Shining the Projector on 2013

In his rookie year of 2010, Ike Davis burst into Metville with a solid full season of .264/.351/.440 and 19 home runs. With good defense, he produced three-and-a-half wins over a replacement-level first baseman. Not too shabby. Met fans had high hopes for the future.

Davis was hurt in 2011, but his 2012 confounded everyone by leaping in the power department while collapsing in the on-base arena. He smacked 32 homers but batted just .227 and got on base at a weak .308 clip. Despite the power surge, he was worth less than half as much at the plate.

So which Ike is the real Ike? What can we expect from 2013?

Statistical projection systems help make sense of these kinds of players by parsing the components of their results, comparing them to comparable players through history, and adjusting for ballpark, league, era, and age. In Davis's case, the essential components of his performance didn't change, but bad luck truncated his batting average on balls in play from a slightly above average .321 to a miserable .246, dragging down his batting average.

Assuming a regression to normal batting average on balls in play (BABIP), Bill James projects that Davis will rebound to a .266 batting average and a .354 on base percentage. Met fans will be delighted to know that there isn't any reason to expect his power to decline. James projects Davis will hit 31 bombs and slug .511. In other words, history says that Ike Davis is the guy who sprung from the gate in 2010, not the baffling slugger of 2012, and now that he's two years older, should be even better.

Projection systems aren't predictions; they are guesses educated by 130 years of baseball history, leavened by data that can illuminate why a hitter performed as he did. If Davis's strikeout rate had leaped, or he suddenly hit many more pop-ups, or the percentage of his fly balls leaving the park had skyrocketed, James would be considerably less sanguine about Ike's future.

In short, statistical projection systems have discovered some basic rules to suggest how players will perform going forward. Many players defy the historical standards and completely elude their projections, but these are generally good guides. Here are some basic rules governing the projections:
1. As batters age, particularly as they get near and then past 30, they tend to hit for lower average and more power, walk more, strikeout more, and steal less.
2. Young players with high on-base skills tend to decline faster because they can't add that skill as they age.
3. Perhaps counter-intuitively, fleet players have longer careers with flatter aging curves.
4. Batters who break out suddenly from established performance norms generally regress about halfway to their mean thereafter. A guy with a .250 batting average and 15 homers a year over six seasons who suddenly hits .300 with 35 homers can be expected to hit roughly .275 with 25 bombs the following campaign.
5. Low average sluggers with big bodies tend to fall of a cliff. When they lose a split second of timing the fat lady starts singing.
6. Component statistics can add a great deal of information to the above. For example, strikeout rates can indicate if a batter is losing bat speed or becoming more disciplined even if his results don't change. Another example: a big variation in BABIP generally means luck has infiltrated the results and likely won't stick around another year.

Knowing all this, let's see what James says about some interesting players:

Mike Trout
2012  .326/.399/.524, 30 homers, 49 steals
2013  .325/.402/.544, 30 homers, 53 steals

This boggles the mind. According to James, Trout will follow perhaps the greatest 20-year-old season in history with an almost identical 21-year-old season, even though Trout batted .383 on balls in play last year. That BABIP is sky high because Trout runs well and hits the ball hard.


Edwin Encarnacion
2011 .272/.334/.453, 17 homers, 8 steals
2012  .280/.384/.557, 42 homers, 17 steals
2013  .271/.359/.504, 31 homers, 9 steals

As you might imagine, James projects Encarnacion in 2013 to post on base and slugging percentages almost exactly halfway between his established norm and last year's breakout season. Because Encarnacion is turning 30, we might ordinarily expect an uptick in his home run numbers, which accounts for the high 2013 home run tally.

 
Dan Uggla
2011 .233/.311/.453, 36 homers, 62 walks
2012  .220/.348/.384, 19 homers, 94 walks
2013  .271/.341/.439, 28 homers, 84 walks

Uggla is an enigma wrapped in a fireplug. In 2010 he added another stellar year to his Marlin resume, batting .287 with 33 blasts from his second base position. In 2011 he couldn't buy a hit in the season's early months with the Braves and finished at .233, but with 36 dingers. Last season the batting average and power spasmed, but he led the league in walks. Without historical comparisons, projection systems spasm too.


A.J. Pierzynski
2011 .287/.323/.405, 8 homers
2012  .278/.306/.501, 27 homers
2013  .269/.310/.422, 17 homers

The White Sox catcher is a free agent and James's projection should serve as a caveat to any team thinking of signing him for an offensive injection. Pierzynski was the same hitter in '12 as in '11, except he suddenly made a habit of leaving the yard. The projection system is not particularly impressed, probably because at 36 he's reaching the cul de sac of his career.


Mike Napoli 
2010 .238/.316/.438, 26 homers
2011 .320/.414/.631, 30 homers
2012 .227/.343/.469, 24 homers 
2013 .240/.350/.498, 29 homers

So Mike Napoli is a slugging catcher who doesn't hit for average. Except BOOM! when he does. What do you do with this guy, particularly considering he spent 2010 playing home games in Anaheim, 2011 and 2012 in Arlington and will spend 2013 in, well, we'll get back to you on that?


Albert Pujols
2009 .327/.443/.658, 47 homers 104 BB/54 K
2010 .312/.414/.596, 42 homers  103 BB/76 K
2011 .299/.366/.541, 37 homers  61 BB/58 K
2012  .285/.343/.514, 30 homers  52 BB/76 K
2013  .305/.394/.564, 38 homers  84 BB/73 K

Albert Pujols is the fastest car at Indy, but for the last three laps it's been running out of fuel. His batting average, on-base, slugging, home runs and walk rate have all declined for three consecutive years while his strikeout rate has creeped up. Yet James projects improvement in every aspect of Prince Albert's game at age 33. The projector is broken.

These kinds of projections are the result of the atomizing of offensive data. Because pitching and defense are more difficult to capture, the projections for pitchers are less useful, but we'll take a look down the road.

All of James's projections can be found by subscribing to Baseball Info Solutions.

Keeping Us On Our Toes

Here's another reason baseball is a great game. An objective pre-reason forecast for the Mets offered little hope. The Queens contingent was drinking from a nearly empty pitching cup and sported Band-Aids all over the field.

It's a long season and the prediction may yet turn out right, but for now, the Mets are 10 games over and knocking on the door of first. How did a squad with a flashing check engine light manage to lap the field for two weeks? 

Well, R.A. Dickey is 5-0, 2.82. It's no knock against the early prognostications that none of them accounted for Dickey. He was neither a Met nor an asset before the season began.

Non-prospect Ike Davis, whose pedigree included half a year at Double-A prior to 2010, has banished the ghost of Carlos Delgado at first base. Pre-season reviews missed that. So sue them.

Mike Pelfrey dipped into 2009's 10-12, 5.03 performance and pulled out a 9-1, 2.39 exhibition so far in 2010. Whoops. Didn't have that.

Jonathan Niese was certainly on the early spring radar screen, but bets on rookies always have to be hedged, right Matt Wieters?

The Grapefruit League roster included train wrecks Oliver Perez, Elmer Dessens and Gary Matthews, Jr. After a few painful looks, Jerry Manuel has minimized their participation. D'Oh! Couldn't have predicted that.

In short, the Mets today aren't the team that broke camp in April. Nor, likely, are most others. The only constant in baseball is inconsistency, which makes pre-season predictions largely academic exercises.

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Word was floating around, as the Pirates sunk in the NL Central like Blackbeard in cement shoes, that manager John Russell and GM Neal Huntington would be jettisoned because of the team's poor performance. Anyone who believed (or reported) this needs a psych eval.

Neither Russell nor Huntington is being paid to break Pittsburgh's string of futility this year. They inherited a patient with strep throat, a broken leg, a bleeding ulcer, elbow tendinitis, diabetes, an ingrown toenail and bilateral plantar fasciitis. Their charge will require time, tender care and lots of patience before he recovers, and any attempt to send him home prematurely will delay his ultimate recovery.

Management in the Steel City gets this and recently revealed that contracts for Russell and Huntington had been extended through next year. There will be a reckoning for this administration, but it's not now. So stop looking at the Pirates' box score unless you've got the 2012 newspaper. 

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Reports, including mine, of the baseball death of David Ortiz have been greatly exaggerated. I revert to my original projection for Ortiz: he will be a diminishing asset, but an asset nonetheless this year. 

No really, that's what I said.

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