Yes, the dastardly Sox site has done something that was asked about last week when Fangraphs added wOBA -- the offensive stat we should all be using. Thanks to Sky for pointing it out and also for agreeing with me that Colin made a mistake with the 3B adjustment. The methodology isn't perfect (to be more precise one would need to judge each position in relation to league average wOBA year-to-year) but it isn't meant to be. It's rough. He has a little chart that includes adjustments for defense, but I'm not going to deal with the headache of arguing about that here (the positional adjustment thing is bad enough, sometimes). So... here are the averages Colin has, and then how some Royals (and new Royals) did in relation to those averages in 2008 -- this is retrospective, not predictive. I'm using StatCorner's version of wOBA because, among other things, it's park-adjusted (wOBA*). Some guys are listed in more than one position for obvious reasons.
C .306
Olivo .313 (+.07)
Buck .300 (-.06)
SS .326
TPJ .189 (-.137)
Avilanche .364 (+.038)
2B .335
Grudz .345 (+.010)
Callaspo .341 (+.06)
German .294 (-.041)
CF .335
DDJ .361 (+.026)
Gathright .277 (-.058)
Crisp .334 ( -.01)
MITCH .288 (-.047)
3B .335
Gordon .351 (+.016)
Teahen .315 (-.020)
RF/LF .354
Teahen .315 (-.039)
Guillen .329 (-.025)
DDJ .361 (+.07)
1B .364
Gload .304 (-.060)
Butler .326 (-.038)
Jacobs .342 (-.022)
