Jay Bruce 2010 Questions
by DodgersBacktoBrooklyn2011 on Feb 17, 2010 1:25 PM EST
Email
Print
Where will Bruce hit in the line-up this year?
Where should Bruce hit in the line-up this year?
What will his basic stat line be?
_______________________________________________________________________________________
I have no idea, and that's why I ask for feedback. But here are my guesses to kick it off. Thanks for any thoughts/insights...
6th
Clean-up
.277, 29 HRs, 93 RBIs (in 151 Games)
http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/b/jay-bruce.shtml
As an FYI and for word filler, here is Commissioner.com 2010 projections
.254, 30 HRs, 88 RBIs
26 comments
|
0 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
I think he'll excede that stat line
I bet he mostly hits fifth or sixth, though I’d bat him cleanup.
Amazingly, Jay Bruce now seems to be underrated.
Agree
It is a bit amazing.
I only think he’ll hit 29 HRs because he won’t see a lot of strikes lower in that Red order. Put him behind Votto and in front of Phillips, and he could really rake…
by DodgersBacktoBrooklyn2011 on Feb 17, 2010 2:01 PM EST up reply actions
go figure
It’s like everybody else saw his .223 batting average.
didn't he have some really low line drive rate last year?
i’m sure that didn’t help the average.
baseball rules.
off the top of my head, I can't remember
But really now, I think a lot of this is really silly. While batting average can vary based on luck, the degree of that variation isn’t nearly as severe as some of the folks are trying to argue here. I can buy giving him, say, 20 points of batting average based on luck (which would be typically regarded as very generous), but that still only gets him to .243.
When you start having to use formulas with lots of complicated numbers that may or may not mean anything (after all, you’ll find lots of statistical noise behind the numbers of even the best hitters) to suggest that the guy was really a good hitter, I have to push back from the table a bit and look to Occam’s Razor. In other words, maybe the reason why Jay Bruce didn’t have a good year last year was because he just wasn’t a good major league hitter last year. Which is fine, really . . .he’s young.
But then some will say, but maybe he was just unlucky on a near-historic level! To which I would say, perhaps, but even the optimists would have to admit the record isn’t on their side there. The closest optimistic comparison in my mind would be Paul Konerko’s 2003 season, but in that case we had 4 seasons of excellent performance before that point to suggest that the 2003 season was an outlier. That ended up being proven true, but it certainly could have been false.
The funny thing about all this? I could be completely on the ball about Bruce’s 2009 and yet he could have a terrific 2010. He’s young and young players often (although not always) improve. Bruce is also quite talented. But I really have a problem when people try to act like we might as well throw out the 2009 season, or that we should somehow amend the record to what advanced sabermetrics tell us it should be. We just can’t do all of that, even if Jay Bruce goes on to a Hall of Fame caliber career.
Overreact much?
He’s 22 and had a .221 BABIP. He was the consensus top prospect in MLB a year before.
i’d take Bruce over every minor leaguer out there now except maybe Heyward.
hardly an overreaction
Yes, he’s young. Yes, his BABIP was low. I’m unconvinced that BABIP can totally be chalked up to numbers, though. It may have plenty to do with the player’s approach. If he’s taking a lot of bad swings (a horribly subjective term for those who are sitting on their numbers), then it’s very possibly that one reason why his BABIP was low was because his swing mechanics were all over the place. Based on the drop in strikeouts, it does seem reasonable to think that he might have traded some effectiveness of contact for contact itself.
All I’m saying is, a .221 BABIP is very low, yes. But historically all you really have to go on for the guy is a .254 batting average the year before and some good minor league numbers. You don’t have much of a major league baseline to figure out where he should be at. And while I would definitely expect him to play better in the years to come, calling the guy underrated on the merits of a .223/.303/.470 campaign and suggesting he’s going to hit .280 with 35 HRs shows a pretty startling disconnect with reality. He’s talented enough to have those types of seasons, but I think it’s grossly irresponsible to expect that of him, especially so soon.
I think a more reasonable expected optimistic projection for 2010 is something like .265/.340/.480. Trades power to get the average back up.
If you say Bruce can't hit for average after a few hundred PA's at age 22
Then yes, I think you are overreacting. His minor league track record is laden with solid BA’s and a ton of power.
He probably will K too often to be a consistent .300 hitter — though I expect he’ll hit .300 a couple times in his prime. But even if he hits .260, Bruce is more than capable of hitting 35 bombs.
The minor league numbers are a LOT more significant than his 2009 season — when he was serviceable in MLB at 22. Bruce has a .246 ISP and was excellent in September, after returning from injury. (SSS I know but….326/.426/.652, pretty nice.)
My larger point is that I think young stars like Bruce get underrated quickly if they fail to light the world on fire. If Weiters in 2010 gets hurt and underperforms like Bruce did in 2009 we’ll be having this same conversation next year about MW.
LOL
So if his minor league numbers are a LOT more significant, then you agree with me that he will strike out in epic fail proportions. You can’t just choose ignore his whifftastic ways in the minors.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
by WayneCampbell08 on Feb 19, 2010 12:38 PM EST up reply actions
I agree, he's going to strike out a lot.
I never said he wouldn’t. He had contact issues in the minors, but they weren’t a huge drain on his productivity.
It's like you just ignored my entire post
You didn’t address anything in my post, and the one thing you did address was something I never said nor even implied. At no point did I say that Jay Bruce “can’t hit for average”. Read it again. If anything, I’m optimistic that at some point in the future, he just might.
Our respective points of view on Jay Bruce, .223/.303/.470 hitter in 2009, quoted from previous parts of this discussion (I’m not going to straw man you):
Me: "In other words, maybe the reason why Jay Bruce didn’t have a good year last year was because he just wasn’t a good major league hitter last year. Which is fine, really . . .he’s young.
But then some will say, but maybe he was just unlucky on a near-historic level! To which I would say, perhaps, but even the optimists would have to admit the record isn’t on their side there."
You: “He probably will K too often to be a consistent .300 hitter — though I expect he’ll hit .300 a couple times in his prime. But even if he hits .260, Bruce is more than capable of hitting 35 bombs.”
More succinctly put:
Me: Acknowledges he mostly sucked last year, doesn’t make excuses for him, shows cautious optimism about his future
You: Ignores the fact that he mostly sucked last year to talk about his good September, makes plenty of excuses for him at every possible point, expects him to hit better than .277 with 30+ HRs this year
Even if you’re right in reality, it won’t be because your reasoning was legitimate. So I’m okay with my position.
OK
We disagree on the flukiness of his BABIP. I see the ISOP and presume it will bounce back in a big way woth some luck. You see the contact issues and
I do think there is a good chance he’ll hit better than .277. But it’s splitting hairs really. He’s not gonna win a batting title in 2010 or probably ever. My off-the-cuff prediction would be that he hits .285 or so. But it’s batting average. It’s fluky. It’s not really worth arguing over that much.
I wouldn’t say he was historically unlucky. But I do think he was one of the least lucky hitters in MLB last year. I did mention his good September. It’s not the centerpiece of my argument. Sure, focusing on his September is his cherrypicking, but so is focusing on his April.
Well....
He had a slash line of .273/.347/.629 from the 5 hole last year, therefore I think that’s where he’ll start and where he should be as well. He also had 12 HR in 132 AB’s in the 5 spot. Projecting that over 600 AB’s, and we can safely assume 54 HR this season. Joking, I’d say .275, 36 HR, and 100 RBI.
I'm pretty confident he's going to hit at least 35 HR
OPS in the .860-.900 range.
strongly believe in da bat.
How about if he just has some BABIP luck???
Jay Bruce Future Average
I think a lot of people are underestimating Jay Bruce’s potential in the Batting Average department. Using the xBABIP tool that was developed by the fellows at Hardball Times (http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/simple-xbabip-calculator/), we come up with an xBABIP of .293, based on current K rates, HR/FB rates, etc., that would mean he SHOULD have had a batting average of .275, even with his inability to handle the low inside pitch! :) This is assuming no component improvements from someone who turns 23 around Opening Day next year.
On the component improvement note… Fangraphs wrote a great article describing how his Plate Discipline and Contact Rate both improved from 2008 to 2009. Article can be found here…
http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/index.php/believe-in-jay-bruce
All thngs considered, I wouldn’t call someone crazy if they saw Jay Bruce having a .320, 45 HR season in his future. As for next year, I am saying….
.280, 35 HRs, 110 RBI. That is guessing he gets 530 AB.
"God, I'm from Cleveland. When is it going to be our time?"
Or
If you’re like me, you’d think his K rate was the fluke and it’ll spike back up again next season.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
by WayneCampbell08 on Feb 17, 2010 8:45 PM EST up reply actions
Completely fair assumption...
In which case he puts 15 less balls in play last year (assuming a K rate of 26% again), which would presumably take away 4-5 base hits. Or based on his XBABIP, would take away an expected hit level of, let’s be crazy and say 10. In that case, then yes, he is at right around .250.
But… since we want to take him back to that K rate, can we take him back to his old Home run rate too? Because if we do that, now he is back in the .260-.265 range with more HR’s.
I still have a hard time believing that his K rate won’t stay down some though, his swing % was down last year vs 2008, and his contact % was significantly up. These two facts are driven almost completely by the fact that he swung at a lot less balls outside the strike zone, although his contact % on balls in the zone also went up quite a bit as well though.
This just seems to point to a very young hitter who is maturing.
"God, I'm from Cleveland. When is it going to be our time?"
Sure
Then don’t forget to scale back his walk rate too if you want to do that. You can’t have it both ways. I put the over/under K at 150 if he plays 150 games though he can’t seem to play more than 100. Take the blinders off and love at the whole picture instead of cherrypicking the stats you want.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
by WayneCampbell08 on Feb 19, 2010 12:44 PM EST up reply actions
bruce composite projection
0.262 AVG, 29 HR, 89 RBI, 72 R, 7 SB, 0.330 OBP
That line is based on 11 different sources. I think he is perfectly capable of achieving those numbers but assuming a natural progression, he should do slightly better.
Go to: http://drafttracker.weebly.com/ for the FREE Excel Drafttracker v2.22 (BETA)
Complete with Composite Projections (currently 4 to 11 projection sources per player) and MDP rankings (currently 5 ADP sources) updated weekly
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
Related FanPosts on Minor League Ball
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Certain photos copyright © 2012 by Associated Press or Getty Images. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of Associated Press and Getty Images is strictly prohibited.
