Serious Baseball: David Wright

As I mentioned in the article I wrote about Chase Utley about a week and a half ago, I enjoy making projections on players. When the Utley article was published though, baseball was still in the middle of it’s League Championship Series, and I said:

“I know the 2005 season isn’t even over yet, and I’m probably one of the first writers making predictions on 2006, but this is what I love to do…”

Now though, after the Chicago White Sox successfully capped off their championship season with a 1-0 victory over the Houston Astros last night, it’s officially the off-season, and it’s ok to make projections; so I’m in the clear.

I’m almost jumping out of my seat to get started here, and I believe I’ve chosen a great player to start the off-season projections in New York Mets third baseman David Wright.

I will be using the same methods I used to project a 2006 season for Utley, on Wright.

First, lets have a look at every season in Wright’s career since he entered the Mets organization at the age of eighteen:

Year	Level	Age	AB	AVG	OBP	SLG	HR	OPS	IPD	ISOP
2001	R	18	120	0.300	0.386	0.458	4	0.844	0.086	0.158
2002	A	19	496	0.266	0.367	0.401	11	0.768	0.101	0.135
2003	A	20	466	0.270	0.369	0.459	15	0.828	0.099	0.189
2004	AA	21	223	0.363	0.467	0.619	10	1.086	0.104	0.256
2004	AAA	21	114	0.298	0.388	0.579	8	0.967	0.090	0.281
2004 (Mets)	MLB	21	263	0.293	0.332	0.525	14	0.857	0.039	0.232
2005 (Mets)	MLB	22	575	0.306	0.388	0.523	27	0.911	0.082	0.217

This is what you call a “phenom” folks. Wrights only “bad” season occurred at the age of 19 in A-Ball, and he still had a .367 OBP in 496 AB’s!

To start figuring how he’ll perform in 2006, we will start by looking at his IPD and ISOP numbers, as I always do.

Wright’s progress in plate discipline is well displayed in the graph below:

Remember, league average IPD is around .060, meaning that Wright has always been above average in this aspect of the game. The only time he dropped below this level was in his half season debut last season on the big club. As you can see by his jump in this category in 2005 though, Wright clearly has adjusted. He still has a little ways to go though until he reaches his average IPD (.096) through his minor league career. I don’t believe I’m going out on a limb by saying the kid is only going to get better here.

Will he necessarily get better next season though? I actually think that pitchers and defenses may catch up with Wright a little in his third season in the league and he will stay around the level of plate discipline he showed in 2005, which is still great.

Now, let’s use his ISOP numbers to see how much raw power Wright possesses. As we did with IPD, here is a chart showing Wright’s progress in ISOP:



Wright has clearly made huge leaps in this category, but has dropped slightly since his 2004 season in Triple-A. Since I believe pitchers are going to catch up with Wright a little next season, I expect another slight downfall in this category, though he’ll still be above .200, which like his plate discipline, is still great.

Lastly we must look at how David Wright’s batting average is going to progress into 2005. As I’ve stated in earlier articles, this is very hard to do, but the best way to make an attempt at it is by knowing a player’s BABIP (Batting Average On Balls in Play).

The League Average BABIP is around .300 and in 2005 Wright’s BABIP was .335. To put this simply, this number has to fall. I mean it just HAS to. This high BABIP is something that is absolutely necessary for individual great season’s to occur, but not something that happens often.

Watch for Wright’s BABIP to regress to the mean in 2006, making his overall numbers suffer accordingly. With this educated guess now made, I can now make a projection on Wright’s overall numbers in 2006.

My belief that pitchers and defense will “catch up” with Wright a tad in 2006, combined with a regression to the mean BABIP means his 2006 season will look like so (based on 500+ AB’s):

.291/.371/.496 (.867 OPS), 23 HR’s.

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