12-10-2010: Revised projection for Adrian Gonzalez

Alright, I’ll admit that the first projection I put up was a little too conservative. It’s because I was using a flat adjustment for the NL to AL transition. Works well for average players, doesn’t work so well for superstar players. I’ve adjusted my methodology to a component-correlated one, and used it as a basis to regress towards 50%. Using this new method, here’s what I get for Gonzalez in Fenway:

Age	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	R	RBI	BB	SO	SB	Avg	OBP	SLG	OPS	wOBA	wRAA
29	606	175	39	1	30	98	105	81	121	2	0.289	0.378	0.505	0.883	0.392	46.2
30	615	176	38	1	30	98	106	80	122	2	0.287	0.375	0.501	0.876	0.389	44.6
31	617	175	37	1	30	97	106	78	121	2	0.284	0.370	0.495	0.864	0.384	41.2
32	612	172	35	1	29	95	103	74	118	2	0.281	0.363	0.485	0.848	0.377	36.0
33	600	166	33	1	28	91	99	68	114	2	0.276	0.355	0.473	0.828	0.369	29.5
34	580	157	30	1	25	85	93	61	109	2	0.271	0.346	0.459	0.805	0.359	21.9
35	552	147	27	1	23	78	85	53	103	1	0.266	0.335	0.443	0.778	0.347	13.7
36	517	134	24	1	20	71	76	45	95	1	0.259	0.323	0.425	0.748	0.335	5.5

I feel much better about this projection. One interesting thing I found was that even top sluggers who go from the NL to the AL lose a lot in terms of home run rate, and vice versa, for whatever reason. There’s a big difference once you change leagues, whether you’re Manny Ramirez or Matt Holliday or Mark Teixeira. That’s reflected here in Gonzalez losing 5 HR compared to his NL projection. I hope Adrian bucks that trend and hits 40, but it looks like the over/under number for 2011 is about 30.

About these ads