2011 Community Projections Review: Adrian Beltre

In 2010 we saw the Texas Rangers trade for a true TORP starter, win their first American League pennant, subsequently lose their first World Series and then also lose their newly acquired TORP starter in free agency when Cliff Lee decided to sign with the Phillies.  Flush with additional playoff revenue and a desire to get back to the World Series, the Rangers went out and did the next best thing (or arguably the best thing regardless) when they signed Adrian Beltre to be their new starting third basemen.

Beltre had an awful 2009 where he gained a crushed testicle to go with his crushed soul from five years playing for the Mariners.  In 2010 he rebounded for the second best season of his career on a make good contract with the Red Sox.  Word of his signing generated an epic thread and the community projections reflected an expectation of a season more similar to his .919 OPS in 2010 than the .759 OPS he put up in the five years he played in Seattle for a non contending team trapped in a park that punished right handed pull hitters.

Adrian Beltre in 2011 was almost everything that a Rangers fan could ask for.  He produced similar numbers to his outstanding 2010 with an .892 OPS in his first season with the Rangers.  His AVG and OBP were fairly close to the LSB projections but with a .561 SLG that was almost 60 points higher than projected.  From a total production standpoint, his numbers were diminished by missing almost a quarter of the season with a hamstring injury that saw his PA limited to 525. His outstanding season was recongized by winning both the Gold Glove and Silver Slugger as the most outstanding offensive and defensive third basemen in the American League.

Using a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) approach [lower is better] the top and bottom individual projections have hotshot215 at the top of the projections and bigsteve at the bottom.  Everyone's rankings can be found in this Google Spreadsheet and the top and bottom 5 shake out as: