SWP 2014, part 1: The Final Four

Well, another baseball season is officially in the books and the San Francisco Giants are officially making a habit of winning the championship every even-numbered year. While it would have been nice to see some new blood hoist the trophy over their heads this year, it is slightly gratifying that at least half of my prediction came true: the Giants did indeed win, but they by no means trounced their opposition, as the Royals battled till the bitter end and it was only the double-MVP-worthy awesomeness of the MadBum that put them down. So I'd like to congratulate San Francisco on an exciting, hard-fought World Series and a well-deserved victory. You made a lot of fans everywhere very happy.

So now, with a few days left before the free agent feeding frenzy begins, it seems like a good time to look back on the season that was in an overall big picture type way. And as it happens, I just finished my age-old SWP lineups project that I've done for the past decade and a half. This differs from the projected playoff lineups I posted in that those had the current lineup that I thought was most likely to play in the tournament, whereas the SWP project shows the overall composition of a team over the course of the whole year. Plus it comes with a cool team logo.

I use the same fantasy point system that I have been using since the start of this blog, which is called SWP after the Small World fantasy client where I first saw it implemented. This was a format without draft or auction - rather each player had a dollar value attached to them and each team owner had a salary cap with which to build their team. I don't remember the exact year I started playing, but one of my earliest memories was windmill slamming Ichiro Suzuki as a rookie for cheap and feeling really great about it.

The documents have evolved over the years - they started with just the lineup listed in positional order, rotation, and bullpen listed by games played. But as my favorite website baseball-reference.com started putting up more information such as batting orders, my lists reflected that as well. I also added bench players and adopted a somewhat complex qualifying system (shown at right) mostly to determine which pitchers fit in which category. Suffice it to say, any batter that logged more than 200 at bats and any pitcher with 40 innings/appearances are now represented.

Based on their most recent football preview, Sports Illustrated's projected lineups may be a thing of the past, but thankfully we still have them from the 2014 baseball preview to serve as a point of comparison. So as I go through the teams (starting in playoff finish order and then we'll see where it goes from there) I'll be keeping a running total of what SI got right, not to maliciously point out errors, but as a way to keep track of what unforeseen changes took place over the course of the season.

San Francisco Giants

Lineup: 7/8

Rotation: 5/5

Bullpen: 2/2

As you can't see, cuz I'm not posting pics of the projections, SI predicted the makeup of the world champions impressively well. The only discrepancy stems from their optimism that veteran Marco Scutaro would return from his injuries to play a significant role for this club, which of course he did not, allowing rookie Joe Panik to lock down this spot, possibly for years to come. While they technically did predict the team's top 5 starters listed in terms of innings pitched, Matt Cain was absent for most of the second half with injuries and Tim Lincecum was a non-factor pitching out of the bullpen. There is of course no way they could have predicted the acquisition of Jake Peavy, who actually equalled the production of Bumgarner in his brief sample size. Both the too two relievers listed ended up serving as the closer for part of this year, so that has to feel gratifying.

Kansas City Royals

Lineup: 9/9

Rotation: 4/5

Bullpen: 1/2

Turns out both participants in this year's World Series were pretty easy to predict. The folks at SI got the Royals offense down even to the batting order... that is until manager Ned Yost went rogue and switched things up late in the final month. The only thing they got wrong was assuming Bruce Chen would stick as the fifth starter, a job he ceded to Danny Duffy early on. I know that bullpens are hard to predict (which is probably why SI hedges their bets by only naming two relievers) but it is worth noting that there was no mention of Wade Davis in the magazine, making his historical season all the more impressive.

St. Louis Cardinals

Lineup: 8/8

Rotation: 4/5

Bullpen: 2/2

The only offensive player SI missed for the Cardinals was Jon Jay, who curiously didn't show up at all in the preview article, not even on the bench, despite the fact that he ended up leading the team in outfield appearances. There was again of course no way for them to predict that projected #5 starter Joe Kelly would have been traded for actual #5 starter John Lackey. There was also no reason to predict the emergence of Pat Neshek as an All-Star middle reliever, which they didn't, but I gave them a perfect bullpen score because their projected setup man Seth Maness logged more innings.

Baltimore Orioles

Lineup: 6/9

Rotation: 5/5

Bullpen: 1/2

The Orioles definitely went through some changes as the 2014 season progressed, which resulted in some wonky predictions. To be fair, Matt Wieters and Jemile Weeks did start the season at catcher and second base, respectively. But Wieters saw his season end due to injury before the All-Star Break and Weeks was demoted to the minors and found himself traded for a relief pitcher for the second time this year. Projected left fielder David Lough did log a lot of games in the field, but mostly as a defensive replacement. While a run prevented is technically worth as much as a run scored, this team was all about the long ball, so more often than not, LF at bats went to home run threats like Nelson Cruz (when not DH-ing), Delmon Young, and Steve Pearce (when not filling in for Chris Davis at first, or indeed pushing him over to third base).

The rotation situation is similar to the Giants, with the non-factor being utterly disappointing Ubaldo Jimenez, but unlike in San Francisco, his replacement Kevin Gausman did not come via trade but rather through the prospect pipeline. As with the offense, SI's bullpen projections match how Baltimore filled out the card at the start of the season, but while Darren O'Day remained a top flight setup man, they did not project that Tommy Hunter would lose the closer job to lefty Zach Britton. (And neither did I, based on my fantasy draft. That's why you never pay for saves...)


So that's the first round of charts. Next will be the rest of the playoff teams and then depending on how exciting the hot stove season gets, I'll likely continue with the rest of the teams.