Cheap in 2010 - Jay Bruce

As commenter Andrew* pointed out a few weeks ago next year will be an interesting year for Jay Bruce. In his first two years in the bigs Bruce has showed serious power potential but widely divergent BABIP results (.298/.222 respectively.) While Bill James sees him putting it together in '10 to the tune of 38 dingers fans are a bit less optimistic, projecting Bruce at 28 HR's as of this writing. Both projections put him around the 90's for R's and RBI and mid to high single digits for Steals. When you combine those numbers with the youth and breakout potential of Bruce you get a solid second or third OF who could challenge some of the top OF's for value in 2010.
Jay's current ADP over at mockdraftcentral.com is 124th, near guys like Michael Cuddyer, Denard Span, and Nyjer Morgan. Bruce is probably the most likely of this group to breakout and I'd lay better than even money that he outperforms these guys even without a breakout-type season.

Keep an eye on Bruce's ADP; if it's still lingering in the 9th ot 10th round on draft day then he'll be an excellent value in '10. Remember that taking a guy a round or two earlier than market value is not overpaying if you value him at two or three rounds better than market value.



* Check out Andrew's comments in the Cheap in 2010 comment section if you want to see more number crunching on Bruce's potential.

Friday Rewind

I hadn't done this in awhile, but thought we should get back to doing this weekly as free agent signings will play a big role in values for 2010.

- Red Sox sign Marco Scutaro for 2 years

- When is a rumor worth believing?

- Who to keep Cueto, Joba or Slowey?

- Clone Wars looks at John Lackey and Jason Hammel

Also make sure to follow RotoSavants by the following means:

- RSS Feed
- Twitter @TroyPatterson

Fangraphs fan projections

In case you haven't heard fangraphs.com is starting a new projection system based on the wisdom of crowds idea and have asked their readers to make projections for 2010 to see how we as a group stack up against traditional projection systems like Marcel, Chone, and ZiPS.

The system is easy to use, although you do have to be registered with fangraphs, and quicker than you might think. Each offensive player can be projected in ten categories from games played and position to walk % and UZR, while pitchers can be projected in eight categories from innings pitched to HR/9. Each category can be projected in a range, so if you think Jay Bruce will hit 29 HR you can project him in the 25-29 category but you can't be more specific than that. You can also leave categories blank if you don't feel like projecting them.

This is definitely a cool idea from fangraphs and it will be interesting to see how well the fans as a group do compared to the expert systems. The fan projections will only become visible on each player's page once at least thirty ballots have been cast for him so go give it a shot.