A peak at peak translations part 4: pitchers

As promised, we will now take a look at Clay Davenport’s Peak Translations for pitchers. This gets into a little more precarious ground, as pitcher projections are much hazier then projecting hitters, as pitchers can be pretty volatile lot.

A peak at peak translations, part 3

Finishing up with part three of the series, it’s been a pretty fun ride. According to the translations, we found out we have a future star CF, and future above average catcher in Anderson, a power hitting first baseman in Hamilton (trade bait), a possible future all star 3B in Craig, and a pretty fine SS in Jose Martinez. And we have at least an average 2B in Hoffpauir. Not too shabby. Of course there is always the “grain of salt” warning attached to all this, but it’s at least been entertaining. To wrap up, let’s look at some others of note:

A peak at peak translations: the hitters, part 2

Diving back into part 2 of our little series here. See part 1 for an explanation of how the translations work.

A peak at peak translations: The hitters, part 1

AZ had a great post the other day at VEB about why the Cardinals can’t afford to trade Colby Rasmus. One of the arguments he made was that Colby’s MLE (minor league equivalent) was a solid .240/.331/.474 line, and his peak translation line is .273/.380/.538, or a .308 EqA (.260 is considered average, while Curtis Granderson led all CFers with an EqA of .300.) So what is peak translation? Peak translations come via Baseball Prospectus brainiac Clay Davenport. Here is his own definition:

Peak Translation: Applies a typical aging pattern to the regular translation, to try and assess how good the player will be at his peak. Peak generally means somewhere around age 27; however, since the components of offense don’t age at the same rates (speed decays earlier than power, for instance), and since players don’t have the same mix of those components, the actual peak age has some variability, as early as 25 for pure speedsters and as late as 30 for sluggers…the peak translation is an important tool for me to assess prospect status.

Davenport’s system believes Colby is capable of being an above average major leaguer right now. When you apply the normal aging curves of what a player with Colby’s skill set is expected to perform at his peak, we see that Colby is expected to be an All Star, possibly even the best at his position for a period. That got me wondering-what are some of the other peak translations for the other hitters in the system? There are a few worth noting, enough to make this at least a 2 part series. Here we go-