2006--Setting the Stage

Players to Watch

by Rany Jazayerli

A year ago, I set the stage for the new season with an article on a half-dozen players who I thought, after consulting the statistical tea leaves, were poised for breakout seasons. If you read the article, you would have seen that I predicted Chad Cordero to have a big year. Hopefully you were just skimming, and missed the parts where I foresaw great things from Zach Day, Calvin Pickering, Juan Cruz, and D'Angelo Jimenez.

Well, if you don’t want to strike out, don’t swing for the fences. Still, by any reasonable measure that was a truly awful piece of prognostication.

Despite my embarassment, I’m back to try my hand at this soothsaying gig once more. But rather than issue foolhardy proclamations of imminent greatness from the three players listed below, I will merely argue that all three are, for various reasons, worth watching very carefully this season.

The Starter

My favorite misconception about Baseball Prospectus is that we’re monolithic; we all believe the same dogma, reciting our catechisms about on-base percentage and TINSTAAPP before we go to bed every night.

Anyone who thinks that everyone at BP believes the same things has never seen Joe Sheehan and I argue. Our latest flashpoint is A.J. Burnett. Sheehan has maligned the Blue Jays’ signing of Burnett from day one, writing that “no matter how much money he makes, A.J. Burnett doesn’t look like more than a mid-rotation guy with some durability questions.”

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