Brandon Moss in Cleveland
It’s tempting to say Brandon Moss will be about the same in his new digs. Without delving too deep, it looks like the slugger goes from a good lineup in one pitcher’s park to a good lineup in another. But there are plenty of reasons to like Moss more today than yesterday. He’s an Indian now.
The overall park factor for offense in Cleveland and Oakland is identical: 97. But once you break it down, it looks more favorable for Moss. He’s a lefty, and the park factor for lefty home runs in Oakland was 88 and with the Indians it was 109. That Cleveland number is tied for sixth-friendliest in baseball. That’s a nice change.
On the road, Moss will see better parks, too. The lefty homer park factors in Oakland (88), Anaheim (91), Texas (109), Houston (106), and Seattle (99) are slightly worse than his new division — Cleveland (109), Chicago (106), Detroit (100), Minnesota (91) and Kansas City (93). Maybe just a little bit better.
There’s the concern about his hip surgery, but maybe it’s not such a concern. After all, he was able to ‘struggle’ to 25 homers with that injury, and now it’s fixed. Also, Jeff Zimmerman has found that players that played through injury are subsequently under-projected in the power department. Because the projections are agnostic as to the cause of the power outage, they just assume it was age or play related. If the power was down due to the hip and it’s fixed, there’s another reason to like him this year.
Time for the notes of caution. Because of a late bloom, Moss is 31 and post-peak in the power department. Also, he could get platooned. He’s been above-average against lefties to date (101 wRC+), and Oakland started playing him mostly every day this year, but he’s also been called a platoon player before. You may not want to project him for much more than 550 plate appearances to be safe.
Also, even if we believe that Moss may be 20% better off in the power department this year — 25% due to parks, minus something for aging, plus something for playing through injury, if you want to follow this bad math — that might mean five more homers this coming season.
No matter. You can probably pencil project Brandon Moss into about a .245/.330 season with just about 30 homers and around 90 RBI. Only four first basemen hit 30 last year, and only 11 players overall. Your Brandon Moss stocks just went up.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
Scott Courlander covered this over at Fantasy GM
http://scottcourlander.sportsblog.com/posts/1375073/who_the_hell_is_joe_wendle_.html
Keith, I hope this doesn’t come off as rude, but the post you linked didn’t cover anything of what Eno wrote about here. Did you mean to post this comment on a different post/article?
Lancellotti Link, Secret Chimp?
Hi Scott!