  That is, over a billion seasons, the pitcher who is actually the best would almost certainly be the pitcher who finished with the best ERA on average and that average "best" ERA would be nowhere close to what typically leads the league.

In no way does this take away from players who lead the league in a category.  Rather, I am emphasizing that a player who leads the league in a category must usually be both good and lucky to post the result that he does because the nature of deviations is such that whatever role luck does play has a tremendous effect on what total will lead the league in a category.  The more players play and the larger the sample, the less luck plays a factor.

In our example of the billion seasons, I have no doubt that in just about every season, some pitcher would post an ERA closer to typical league-leading totals or win 20 games, the two categories you mentioned.  Unfortunately, even if we could know the real hidden abilities of every player, it would not be the same pitcher that leads the league and, on average, the pitchers would perform according to their real, hidden abilities in the long run.

Therefore, my response to you is that when I project Pedro Martinez with an ERA of 2.99, I really believe that this is his average expected performance given his current team and situation if the season were played a billion times, as I say here.  I actually view that he has anywhere from a 30-40% chance to better that by up to half a run or to fall short.

You know, it's so easy for some forecasters out there to project a specific pitcher to win 20 games or to force their leader to have an ERA that's typical of a league leader but they must know something I don't as part of the reason I believe in our methods is that they work.  A side effect of that is that I can't tell you which pitcher is going to win 20 games next year.  That's being blunt, I know, but it's the truth.  Someone will and Pedro, according to the set, has the best chance in the National League but if we could somehow played the 2006 season a billion (or even an infinite number of times), there's no pitcher who would average 20 wins.  I know it's not what some readers are expecting but I'm trying to give you the most accurate, best possible projection here and not what you necessarily expect to see.  If luck plays even the most remote factor in baseball, and the nature of deviations says it must, then a forecast set should have much tighter ranges than any single season.

Just on the issue of players improving, though this luck explanation I gave you relates to this, there are many NL pitchers who are projected to have better ERAs than they did in 2005.  In addition to the ones you metioned, just a few that come to mind are Livan Hernandez, Greg Maddux, Russ Ortiz, Brad Penny, Odalis Perez, John Thomson, Javier Vazquez and Woody Williams.  Naturally, the most extremely positive of 2005 performances are unlikely to be repeatable and so perhaps you're noticing that effect at work.  Also, a number of the National League bullpen spots remain unfilled and the absence of established relievers does have a negative effect on projected ERA for many starters - it can make a difference of up to 0.40 or 0.50 on an ERA forecast, theoretically.

Q.  I noticed the absence of four players from your prospect lists that I have been following: Matt Cain, Joel Guzman, Ryan Zimmerman and Lastings Milledge.  Could you please tell me where they fit into a longer list of prospects?

A.  Your question is the type of question for which I created the BNRA e-book as its 800+ pages gives me space to offer a much more extensive list of prospects and projected actual future abilities.  I already mentioned Milledge above, who is now at #103.  Cain came in at #111, Guzman came in at #201 (and also made my list of the top 25 most overrated prospects) and Zimmerman was at #396.

For Cain, I project future serious problems with his control.  Under the model, Guzman projects as a good future power hitter who won't hit for average the way some think he will and won't walk often enough, a frequent reason prospects whom others rank highly get lower rankings on my lists.  Zimmerman, despite how he looked in 2005, doesn't project as the future batting title contender some have him down for and I only rate his eventual power potential as medium (think 15-20 home runs).

I know that some readers want to see some of these players ranked higher but if I gave readers what they expect or want only for the sake of avoiding criticism, there really wouldn't be much purpose to publishing an original list.  All I'd have to do is average what everyone else thinks or expects and I'd have a non-contentious, as-expected list which really wouldn't bring any new ideas or possibilities to the prospect discussion.  So, that's where all of the ones you asked about ended up in my rankings.

I've made this issue quite a bit longer than usual because there were so many questions submitted recently that I had to filter them down to common themes.  The recent prospect lists actually dominated my inbox even though we had just come off our first projection set for 2006, which was a bit of a surprise to me.  In a few cases, readers will have to forgive that I actually combined questions here that were on similar issues, though I tried to preserve the language of every question even if two questions were combined into one.

Readers might laugh at this because it seems there's an ongoing debate about the political correctness of wishing someone "Merry Christmas" when you represent a corporation.  I've decided that what I'll do here is say that to those readers who celebrate Christmas, then I'll wish you a Merry Christmas.  To readers who honor some other holiday or occasion at this time of year, religious or otherwise, I just want to wish you all the best and the safest of times and travels during the upcoming couple of weeks.  Our next projection update is scheduled for a rare Saturday morning update because it otherwise would have fallen on January 1st so we moved it up to December 31st.

For the record, Baseball Notebook member support will be closed from noon on December 24th until noon on December 26th.  We will have someone answering member support emails on January 1st.

Keep sending your good questions to the column and I extend my best wishes to you and your families during this season!