Last week, Royals Review readers, or at least the few of you that voted, predicted that Mike Jacobs would hit .259/.314/.488 next season, with 28 home runs. PECOTA, BP's projection system, has similar thoughts, but is a little less sanguine.
PECOTA's projection for Jacobs next season is .257/.322/.465, with 20 homers. For some reason, the Jacobs numbers are still based on him playing in Florida, which may be depressing those numbers slightly.
Basically, this tells us nothing we don't already know: at least if you stick with the actual data, there is no breakout coming. He is what he is: a slow guy with some legitimate power and not much else. So little else in fact, that the power's benefit is almost completely mitigated. Although you wouldn't want to confuse him with the seven other guys on the roster that can be described the same way. Jacobs is the one at the easiest position on the diamond to field a player. There, that helps.
Jacobs's comparables are interesting: Tino Martinez (one of the most over-rated players of the late '90s-early '00s, but a guy who hated, and was hated in St. Louis, so bonus points), Greg Walker (a hated hitting coach for the White Sox), Eddie Robinson (obscure '50s player who played a little for the KC A's) and Gordy Coleman (obscure sixties Red who peaked at 27 and was useless two years later).
If there is a bit of good news here, it is that PECOTA is completely and utterly disdainful of Ryan Shealy's ability, to the tune of a hateful .218/.291/.379 projection. Kila's PECOTA is hardly better at ..225/.324/.375. I'll be the first to say that I don't see how the Kila numbers can be that low, but it's really an irrelevant matter anyways, since he isn't a good bet to play.
Oh, what about Ross Gload? The horrendous thing about all this is, we've almost come back to the beginning, back to a kind of Mientkiewiczian revisionism: maybe, if Gload actually played great defense, he really should be playing. PECOTA looks at Gload and sees a .274/.314/.375 hitter though: the same horrible OBP, but without the power!
If there's a moral here, it must surely be only a dark one, rather like whatever must have passed through Hurstwood's mind at the conclusion of Sister Carrie.