Serious Baseball: J.D. Drew

I want to first go on record saying that I did not want the Red Sox to sign J.D. Drew. While I know he is extremely talented and has great patience at the plate, I just don't trust him to stay healthy for an entire season. It’s as simple as that. Heck, I don't even trust him to stay healthy enough to muster 500 AB's!

Drew is now 31 years old and has averaged 395 AB's per season for his entire career. So while the Red Sox are going to get a great player for approximately that many AB's, what are they supposed to do about the other 150-200 AB's? Whether a team has a decent replacement or not (which the Red Sox do in Wily Mo Pena), you just don't pay a guy for showing up to work roughly two-thirds of the time, right?

Now I know there are many readers who will read the preceding paragraphs and say Drew's last two injuries did not occur because he is injury-prone. They’ll be thinking that they were "freak" accidents that won't happen again because both of Drew's last two injuries were the results of getting hit by a pitch.

To those folks I say, "Weren't you uttering those same words after the first time he went on the DL because of getting beaned?" You see, pitchers know things (a lot of things) and they have this amazing capability to watch video and study hitters. And you can bet your life that they know Drew is “slow on the trigger” when it comes to getting out of the way of an inside pitch. So, where do you think they are going to throw the ball while they’re busy trying to get the man out?

Now I'm not predicting that Drew will get hit by another pitch in 2007 that ends his season prematurely. What I am saying is that the chances of it happening to him are much better than that of pretty much any other player. And with baseball being played in a competitive arena, where players will do anything to gain an edge, you can expect that opposing pitchers will look to take full advantage. Factor this in with the absolute fact that Drew is injury-prone and, "Presto," you have a player that may give you two fully healthy seasons with three injury-shortened ones in between throughout the tenure of his five-year contract.

With that in mind, let's try and project how the injury-riddled, reflex-challenged right-fielder will perform offensively in 2007 as a Red Sox in Fenway Park.

Before I get started I'd like to point out that I have a new, much more complicated projection system this season that I believe will be more accurate.

Using my new handy-dandy "Bill James Handbook," which provides me with all left-handed and right-handed park factors for every ballpark from 2004 through 2006 (I am aware of the errors made in the book and have used the corrected park factors posted here) I went back and "neutralized" each of Drew's last three seasons and then projected a 2007 season using rates stats created from these "neutralized" seasons (AB/BB, AB/HR, AB/2B, etc.) through a little trend analysis and common sense.

For example, if I see an aging batter’s extra base hit rates dropping and his home runs increasing, I will base my projected park-neutral figures on the assumption that he is developing “old-man skills” and predict general decline.

Once I finished coming up with Drew's "neutral" projected season I just "plugged" it into his 2007 home ballpark (Fenway Park) using the stadium’s 2004-2006 combined park factors to come up with a final projection.

To start, let's have a look at Drew's past three “actual” seasons:

Now, here are those same three seasons “neutralized” using the park factors we spoke of earlier (Drew was an Atlanta Brave in 2004, and a Los Angeles Dodger in ‘05 and ‘06):

To project a 2007 season for Drew I only used numbers from the second chart. This way I would come up with a projection that was free of factors that a park could affect.

Here is the “neutral” season I came up with:

395 AB, .281/.390/.473 (.863 OPS), 14 HR, 73 RBI.

That isn’t my final projected season, however. To come up with that, I had to “plug” those numbers into Fenway Park.  Before showing you those “final” numbers, though, I’d like to point out a few intricacies of Fenway Park (Drew’s new home ballpark) and Dodger Stadium (Drew’s old home ballpark) that may not be known.

While it is widely believed that Dodger Stadium is not a favorable park for HR’s and that Fenway Park is, park factors reveal that it’s actually the complete opposite. Using park factors calculated using data from 2004-2006 Fenway Park had a HR factor of 86, while Dodger Stadium came in at 110. Remember, a park factor of 100 means a park played completely neutral while a number above 100 means that park favored that particular event, and vice versa for numbers under 100.

Essentially, it was 14% (100 minus 86) harder to hit a HR in Fenway Park the last three seasons than at a neutral ballpark, while it was 10% easier (100 minus 110) to hit a HR in Dodger Stadium.

This trend becomes even more lopsided when considered for left-handed hitters (like Drew). In that same time span the HR factor at Fenway Park for lefties is a mind-blowing 77, while at Dodger Stadium it’s 109. That means that in the past three seasons it has been 23% tougher (100 minus 77) for a left-handed hitter to hit a HR at Fenway Park, while at Dodger Stadium it was 9% easier (109 minus 100).

So with that fact in mind, it should not come as a surprise to you when you see the low amount of HR’s I have projected Drew to hit next season.

Here is how Drew is projected to perform in Fenway in 2007:

395 AB’s, .287/.394/.476 (.870 OPS), 12 HR, 74 RBI

Oh, and by the way, as you can see with the 395 projected AB’s, I have predicted “Fragile-man” to be injured for some time next season (not coincidentally this is his career season average as mentioned above).

As far as how good a projection this is, one will never know until the conclusion of the 2007 season; but I was able to assess how my new method worked compared to a proven projection system: Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA. A few weeks back, when the deal between Drew and the Red Sox had initially been reported, BP decided to release their 2007 PECOTA projection for him earlier than normal:

405 AB’s***, .286/.395/.472 (.867 OPS) 14 HR, 60 RBI

***PECOTA actually projects 475 PA’s. I just subtracted the amount of BB’s they projected—70--to come up with the 405 projected AB’s***

Scary, huh? My projection is almost identical to PECOTA's—this tells me my new system can’t be that bad; even though we’re only talking about one player.

Now this doesn’t mean I have found the formula that PECOTA uses…not even close. Baseball Prospectus’ system is far more complicated, and better, in that it uses players from the past that match current players’ profiles and looks at how they performed at certain ages to come up with much more accurate projections. PECOTA is a much, much better system than the little one I just used, and the two should never be thought of as even comparable.

With that said though, it is interesting how close the two projections are. At least at the end of the season when Drew piles up 575 AB’s while batting .313/.432/.605, with 37 HR, and 126 RBI I can say that not only was I wrong…but Baseball Prospectus was as well.

I look forward to using this system more as the off season wears on and I get closer and closer to falling into a deep depression since baseball is out of season.

Thank you for reading. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions, please do not hesitate to email me at frnkbndy@yahoo.com.