I recently bought a subscription to The Hardball Times’ 2011 Forecasts, which features projections utilizing its Oliver forecasting system, and if you thought Bill James was too optimistic and CAIRO too realistic, Oliver’s got the pessimism end of the spectrum covered for you.
While I appreciate the hard work that obviously goes into these Forecasts, which include six-year projections and MLEs for minor leaguers, I have a difficult time taking a forecasting system seriously when it tells me that is going to hit .244/.326/.401; .321 wOBA in 2011. That would be a drop of .031 from his 2010 OBP and a .051(!) fall from his career rate. The dip in SLG is even more severe — .053 down from 2010′s .454, and .078 down from his career number.
Now I know Posada isn’t exactly a spring chicken and he’s undergone quite a bit of wear-and-tear over the years, but considering that he’ll only be squatting behind the plate maybe a fraction of the time, if that, and getting the majority of his reps at DH, I don’t see how a system could realistically project such a dramatic fall in OBP and SLG. These are two skill sets that have remained constant through Posada’s career, and typically regress less severely as sluggers age. The projection has Posada playing 70% of his games at DH, and I’d imagine the projection draws fairly heavily from Posada’s career stats in that role, which are not very good (.223/.336/.358 in 351 plate appearances). While that’s not quite a dismissible sample size, it’s still a poor indicator as to how Posada will fare as DH because he’s never been asked to do it for a full season. I have to imagine a professional hitter like Jorge will figure out how to adapt to and thrive in a role that only asks him to bat.
As for the rest of the offense, Jesus Montero currently projects to be the third-best hitter on the team! And that’s in only 152 plate appearances. The remainder of the lineup is in for a world of hurt according to Oliver, who doesn’t believe (wOBA in the mid-.320s) or (wOBA in the mid-.360s) can bounce back, sees somehow losing nearly .040 points of wOBA, losing .026 points (although so far all three projection systems see Swisher taking a hit, but this is the most severe), posting a wOBA barely being above league average and wOBAing .001 more than Posada! The only two projections that seem semi-reasonable are for and .
With an offense projected to be this putrid, you might be asking yourself how Oliver is still calling for the Yankees to finish in 2nd place in the AL East with a Wild Card-winning 87-75 record. The answer, to a certain extent, lies in the pitching staff.
Oliver sees slight regression for and , and very slight improvement for , but nothing to write home about. I guess the good news is Oliver really likes , projecting a substantial decrease in ERA (though a higher WHIP), a rise in K/9 and a drop in his HR/9. Oliver also likes and for some reason. I’m fairly certain the world would explode if Mitre threw 125 innings of 4.21 ERA ball.
The bullpen looks to be around where you would expect it, so no real surprises there. I’m not sure if THT’s projected standings include Pettitte on the Yankee roster, though on his player card they have him listed as a free agent, so I’m guessing not. If that’s the case, I guess 87 games seems like a reasonable estimate for the roster as currently constructed, although the bats would really have to outperform their paltry projections to reach that level.
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I agree that Posada, Swisher and Granderson will have less productive years. They all struck out way too much the last two weks of the season and in the playoffs. Pitchers have their numbers now. Possada will be the bifggest bust as he is washed up, he could never catch to begin with and his baserunning is probably the worst in baseball.
So Bob, you're saying pitchers "have their numbers now" based on the last month of plate appearances? Yea, because after the tens of thousands of at-bats between them preceding the last month, pitchers "have their numbers.
And Posada is not catching this year. I don't see your point. I'd take a "washed up" player with a 122 wRC+ any day and twice on Sunday.
An interesting and scary piece, Larry. It's inevitable that some of our guys will underperform in 2011, but hopefully a similar or greater number will perform above expectations.
One reason for hope is that Burnett was apparently going through a really nasty divorce last year. Some of you may just shrug that off and say “So what? What’s the big deal?” Well, I went through an AMICABLE divorce once, and both my ex and I lost 30 pounds in about six weeks, and we didn't fight over anything! So, believe me, a divorce can really mess up your life for a while. Hopefully, that's the reason Burnett had such a bad year, in which case he might be in for a big bounce-back year.
Hopefully, we’ll also see a fairly dramatic increase in Tex’s numbers, and we can hope and pray that Montero will fully warrant his first name as a Yankee: walk on water, baby . . . or, short of that, hit .300 with a ton of HRs and RBIs.
Personally, I believe A-Rod's power numbers will rebound quite a bit if he's healthy all year. I think he'll hit at least 35 HRs with 120-135 RBIs, assuming he's health all year.
I expect a slight uptick in Jeter's number, and an even greater increase in his numbers if he accepts the fact that he needs to shorten his swing now that he getting older and his reflexes are a bit slower. If he listens to Long and shortens his swing, I can see him hitting in the .290-.320 range again.
Swisher may be just reaching his peak . . . or he may have already reached it, but NO ONE can say for sure. We'll just have to wait and see.
Granderson is anybody's guess. Let's just hope for the best.
Cano will be very good once again . . . if he remains focused.
If Gardner learns to drag bunt really well, he could easily raise his average and OBP by 20 points or more, which would be really nice. But Gardner worries me because his hitting ability rests solely in his legs. He’s not a pure hitter; he made the majors on the strength of his legs. If he looses one step to injuries, he’ll hit no better than .250. If he looses two steps to injuries, he's done.
As long as CC is healthy, he should be his usual reliable self.
Hughes? Hopefully, he’s going to continue to improve and become a a dominant or near-dominant pitcher. But he’s another wait and see guy, like Swisher.
Mo? God help us if he goes down . . . and that’s a scary statement coming from an agnostic.
By the way, Larry, did you see the piece on Fox Sports webpage about the "Most expensive (baseball) players by position"?
I had one problem with the piece. It contained one unfounded dig at the Yankees in the introduction. Here it is:
"It's no surprise that the Bronx Bombers dominate this list of highest-paid players by position."
Really? The Yankees "dominate" the list?
The Fox list includes 13 positions:
3 of the 13 are Yankees (A-Rod, Jeter, and Mo). That's dominating?
Hell, the Phillies had 2 players on the list, and I imagine Jeter didn't beat out Tulo by much at the SS position.
Boy, the anti-Yankee folks are always looking for a reason to knock the Yankees, even when the reason is pretty damn lame.
Hey Wayne,
I did not see that Fox Sports piece, but I am not surprised it was biased. As a rule I try to stay away from mainstream media publications that employ Yankee-hating hack writers to author negative pieces for the sole purpose of riling Yankee fans. See Lupica, Mike, for the most grievous offender.
After all, hating on the Yankees is good business. We can only hope that now that Boston and Philly are spending as much as the Yankees are that the overarching negativity will start to permeate those markets as well, especially after they both fail to win the 2011 World Series despite being prohibitive preseason favorites.
When you have success (and the Yankees have obviously been the best franchise in sports over the last 100 years) you will attract fans who love you and people who hate you. That is human nature at play.
But I would say to Wayne that with 30 teams in baseball, if the most expensive players were evenly distrubuted then you could expect each team to have a roughly 43% shot at having ONE. With the Yankees having 3 of the 13 that means they have 7 teams worth of expensive players. I would agree that is domination. But I don't doubt that the Fox people were trying to overdramatize it. Yankees stories sell. Both the people who love and the people who hate them pay attention when a Yankee story comes on.
Dangerous Dan,
Superficiously, your 43% figure is correct, but it doesn't take into consideration that another team (the Phillies) have 2 of the 13 players in Fox's list. You can't say the Yankees alone dominate the list when another team also has more players on the list than any other team, except the Yankees.
The Yankees have 23% of the players on the list, while Phillie has 15.3%. That hardly qualifies as domination on the Yankees' part.
It would have been accurate for Fox to say the Yankees AND Philadelphia dominate the list because the two combined have 38% of the players on the list, and no other team had multiple players in the list. To say only the Yankees dominate the list betrays Fox's bias in the matter, at least in the case of this piece.
[...] expectedly optimistic projections; SG’s pragmatic CAIRO projections; THT’s rather pessimistic non-park adjusted Oliver projections; Tango’s slightly-less-dire-than-Oliver non-park adjusted Marcel projections; and [...]
[...] remember thinking the system was near-worthless after it spat out a .244/.326/.401 (.321 wOBA) line for Jorge Posada in 2011, and Posada managed to [...]