UPDATE: Our V1 2024 Projections powered by PLV are available NOW inside the PL Pro Hub Page. We will be releasing the latest version inside the Auction Draft Calculator in Early February.
Our 2023 Player Projections powered by PLV and ATC are now live!
Only PL Pro members are able to access our projections in full via the Live Draft Assistant Tool, Auction Draft Calculator, and a Google Sheet containing all projections – members can head here for links to all three.
Let’s quickly discuss the process for how we created these projections before diving into some interesting outliers our projections uncovered.
Jesse Wolfersberger joined the team last summer with the task to take our newly finalized PLV metric and form a projection system around it. It’s a daunting task and I’m incredibly proud of the hard work Jesse has done to put these together. He outlined the process during his PitchCon presentation and I encourage everyone to give it a watch to get a better idea of what he created (start around 22:10):
The above video details how Jesse created a pitch simulator, pulling pitches out based on count buckets (Early, Behind, Ahead, and Two-Strikes), then serving them to the hitter. It’s a massive simulation that would take a long time to run after each tweak, creating a collection of projections that differentiates itself from the standard regression projections.
However, there is a major benefit to regression projections. After many many iterations of his simulator, we introduced ATC projections into the mix to normalize the results and trim down the outliers.
In short, we created a projection system that analyzes pitchers based on the pitches they threw, then hitters based on their performance from the pitches they saw, then blended it with a traditional projection system to get the best of both worlds. We’re thrilled with how this turned out and we’re anxious to see your reactions to the results.
It’s wonderful to be partnered with Ariel Cohen and I’m excited to have ATC projections inside our Live Draft Assistant Tool as well.
We don’t want to spoil what’s inside, but here’s a look at the top five pitchers by IP and the top five hitters by home runs (we really like Gerrit Cole. Shocking):
Take a listen to the latest On The Corner podcast getting released later today to hear some of the more interesting projections, including which projections are making us lean away from drafting them this season.
Get access to all 2023 Player Projections via PL Pro today.
Photos by Mark LoMoglio/Icon Sportswire and Kyle Ross/Icon Sportswire. Illustration by Cody Rogers (@CodyRogers10)