keep it simple

haven’t posted in a zillion yrs, my life taken over temporarily by another writing project. but here’s something quick n easy n worth the time: tom meagher at sabernomics has come up w a new projection system which he calls the sabernomics simple projection system, or ssps. (tip o cap to baseball musings.) meagher ran 2005 projections for ev’y major league hitter who got 150 pa in 2004 (ceptin’ larry walker, apparently, since i could not find the old buzzard). the cardinals’ projections herewith: batting avg, oba, slg, ops

reg’lars
eckstn 284 / 333 / 380 / 713
pujols 323 / 405 / 589 / 994
rolen 300 / 384 / 550 / 935
edmnd 288 / 401 / 597 / 998
grud’k 285 / 333 / 428 / 761
sanders 263 / 331 / 487 / 818
molina 291 / 347 / 443 / 790

bench
cedeno 273 / 335 / 423 / 758
hluna 275 / 328 / 436 / 764
mabry 276 / 350 / 498 / 847
tagchi 282 / 332 / 417 / 750

god bless’m if he’s right about molina; a line like that and we’d never notice edgar’s bat missing. but i’m with you — i’ll believe it when i see it. he’s got mabry outslugging and out-oba’ing sanders — platoon? — and projects that little scrapster eckstein to keep scrappin’. and if’n he’s wrong about eckstein . . . . well then maybe he’s right about luna, who’s a better fielder to begin with and, by these lights, a more productive bat. but hold on: ssps predicts signif productivity declines for all three of the bats that matter most, albt jimmy and scotty. and i can’t say i disagree: all three either set or tied career highs for homers in 2004 (more on this soon, i hope), and both rolen and edmonds set new standards in slugging and ops. you betcha they’re going to slide.

in any case, it’s an untested system and not likely to be worth more than any of the other ones out there (ie, not worth a lot). but to the extent it has any value at all, i think it bodes more good than ill. will keep an eye on it.