What Can We Expect From Sammy Sosa in 2004?
Here are Sammy Sosa’s numbers from the past four seasons, along with his Baseball Prospectus PECOTA projection for 2004:
Year Age PA BA. OBA. Slg. OPS OPS+ 2000 31 705 .320 .406 .634 1040 169 2001 32 711 .328 .437 .737 1174 201 2002 33 666 .288 .399 .594 993 160 2003 34 589 .279 .358 .553 911 135 2004 35 517 .276 .374 .549 923 ??
Interestingly, PECOTA doesn’t predict a further fall from 2003. Sosa is projected to have substantially the same OPS in 2004, albeit in fewer plate appearances. That makes sense. Sosa suffered at times last year, first as the result of the toenail injury, and then as the result of the loss of timing due to 1) going on the DL for the injury and 2) being suspended after the corked bat incident. Partly as a result, Sosa’s 2003 OPS was 9.4% below his 2003 PECOTA projection. Sosa should resume a more normal decline from his 1998-2001 highs in 2004.
After looking at Sosa’s production last year again, and his projection for 2004, I started to worry that perhaps the other Central division contenders had caught up with the Cubs in terms of offensive production out of right field. That would have created the unfortunate situation of the Cubs’ best offensive player not even being the best offensive rightfielder in the division. But they haven’t caught up yet. Here are the projections for next year using the more advanced metric (and thus a ballpark neutral metric) Marginal Lineup Value Rate (MLVr), which measures the number of runs per game a player produces above or below an average player:
Player Team MLVr x150 Sosa Cubs 0.21 31.5 Hidalgo Astros 0.12 18 Kearns Reds 0.12 18 Sanders Cardinals 0.06 9
The right column is MLVr mulitplied by 150 games played. That gives us a projection of Sosa contributing 31.5 more runs to his team than an average player would over the course of 150 games played.
So we can expect Sosa will still be the best offensive rightfielder in the division, at least for one more year. Hidalgo’s and Kearns’s defense certainly help close the gap, but not completely.
For a reference point, Barry Bonds is projected to once again lead the majors in MLVr, at 0.75, almost twice the rate of any other player. Alex Rodriguez, Todd Helton, and Albert Pujols tie for second at 0.38.