2011 Community Projections Review: Mike Napoli

by Brad on Nov 29, 2011 1:00 PM CST

When Mike Napoli was acquired for Frankie Francisco most Rangers fans thought he'd be a part time player who would catch a bit (and with his defensive reputation the smaller the bit the better), play first a bit and DH a bit. He was clearly a guy with a decent bat, but was more well known for being one of the best mashers in baseball against left handed pitching. Napoli had also only had over 500 PA once in his career due to a combination of injury history and splitting time with Jeff Mathis in LA. The projections reflected this with a decent .837 OPS and a moderate 395 PA.

	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	RMSE
LSB Average	395	.270	.345	.492	.837	16.42%
ZiPS	419	.254	.341	.505	.847	16.91%
Snark (Marcel)	498	.253	.330	.467	.797	20.97%
2011 Results	432	.320	.414	.631	1.045	0.00%

However, instead of being decent, Napoli's 2011 season was unbelievably awesome. He didn't quite have enough PA to have a qualifying season due missing almost a month to injury and his early usage, but if he had his numbers would have been near the top of the leader boards. His .320 / .414 / .631 slash line would have been 5th, 3rd and 1st in the AL respectively. Napoli's 1.045 OPS and 178 wRC+ would have only trailed Jose Bautista as well. For historical perspective, that 178 wRC+ was the second best offensive performance [relative to the rest of the league] in the history of the Texas Rangers franchise after Josh Hamilton's 2010 year where he had a 180 wRC+.

Interestingly enough, both his 13.4% walk rate and .312 ISO were not career highs... but his .344 BABIP was 23 points higher than his previous high and was only the second time he's ever surpassed .300 in that measure. Also his strikeout rate plummeted to 19.7%, well below his career numbers that were over 25% coming into the season. By Runs Created (RC) he outperformed his projections by 60%, easily highest among the projected position players.

Using a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) approach [lower is better] the top and bottom individual projections have John08Patriot at the top of the projections and Bigfan16 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. John08Patriot	400	.285	.370	.550	.920	10.63%
2. Rossome	431	.289	.364	.499	.863	13.01%
3. Conjunction	350	.290	.370	.550	.920	13.47%
4. Philar	400	.285	.365	.502	.867	13.53%
5. erudy	435	.275	.365	.495	.860	14.17%

Bottom 5	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	RMSE
72. Brother_jd	340	.259	.329	.450	.779	22.70%
73. badradiorules	425	.247	.289	.443	.732	24.10%
74. MikeEl	300	.245	.305	.445	.750	27.59%
75. Gay For Feliz	320	.246	.287	.435	.722	27.90%
76. Bigfan16	170	.212	.268	.410	.678	42.68%

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Comments

He's so guh-REASY!!!!

"Back in Irish's day you had to kill a man before you were taken seriously in polite society." - Aquaman56 06/25/10

by Samuel_L_Bronkowitz on Nov 29, 2011 1:06 PM CST reply actions

slight improvement over my Murphy projection

by erudy on Nov 29, 2011 1:07 PM CST reply actions

Noooooo

I hate The Angels so much, it's actually cramping my style. (See RevHaloFans SBN profile page)

by Gay For Feliz on Nov 29, 2011 1:26 PM CST via mobile reply actions

I was only one out of the bottom 5

Still going for last place ha.

AND I am so glad I was wrong about this trade. I believed the hype that Napoli was not good at calling games.

by Mark from OC on Nov 29, 2011 2:58 PM CST reply actions

Definitely not my finest hour.

Naps turned me into a believer about half way through the season. Now I’m wondering if he could challenge Bautista in offensive production next season.

by MikeEl on Nov 29, 2011 4:15 PM CST reply actions

Well here's the thing.

His BABIP went up by like 50 points from 2010 to 2011… but his LD rate didn’t change at all.

I think Napoli can probably give you a .280 / .380 / .540 type line next year… which is still fantastic. But another 1.000+ OPS year is probably very unlikely. Even expecting a .920 OPS is kinda unlikely.

"I became an optimist when I discovered that I wasn't going to win any more games by being anything else." by Earl Weaver

by Brad on Nov 29, 2011 4:31 PM CST up reply actions

Yeah

The BA is what I see dropping. Power and walks should stick around for quite a while.

"By MLB.TV, we can see J. Hamilton's homer, M. Young's clutch, and N. Feliz's explosive. All about Rangers things can be our interest" --South Korean Rangers fan

I'm a Web & TV Sports Producer at WFAA. Feel free to email me about anything.

by Conjunction on Nov 29, 2011 4:32 PM CST up reply actions

Keep in mind

my projection was based on the belief that he’d pretty much only face lefties.
Napoli’s performance this year was ridiculous for a couple of reasons… the fact that he hit righties so well is one huge reason.

"By MLB.TV, we can see J. Hamilton's homer, M. Young's clutch, and N. Feliz's explosive. All about Rangers things can be our interest" --South Korean Rangers fan

I'm a Web & TV Sports Producer at WFAA. Feel free to email me about anything.

by Conjunction on Nov 29, 2011 4:27 PM CST reply actions

350 PA is still a high number if it was just lefties.

I you can probably only top out around 150 PA or so if you truly only face lefties.

"I became an optimist when I discovered that I wasn't going to win any more games by being anything else." by Earl Weaver

by Brad on Nov 29, 2011 4:29 PM CST up reply actions

Hmm

salient point. He had 135 PAs against them last year. Granted, he wasn’t healthy all year long, but yeah. Point still stands, though, that he faced far more righties than I envisioned.

"By MLB.TV, we can see J. Hamilton's homer, M. Young's clutch, and N. Feliz's explosive. All about Rangers things can be our interest" --South Korean Rangers fan

I'm a Web & TV Sports Producer at WFAA. Feel free to email me about anything.

by Conjunction on Nov 29, 2011 4:31 PM CST up reply actions

So I was way the ff off on all the numbers except ABs

Which I was off by 1 and I get 2nd. Not sure how the system works exactly, but I know thats a big part of it, but that just tells me we were all WAY off. In a GREAT way.

I’ve now made the top 2 twice. Damn right.

by Rossome on Nov 29, 2011 5:11 PM CST reply actions

I was the most bullish on him from an OPS perspective

But didn’t think he’d get nearly the PA that he got. I was expecting a strict platoon at C with minimal AB at 1B and DH due to MY and Mitch. If I had thought about it a little more, I would have realized that if he was hitting that well, Wash would play him against LHP and RHP giving him more PAs. But then I would have lowered his slash stats. So.. What was I saying?

"Nap-O-Li! Nap-O-Li! Nap-O-Li!" - 51,351 fans on 10/01/11

by NorCalRangersFan on Nov 29, 2011 7:01 PM CST reply actions