I better hurry the hell up if I want to be done with these things by Monday. Don't forget to swing by USSM, since Dave's covering the pitchers.
AB: 556 (536)
2B: 35 (38)
3B: 5 (2)
HR: 10 (9)
HBP: 3 (1)
BB: 21 (15)
K: 55 (48)
SB: 12 (5)
CS: 7 (4)
GB%: 46 (43)
BA: .291 (.289)
OBP: .321 (.308)
SLG: .424 (.418)
IsoPa: .029 (.019)
IsoPo: .132 (.129)
An observation:
Johjima projected walk rate increase: 43%
Lopez projected walk rate increase: 38%
Betancourt projected walk rate increase: 35%
I have a theory about this. When people are filling out their projections, they're trying their hardest to be realistic. That's the whole point of the exercise; wild-ass guesses would render the project entirely worthless. So with that in mind, when people were entering their data for Johjima/Lopez/Betancourt, they threw in a few extra free passes because they didn't think it was humanly possible for someone to walk so infrequently. Well guess what? You sons of bitches are wrong. It is possible, and these three players are living proof.
Anyway, walks aside, there's not too much that's different here. Yuni's put up back-to-back identical seasons, and you guys see more of the same coming up. High average, low OBP, limited power, and enough stolen base attempts to make us wonder why Yuni ever bothers trying to steal. Nothing extraordinary, but slightly above average for his position. For $1.25m, that's a heck of a deal.
So once again, it looks like most of the attention will be paid not to Yuni's bat, but to his glove. We're still waiting for his defensive stats to catch up to his stellar reputation, but if it doesn't happen now, that'll give us three and a half seasons' worth of data calling him ~average. That's a pretty significant sample, and one that'd force us to re-consider just how valuable a player Yuni really is. I mean, the decent offense and low price already make him valuable enough, but elite-level defense would make him one of the better steals in the league. If he doesn't really have it, I guess we'll just have to settle for "good", instead of "mind-blowingly awesome". Raspberries.
Prediction: Yuni's offense barely changes, but nevertheless attracts quite a bit more criticism than it did last year due to a little clutch situation regression to the mean.