Tip #1: Know where player values come from

Tip #2: Set your Hit/Pitch split

Tip #3: Value your Picks and Make Preseason Trades

Tip #4: Draft with tiers

Tip #5: Use xFantasy, the xStats projection system

Tip #6: Use aging curves for keeper/dynasty leagues

Entering now into part seven of my preseason player valuation series, we arrive at one of the more important decisions of the preseason: deciding which projection system(s) to use. As a testament to how important this is, people have been asking me about this piece for weeks - wait no longer!

Evaluating projection systems is well-trodden ground, as documented by Will Larson over at the Baseball Projection Project. This year, the most notable projection analysis I've seen is again BTBS and in that case it was not a specifically fantasy-focused analysis. Over there, they largely found that Steamer was the best, followed closely by PECOTA, and they also examined some interesting differences in how each system does with players of certain ages. Each of the projection systems changes and iterates their methodology year over year, and so we can always stand to learn more by analyzing the most recent year's results.

In this study, I'll focus on the most commonly used projections - the same ones that appear in the Big Board: Steamer, PECOTA, ZiPS, Fangraphs Depth Charts, Fangraphs Fans, and Clay Davenport projections. The categories of interest are the typical 5x5 categories, HR/R/RBI/SB/AVG for hitters, and W/SO/SV/ERA/WHIP for pitchers. I'll look at each system's ability to project these categories in total as well as on a per-PA/per-IP basis. Since for fantasy purposes we only care about the relative projections made by each system (ie, we only need to know Kershaw is the best SP in baseball, not exactly what his ERA will be), I'll primarily use R squared to evaluate how well the projections correlated to actual results, but this year I'll also be including RMSE to show the absolute error in each projection system. The most common fantasy leagues draft about 300 players, broken out into 180 hitters, 90 SP, and 30 RP, and so I've gone through each system to find the consensus top 300 players as projected in the 2016 preseason, and will only be evaluating the systems based on their projections of those 300 players. One final adjustment - hitters that didn't end up reaching 400 PA and pitchers that didn't reach 35 IP, have been thrown out of the sample this year to reduce the effect of outliers.

Finally - for both hitters and pitchers, I'll present the the weighting factors used to create the best possible projection from a combination of the various 2016 projections. This year, it's called "Steacotaps" for both hitters and pitchers, which as you might guess, means it's a combo of Steamer, PECOTA, and ZiPS. This combined projection will be the default one I set for the Big Board as we head into draft season.

Hitters

After applying the caveats listed above, I end up with 142 hitters in my data set for 2016. In addition to each of the standard projections, I've included a custom mix which I'll call 'Steacotaps' - 40% Steamer, 35% PECOTA, 25% ZiPS. This custom mix also uses weighted playing time, with the same percentage weights. Rate stats like AVG were also evaluated as part of the 'total' projections by using a playing-time weighted value indicated by an 'n' (e.g. "nAVG").