What can we expect in 2008 and who should be drafted first?

I was listening to the Fantasy Baseball Mafia podcast this weekend. The podcast was a live discussion of one of their expert drafts, and during the draft the question was posed as to whether Lincecum or Cain should be preferred.

I will admit that my first thought was that it makes no difference at all who you prefer. The reason is that they are so close in draftability and their projections are likely to be very similar, so that the inherent error in both makes it impossible to select one over the other with any degree of certainty.

So I took a look at their projections and some other indicators. First up is their 2008 PECOTA projection from Baseball Prospectus:

These are almost identical projections. Clearly once cannot be preferred over the other based on PECOTA. Or can they?

One thing that PECOTA has is a projected probability of a “breakout,” “improve” and “collapse.” “Breakout” and “collapse” are measures of the chances of an increase/decrease of 20% in base performance, and “improve” is the possibility of any improvement.

PECOTA is pessimistic on Cain. It projects an 8% chance of breakout, 23% chance of improving and a 46% chance of collapse. For Lincecum it sees a 14% chance of a breakout, 34% chance of improvement and a 30% chance of collapse.

So, according to PECOTA, Lincecum is twice as likely to improve by 20% or more, and is far less likely to collapse. PECOTA predicts that almost half the time Cain will drop in performance by 50%, and three quarters of the time he will be worse in 2008 compared to 2007. This is a sobering thought.

Looking at Cain’s core skills, in 2007 Cain had an expected ERA of 4.67 and an actual ERA of 3.65. This is a strong indicator of a correction, absent any significant skill growth. Lincecum, on the other hand, had an xERA of 4.00 and an actual ERA of 3.99. Neither had any significant good fortune in the hit rate or strand rate departments and both profiled similarly in K/BB ratio and other core skill sets.

No analysis is perfect, however judgment comes from playing the odds in situations like this. Given that PECOTA and xERA both are pessimistic on Cain, and since Cain’s xERA/actual ERA gap is very wide, and given Cain’s inconsistency, I think it is Lincecum by a nose.