Mike Wilner, in his blog has often said that the Jays should have an average offence.  So that they don’t means they aren’t playing up to their potential, offensively. His feeling is that, with their pitching, if they had an average offence they would be in contention.

I’m not sure he’s right….I’m not sure that we should be expecting too much more out of the offence as a whole. Some players…sure…they are well below what they ought to be doing, but personally, using Stewart in a corner outfield spot, I don’t feel he’s near average as a corner outfielder. Barajas wasn’t a favorite of mine, going into the season. Eck….isn’t great.  Wells had a great season two years back, but was poor last year, which Wells should we have expected this year?

Anyway, how to would one go about proving if we should have had an average offense.  After some thought I figured I’d compare the expected OPS with the league average OPS and see if we should have expected the offense to be better. I’ll use the Baseball Predictions and compare them to the average OPS by position for each the players and see which ones should average or better at their positions and then see which ones are really are. Then we can decide if we think the team should have an average offense.

Catchers:

So our catchers were expected to have OPS slightly above what league average is. Surprises me some…but Barajas projections were figuring he’d play in Philly, so may have been slightly lower in Toronto.  Barajas is doing much better than anyone could have expected. Of course, he’s been hot lately, his numbers could fall back to what was expected of him. Zahn is doing almost exactly what BP thought he would. Is worth noting that, of catchers with more than 100 at bats, Barajas is second in OPS to Joe Mauer. Who’d have thunk that???

First base:

Lyle’s OPS was projected to be slightly above league average and basically has been about that…just about average. The interesting thing about his projections is that his OB is much higher than projected but his Slugging is much below what they expected.

Second Base:

Hill’s OPS being over league average for 2B surprises me…is worth noting that NL second basemen are hitting far better than the AL one.  We all think he should be batting better and hopefully he’ll recover from his concussion soon and hit the way we’d like him to. Scoot’s batted like an average 2B, course he’s played all over the diamond.  BP expected a bit more power than he’s shown so far.

Shortstop:

Eck…..Well, he’s been a bit of a surprise….actually doing better than what we would expect.  And……of AL SS with over 100 at bats only Mike Young has higher OPS!!  Who’d have thought that Eck’s OPS would be higher than Jeter’s?  Yeah, yeah I know….only by .003 but still. So BP thought he’d be a little bit over league average and he’s really been a bunch over. Yeah….his D hasn’t been what we would like, but we’ve been spoiled watching Mac.

Third Base:

Rolen was projected to just above average…and he’s turned out to be much better than that. He does seem to be in a slump at the moment but up till now he’s been far better than what we could expect.

Left Field:

BP didn’t expect Stewart to be anywhere close to a league average LFer, but he has been far, far worse than they though. Of AL OFers with 150 at bats, there is only one with a lower OPS, Gathright in KC. Yeah he should be better, but he never was going to be league average.

Center Field:

Wells had been worse that BP expected, but the little hot streak when he came back from his injury brought him back to their numbers. Seems to be slumping again the last few days but is doing about what they expected.

Right Field:

Well….the two corner outfield spots are killing us….Rios should be well above average in right and he’s below. Wilk’s projection is based on playing in Texas so is higher than it would have been in Toronto, but the projection is much higher than I’d have though. That being said he’s doing a lot worse than we’d expect him to before the season.

DH:

I really don’t agree with BP’s projection….they figured he’d have much the same season he had last year and last year came out of nowhere. How would you expect that to happen twice?  But he’s been a little better than average at DH, but we could have hoped for better.

So I guess I’d conclude that Wilner is right…..we should have expected major league average offence (at least) from every position except for LF.  And we have received major league average offence from every spot but left and right field. I would say that the only reason we aren’t getting major league average offence is the black hole we’ve had in LF and the extremely poor batting we’ve had with RISP. IF the second part improves and if we could find a reasonable LFer we’d be ok.

The only players to significantly out perform their projections are Barajas and Rolen. The ones that have seriously under preformed are Stewart, Rios, Wilkerson and Stairs though Stair’s projection seems off to me. The one I’d hope for improvement from is Rios.