The people have spoken. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the 2010 IVIE projections for hitters:
Catchers and Infielders
N PA BA OBP SLG Adrian Gonzalez 25 614 .289 .401 .545 Chase Headley 25 601 .277 .355 .444 Everth Cabrera 24 591 .271 .353 .376 David Eckstein 21 430 .259 .328 .341 Nick Hundley 24 382 .252 .316 .413 Jerry Hairston 18 282 .264 .330 .377 Yorvit Torrealba 21 213 .251 .310 .385 Oscar Salazar 16 178 .269 .327 .429 Matt Antonelli 10 170 .250 .316 .370 Dusty Ryan 14 57 .249 .300 .348
Comments:
- Three respondents gave Gonzalez fewer than 400 PA; one put his line at .288/.307/.465, which is basically Joe Carter
- We are counting on Cabrera to succeed; nobody guessed fewer than 475 PA
- One respondent gave Eckstein a line of .275/.355/.445; I guess some guys don’t find their power stroke until age 35
- A downside to anonymity is the occasional .325/.335/.565 projection for Hundley; without that, his line is .249/.315/.406
- Salazar should beat his projection
Outfielders
N PA BA OBP SLG Kyle Blanks 24 517 .273 .357 .500 Will Venable 21 487 .271 .342 .437 Scott Hairston 19 442 .274 .339 .476 Tony Gwynn 21 373 .264 .335 .353 Aaron Cunningham 13 139 .251 .322 .385 Matt Stairs 12 111 .231 .346 .420 Chad Huffman 8 95 .260 .299 .373 Mike Baxter 5 42 .240 .323 .369
Comments:
- Only three respondents had Blanks reaching 600 PA; also, for as much as I think his power will play just fine at Petco Park, that SLG is about 40-50 points too high for my taste
- One respondent gave Venable a .423 OBP; take that away, and his projected OBP drops to .338
- Hairston’s BA and OBP are too high
- Gwynn’s projection represents his upper limit
We are an optimistic bunch, aren’t we? It’s spring; I would expect no less. We’ll run the pitchers tomorrow.
Not that spring training records account for much, but it is impressive to note that after a slow start this spring, the Padres have gone 6-1 in the last 7 games. I hope this success continues next month. If reality is close to these IVIEs, there should be quite a few Ws coming.
I’ve never understood why you’re so down on young Tony Gwynn, Geoff. I don’t think it’s fair to say that a 264/335/353 line is his upper limit when he just put up 270/350/344 in 451 plate appearances, and other more sophisticated projection systems have him doing even better (e.g. CHONE has him at 270/340/359). I think there’s good reason to take the under on these projections, sure, but let’s not forget Brady Anderson 1996 when we’re talking about the actual upper limit of what we can expect from a guy.
These projections would put our team BA at roughly .268, which to give perspective would have put us 8th in MLB last year. This stat would obviously be lower because of pitchers hitting but would give you an idea of where we’re at. Last year we batted a league worst .242. If only we could be so lucky to have a team batting average this high. 2006 was the last time the Padres were even close to this, when they batted .263 as a team.
Our team OBP would be .344, which would have placed us 6th in MLB last year, again with the caveat that pitchers are not included in these stats.
Our team slugging % would be .426, which would have placed us 10th in MLB last year. Only in San Diego do we think so optimistically.
(I apologize if any of my math is wrong)
I think our projections are not park adjusted.
GY, maybe you could run a little Petco regression on the IVIES and come up with something a bit closer to the mark. I kid, I kid. This is fun and I’m glad I threw my .02 in this season. I wish I’d written my projections down, but I’m pretty sure I was lower on most. I tried to hit the slugging pretty hard as Petco is brutal on power. I also am pretty sure I was much lower on Blanks. I do believe he’ll get to this level eventually, but I don’t think it’s going to happen this season. I think he’ll need some time to adjust to big league piching. If you look at what he did last year, you’ll see he never even made it through the league. Teams and pitchers will adjust once a scouting report gets out on him and then he’ll have to adjust as well. Will be fun to watch!
Fojtasek, my take would be Gwynn is probably not going to develop further because of his age, or not much further. He might or he might not, we’ll just have to wait and see, but most guys are who they are by the time they’re 27. He does have a couple of things going for him, I think. He’s still not had a ton of experience at this level so he may have some growth left and he may be put into the right situation for him to succeed if he’s platooned with Hairston the right way. If not, what we saw last year probably does represent his upper limit. Also, I don’t think the IVIE line and the CHONE are really that much different. 5 or 6 points of BA/OBP/SLG over the course of a season isn’t a huge difference. A couple of base knocks will take you from .264 to .270 with about 350 AB’s, which is roughly what IVIE is projecting.
Derek – it’s *not* “only in San Diego” … I was reading recently about an IVIE-like projections gathering by fans across MLB … and it said that fans project at about the 75th percentile … we’re all an optimistic lot.
All that means is that 2 of our 8 starters will perform at this level … and 4 of the 8 will perform at the level projected by the PETCOTA/CHONE/MARCEL/etc. systems (i.e., 50th percentile) … and 2 of the 8 will be at their 25th percentile … unless things go extraordinarily well (or poorly) …
Hey, let’s play the games and see what happens! I think I can/will enjoy 2010 with an eye towards ’11 and ’12 and beyond!
@Fojtasek: My main concern is that Gwynn is 27 years old and his professional record looks like this:
minors: 2697 PA, .275/.349/.345
majors: 715 PA, .261/.331/.326
If absolutely everything breaks right, he could have Dave Roberts’ career. Pat mentions some reasons to be optimistic, and I’ll add that Gwynn’s new batting stance gives me hope… but until I see on-field results, I remain skeptical.
@LynchMob: “Hey, let’s play the games and see what happens!” Amen to that.
@Fojtasek and Pat
Pat, that’s exactly right. There’s almost no difference between CHONE and the IVIE projections; 5 points can be made up a very small number of factors — couple of bloops, an error called a hit by the hometown scorer, an extra HBP, two more leg doubles.
Let’s not forget what almost certainly fueled Brady Anderson’s 1996. Yeah, there were fluke years before PEDs, but there were also fluke years mainly caused by PEDs.
@Tom Waits: It’s also worth noting that Anderson displayed serious skills in the minors. Compare his age 22 with Gwynn’s:
Anderson: A+, .319/.459/.504, 107 BB, 47 K
Gwynn: AA, .271/.370/.338, 76 BB, 75 K
Anderson at least gave some indication that he might be capable of better than what he showed on first reaching the big leagues. It did take him a while to produce at the highest level, though:
24-27: 1273 PA, .219/.313/.306, 76 OPS+
28-31: 2595 PA, .265/.367/.436, 112 OPS+
32: 687 PA, .297/.396/.637, 156 OPS+
33-36: 2580 PA, .267/.384/.449, 117 OPS+
37-38: 602 PA, .196/.313/.292, 65 OPS+
Brady had himself a pretty nice career.