This post has been in the back of my mind for a while, and I couldn’t make it go away. And what better time to dust it off than for my first post of 2011? Although I’m just a hobbyist with too much time on my hands (I still can’t believe the Daves fell for it), I feel some responsibility to own up to when I’ve been wrong. Naturally, a full listing of stuff like that would go on far too long for a blog posting. Moreover, when dealing with stuff like statistical projections, one expects to turn out to be wrong a lot of the time (the trick is to be right, or at least “on the right side” a bit more often than not). Therefore, I’m not going to focus on posts I did that relied on projections that turned out to be wrong, but rather on three particular posts that I think were flawed in ways that I should have seen at the time. In that way, I can do more than just say “well, I guess that projection was way off” and actually take some lessons away from my mistakes.

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A few months ago, I posted in the Community Research Blog on Matt Kemp’s struggles against fastballs this past season, highlighting how he whiffed on more fastballs in 2010 compared to that of 2009, particularly high fastballs as well as fastballs down the middle of the plate. I showed that he displayed a lower contact percentage on fastballs down the middle in 2010 as opposed to 2009, and I posited that, since his whiffing behavior was season-long, his 2010 offensive struggles may have been due to a change in swinging mechanics, or worse, a season-long injury kept hidden from the media.

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It has been three months since the season ended, and many of us are still trying to wrap our heads around the 2010 Blue Jays offense. It’s not often that we see the team with the fifth worst OBP in the league finish sixth in wOBA. Last week R.J. tried to make some sense of the matter and what it means for the 2011 offense. But I’m still stuck on 2010. The platoon split information I found over the weekend didn’t help matters.

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I am far too excited to watch Craig Kimbrel pitch next season. He’s a right-hander with high-end velocity – a 95 mph average fastball with rising action that can reach 98 – but nothing we don’t see from relievers with some frequency. He will be 23 years old and has only a meager 21 innings of MLB experience. Despite being moderately interesting on the surface, I didn’t think that I could possibly be more excited to watch him over relievers like Carlos Marmol, Aroldis Chapman, Brian Wilson, Neftali Feliz, Mariano Rivera, and more. But no, as we enter 2011, Craig Kimbrel is my most anticipated reliever of the year.

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I wasn’t originally planning on writing much about the Hall of Fame, but the discussions that have arisen over the last week or so – particularly the one about Andruw Jones‘ candidacy that we posed last week – have sparked some additional thoughts. Clearly, how defensive contributions should be valued is not universally agreed upon, and a player’s offensive numbers still generally carry the day when the question of Cooperstown comes up.

But defense is a consideration in the perception of a player’s value. For instance, consider this comparison between a second baseman who will almost certainly be elected on Wednesday and a second baseman who I doubt has any real chance of getting in when he hits the ballot.

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The Detroit Tigers have a fighter’s chance at winning the American League Central in 2011. Their lineup is going to score runs behind a middle of the order that figures to feature Miguel Cabrera, Magglio Ordonez, and Victor Martinez. Justin Verlander, one of the most dependable pitchers in the game, is joined in the rotation by the above average Max Scherzer and the seemingly progressing Rick Porcello. Once contract quality is thrown out the window, the bullpen lacks noticeable flaws too, leaving the back end of the rotation as the only potential culprit separating the Tigers from late season contention.
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The Baltimore Orioles have continued their Extreme Makeover: Infield Edition by agreeing to terms on a one-year contract with free agent first baseman Derrek Lee. The exact terms of the deal aren’t yet known. But Sports Illustrated’s Jon Heyman suggests that Lee’s base salary figures to be in the $7-8 million range, and Yahoo’s Tim Brown adds that the deal includes a couple million bucks in possible incentives.

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