Royals Defeat White Sox for Sixth Straight Victory

/sneers at Joel

Seriously, he interviews horribly.

I try to stay level-headed, but even with his ups and downs, Hosmer is really exciting. From a “neutral” perpsective, his season has just been decent. Given that he’s 21, though… Who knows? Maybe he’ll have a “sophomore slump.” He might also have a monster 2012.

Still think Hos, Butler, and Gordon are the only three hitters on the team I feel confident in saying will be above average next season. At least two of the likely sinkholes are defensively good (Perez, Hercules). Moose is his own weird world.

Second base is going to be a problem, I think.

I actually did a basic number-crunch w/ next year’s expected starting lineup and Oliver’s updated projections and the projected 2012 wOBA of that group was the same as whatever the team’s 2011 wOBA was at the time. There are other variables, of course, like thee players who aren’t on the team anymore (although it’s not clear whether that helps and hurts the comparative offensive outlook for next season, given Betemit’s offensive contribution).

As for age adjustments and regression, remember that those are two separate things. Component skills age differently, so that might make a difference, but most overall hitter curves peak around 26 or 27, which means and Gordon and Francouer and people like that are estimated to be at their “peak age” this season.

But it isn’t the aging of Gordon, Francoeur, etc. that probably does most of the “canceling,” it is regression to the mean generally and in specific cases of past performance. In Gordon’s case, there is less of a record of playing time in past seasons, which means that systems regress him more to the mean (and his heavy reliance on BABIP this season, although not the total basis for his performance, is a big part of it, and that typically gets regressed more). That also adds more uncertainty to the projection, but it is as likely to be too high as too low.

Everyone who performs above or below average is projected to be closer to average than observed performance. The more performance records we have, though, the less they are regressed because of more data. However, that really doesn’t help guys like Melky and Francoeur, whose relevant seasons (probably 2008-2010) are, well, really, really terrible. Yes, Jeff Francoeur is having a nice, above-average season with the bat in 2011. But it isn’t like he was a part-timer in past seasons. From 2008-2010 he was not only one of the four worst qualified hitters in baseball (look at the few hitters who were worse and think about it for a minute), but he has over 1700 PA during that time. Those didn’t go away, and shouldn’t.

That isn’t to say that the youth of Hosmer, et. al. doesn’t add more “upside,” as young players with small MLB track records have greater uncertainty in their projections. Of course, that also cuts both ways (cf. Heyward, Jason). The systems just pick the midpoint.

I was talking about this season’s offense versus next season’s projected offense.

As for Pythag as a “predictor” of future teams success, I recently wrote about that.

I have a feeling there’s going to be a really uncomfortable chapter in one of the current Royals’ autobiography.

This was all in super slow-mo, frame-by-frame, BTW. Then, Frenchy grabs at Hosmer’s chest and twists.

mis-guided wanna-be nerdy A’s fans, but good people.

“In play, run(s)”

This PCL title is in the bag. Now to Albuqueerque.

there was one out. gordon gets picked off, etc, and the speed of the only base runner becomes pretty important. it’s a precaution that makes sense to take.

Honestly, who do you want to see brought up?

One of Vinny/Mendoza/SOS will eventually make an appearance in KC.

I suppose we could see C-Rob, Dyson or Cain… but what would Yost do with any of them at this point? (Yeah, ok, I know what speed do…)

How about Suppan for old time’s sake?