Jeff Francoeur shows has having a 2000 game career with a 96 OPS+. Have there been any other career corner OF's who reached 2000 games with an OPS+ less than 100?

w00t d0g!

Have there been any other career corner OF's who reached 2000 games with an OPS+ less than 100?

no.
A 1b, Charlie Grimm did it (94) back in 1918/1936, his batting averages (career .290) may have fooled a few people, plus pre 1920s 1B had a different job description, he was a bit of a throwback/holdover.

Other than that you got BJ Surhoff, although he almost caught as many games as he played in left... and I'm opretty sure that once out form behind the plate... yes, his tOPS+ for laying left was 111, RF 116, his career OPS+ was 98, so he was around 110 when he was a corner OF.

Buckner 99 (more games at 1b than corner OF)
Garrett Anderson 102

But what are their projections on the Ron Polk chart?

Isn't Aaron Crow being moved into the rotation this year?

Also I am surprised by how low the numbers on Tony Abreu are. He hit 292/335/429 in AAA last year while increasing his BB% and decreasing his K%, and his OPS+ went down 15 points when compared to last year's projections.

He is. I imagine he'll start in Omaha.

I'm slightly optimistic with these projections. No real terrible hitters, even the rookies/second year guys aren't overwhelmed. No huge regression from Franceour or Gordon.

The pitching is bad, but it doesn't seem groin-grabbingly bad in the rotation. Just five below average guys who should all be back of the rotation guys, but that's an upgrade from 6-7 years ago when the rotation was filled with guys who should have been in the PCL. And the bullpen looks good. I don't think 75 wins is out of the question at all, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to see the break through that on up to 80 wins or so.

This team looks like it should be in on Edwin Jackson. He could still be effective when they become good.

The pitching is bad, but it doesn't seem groin-grabbingly bad in the rotation. Just five below average guys who should all be back of the rotation guys, but that's an upgrade from 6-7 years ago when the rotation was filled with guys who should have been in the PCL.

If they're all healthy, and match predictions, they'll be (as you note) bad, but not soul-crushingly so. The problem is that there's almost no chance they'll all be healthy, and so you'll have to dig down a lot deeper than the top 5. Going by ZIPS inning predictions, you have to get all the way down the list to Danny Duffy before you get to the roughly 1000 innings that they'll need from their starting rotation this year.

nasty Crow zip considering how effective he was last year, It baffles the mind You could easily make the case that Holland and Crow should be the best 2 relievers on the Royals staff this year coming yeah while Holland is rated ok crow is not even barely serviceable.

The Royals are getting kind of interesting, at least at the plate. It's about time for them to go into acquision mode. Their window is...well, pretty soon.

There's not a position player on that list over 30. I bet this is the only team where that will be true.

I'm surprised Sanchez doesn't project to league average, though I guess I'm still remembering him as the guy who led the league in H/9 in 2010.

Super-pumped to see the Opening Day start from staff ace LEAGUE AVERAGE.

Tim Collins RP 19% 52% 29% Mitch Williams John Rocker Darren Oliver

Also I am surprised by how low the numbers on Tony Abreu are. He hit 292/335/429 in AAA last year while increasing his BB% and decreasing his K%, and his OPS+ went down 15 points when compared to last year's projections.

????
He hit 292/335/429 in the PCL
The league hit .286/.359/.448
relative to league that's easily the worst he's hit in the minors, the mle on that is likely .240/.280/.325
and given what he hit in Arizona in 2010 its been almost 2 years since he's hit a lick anywhere

As a Royal fan, there's a good bit to be excited about here, as well as a measure of disappointment. It's been a long time since we've had 3 such solid hitters at the top. There's a good amount of mediocre hitting as well, but they are mostly young enough to improve as well.

Lough is a bit of a head-scratcher to me, as he Zipped at 86+ last year, and posted a better 2011 season than 2010, only to fall to 79+. I guess ZiPS is penalizing him for ARL?

I'll take the over on Cain, but can understand why he projects as low as he does.

I'd be curious to see Myers' comps, if he has any (having not played above AA). Statistically speaking, he lost a lot of steam with his 2011 regular season performance.

Crow and Collins both look low to me. Crow has been discussed earlier. Collins had 106+ ZiP last year, and then posted 113+ in MLB, only to fall this year. He was also just 21 in MLB last year, so I would expect some ARL help there.

While having this much youth is tough to predict, I would bet the over on 75 wins in 2012, given the relative weakness of the division.

If they're all healthy, and match predictions, they'll be (as you note) bad, but not soul-crushingly so. The problem is that there's almost no chance they'll all be healthy, and so you'll have to dig down a lot deeper than the top 5. Going by ZIPS inning predictions, you have to get all the way down the list to Danny Duffy before you get to the roughly 1000 innings that they'll need from their starting rotation this year.

I think even Dan admits you should take innings projections with a grain of salt.

Even if the top five guys get hurt (and they certainly will) the Royals have to have about the smallest gap between their #1-5 and #6-10 in the league (probably Aaron Crow/Danny Duffy/Mike Montgomery/Vin Mazzaro/Luis Mendoza). Heck even after that Sean O'Sullivan and Everett Teaford are going to be better than the shlock some teams throw out. Yea, the Royals don't really have anything higher than a #5 starter, but they won't throw anyone out there that will be totally embarrassing either. And who knows, maybe Paulino shows 2011 wasn't a fluke or Monty or Crow or Duffy shows some real upside this year.

Abreu was also in a big time hitter's park - it was actually a horrible year.

The thing about Cain is that he's had some *huge* BABIP numbers throughout his minor league career: .402 at Huntsville in 2010, .371 at Nashville, .369 at Omaha last year - and (until last year) he also had high ground ball rates.

We only have one year of data on Werner Park in Omaha, but it's looking like it might be a good home run park; Cain hit 10 of his 16 there a year ago, and Dan's park factors give it a 1.04 HR factor. Dan, are you remembering that the park just opened last year?

-- MWE

Nice projection for Hosmer -- higher than Montero's at the same age. Not so sure about projecting Hosmer already to over 10,000 PA but we've been down that road. (50% of games at 1B, OPS+<=125 ... Perez, Buckner and Vernon.)

And I'd never heard of Joe Vosmik before. Strange career. And involved in a great "name" trade:

Vosmik, Oral Hildebrand and Bill Knickerbocker for Ivy Andrews, Lyn Lary and Moose Solters.

And ZiPS doesn't think Chen is going to be the next Jamie Moyer. Darn.

Super-pumped to see the Opening Day start from staff ace LEAGUE AVERAGE.

Heh, pretty good one.

My wife wants to know if Sluggerrr is above or below the LEAGUE AVERAGE line for mascots.

We only have one year of data on Werner Park in Omaha, but it's looking like it might be a good home run park; Cain hit 10 of his 16 there a year ago, and Dan's park factors give it a 1.04 HR factor. Dan, are you remembering that the park just opened last year?


I did! Because of the uncertainty of new parks (as you know, the accuracy of one-year factors is like using a trebuchet and an object of unknown weight), I use neutral for years we don't have.

I'm pleasantly surprised by these projections. I tend to think of an OPS+ of 80 as the borderline between below average and unplayable, and only Getz, Dyson, and "Batter Nine You Sucky" (Yuniesky Betancourt) look to be below that. Escobar is in the danger region, but makes up for it by being a defensive whiz. I can live with a team where 90% of the playing time goes to people who deserve it.

The rotation looks like a long list of back-end starters. With such a long list of players with comparable talent, you hope somebody will step forward and separate themselves from the field. Failing that, you hope they'll pitch well enough to stick around in most games.

I'd say the upside is a young team that shows flashes of contending, with maybe a couple of fixable weak spots. Downside is a team that is subtly but noticeably below average. It'll be an interesting summer.

Lough and Gordon have the same exact comps. Is that accurate?

Lough and Gordon have the same exact comps.

And Lough has a secretary named Gordon ...

Dayton Moore has put together a very good farm system -- hardly surprising for a guy who came up through player development -- but I've seen absolutely nothing yet that suggests that he has the ability to take all these ingredients at his disposal and bake KC a winner.

Chuck Lamar syndrome, though Moore has gotten better results faster with the farm system.

Chuck Lamar syndrome, though Moore has gotten better results faster with the farm system.

So you could kinda say he's John Schuerholz, without all the onfield success.

David Lough's projection is all wrong. When I move to the next player in the projection order, I'm supposed to wait for everything to re-calculate before I hit control-D to run all the ZiPS stuff (I did Lough after Gordon). I'm away from home until the 25th, so I'm on my laptop instead of the ZiPS SuperComputer (I built an extra little PC last year that's simply a customized mathnerd box (i5 760, 16 GB RAM, solid-state hard drive, no fancy graphics cards or games or anything). My laptop is getting on the old side (it's a Turion X2 u64) so it runs ZiPS a *lot* slower and I ran it prematurely.

Lough is supposed to be 264/305/385, OPS+ 87, comps Brian Kowitz, Eddie Milner, Jim Wawruck and will be on the final disk/spreadsheet correctly.

so I'm on my laptop instead of the ZiPS SuperComputer (I built an extra little PC last year that's simply a customized mathnerd box (i5 760, 16 GB RAM, solid-state hard drive, no fancy graphics cards or games or anything).

Yep. Did that same thing.

NVM

So with Soria out for the year, is the 9th inning job Broxton's first?