Serious Baseball: Sammy Sosa Projections

Welcome to the final installment of “Serious Baseball’s” Projecting the Old-Timers series.

With this article I will project a 2006 season for 37 year-old Sammy Sosa who used to be one of baseball biggest superstars, but is now a joke punch line.

Here is how Sosa performed in an injury plagued 2005 for the Baltimore Orioles:

380 AB, .221/.295/.376, .671 OPS, 14 HR, 45 RBI

Obviously, he wasn’t that good at all. In his last two season’s combined his numbers aren’t much better:

858 AB, .239/.316/.455, .771 OPS, 49 HR, 125 RBI

While that Slugging Percentage is decent, is he really worth it when his OBP is .316, and his AVG is only .239? Essentially, Sosa is an out machine that every once in a while hits a HR.

Now, let’s see if Sosa will continue to be an out machine in 2006 for whomever he plays for.

We’ll start by looking at Sosa’s season-by-season progression in plate discipline (IPD: OBP minus AVG) in every season since 1990; his first full time season:



Sosa definitely has a very weird trend line here, but the only fact that can’t be drawn from this chart is that he has gotten more patient as he aged. Sosa is a rare, rare case indeed. From 1990 until 1997 he had only one season where he had average patience while every other season he was below average. Then in 1998 he had average discipline and in every season since then he’s been above average, although steadily declining since his peak IPD of .111 in 2002.

It’s as if after 1997 Sosa became a completely different player. I can’t come up with any reasons as to why this happened, and luckily that is not what this article concerns. What it does concern is how Sosa will perform in 2006, and it looks like next season Sosa’s patience isn’t going to get much better. Considering he was injured last season though, I’ll project a slight rebound in this category to a number between his 2004 and 2005 number.

In a full season worth of playing time in 2006, Sosa’s IPD would be 0.77.

Now let’s take a look at the facet of Sosa’s game that made him a superstar: His power. Here is his ISOP (SLG minus AVG) progression chart provided by FanGraphs.com:



The regression in Sosa’s power the past few seasons is even worse than the regression in his patience. At least his patience is still a tad above average. His power has regressed to the point where it was just average last year! That’s right, after a career of being consistently high above average in this category, Sosa is now just plain average.

Like I did for projecting Sosa’s patience though, I will take into account the fact the he was injured in 2005, and project a slight increase in this category in 2006.

Next season, Sosa’s ISOP will be .170.

To try and predict Sosa’s AVG, let’s take a look at Sosa’s BABIP every season of his career:



Seriously, is there a category that Sosa isn’t declining in the last three seasons?

Actually, the fact of the matter is that Sosa’s career BABIP is only .305, and the recent decline he’s been in just makes up for the up spike he had in this category in 2000 and 2001. It is likely that if Sosa has a healthy season next year his BABIP will increase. Not because he will be better in this category, but because of the good old fashion law that says a player’s BABIP will regress to the mean.

In 2006, Sosa’s BABIP will be .261.

Finally, if Sammy Sosa played a full season in 2006, whomever he plays for, he would post these numbers:

.241/.318/.411, 16 HR

Ok, so now that that last projection is done, let’s take a look at how all the old-timers will perform in 2006:

Frank Thomas in 2006: .268/.378/.543, .921 OPS, 28 HR

Mike Piazza in 2006: .271/.350/.441, .791 OPS, 20 HR

Sammy Sosa in 2006: .241/.318/.411, .729 OPS, 16 HR

It isn’t hard to see that Sosa is the one player out of the three that is due for the worst season. This is kind of weird since he, starting in 1998, became the biggest star of the three.

Sosa honestly isn’t worth a position on any club, while Piazza can be an average player. Both of them have injury problems though, essentially making their risk very high and I would understand if no team decided to sign these veterans. Thomas though, is unquestionably worth a full-time slot on any team and is worth the injury risk because he is still that good. If he does sign, it will most likely be to an American League team as a DH.

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