Projecting Both Miguel Tejada’s

by
July 23, 2008

One of the odder stories this season was the revelation that former MVP shortstop Miguel Tejada is actually two years older than the public had been to led to believe. Despite the questionable journalism techniques utilized in order to show that Miguel’s pants had in fact been on fire for sixteen or seventeen years, the fact remained that he was 33 years old, not 31 years old. A few months later, he is now 34, not 32 years old.

The first thought to cross my mind upon hearing this news was how it would effect his projection coming into this season. He was already a 32-yr old shortstop experiencing a noticeable decline in power. Now that we discovered him to be a 34-yr old shortstop, the sharp decline made a bit more sense. With the in-season Marcel projector readily available I plugged in Miguel’s current numbers but entered in both of his birthdays. Here are the results:

32 yr – 2nd Half: .293/.346/.455, 8 HR, .801 OPS
32 yr – Total: .284/.329/.435, 18 HR, .764 OPS

34 yr – 2nd Half: .291/.344/.452, 8 HR, .796 OPS
34 yr – Total: .283/.328/.434, 18 HR, .762 OPS

In 2004, he posted a .534 slugging percentage as a 30 year old (thought to be 28 year old). Since then, the same metric has decreased in each year and, if his true talent level holds up in the second half, the .434 would again show a decline from the year prior. His true talent level was barely affected by the change in age based on these in-season projections, but moving forward this level will have two lost years to take into account.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.




 

Eric is an accountant and statistical analyst from Philadelphia. He also covers the Phillies at Phillies Nation and can be found here on Twitter.

2 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Bob
17 years ago

Considering your title, “Projecting Both Miguel Tejada’s”, what exactly are the Tejadas possessing?

0