At the start of the season we took part in a Community Projection project that Sky Kalkman from Beyond the Boxscore was running. The idea was to project what we thought Jay players might do this season. I thought maybe it is a good time to see how our guesses are working out.
What we predicted was plate appearances, on base percentage and slugging average. Also fielding value and running rating but I am just going to look at those first three. After the jump, of course.
Catchers Projections:
|
PA |
OBP |
SLG |
|
|
Rod Barajas |
450 |
.290 |
.400 |
|
Michael Barrett |
200 |
.300 |
.370 |
|
AJ Arencibia |
100 |
.275 |
.405 |
Barajas is at 261 PA, .286 OB and .405 SA. The 261 PA over 90 games would work out to 470 for the season. I think we got one right. Barrett, of course, was injured after 19 PA, which was not in our crystal ball. Nor did we figure on Raul Chavez. Arencbia numbers were thought to be a September call up. We will see on that.
First Base:
|
PA |
OBP |
SLG |
|
|
Lyle Overbay |
570 |
.350 |
.450 |
|
Jose Bautista |
300 |
.315 |
.420 |
Lyle is at 272 PA, .371, .460. 272 PA projects to 490 on the season so he is sitting out more than we figured he would. He is getting on base a little better than we figured, slugging almost exactly what we guessed so we were in the ballpark.
Bautista, I think we listed him at first base to minimize the effect of his defensive rating and we didn't know Kevin Millar was going to be part of the team at the time. Anywas Bautista is at 178 PA, .400 .371. Well...we were close on PA, it comes out to 320 for the full season but he is getting on base far better than we thought while not hitting with near the power we figured. I get the feeling that he thought Cito was talking to him, when Cito told the pitchers not to swing the bat.
Short stop:
|
PA |
OBP |
SLG |
|
|
Marco Scutaro |
600 |
.340 |
.360 |
|
John McDonald |
200 |
.255 |
.270 |
Marco is at 424 PA which figures out to 763 PA on the season. His OBP and SLG are .384 and .420. And people spent the entire off season telling us we liked Scoot too much. Apparently not.
McDonald has had 34 PA. I think we underestimated Cito's intelligence, thanks Cito for not using him too much. For what it is worth, he is out pacing our guesses .294 OB and .412 SLG. But you all know: small sample size.
Third Base:
|
PA |
OBP |
SLG |
|
|
Scott Rolen |
500 |
.355 |
.460 |
|
Joe Inglett |
350 |
.345 |
.400 |
Sorry Scott, we underrated you. He has 326 PA already which would be 587 for the season. We came close on the slugging, he is actually at .469 but his on base is better than we thought .377. Inglett well we thought he would play.
Left Field:
|
PA |
OBP |
SLG |
|
|
Travis Snider |
525 |
.320 |
.450 |
Ok we blew this one totally. For what is it worth he was hitting .292 and.394 in his 108 plate appearances before he was sent down. Maybe, if he is called up he can bring those numbers up to what we guessed.
Center Field:
|
PA |
OBP |
SLG |
|
|
Vernon Wells |
600 |
.320 |
.500 |
Sigh. He is at 397 PA which works out to 706 on the season. We weren't off by too much on the OBP, he is at .312 right now but he is only slugging .411.
Right Field:
|
PA |
OBP |
SLG |
|
|
Alex Rios |
675 |
.345 |
.495 |
Double sigh. He is at 396 PA working out to 705 on the season. His OBP is .316 and his SLG is .416 Yeah, there is no real hope he will come close to the numbers we projected for him.
DH:
|
PA |
OBP |
SLG |
|
|
Adam Lind |
580 |
.330 |
.465 |
He has 382 PA, would rate out to 679 so we likely will be low on that, but then when projecting you have to figure some guys will get injured. He is blowing our projections right out of the water with an OBP of .377 and a SLG of .551. But then if we had projected him to do that everyone would have laughed at us.
That was it for the projections, when we did it we didn't know Millar would make the team. If we had known he would, we likely wouldn't have projected him so many PA (he has 176 now) but the OBP (.318) and SLG (.373) fit in nicely with what he did last year (.323 and .394) so I would guess we would have been close.
I'll look at our pitcher projections tomorrow but as you can likely guess, we didn't figure on all the injuries.
Late fix
Second Base:
|
PA |
OBP |
SLG |
|
|
Aaron Hill |
600 |
.335 |
.435 |
How did I miss him....at the moment he has 419 PA which would work out to 754 on the season. We left wiggle room in case he couldn't play every day coming back from the concussion. His OBP is .333 almost exactly what we projected for him but he is slugging 52 points higher at .487.