Comments on: What Can We Take Away From Spring Training?

By: Marc Schneider

Marc Schneider — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:49:26 +0000

I see nothing to suggest that Francouer is anything more than what JC says–an adequate right fielder. I think he may well end up being one of the most overrated players in baseball.

The Braves are capable of making the playoffs in a very mediocre league but I don’t think much more. In Search of Being OK seems to be the Braves motto these days.

By: Jason S.

Jason S. — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:25:58 +0000

I totally agree about Jair Jurrjens. A quick survey online seems to indicate that some of the blogs are a little surprised by this one too.

By: Hill

Hill — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 20:01:54 +0000

Of course I might tend to be a bit biased when say every year we’ll win the Series this fall but it seems that Jayson Stark has my back.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/preview08/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&id=3320120

By: Cyril Morong

Cyril Morong — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 16:55:51 +0000

John Dewan’s stat of the week had something on how spring training stats might indicate something. Here is what he said, followed by the link. The link has a list of possible breakout players.

“A few years ago we discovered that there is a way to use spring training stats to predict future performance. We took all spring training hitters and found that, as expected, about half of them do better than their career norms in the upcoming season, and about half of them do worse than their career norms. However, when we chose only those players doing exceptionally well in spring training, we found that about three-fourths of them performed better than their career average during the upcoming season.

Our definition of “exceptionally well” was slugging 100 points higher in spring training than their previous career slugging percentage.”

http://www.actasports.com/sow.php?id=164