Serious Baseball: Frank Thomas Projections

While many free agent signings have take place so far this off-season, there are still a few notable free agents left unsigned at this moment in time. Three of which are very notable, and alike because they all fit in the same age group.

These three players are all well into their late thirties, and all have been superstars in past years. If you don’t know already, the three players I am talking about are Mike Piazza, Sammy Sosa, and Frank Thomas.

Thomas, to turn 38 in 2006, is a five-time All-Star and two time American League MVP that spent every single season of his 17 year playing for the Chicago White Sox.

Piazza, 37, is a twelve time All Star and former National League Rookie of the Year award winner (1993). He has hit the most HR’s of any catcher in the history of the game. His career has taken him through three cities: Los Angeles as a Dodger, Miami as a Florida Marlin, and for the last seven years he’s played in New York as a Met.

Sosa, 37, has 588 career HR’s, and has hit 35 or more HR’s in a season seven times. After spending 13 seasons as a Chicago Cub it was just last season when Sosa was traded to the Baltimore Orioles. Now he, like the other mentioned players, is a free agent looking for a home.

(As I write this article rumors are flying around that Sosa is close to signing with the Washington Nationals)

My little way to pay tribute to these three unforgettable players is to do what I like to do most, project an upcoming season for them. Just because these players don’t have a team, doesn’t mean I can’t predict how they’d perform in 2006.

So with that, this article becomes part one of a three part series where each part will be a different projection, for each old-timer.

First we will start with Frank Thomas.

In 2005 Thomas missed a lot of playing time for the second season in a row due to a navicular fracture in his left ankle. In 2004 Thomas only managed to get 240 AB’s, while last season he only managed 105.

This is the main reason nobody has yet signed this amazing hitter. Just take a look at his career statistics:

6956 AB, .307/.427/.568, .995 OPS, 448 HR, 1465 RBI (.120 IPD, .261 ISOP)

After that many AB’s, we definitely have enough data to let us know what kind of hitter Thomas is, and therefore, making his projection will be a little bit easier.

Let’s start with taking a look at how Thomas’s patience has progressed throughout his career (remember, the average IPD is between .065-.070):



We can obviously see one thing: that Thomas has always been great in this category. Unfortunately, the other thing that we can see is that in 2005, he had a drop-off of mammoth proportions in this category. These type of drop offs in players patience don’t just happen randomly though; especially to a player like Thomas. It’s obvious that Thomas rushed his approach in his short stint back. He wanted to make an impact, and he wanted to make it quickly. Because of this, he didn’t wait as long as he normally does for his pitch to hit.

Essentially what I am saying is that you shouldn’t look at last season’s drop off as an indicator of future regression. If Thomas played another full season, his IPD would be sure to be over .100, like it has his entire career.

Projecting a .110 figure in this category for Thomas next season is a very reasonable expectation.

When it comes to predicting a player’s power (ISOP), this is much different than his IPD. If Thomas had a drop-off in his ISOP figure in 2005 like he did in his IPD it would actually mean something because power is a facet of ones game that will diminish with age. While IPD will fluctuate over a player’s career, they will most likely always have very good patience, average patience, or bad patience. It would be very rare to see a player have a .035 IPD one year, and a .095 IPD the next, followed by another .035.

Anyways, here is Thomas’s ISOP progression chart (Provided by FanGraphs.com). The blue line represents the league average ISOP in each season:


Along with Thomas’s great patience, Thomas also has amazing power (did you ever wonder why he has been around so long?). He’s actually gotten better in each of his last four seasons in this category. If Thomas played a full season in 2006 you can be sure that his ISOP would be around his career number of .261 because he has shown no signs of losing it with age.

For 2006, if Thomas played a full season, his ISOP would be .275. Thomas is so good that even though I forced myself to project a slight regression in his ISOP due to his age, I still projected that high figure which is more than 100 points higher than average!

Now, we must look at the most alarming statistic of Thomas game, his BABIP. Just look at his progression chart in this category (Chart provided by FanGraphs.com):



Wow, it’s sort of surprising how a player as good as Thomas could be going through such a decline in this category. This is the one facet of his game where Thomas truly is showing his age.

Even though Thomas was injured in 2005, and we already determined that he was rushing to make an impact, the .177 BABIP he posted last year was the worst of his career, and is a bad sign. While I will project an improvement over that number he posted in 2005, he will still be below average in this part of the game in 2006 because he hasn’t shown an ability to be above average in this category since 2000.

If Thomas played a full season in 2006, his BABIP would be .265.

This increased BABIP (over his 2005 number) will definitely lead to an improvement over his 2005 season (.219/.315/.590, 12 HR, 26 RBI).

My projected season for Thomas in 2006 looks like so (based on 500+ AB):

.268/.378/.543, 28 HR

This is a great season. So why is it that Thomas is still unemployed? Obviously, teams are being very cautious with Thomas’s injury. But when Thomas was asked if he could play in 2006, he told the Chicago Tribune:

"I'm ready to go. I didn't like the reports that said I was a risk. That's not the case. No one gave me a physical to check. To call me a risk, that's a problem.”

Unfortunately I am not in the medical field, so I can’t elaborate on how long it should take Thomas to heal from this injury, and therefore couldn’t give an answer as to whether he should be ready for 2006.

If some team is willing to take the risk though (a risk that Thomas says doesn’t exist), they could be getting a very good player for next 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.