Serious Baseball: Projecting Derrek Lee

Anyone who read any of my articles at the end of the 2005 season would know that I adamantly believed that Derrek Lee of the Chicago Cubs should have won the National League MVP award. I thought it completely unfair that, despite Lee's superior statistical season, the voters instead selected the St. Louis Cardinals' Albert Pujols, favoring a candidate whose team made the playoffs.

That is the past, though. Here at Serious Baseball, we like to focus on the future, and that is exactly what I'm going to do by projecting Lee's 2006 season. Will Lee be able to follow what was very likely a career year in 2005 with a remotely comparable season in 2006?

Age	Year	PA	AB	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	HR	RBI	SB
		4691	4083	0.276	0.363	0.501	0.864	208	626	78
21	1997	63	54	0.259	0.365	0.370	0.735	1	4	0
22	1998	513	454	0.233	0.318	0.414	0.732	17	74	5
23	1999	236	218	0.206	0.263	0.326	0.589	5	20	2
24	2000	546	477	0.281	0.368	0.507	0.875	28	70	0
25	2001	625	561	0.282	0.346	0.474	0.820	21	75	4
26	2002	688	581	0.270	0.378	0.494	0.872	27	86	19
27	2003	643	539	0.271	0.379	0.508	0.887	31	92	21
28	2004	686	605	0.278	0.356	0.504	0.860	32	98	12
29	2005	691	594	0.335	0.418	0.662	1.080	46	107	15

Notice that I have not included any of my old favorite predictive statistics — IPD, ISOP, and BABIP. This time, I am trying a new methodology because while I believe that IPD, ISOP, and BABIP are good, there are too many subjective measures and outcomes mixed into these statistics. This new approach will take a closer look at the individual outcomes of a player's plate appearances by looking at a player's 1B%, 2B%, 3B%, HR%, K%, and BB%. By doing this, I can really see how a player produced what he did. When I see trends in these numbers, I can just project future percentages from those trends. Then I project a player's number of plate appearances and ABs based on career numbers and just multiply those by my projected percentages to come up with a batting line. Although this method obviously involves more number crunching, I believe that it is not only better and more in-depth, but also easier.

First, I present to you Derrek Lee's Hit Type Percentage chart. This chart shows what percentages of Lee's total ABs resulted in which type of hit (single, double, triple, or home run):

Age	Year	AB	1B	1B%	2B	2B%	3B	3B%	HR	HR%
		4083	646	0.1582	251	0.0615	22	0.0054	208	0.0509
21	1997	54	10	0.1852	3	0.0556	0	0	1	0.0185
22	1998	454	59	0.13	29	0.0639	1	0.0022	17	0.0374
23	1999	218	30	0.1376	9	0.0413	1	0.0046	5	0.0229
24	2000	477	85	0.1782	18	0.0377	3	0.0063	28	0.0587
25	2001	561	96	0.1711	37	0.066	4	0.0071	21	0.0374
26	2002	581	88	0.1515	35	0.0602	7	0.012	27	0.0465
27	2003	539	82	0.1521	31	0.0575	2	0.0037	31	0.0575
28	2004	605	96	0.1587	39	0.0645	1	0.0017	32	0.0529
29	2005	594	100	0.1684	50	0.0842	3	0.0051	46	0.0774

Please notice that Lee is significantly outperforming his career percentage for every single type of hit, except triples. He actually outperformed some of his previous career highs by so much that I am forced to look at his 2005 numbers as a fluke. In fact, I have chosen to weigh his performance in 2005 very lightly because of this. In other words, Lee's numbers from recent seasons before 2005 and his career numbers will mean much more than those from 2005 when I make projections for Lee's 2006 campaign.

However, if you look closely at the chart, you can see that, even before 2005, Lee was building on positive trends in many of these percentages. These are easy to see in Lee's season-by-season progression graphs (3B% is excluded because Lee is not really a triples hitter):

(Click on graphs for full-size images)

Accounting for these trends, and underweighting Lee's 2005 campaign, I was able to make very good projections for Lee's 2006 season.

(Projected %'s: Singles: .1596; doubles: .0672; triples: .0054; home runs: .0551)

Let's now look at what I call a patience chart, which shows how much percentage of Lee's total plate appearances resulted in a strikeout or a base on balls:

Age	Year	PA	SO	K%	BB	BB%
		4691	995	0.2121	525	0.1119
21	1997	63	24	0.3810	9	0.1429
22	1998	513	120	0.2339	47	0.0916
23	1999	236	70	0.2966	17	0.0720
24	2000	546	123	0.2253	63	0.1154
25	2001	625	126	0.2016	50	0.0800
26	2002	688	164	0.2384	98	0.1424
27	2003	643	131	0.2037	88	0.1369
28	2004	686	128	0.1866	68	0.0991
29	2005	691	109	0.1577	85	0.1230

Notice Lee's BB% trend. If you take out the aberration that was 2004, Lee is progressively walking less and less as the seasons go by. However, at the same time, he is also striking out less. In this four year span of decreased Ks and BBs, Lee has been his most productive (as measured by OPS). Obviously, Lee is a better player when he puts the ball in play. This formula doesn't work for every player, but it has for Lee.

(Click on graphs for full-size images)

Again, since last season was an obvious career year, Lee's 2005 performance in the patience categories will be under weighed. Doing this led me to project a K% of .1623 and a BB% of .1095 for Lee in 2006.

Lastly, since Lee is one of those rare first baseman who can swipe a bag, let's take a look at his performance with respect to stealing bases. Here are his season-by-season SB statistics:

Age	Year	SB	CS	SBA	SB%
		78	33	111	70%
21	1997	0	0	0	0%
22	1998	5	2	7	71%
23	1999	2	1	3	67%
24	2000	0	3	3	0%
25	2001	4	2	6	67%
26	2002	19	9	28	68%
27	2003	21	8	29	72%
28	2004	12	5	17	71%
29	2005	15	3	18	83%

We can see that Lee is far from the days when he was attempting 25+ stolen bases a year, but last year was also his best in SB%. I'm not going to weigh this facet of Lee's 2005 season lightly, as I did with his hitting statistics, because his base running is completely separate from what he did at the plate. I will project a SB% of 76 in 2006 for Lee. This percentage is better than his career SB%, but not as good as last season's. As far as the number of attempts he'll get, I'll stay within his recent range and project 17. This gives a SB/CS ratio of 13/4.

Now, coming up with a final batting line is easy. I just take my projected percentages and apply them to a projected 580 ABs and 671 plate appearances. Lee comes out with the following "counting" stats in 2006:

671 PA, 580 AB, 167 hits, 93 singles, 39 doubles, 3 triples, 32 home runs, 308 total bases, 109 Ks, 73 BBs, 5 HBPs, 6 SFs, 13 SBs

Note: Projected HBP and SF numbers are just rough estimates based on Lee's season-by-season outputs in these categories throughout his career.

All those above numbers translate to a 2006 batting line of .288/.365/.531.

This line does represent a large drop-off from Lee's 2005 campaign but is still better than his career numbers, which do include his 2005 numbers. Thus, while it is highly unlikely that Lee will not repeat his 2005 season, it is easy to see that Lee is a great offensive player and base runner. Although this article did not explore defense at all, Lee is also an excellent defensive first baseman, clearly making him one of the most valuable all-around players in baseball.

To say the least, Lee is a superstar, and if it weren't for Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals, he would widely be considered the best first baseman in the league.

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