2011 Community Projections Review: Nelson Cruz

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%