During my fantasy baseball research I found a pretty interesting note when regarding spring training stats. From Yahoo.com

"For the past six seasons John Dewan (founder of STATS, Inc., co-founder of Baseball Info Solutions, Author of Stat of the Week and The Fielding Bible) successfully predicted break out seasons for hitters at a 60-percent rate using spring training slugging percentages. 60-percent may not sound too accurate, but many other methods of projecting the outcome of a players performance at a season's end usually sit closer to 30-percent."

The criteria for finding these players is rather simple. If a player with at least 200 career major league at-bats posts a slugging percentage at least 200 points higher than his career average in 40 or more spring training at-bats, he is poised for a break out year. In 2010, the player who posted the largest difference was none other than Toronto Blue Jay Jose Bautista. His spring training slugging percentage was 484 points higher than his career mark. Other notables on the list were Troy Tulowitzki, Nelson Cruz and Will Venable. As you can see by looking at the complete 2010 list, 60-percent is a pretty accurate number of players that may not have had break out years, but definitely improved on their previous career performances at the plate.

His 2012 crop played out like this. I am Using wOBA as my chosen offensive metric. A gain or loss of less than 29 points will fall under small gain/loss, of over 29 a large gain/loss, These are the players who received over 100 plate appearances in 2012 who had a spring training slugging % 200% higher than career average.

Large Gain: Carlos Ruiz +65, Alex Gonzalez +60, John Lucroy +67, Alfonso Soriano +30, Tyler Colvin +147 Aj Pierzynski +51, Melky Cabrera +46, Austin Kearns +57, Travis Snider +37

Small Gain: Andre Ether +5, Cody Ross +24, Joe Mather, +4, Chris Young +14, Delmon Young +1, Ryan Zimmerman +4, Billy Butler +25

Small Decline: Darwin Barney -7, Albert Pujols -24, Alex Gordon -25

Large Decline: Ryan Rayburn -100, Howie Kendrick -33 Ian Kinsler -37, Eric Hosmer -52, Jemile Weeks -117, Curtis Granderson -49, Chris Snyder -75

In this population size the % chance of wOB Gain is 61%, right along the lines of the 2010 numbers. So what does this data tell us? In my eyes, this is a good indicator of potential offensive gain. Moreover it gives me as a fan hope. It gives me a number to watch out for when it comes to the Mariners young veterans, and in these spring training months that's all I can ask for.

Here are the Mariners Slugging% targets for Spring Training of 2013

(in order of career at bats)

Raul Ibanez 670

Jason Bay 685

Franklin Gutierrez 584

Brendan Ryan 527

Kendrys Morales 691

Kelly Shoppach 618

Michael Morse 692

Justin Smoak 577

Robert Andino 523

Michael Saunders 565

Dustin Ackley 560

Kyle Seager 612

Eric Thames 631

Casper Wells 635

Jesus Montero 608

Carlos Peguero 567

As im watching Justin Smoak and Carlos Peguero get off to hot starts, I have these numbers in the back of my head. I'm irrationally hoping they can slug over their Dewan lines, and the 2013 World Series parade is led by The Smoakmonster and Peggy Bats.

Happy hoping to you all and go M's!