FanPost

Royals 2009 Offense vs. CHONE Projections

During the offseason, I put together a spreadsheet which looked at the Royals offense over the past 10 years.  It started out as a project to look at how the Royals lineup had performed with regards to RBI, but ended up showing how the overall lineup had performed. 

At the end of the fanpost, I compared the past 10 years to the CHONE projections for the everyday starting lineup based on Trey's anticipated lineups.  Now that we're about 1/3 of the way through the season, it's probably a good time to revisit the CHONE projections versus the actual results.

 

The table starts out by giving the CHONE projected batting average, OBP, SLG, and OPS for each starter.  After that, the actual OPS is given, plus any qualifiers.  The table was originally put together as a kind of "best case scenario", as in, not giving ABs to guys like TPJ who would drag down the OPS for the lineup spot.

Lineup Position Batting Avg OBP SLG
Projected OPS
Actual OPS
(Crisp) 1 0.271 0.334 0.398
0.732
0.726

(Aviles) 2 0.280 0.317 0.425
0.742 Bloomquist 0.458 0.755

(DeJesus) 3 0.279 0.354 0.406
0.760 Maier
0.670 0.728

(Guillen) 4 0.265 0.317 0.428
0.745
0.753

(Jacobs) 5 0.259 0.313 0.474
0.787
0.757

(Butler) 6 0.289 0.356 0.444
0.800
0.788

(Gordon) 7 0.265 0.349 0.44
0.789 Teahen 0.507 0.777

(Olivo) 8 0.243 0.271 0.406
0.677
0.683

(Callaspo) 9 0.284 0.344 0.387
0.731
0.789

 

 

Aviles had performed well below expectations, but was more or less replaced by Bloomquist.  Bloomy's played above the level that was expected of Aviles, and has now placed in about as many games as Aviles did.  Gordon performed poorly, but was replaced by Teahen, who has nearly matched the projections for Gordon.

The only player who has significantly underperformed expectations and not been replaced at a "near-projection" level is DeJesus.  Maier has played well in over 60% of the games so far, but hasn't been able to make up for DeJesus.

 

So, I guess there are a couple of takeaways from this: 

   - The CHONE projections have been pretty close so far, meaning this is the offense that should have been expected.

   - Even assuming that Gordon comes back healthy, and that DDJ starts to hit, we've still got a below average offense.  Ugh.

This FanPost was written by a member of the Royals Review community. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the editors and writers of this site.