Roy Halladay, born May 14, 1977.

2005: 141 IP, 2.41 ERA (missed time with broken leg)
2004: 133 IP, 4.20 ERA (missed time with fatigued shoulder)
2003: 266 IP, 3.25 ERA
2002: 239 IP, 2.93 ERA

I marked him down for 205. I agree that he is more likely to throw 230+ if he gets 34-36 starts, but discounting him 10% for contingencies seems reasonable to me.

Are we trying to pick an over/under number [median], a most likely number [mode], or a weighted average of expected outcomes [mean]?

If the purpose is to project team performance and what not we should be selecting the mean for all the players, as that gives the best overall team projection.

With pitchers IP that is important because if you ran the season 20 times for Halladay you might have the following sorted outcomes:

50
50
100
125
150
150
175
175
175
200
200
200
200
200
225
225
225
250
250
275

which gives mode of 200, median of 200, and mean of ~180. The mean is always lower than the median for this because season (and career) ending injuries are possible with low probability but skew the mean. But for the best team probability you want to use everybodies mean projections as odds are against any one specific player being injured or missing much of the season but are in favor of at least one player on the team total suffering such a fate.

So I think having 5/9 people pick Halladay to pich 230+ IP is unrealistic if you expect to use these numbers to accurately project the team results.

Ah, but who said we would try to be as realistic as possible. Sure, Las Vegas or the GM might need to be cautious, but as a fan site, we can be optimistic, even to the point of silliness on occasion (not that this exercise is necessarily silly). And I'm sure the projections must take some things into account; for instance, the total innings and ABs we project this way will be unlikely to come to reasonable season totals.

Also, with regards to the method Michael suggests, the numbers could be run both ways, as sort of a "best-case" vs "realism" exercise.

What you vote is your personal guess/estimate. How you come up with that is your own preference. (I go with what I think will happen, regardless of the chance of that happening.)

I believe the results will be a weighted average of the votes, so right now it looks like something in the 217 innings and 2.90 ERA range.

I like the bullpen alot more this year than last year. And, although we all know The Doc is a workhorse when healthy, the management might want to limit his complete games and high pitch counts to conserve the Doc's energy for the stretch drive (pennant races etc...). I also don't know the extant of his injury. I'd also rather see a healthy Doc win Pitcher Of the Month in September than win POTM than May.

Michael

Michael is correct, and Pistol is right. Which is to say, the most accurate method would indeed be a weighted-mean approach. However, I don't think it's even worth trying to do, as most of us are not fluent in statistical theory and at any rate are Jays fans who are going to bullish about Toronto's players. The end result is inherently going to be optimistic. That's okay. It'll still be fun to see just how optimistic we are (I wouldn't be surprised to see our total projection add up to over 100 wins) and to look back at these at the end of the season to see which players we had a handle on and which we really did not.

It's also interesting to compare the collective knowledge of fans to an advanced projection system like PECOTA. We know that Halladay is a much safer bet than Lilly to stay healthy for the entire 2006 season, but PECOTA looks at 274 innings for Doc the past two seasons versus 324 for Lilly and doesn't know that the circumstances were very different. Another example: Hillenbrand and Hinske both had large platoon splits in 2005, but and as long as they're on a team that also features Glaus and Overbay in 2006 there's no reason for them to rack up a lot of at-bats with the platoon disadvantage and their final numbers will look much better because of this. Does PECOTA know that?

I am one of the three (so far) to select 155 and I almost went with the lower total ... Halladay is one of the top four or five pitchers in the game, talent wise, but the last couple of years scream "injury precedent" until proven otherwise. And yes, I am fully aware that last year's injury was due to a line drive, not anything inherent to Halladay -- I just think there's something to the whole "prone to" idea.

This is why getting Burnett was such a must-do.

I sit at the other end of the spectrum when discussing a pre-disposition to injuries and believe very strongly in identifiable causal relationships between said player's actions and their injuries. Two seasons ago, Halladay suffered from extreme fatigue due to an accumaltion of innings from previous seasons AND an offseason regimen that did not properly address the complete needs of his body. Realizing this, his regimen was changed and I think the results were reflected in his performance last year.

Last season's injury was a fluke and I have no problem dismissing it as such. Could something else like that happen again? Of course it could but the chances of that occurring are in my opinion, minimal.

I have no qualms predicting (or is that praying) that we will see 230+ innings from Roy this year accompanied by his second Cy Young.

I find it funny that fans (not talking about anybody in Da Box) go on and on about how AJ is such a big injury risk.

Guess who has pitched more innings the last 2 seasons combined Doc or AJ?

The answer is AJ.

I picked 205 innings but I wouldn't be stunned if he didn't even reach 150 next season. If he spends significant time on the DL again next season, I think it would be fair to say he's an injury prone player. He hasn't stayed healthy ever since he signed the big extension.

He hasn't stayed healthy ever since he signed the big extension.

Are you suggesting there's a connection between the two?

"Are you suggesting there's a connection between the two?"

I don't think there's a connection. I believe the leg injury was a fluke but I'm worried about his shoulder.

He was a high injury risk in 04 after the amount of innings he pitched in 03. He missed a start in May/05 because his shoulder wasn't feeling 100%.

You can put me down as somebody that is skeptical that he will stay healthy next season. Without a healthy Doc, the Jays playoff chances are near zero.

He missed a start in May/05 because his shoulder wasn't feeling 100%.

What start was that? The only start I remember him missing before the line drive was one in May that was pushed back two days because of an abdominal strain. Of course that affected him so much he was only able to toss a two hit shutout against Minnesota in his return.

Looks like I made a mistake. He missed a start against the Red Sox because of a strained left side muscle.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2067747

What exactly is Doc prone to - line drives up the middle hitting him in the leg? Come on guys.

Who knows what will happen this year. I am not a doctor, but I would be shocked if one told me that Halladay is more likely to be injured next year than the average major league pitcher. I would think the Jays would not let their franchise pitcher play unless he was fully recovered from both his leg and shoulder ailments. Assuming highly-paid medical people with fancy degrees give Doc the OK, why is he more susceptible? Are his bones brittle? Is there something in his muscles, ligaments, or tendons that could possibly make him more "injury-prone" than others? I don't get it. I do not declare myself an expert by any means. (To be fair, neither has anyone else here). I am willing to listen to contrary evidence. I just have not seen any yet.

The concept of injury "prone" can be debated.

How about this question. Is Ken Griffey Jr. an injury prone player?

Are all of his injuries the past 5 seasons just due to bad luck?

I'm thinking that his stress fracture might turn out to be fortuitous for this season. He only pitched 141 innings last season.

As long as he comes into this upcoming season in shape - very likely- his shoulder will have endured less wear and tear.

I put him down for 205 innings bearing in mind the Ryan signing etc.

I think some injuries are due to overuse or misuse. If that injury occurs a second time or if compensation to try to protect the injured body part causes an injury to a different body part, then one can say that there is an increased future liklihood of injury.

I would say it might be reasonable that Griffey was injured more than your average CF because he might have played more recklessly than your average CF. Perhaps there is a skill measured by fractions of seconds or inches where a player needs to prepare to absorb a violent blow that Griffey lacked. On the other hand, some of Griffey's injuries were muscle pulls, which might have occurred because he pushed himself more than his body could handle. I don't really know - these are just theories.

I think Doc is completely different and not belonging in the same conversation as Griffey. Doc has suffered a "major" injury 2 years in a row. If he had shoulder problems last year, then he could probably be placed in the "injury prone" category due to a recurring injury to the same body part. But the fact is he was hit in the leg by a line drive, something that could have happened to anyone. It has *everything* to do with luck. If anything, you could make the claim that Josh Towers has a very, very slightly better chance of suffering a a broken leg in similar circumstances than Doc next year because Josh allows more balls to be put in play.

The fact is that Doc had a shoulder injury 2 years ago that showed no signs of recurring in 3 months of starts last year. The broken leg is irrelevant assuming it's fully healed. I don't understand how anyone could consider him injury-prone.