Your voices have been heard. Tallying six big votes for the next pitcher to be Pod Projected was 2012 breakout starting pitcher, Jeff Samardzija. I owned him in all of my leagues last year after scooping him up post-draft during spring training and I know how to spell his name without looking it up! Impressive feat, I know. So what will the “Shark” do for an encore?
Last Thursday, fellow RotoGrapher Chris Cwik tried to make sense of Justin Ruggiano’s half a season breakout performance last year. Chris primarily focused on historical comparables and concluded that it is unlikely that Ruggiano will continue to enjoy above average offensive performance. Looking at historical comparables is a good idea and tells us that Ruggiano is indeed facing long odds. However, I want to take that analysis one step further and dive into Ruggiano’s specific skill set to determine whether he’ll experience a better fate than the majority of the group in Chris’ sample.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have published several of my hitter projections with a detailed explanation of each metric projected. Today, it’s finally time to switch over to the pitching side. Kris Medlen returned from Tommy John surgery with a bang last year, posting a microscopic 0.97 ERA and 0.81 WHIP as a starter. A performance like that will grab the attention of fantasy owners and it has vaulted him up the ADP charts, as he has been getting drafted 75th overall and 14th among starting pitchers on Mock Draft Central. With a limited history, projecting him is tough. Let’s go through the process, of which you can read more about here.
In what is likely to be my last hitter Pod Projection, Desmond Jennings topped the list of remaining vote getters. The sophomore was a bit of a disappointment last season and was hampered by a knee injury that cost him nearly a month. I have been a big fan of Jennings in the past. Let’s find out if we can expect him to rebound this year and enter the upper echelon of fantasy outfielders.
Yesterday, seemingly out of nowhere, the Astros acquired first baseman Chris Carter from the A’s. Carter was a one-time top prospect in the White Sox system, boasting elite power and above average plate patience. Of course, that came with its share of strikeouts, making Carter the prototypical slugging first base prospect. Carter is no spring chicken though, he is already 26 years old as he moves onto his third team. Sadly, last year represented his most expanded audition in the big leagues, even though he recorded just 260 plate appearances. His massive power was on full display, though, as he launched 16 homers to notch a .275 ISO. So now in Houston, does he shoot up sleeper lists?
It’s been nearly two weeks since I posted my last Pod Projection after the journey to estimate/project HR/FB ratio took over my life. Surprisingly, Jason Heyward tallied nary a vote when I first asked you readers who you wanted me to publish a projection breakdown for next. Instead, fellow RotoGrapher Howard Bender requested Heyward, while kickin’ rocks of course. Big things were expected of Heyward as a rookie and big things are still expected. As such, I thought he was a hitter more than worthy of a statistical dissection.
Tying for the second most number of votes for a full Pod Projection was Blue Jays third sacker Brett Lawrie. After sky high expectations resulting from an exciting debut that mixed power and speed, the sophomore seriously disappointed in his full season follow-up. Lawrie missed a month of action due to an oblique injury and missed time here and there due to various other nicks and bruises. You have to wonder how healthy he was all season and if those issues affected his performance. This is just another example of why projecting player performance is so difficult. We have to speculate about injuries and their effects and we may never know if we were correct.
The tribe has spoken. Thanks for all the player votes you included in your comments of the first edition of this year’s Pod Projections. The winner was Mark Trumbo with 5 total votes. Clearly, many of you were wondering about his second half when he hit just .227 with 10 home runs after a scorching .306, 22 home run first half. Before I dive into my projection process though, it’s important to be aware that I don’t put much stock into first half/second half splits. They have proven to have limited predictive value, so unless it was a sign of injury or there is some clear explanation that might very well continue, I mostly ignore the splits. With that caveat out of the way, let’s get to the projections.
It’s projection time! Welcome to the first edition of the 2013 Pod Projections. Last year I started the Pod Projection series and in it, I explained the process behind my projections of the five fantasy categories for various players who were most interesting. I included an introduction that described the process in a general sense, so refresh your memory by checking it out again.
Welcome to the first edition of the Pod hitter projections for the 2013 season! If you are unfamiliar with my process, you can read the introduction I published last January. As a reminder, these are not computer generated where I input the data and a spreadsheet spits out a projected batted line. I manually project every category that has fantasy relevance.
The first projection I’ll make is for Wil Myers, the top ex-Royals prospect who was recently shipped to Tampa Bay for James Shields.
