ARLINGTON, TX - OCTOBER 10: Nelson Cruz #17 of the Texas Rangers hits a walk off grand slam home run in the bottom of the 11th inning to win Game Two of the American League Championship Series 7-3 against the Detroit Tigers at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington on October 10, 2011 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
In 2010 Nelson Cruz had a breakout performance by putting up a .318 / .374 / .576 slash line for a .950 OPS in 445 PA. His PA were limited by injuries but before the season started expectations were very high for Cruz to build off his 2010 and have an outstanding 2011. Some local and national writers even picked him to lead the AL in home runs during the spring. The LSB community had strong expectations as well, projecting a .928 OPS. However the projections were the most varied with a standard deviation on his Runs Created (RC) was 14.0, the highest of all position players.
| PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS | RMSE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LSB Average | 581 | .298 | .361 | .567 | .928 | 13.54% |
| ZiPS | 513 | .283 | .350 | .536 | .886 | 7.65% |
| Marcel | 474 | .283 | .349 | .514 | .863 | 8.02% |
| 2011 Results | 513 | .263 | .312 | .509 | .821 | 0.00% |
Nelson Cruz in 2011 was a disappointment compared to the expectations. He only put up an .821 OPS in 513 PA, twice spending time on the DL with the annual leg muscle issues. Much like Josh Hamilton's projections, the systems had much more subdued projections closer to his career numbers rather than his 2010 season.
Using a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) approach [lower is better] the top and bottom individual projections have PerfectZero at the top of the projections and Mark from OC at the bottom.Everyone's rankings can be found in this Google Spreadsheet and the top and bottom 5 shake out as:
| Top 5 | PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS | RMSE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Perfect Zero | 488 | .265 | .300 | .511 | .811 | 3.13% |
| 2. AfterSchoolSpecial | 505 | .265 | .315 | .542 | .857 | 3.39% |
| 3. Adam J. Morris | 539 | .271 | .337 | .518 | .855 | 5.06% |
| 4. hefe300 | 517 | .277 | .343 | .516 | .859 | 5.69% |
| 5. jshcmp | 520 | .270 | .333 | .567 | .900 | 6.78% |
| Bottom 5 | PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS | RMSE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 77. MikeEl | 565 | .330 | .400 | .600 | 1.000 | 21.60% |
| 78. Baseball North | 650 | .310 | .390 | .600 | .990 | 22.23% |
| 79. Winojohn | 688 | .302 | .378 | .605 | .983 | 23.38% |
| 80. JDT217 | 640 | .318 | .376 | .683 | 1.059 | 25.69% |
| 81. Mark from OC | 609 | .375 | .433 | .620 | 1.053 | 32.18% |


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