I’m thinking it’s about time to fire up our community projections for the 2009 season. Last year we did reasonably well — as Paul DePodesta points out in the foreword to this year’s Annual (which I’m sure you’ve ordered by now!) we nailed Adrian Gonzalez, Scott Hairston, and Chase Headley:
| Projected | Actual | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PA | BA | OBP | SLG | PA | BA | OBP | SLG | |
| Gonzalez | 641 | .293 | .362 | .517 | 700 | .279 | .361 | .510 |
| Hairston | 392 | .268 | .327 | .467 | 362 | .248 | .312 | .469 |
| Headley | 240 | .266 | .347 | .435 | 368 | .269 | .337 | .420 |
If that’s not deadly accurate, then it’s at least comatosely accurate, which nobody can deny because the phrase “comatosely accurate” is complete jibberish.
The only thing we lacked last year was a snappy acronym honoring a relatively forgotten player. Well, I’ve fixed that. This year’s projection system is called IVIE, in honor of former Padres first-round pick Mike Ivie.
IVIE stands for Insipid Value Indication Estimator. I know this sounds complex and grandiose, but it’s just an inefficient way of saying “dumb guess.” And the first “I” could equally well represent “Idiotic,” “Imbecillic,” or “Inane.”
Anyway, the basic idea is that we all make our best guess at how guys will do this season. Then I tally ‘em up and use the averages as our projection. It’s a totally unscientific process, but when enough people who follow the team participate, it more or less works. Plus it’s fun.
Okay, enough with the talking already…
| PA | BA | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Henry Blanco | 225 | .234 | .276 | .340 |
| Nick Hundley | 450 | .239 | .295 | .372 |
Blanco is difficult to project because he gets so little playing time, but last year screams fluke. Given that he’s 37 years old and moving from Wrigley Field to Petco Park, I’m expecting some serious slippage.
I note in the Annual that Hundley looks like the next catcher in the Ron Karkovice/Jason LaRue line to me. Don’t expect much in the way of batting average or OBP, but he will hit one a long way every now and then.
Those are my guesses; let’s see yours. Use the format PA, BA/OBP/SLG. We’re just doing catchers for now; we’ll cover the infielders on Wednesday, the outfielders on Friday, and the pitchers next week. Enjoy…
Henry Blanco 275 .215 .250 .330
Nick Hundley 400 .245 .315 .400
Henry Blanco 200 .248 .289 .398
Nick Hundley 435 .242 .325 .441
Henry Blanco: 225 0.237/0.282/0.350
Nick Hundley: 385 0.235/0.290/0.398
Blanco 221 .255 .276 .328
Hundley 454 .222 .263 .345
Henry Blanco 250 .225 .280 .330
Hundley 425 .240 .280 .380
Glad you’re doing this again, Geoff. It’s an easy way to be able to look back at the end of the season and see where it all went horrifically wrong.
Hundley 445 PA, .231/.289/.375
Blanco 185 PA, .220/.260/.315 (but with good defense and a very good 92.7 Mentor Rating)
Henry Blanco 221 .210 .282 .315
Nick Hundley 428 .248 .336 .398
With eight precincts reporting:
Blanco: 225, .231/.274/.338
Hundley: 428, .238/.299/.389
Good thing we’re getting the catchers out of the way first, eh?
Blanco: 190, .252/.303/.361
Hundley: 425, .245/.281/.358
Gosh, Peter, that is almost as bad as me predicting a 1000 OPS for Kouz last year.
Blanco: 219, .216/.264/.320
Hundley: 421, .235/.287/.378
Hundley 412 231/301/384
Blanco 98 216/262/304
Blanco 183 .220 .298 .331
Hundley 512 .235 .312 .402
Blanco – 215, .220/.270/.350
Hundley – 225, .235/.310/.365
I still think Eliezer Alfonzo will be playing some catcher this year…he can hit some, unlike the two other guys.
Henry Blanco 200 .250 .310 .380
Nick Hundley 400 .260 .290 .370
With 14 precincts reporting:
Blanco: 208, .230/.279/.339
Hundley: 416, .239/.298/.383
Hundley 325/230/290/390
Blanco 125/215/275/300
Isn’t catcher the position with strange injuries and inability to hit a ball? I predict fewer PA for those guys.
Henry Blanco 175 .220 .270 .340
Nick Hundley 375 .235 .310 .390
Henry Blanco 250 .225 .280 .375
Nick Hundley 425 .245 .295 .395
Geoff,
I haven’t put together a set of projections for all the Padres players with number of PA for 2009, but I did do a complete set of projections based on 600 abs per starter on my blog.
As Padresfanforever says, here is a shameless plug for my blog – http://www.websoulsurfer.com
I will take a few moments/hours and do one that includes projected Pa for each player and post it there by tomorrow night.
For Catchers I had:
Blanco 120 ab .284/.309/.370
Hundley 450 ab .247/.316/.381
With 18 precincts reporting:
Blanco: 199, .231/.280/.341
Hundley: 411, .239/.299/.385
It’s like Joe Oliver backed up by Buck Martinez.
“It’s like Joe Oliver backed up by Buck Martinez.”
Yeah, ’09 is gonna be a great season.
Blanco: 150, .221/.270/.335
Hundley: 350, .247/.290/.340
I expect there will be others, so lower ab totals
Why do the Pads have a chance to play in the post season this year ? Well if the Eugene Kingsale led Netherlands can beat the D.R twice and almost beat Puerto Rico then darn it anything is possible. What a refreshing underdog story. I am absolutely beside myself. Wow !
Hundley: 360, .245/.300/.399
Blanco: 180, .214/.279/.350
Blanco: 100 AB, .265/.295/.365
Hundley: 350 AB, .245/.315/.415
I think that Alfonzo gets a surprising amount of PT this year.
Geoff,
Have you ever thought about having the submissions be private until the results are tallied. Many times the responses are shaped by what we see other people are predicted. If private (at least at first) maybe our result would better match our true feelings about the players. I know that this isn’t scientific but it would be interesting to see what the results would be like without the bias.
#21@Lance Richardson: Hey, Oliver was the starting catcher for the ’90 Reds.
#26@DM: Yes, I’ve thought about keeping responses private, but there are two reasons I choose not to do this: First, I doubt that seeing what others think will significantly affect individual predictions. Second, I think it’s more fun to follow along as stuff happens. But yeah, I could see a case for keeping ‘em private until the end.
Incidentally, several people have mentioned Alfonzo. I didn’t offer a projection for him because I have zero confidence in my ability to project a guy who I think will get very little PT, but if you’ve got numbers for him, please feel free to share ‘em with us. I’m happy to tally those as well.
Hundley: .254/.302/.480, 350 AB’s
Blanco: .271/.320/.400, 300 AB’s
Alfonzo: .280/.330/.400, 100 AB’s (Filling in for injuries)
i guess im the only optimistic one. and i feel im very generous. for some odd reason i feel like hundley is going to just blast doubles and home runs all year and get on base hardly ever. maybe even lower than the .302 clip i gave him.
Blanco: 235, .241/.294/.320
Hundley: 418, .225/.319/.385