I traded Andy Marte for Matt Kemp so I am pleased with your crystal ball. Do you think he has that kind of potential? Or is he just on a hot streak right now? When I look at Kemp he looks like a baseball player.

Nice touch.  Can't wait until they open up Cuba.

Who's a better bet for long-term success and who will have the biggest impact, Francoeur or Kemp?

so do the dodgers win it all in 2012 when laroche, guzman and kemp are all hitting close to 30 bombs and billingsley wins the cy young? hehe :)

... then he's a star.  Otherwise, still a very nice career.

Looks good, really good. He has all the tools to make these numbers a reality, but two things I think are a bit too optimistic:

First, I see him as more of a .260-.275 hitter not a career .285 hitter.

And second, while he certainly has the ability to steal bases at a large clip, I don't see him swiping that many over his career (especially as his frame fills out even more)

All in all, a fine career projection.

I'm surprised you see Kemp tailing off pretty early.

I agree with the above poster who mentioned the CF thing.

If he puts up these numbers with above average/gold glove defense in CF, he's borderline HOF. Otherwise they look similar to Reggie Sanders' numbers with a bit more RBI potential.

John Sickels forecasted career statistics for Kemp are fair. This is one of the many reasons why sports are so great! The unknown. haha yeah nice touch with Cigars.

Hey John, just want to thanks for taking in my suggestion.

I'm not sure that he would be able to maintain generally good AVG like that, including several above .300, with less than optimal plate discipline. I would expect a few less .300 seasons, and a few more .270-.280 seasons.

Strikes me that the Kemp/Reggie Sanders comparison is a fair one.  Kemp's projected career numbers fall in line with Sanders (numbers shown through:

Kemp made his Major League debut at 21, Sanders at 23 with a brief call-up.  Sanders was 24 when he earned a regular spot in the Cincinnati line-up.

The projection has Kemp playing to age 37 (he would turn 38 in September 2022.  Sanders is a Major League regular at age 38, though with the Major League's worst team.  Sanders is playing well enough to hang on for at least another year as a fourth outfielder, if he chooses.

Sanders's injury history is well chronicled - he only has had one season where he played at least 140 games in his entire career.  The projection has Kemp playing at least 146 games in 10 of the next 12 seasons.  To me, this suggests Kemp will move rather quickly to a corner outfield position.  He current weight at an early age does not tell me he will be a career center fielder unless his conditioning and dietary habits are off the charts.

Another comparison point is Larry Walker, who like Kemp, was a larger person - Kemp is 6-2, 230;
Walker was 6-3, 215 or so for much of his career (Sanders is currently listed at 6-1, 205, but he was about 20 pounds lighter when he was Kemp's age now).  

Games:  Kemp 2146, Walker 1988
AB: Kemp 8008, Walker 6907
Average: Kemp .284, Walker .313
HR: Kemp 367, Walker 383
RBI:  Kemp 1330, Walker 1311
SB: Kemp 276, Walker 230
BB: Kemp 711, Walker 913
SO: Kemp 1483, Walker 1231

Of course, Walker has his injury battles too -- he only had four season in a 17-year career where he topped 140 games.  

Of course, not every outfielder has the injury problems that Sanders and Walker had during their careers.  There's Steve Finley, who has been remarkably healthy considering his style of play.  Finley is a player, however, who morphed from a low-power speed guy early in his career (.292-5-55-44 at age 27) into a 30-HR power hitter late in his career (a career high 36 HR at age 39).  Finley's career totals are an interesting point of comparison for Kemp, but when Finley was in his early 20s, he projected to be completely different kind of player than he became in his 30s.

Finally, how is this for a comparison:

Games:  Matt Kemp 2146, Ruben Sierra 2179 (+33)
AB: Kemp 8008, Sierra 8032 (+24)
Hits: Kemp 2272, Sierra 2150 (-122)
Average: Kemp .284, Sierra .268
HR: Kemp 367, Sierra 306 (-61)
RBI:  Kemp 1330, Sierra 1320 (-10)
SB: Kemp 276, Sierra 142 (-134)
BB: Kemp 711, Sierra 609 (-102)
SO: Kemp 1483, Sierra 1320 (-163)
2B: Kemp 435, Sierra 428 (-7)
3B: Kemp 59, Sierra 59 (tie)

The numbers are eeriely similar - but nobody in their right mind would project Sierra's journey to get there.

And I doubt MLB would think it could sell tickets there, and they'd probably be right.  Mexico City isn't any farther from the rest of the MLB cities than Seattle is, but they'd never put a team there, and it's per capita income is much higher than a capitalist Havana's would be any time within 25-30 years.  That's with the highly questionable assumption that such a government would even be stable--check out Russia, though the U.S. media perpetuates the fiction that it's become a 'democracy.'  Chances are that the Cuba of 20 years from now will be more like Haiti than Mexico, let alone New York or Miami.

Believable projection and I love certain bits that smack of reality like--
       The Cigars
       The fact that he has a standout year in presumably his free agent year and goes to another club.

Which team gets moved to Cuba?

...probably would have paid a lot for Kemp, but it looks like they'll get their money's worth.  It would be nice to have Pence in LF and Kemp in CF and Iorg in RF for a few years.

Playing in Dodger Stadium and lacking plate discipline, Kemp is much more likely to hit .240-.260 than .280-.300 when the dust settles.  He does however look to have big-time power, and that if anything might grow.  My guess is that he's more likely to hit 50 homers in a season than to hit .300 several times.