April 19, 2011

BP Unfiltered

Depth Charts Update 4/19

by Sky Kalkman

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The Depth Charts have been updated through Jerry Sands' opening night. While my favorite change was swapping the second and sixth spots in the Braves batting order, the most interesting one was adjusting the Rangers projections for Josh Hamilton's injury. It was interesting because our final pre-season projection already took into account the likelihood that Hamilton would miss time to injuries sometime in 2011. We had him at 549 plate appearances, or about 75 percent of a 162-game season, batting third in the Rangers high-octane lineup. Therefore, he was only docked about five weeks worth of playing time for this injury, even though he'll miss six to eight. In other words, we were already expecting him to miss part of the next two months.

Going forward, we'll be updating the Depth Charts (and PFM) at least once a week. I'm being a bit cautious with claims here--the goal is to underpromise and overdeliver.

You may have noticed that the comments have been removed from the main Depth Charts page. They weren't as useful as comments on the individual team pages or sending emails to dc@baseballprospectus.com.  Many of you are emailing us, and it's awesome. I'm hoping we can use the team-specific comments more, too--both you and I. It's easy for me to make adjustments based on major transactions, but more subtle changes to usage patterns are more likely to be noticed by fans of specific teams. Your input on that will help everybody.

As always, thanks for the feedback. Go Pirates.

Sky Kalkman is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 
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