Painting the Black: Sa... (08/13)
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August 13, 2012 Overthinking ItThe Adam Jones Extension RevisitedThe Orioles went 29-18 through May 25th. Since then, they’re two games under .500. You know about the crazy record in one-run games (22-6!), the related crazy record in extra-inning games (12-2!), and the other fluky factors (Pedro Strop’s BABIP!) that have kept a team with a run differential of nearly negative 50 in contention with six weeks of regular season remaining. But for those first two months of the season, something a little less fluky, if equally fleeting, was keeping the Orioles afloat: Adam Jones was on fire. Jones wasn’t literally on fire. Lighting fires under players is most effective when the flames are metaphorical. In the NBA Jam sense, though, Jones’ bat was burning up. Through the end of May, he hit .314/.365/.618, with 16 home runs. Only Josh Hamilton and Edwin Encarnacion hit more over the same span. Jones’ career high for homers was 25, and he was on pace to blow by that before the end of June. I mentioned the Orioles’ record through May 25th earlier, not just because it made for a convenient arbitrary endpoint, but because the following day, they signed Jones to a six-year, $85.5 million extension. That day, May 26th, was a good day to be an Orioles fan, which is not something you can say about very many days since, oh, 1997 or so. The O’s were in first place, Adam Jones was by far their best player, and he’d agreed to be in Baltimore until 2018. If you looked closely, there wasn’t a lot to like about the 2012 Orioles. But there was plenty to like about Jones. Still, not everyone approved of the move. BP alum Joe Sheehan summed up the objections of the anti-extension crowd by observing that the Orioles had bought high:
Other BP alum Keith Law pointed out that Jones had hit just as well through the same point in a prior season, only to tail off thereafter:
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You know, a player who posts a .983 OPS for the first third of the season and a .785 OPS the rest of the season is not the same as a player who posts a .785 OPS for a whole season, right?
Sure, he's not a 1.000 OPS player, but it's entirely possible - even probable - that he's better than .785, and I would bet that PECOTA will agree (unless he falls apart the next five weeks).
PECOTA doesn't agree. His rest-of-season forecast is for a .278 TAv, which is actually worse than he was in 2011. PECOTA factors several years of past data into its projections, so it never bets on the breakout.
But .278 is the new projection. A TAv of .271 was the preseason PECOTA. Ergo, he's shown PECOTA that he's somewhat better than it had thought. TAv of .278 was his ~65th%ile preseason projection, now it's the median for the remainder of the year.
Again, I'm not saying that we should bet on the breakout being the "new normal" for him. But neither was the breakout meaningless.
No, definitely not meaningless, just not so meaningful that PECOTA thinks he's better than he's been since May. The system is still factoring in his seasons in the .260s and below, so unless he gets very, very hot between now and the end of the season, I'd expect that it would project him for a lower TAv in 2013 than he'll finish with in 2012.
I see what you're saying, thanks for taking the time.