I’ll try to keep these somewhat educated and not just something I’m pulling out of thin air. Perhaps my best prediction was made two years ago at the lemmingtrail board about a certain rookie second basemen.
jay - 01/23/07 - 11:44 am (76.19.196.169)
also: dustin pedroia will hit more doubles than mike lowell.
I also predicted - to my employer at the time at the start of the 2008 season that Jed Lowrie would be the starting SS by the end of the season.
I’ve also made some bad and very bad predictions too - but these are my hunches going into 2009.
1.) Josh Beckett is going back to “2007″ Josh Beckett. Interestingly enough - Josh’s 2008 wasn’t really that bad if you look at the things he had immediate control over. His strikeout rate actually rose and his walk rate fell compared to his Cy-young caliber 2007 season. He was marred by injury and some bad breaks from his defense. In 2008 his defense got to 67.3% of balls that were put into play - compare that to 68.4% in 2007 and 73% in 2006 - the average rate for all picthers is about 70%. I think a 3.25 ERA is certainly within reach for Beckett this year.
2.) David Ortiz is going to be fine. Now maybe not 54 home runs fine, but certainly worthy of the #3 spot. Looking at his post injury numbers last year he hit .277/.389/.529. His “post-Manny” numbers were .262/.381/.519. Given the extra time to heal his ailing wrist I think a .280/.410/.550 season is very attainable for him. His average will shrink from his 2007 levels as a result of teams giving him a free pass but he’ll still OPS over .900
3.) Jacoby Ellsbury is going to lose his spot as the leadoff hitter. The frustrating thing for me about watching Ellsbury play is that he had tremendous success with his plate discipline in the minors - but that has yet to come to fruition for the big league club. In 2008 Ellsbury had a .336 OBP - for reference only two teams in the American League had a lower OBP from their leadoff hitter and those teams were the Twins and the As. Should Ellsbury fail to improve on that rate - I think there is a very high possibility of seeing JD Drew return to batting leadoff.
4.) Daisuke Matsuzaka (and this may be Josh Beckett redux) is going to look more like 2007 Daisuke than 2008 Daisuke. Continuing on with where we left off with Beckett - there are certain few things that a pitcher has nearly absolute control over; striking a batter out and walking a batter. Now as we were mentioning earlier of the remaining balls hit into play (BIP) that were not Home Runs (99.9% of Home Runs at least) Daisuke got some very lucky breaks. Before the 2009 season began I made a spreadsheet for my two fantasy baseball leagues jokingly referred to as the “Risky Business” list. It measured pitchers who caught some lucky breaks in things they didnt have any control over - an above average defensive efficiency on fielding balls in play (Like we said with Beckett this rate should be around 70%), a very low Home Run to Fly Ball rate (most SP fall somewhere between 10-11%), and a very high percentage of stranded baserunners (average is about 72.5%)
Daisuke was the one pitcher who scored well outside of one standard deviation in all three categories. His defensive efficiency was at 73.3%, his HR/FB rate was freakishly low at 6.1%, and his strand rate was at 80.6%. None of these three metrics are indicative of a pitcher’s ability but rather his luck. The two things Daisuke could truly control (and I’m using that word ironically) is his Strikeout and Walk rate and both of these rates regressed from their 2007 levels. Only Tom Gorzelanny, Fausto Carmona, and Barry Zito had a higher BB/9 and none of those guys had an ERA under 5.00.
I’m maybe being a little too hard on this - but I think a 4.80-5.20 ERA for Daisuke is what we can expect from this year. Especially if he shows signs of fatigue from the WBC.