Cespedes is precisely the type of player you never would have found in Paul DePodesta’s computer — or Peter Brand’s spreadsheets, for those who have seen “Moneyball.” Then again, it’s not as if he is a complete mystery. Sabermetricians at both the club level and in the media have attempted to translate his numbers from Cuba to the major-league game.
Dan Szymborski, editor-in-chief of Baseball Think Factory, contributor to ESPN.com and creator of the ZiPS projection system, forecast Cespedes’ numbers through 2019 and came up with this line for his first season — .270/.331/.435 with 23 homers and 86 RBI.
Matt Kemp, Jacoby Ellsbury, Melky Cabrera and Shane Victorino are the only regular center fielders who had better rate stats in 2011. Kemp, Ellsbury, Curtis Granderson and Andrew McCutchen are the only ones who had better home run and RBI totals.
The unknown, of course, is how quickly Cespedes will adjust to the North American game — and whether he adjusts as successfully as the Athletics envision.
The A’s can’t wait on Cespedes, given the size of their investment and the ticking clock on his contract. But as one rival executive said, “What do you do if he’s hitting .110 after 20 games?”
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1. AROM Posted: February 14, 2012 at 08:59 AM (#4060432)I do think the general point stands, though, that a 760 OPS from center field in today's game is a neat and fancy little projection.
The two thoughts expressed in there seem at odds with each other. It certainly looks like you can plug him into the computer and get some numbers and I'm sure DePo, Dan, Billy Beane and everyone else is smart enough to understand the uncertainties in those numbers.
Keep playing him. The A's certainly aren't in a "win now" mode so the A's have every reason to be patient. In fact, there are few teams in baseball that CAN wait on a player like Cespedes more than the A's. What's important to them is how he performs in years 3&4 of this deal.
That's definitely not the time to quit sniffing glue. Anyway, the answer, is to keep playing him. I guarantee you Rival Executive isn't Jack Z.
I don't think the A's are totally bottoming out for four years here. Many of the guys they got back in trades are MLB ready now. The ones that aren't should be up in the next year or two. Beane pushed his window of contention back a year or two, but he didn't push it back 4-6 years.
I haven't posted a Cespedes A's projection anywhere - it'll appear in the prelim final spreadsheet this weekend or so.
-I'm not at all that surprised that the Hero of The Showcase signed with the Athletics.
-One of my Cuban buddy who escaped Cuba 6 years ago to establish himself in Oakland is extatic. Really.
-I've seen enough Cuban players and I have played enough games with Cubans (in Cuba and abroad) to know he will drive Beane insane.
So how did Rosenthal get it? Did he just ask you?
Can you expand on this TWwmH?
First, a warning. I stayed in Cuba for almost a year when I was 19 and I had the occasion of playing and seeing many games. Most of what I'm writing is based on impression rather than thorough statistical analysis.
Most great Cuban players I have seen were fantastic athletes. But most of them were taught how to play the game very agressively. When they're at bat, they're there to swing, not to work the count. Apart from a very few spectacular players like Omar Linares, who was so feared pitchers worked around him, Cubans don't get too many bases on balls. And they like to swing extra hard. There are exceptions. Linares was pretty good at working the count as I said. Yunel Escobar hasn't been bad either (I exclude Palmeiro and Jose Canseco from this discussion, because they learned to play the game mostly in the US). But in general, they like swinging.
Cubans also play a brand of ball similar to the one many of us grew up watching in the 1980s: a lot of base stealing, bunting, hit and run, and so on. Plus they play aggressive defense, trying to get guys out on base at the expense of hitting the cut-off man, diving, etc.
Most of them are signed as 16 or 17 yr olds and under the tutelage of MLB teams from that age.
The Cuban League is pretty thin on pitching. Apart from guys like El Duque, Jose Contreras, Pedro Lazo or Eliecer Montes de Oca, Cubans produce very few star pitchers. To me, that would explain why walk rates are so high in Cuban leagues, but so low when they move to the US.
Vladimir Guerrero is actually the prototypical Cuban player, despite being Dominican...
You can't walk off the island.
Not even Jesus Montero?
Dan Szymborski @DSzymborski
In Oakland, Cespedes official projection by ZiPS is 265/329/418, OPS+ 101
Let him friend Adam Dunn.
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