The Most Accurate Fantasy Baseball Projections

Last month, we released our most accurate expert rankings for the 2016 season. While everyone values a good set of rankings, it is also important to know the accuracy of projection systems. After all, plenty of us play in odd league formats where projections can be tailored specifically to your league.

With this in mind, we’re excited to unveil the results of our latest projections accuracy study. Before we dive into the results, here are a few notes about the analysis.

The projections of 10 sources were evaluated for our study. We used each source’s full season projections as of the first pitch on Opening Day (2016).
The methodology for the analysis is available here. In a nutshell, we evaluated every projection source at each 5×5 category to determine how close their projections were to the actual stats for 398 relevant players. The closer each projection was to the actual performance, the better the score earned.

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So whose projections rated #1? Here are the accuracy results…

Baseball Projections Accuracy Standings

Rank	Source	Hitters	Pitchers
1	Sean Koerner & Corey Schwartz (STATS)	2	1
2	Razzball	1	3
3	Steamer (FanGraphs)	4	1
4	RotoChamp	3	5
5	Clay Davenport	7	4
6	ZiPS	6	6
7	ESPN	5	7
8	CBS Sports	10	8
9	Baseball HQ	9	9
10	RotoExperts	8	10

Hitter Category Rankings

Rank	Source	Runs	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
1	Razzball	3	2	1	5	4
2	Sean Koerner & Corey Schwartz (STATS)	1	6	2	4	3
3	RotoChamp	2	4	3	3	7
4	Steamer (FanGraphs)	8	7	5	1	1
5	ESPN	4	1	4	9	5
6	ZiPS	6	9	9	6	2
7	Clay Davenport	10	10	8	2	6
8	RotoExperts	7	5	7	7	9
9	Baseball HQ	5	8	6	8	10
10	CBS Sports	9	3	10	10	8

Pitcher Category Rankings

Rank	Source	Wins	K	SV	ERA	WHIP
1	Sean Koerner & Corey Schwartz (STATS)	2	3	1	3	3
2	Steamer (FanGraphs)	1	5	2	1	2
3	Razzball	3	2	7	2	1
4	Clay Davenport	5	4	6	5	5
5	RotoChamp	4	1	3	8	9
6	ZiPS	6	6	4	7	4
7	ESPN	7	7	5	9	7
8	CBS Sports	9	9	9	6	6
9	Baseball HQ	10	10	8	4	8
10	RotoExperts	8	8	10	10	10

% of Predictions Better Than the Average Projection

Source	Hitters	Pitchers	Total
Sean Koerner & Corey Schwartz (STATS)	61%	65%	62%
Steamer (FanGraphs)	54%	62%	58%
Razzball	55%	60%	57%
RotoChamp	49%	54%	52%
ZiPS	53%	50%	51%
Clay Davenport	48%	53%	51%
ESPN	48%	52%	50%
RotoExperts	51%	42%	47%
CBS Sports	46%	47%	47%
Baseball HQ	47%	45%	46%

Notes

Congrats to Sean Koerner (STATS) for rating best in our analysis. What Koerner has been doing in the world of sports projections and rankings is extraordinary. This is his third consecutive season finishing #1 in this study. He has also finished first in our football accuracy competition out of over 130 competitors back to back years as well. In other words, he appears to know what he’s talking about when it comes to player predictions.

The team of Koerner and Schwartz continue to find his success in these competitions by being remarkably consistent. They never win by making 5 or 10 huge predictions that come true, but rather by significantly outpacing the rest of the field (as seen in the table above) in being closer on more players than the average projection. Both their hitters percentage and pitchers percentage were better than any other expert’s success rate for the second consecutive year. A key takeaway here is that being “accurate” isn’t a matter of nailing all of your projections. That’s fundamentally unrealistic. What is realistic is hitting your share of predictions and avoiding the misses that are notably worse than what others are predicting. Those are the types of errors that can lead fantasy owners astray.

When analyzing Koerner/Schwartz’s projections, you see that there were 8 categories where they finished in the top 3 out of 10 sources. Part of the reason they were able to accomplish that was by being the top source on a few players who either had surprising seasons or disappointing performances. Mike Napoli, for instance, wasn’t expected to accomplish much in 2016 or even be fantasy relevant, but the STATS team apparently knew better. Likewise, they believed Aaron Sanchez and Kris Bryant were polished youngsters ready to make major impacts and they were right. On the other side, they projected Zack Greinke, Buster Posey and Adam Wainwright to perform quite a bit worse than the consensus. As we know, Greinke struggled in his move to Arizona, Posey had his worst season of his career and Wainwright failed to find his command in the return from surgery.

The player that contributed the highest individual score (more about scoring here) for a source was Kyle Hendricks for ESPN. He won 20 games with a sub 1.00 WHIP. ESPN projected 17 wins and a 0.96 WHIP which were both far better than consensus. They were screaming from the rooftops that we should draft Hendricks, knowing a breakout was in store for 2016. Another strong prediction was on Bryce Harper from Clay Davenport. He somehow anticipated major negative regression in all five categories including a 33 point drop in batting average from the season before.

Top Player Projections

Listed below is a sample of 2016’s peak fantasy baseball performers at each position. The best projection source (out of the 10 evaluated) for each player is displayed. We’ve also included the player’s actual stats and average projections as reference points. Note that our analysis was based on an evaluation of nearly 400 players so this is not meant to represent the full extent of players evaluated.

Salvador Perez (C, KC)

Rank	Source	Runs	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
1.	CBS Sports Projections	61	23	78	1	.255
–	Average Projections	55	17	65	1	.269
–	Actual Stats	57	22	64	0	.247

Anthony Rizzo (1B, CHC)

Rank	Source	Runs	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
1.	Clay Davenport Projections	95	32	108	8	.271
–	Average Projections	95	31	100	11	.276
–	Actual Stats	94	32	109	3	.292

Ian Kinsler (2B, DET)

Rank	Source	Runs	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
1.	BaseballHQ Projections	96	15	78	13	.287
–	Average Projections	89	13	69	11	.277
–	Actual Stats	117	28	83	14	.288

Corey Seager (SS, LAD)

Rank	Source	Runs	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
1.	Clay Davenport (FanGraphs)	91	21	72	5	.275
–	Average Projections	75	18	71	5	.273
–	Actual Stats	105	26	72	3	.308

Kyle Seager (3B, SEA)

Rank	Source	Runs	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
1.	RotoExperts Projections	88	28	89	8	.283
–	Average Projections	82	24	84	7	.270
–	Actual Stats	89	30	99	3	.278

George Springer (OF, HOU)

Rank	Source	Runs	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
1.	Sean Koerner (STATS)	102	26	83	17	.257
–	Average Projections	84	26	76	19	.261
–	Actual Stats	116	26	82	9	.261

Khris Davis (OF, OAK)

Rank	Source	Runs	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
1.	CBS Sports Projections	82	34	93	7	.246
–	Average Projections	65	25	75	6	.246
–	Actual Stats	85	42	102	1	.247

Corey Kluber (SP, CLE)

Rank	Source	Wins	K	Sv	ERA	WHIP
1.	STATS Projections	14	229	0	3.16	1.10
–	Average Projections	14	229	0	3.21	1.11
–	Actual Stats	18	227	0	3.14	1.06

Carlos Rodon (SP, CHW)

Rank	Source	Wins	K	SV	ERA	WHIP
1.	Steamer Projections	9	161	0	4.10	1.35
–	Average Projections	11	172	0	3.76	1.33
–	Actual Stats	9	168	0	4.04	1.39

Jose Fernandez (SP, MIA)

Rank	Source	Wins	K	SV	ERA	WHIP
1.	STATS Projections	13	217	0	2.77	1.05
–	Average Projections	12	195	0	2.74	1.07
–	Actual Stats	16	253	0	2.86	1.12

Craig Kimbrel (RP, BOS)

Rank	Source	Wins	K	SV	ERA	WHIP
1.	Razzball Projections	3	80	35	2.70	1.09
–	Average Projections	4	87	36	2.61	1.07
–	Actual Stats	2	83	31	3.40	1.09

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That wraps up our look at the top projection sources from 2016. Congrats again to Sean Koerner & Corey Schwartz from STATS for taking home the crown as the highest rated prognosticators!

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