Francoeur and Loe cuts are costly

Jeff Francoeur and Kameron Loe were released today by their respective teams. Apparently Loe requested the release since he was not going to make the team. The loss of jobs for these two players run deeper than just not having a job for 2014. Both players have nine years of service time and need one more year to qualify for the ten year pension of $100,000 annually.

The pension can be explained here.

The tenth year of MLB service is an important milestone and might be a further insight into the comeback attempts of Jason Bartlett and Matt Treanor. Neither played in the Majors in 2013 and both have nine years of MLB service.

The last few years of players whose careers ended after nine seasons:

2012:

• Jason Bartlett
• Matt Treanor
• Brian Bruney
• Jose Lopez

2011:

• John Grabow
• Rich Harden
• Aaron Heilman
• Wil Ledezma
• Aaron Miles

2010

• Hank Blalock
• Brendan Donnelly
• Carlos Silva
• Jorge Sosa

MLB Game Picks - Saturday: March 22, 2014

And so it begins...and then ends...and then will begin again in a week. Ah! You have got to love this playing overseas as a false season starter for a tease. Someday, Opening Day will actually mean opening day and it will be one day and all teams will be playing...a day game! And it will be a national holiday.

For those of you new to this space, during the regular season and then the post season, I pick the winners of each game played. No, this is not an odds feature or a gambling feature. This is one guy trying to see how he will do picking games over the course of a season. This will be the fifth season...or is it sixth? Who knows, I lose track.

What I do know is that I have not missed a day or a game in three and a half years. Call me the Cal Ripken of game picking. Or maybe the Rip Van Winkle. I have been doing this site so long I am like a graybeard or something.

Anyway, enough chatter. There are two games to pick. Both involve the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Arizona Diamondbacks who open a crazy two-game set in Australia and with the time difference, they occur in the same day here on the East Coast. One starts at four o'clock in the morning and the next at ten o'clock in the evening.

The picks:

• The Dodgers over the Diamondbacks: Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in baseball tasked with being the prize of the USA in a foreign land. That won't get screwed up. Wade Miley is not exactly in that same class. Miley has had a very good spring though.
• The Dodgers over the Diamondbacks: If my picks turn out correctly, that's a heck of a long plane ride back for the D-backs. That said, wouldn't you take Hyun-jin Ryu over Trevor Cahill? Unlike Miley, Cahill has not had a good spring at all, though his K/BB looks great.

The first two picks of the season! It's too bad it will take a week to report how well I did.

The White Sox should just go young

The Chicago White Sox lost 99 games last year and according to most projections, will not be very good this year either. Most projections I have seen have them coming in with about 88 losses this season. That being the case, it seems to me that the White Sox best course of action at this point is to go young, stay young and build the next good White Sox team. But...they won't.

Why? Because teams and managers get hung up on veterans. Experienced players are more trusted and are more of a known entity. Managers like Robin Ventura, a former player, would naturally side with regulars from the past. Ventura himself hung on for years after his best days were gone and that becomes part of the fabric of how things work.

The thing is, you can lose with the veterans or you can lose with the youth. Either way, you lose. So you have to go deeper than that and determine the benefits of either. Let's weigh them out.

Losing with veterans: Fans are familiar with the players and have some contextual feelings of rooting for the familiar. Is this going to make enough fans happy to reverse recent attendance losses? Not really. Keep young players in the minors long enough to delay their clocks and maintain their rights longer. Does this really work?

What if the latest research is right in that a ball player's peak isn't 28 like previously believed, but rather 24? Aren't you risking leaving some of the player's best time in the minors by delaying them?

I suppose you could also add that young players cannot get discouraged by failing in their early years in the Majors. Do you buy that? I don't.

Losing with youth: The young learn in the Majors and with live game experiences. They get used to playing together as a unit and build in unity and develop into a unit that can learn how to win together.

If you go with young, you need some veterans around to help, right? Sure. One or two maybe. Teaching young players how to handled themselves in the big leagues does help. But do you need a bunch of also-rans who cannot win for you to teach that? I don't think so.

All that said, if I ran the White Sox, this is what I would do. First, I would ditch or try to trade Adam Dunn and Jeff Keppinger. Both players provide little or no value and in both cases, hold up roster spots for the young guys. Dunn has hit 75 homers combined over the last two seasons. Great. But he has been worth 0.9 rWAR in that time. Big deal.

Dunn became moot with the signing of Jose Abreu. How many lumbering 1B/DH types do you need on one team? He is also in the last year of his contract. Jettison him to Seattle or just dump him. What difference does it make?

Jeff Keppinger is signed through 2015. Egads! That was a bad signing. Keppinger has not had an on-base percentage over .300 in two of his last three seasons. He was worth -2.0 rWAR last year. His shoulder is toast and it shows this spring. He will not an cannot help the White Sox. Why hold back a roster spot for that? Cut your losses and DFA him.

Trade Alexei Ramirez. Ramirez is still a decent player. He was the eighth best shortstop in baseball last season. There is value in that. But again, the White Sox are not going to win. Ramirez is 31 and at a peak in value for other teams desperate for a shortstop. The Tigers come to mind. Trade him for something that can help down the road.

If I ran the White Sox, Matt Davidson would platoon with Conor Gillaspie and rotate in the DH position with Paul Konerko (who needs to play and be celebrated in this his last season). Install Marcus Semien at short and see if he is your guy and if not, then move on to Tim Anderson in 2015 if Semien doesn't cut it.

In the outfield, put Jordan Danks, Adam Eaton in left and center respectively and rotate De Aza and Avisail Garcia. Trade Dayan Viciedo to the Mariners or somewhere.

I thought it very discouraging to see the team send down left-handed starter, Eric Surcamp. He misses bats and he does not walk people. No, his two cups of coffee with the Giants did not work out well, but the guy can win in the Majors. Does anyone really think John Danks is going to turn it around any time soon? I don't. Surcamp is 25-years-old. Another stint in the minors is unnecessary.

The depth charts do list Erik Johnson as part of the rotation. That is good at least. It is definitely time to see what he can do.

The White Sox are not going anywhere either way. So why not go young and get these guys Major League experience, let them grow together and build something that can make the White Sox relevant two or three years from now? And for the fan experiences, it sure seems better than watching Adam Dunn and Jeff Keppinger grow old.

Rival Roundup - The Yankees against the AL East

I just concluded a four-part series over at It's About the Money, Stupid that compared the current Yankees to their four rivals in the American League East.

The first part covered the Baltimore Orioles. Questions answered were:

• What does the Orioles' rotation look like?
• Will Chris Davis regress?
• How will Manny Machado recover from his injury?

The second part covered the Tampa Bay Rays. Questions considered:

• Is this the year Desmond Jennings breaks out?
• Is the Rays rotation even stronger with Jeremy Hellickson being out with injury?
• How does Joe Girardi compare with Joe Maddon?

The third segment covered the Toronto Blue Jays. Thing to ponder included:

• Is the rotation still a mess and can Brandon Morrow rebound?
• Can Jose Reyes, Jose Bautista and Colby Rasmus stay healthy?
• Is Brett Lawrie ready to be a factor?

The last segment, of course, covered the Boston Red Sox. Observations about:

• Will David Ortiz ever age?
• Is Will Middlebrooks the answer at third?
• How old is Koji Uehara?

It was a fun series, and I hope you check out all the four parts of the series.

Joey Votto + walks = problem?

Twitter is a great place to gauge how fans really feel about baseball, their teams and their players. Sure, much of it is irrational. But being a fan is never really about rationality, right? Many of the strong feelings of fans on Twitter surprise me. One of those is the total hate many Reds fans feel about Joey Votto walking. Here are a couple of examples:

Two walk game for Joey Votto. Time to give up on the 2014 season. — Tyler (@iTyBan) March 9, 2014

I'm sick and tired of watching Joey Votto get walked every AB. Even in spring training. Go yack or go back to Canada bro. #SwingTheStick — Sage Kendall (@SAKtap24) March 9, 2014

Perhaps the fans are egged on by the broadcasters:

No matter the broadcast team we always get to hear about the lack of RBI from Joey Votto, don't we? — Doug Gray (@dougdirt24) March 9, 2014

I have a really hard time getting what the problem is here. The thinking behind it is that Votto does not drive in enough runs because he walks too much. The thinking must also mean that if Votto would swing more often, he would hit more for power and thus provide more offense.

Are those valid thought processes? First, let's talk about what we know. Votto's walks are part of an evolutionary process during his career. He has swung at less and less pitches out of the strike zone as his career has progressed: 2010 - 30.3%, 2011 - 25.6%, 2012 - 21.1% and 2013 - 21.0%.

2013 was the first time in Votto's career that he played all 162 games of the season. That dispelled some of the nonsense about his durability from the games he missed the season before that. Despite the extra games, his slugging percentage fell under .500 for the first time in his career.

But he also walked an incredible 135 times to push his on-base percentage to .435 and left him with the same wRC+ as his career average. In other words, he had what was an average offensive year (for him). His 6.4 rWAR / 6.2 fWAR stacked up very well with what he did in 2011, the last time he played a full season and the season before that.

In other words, he was just as valuable a player as 2010 and 2011, but many of his fan base, and (apparently) his team's announcers thought he was more of a hindrance to the Reds winning. I am not sure I follow.

The clutch thing might be part of the problem. I am not yet convinced the whole clutch thing is more than a coincidence. But there was a problem for Votto here in 2013. According to Fangraphs.com, Votto's clutch score (-2.38) was the first time in the last four years was in negative territory. And his WPA or win probability added was 3.77 which is much lower than the figures over six where he was for the previous three seasons.

He did have less success in high leverage situations in 2013 where he was murder in 2011 and 2012. In 2011, Votto's OPS in high leverage situations was an incredible 1.221. In 2012, it was even more incredible at 1.299. But he became just above mere mortal in 2013 with an OPS of .856 in high leverage situations.

So, there is evidence that Votto did not do as well in the clutch and in high leverage situations as he has done in the past. His critics point to the walks. His critics say that he would rather walk than drive in the run.

But what if luck was also involved? Back in 2011 and 2012 when those high leverage situations went incredibly well, his BABIP during those situations were .360 and .457. His BABIP in those situations in 2013 was .299. That could be due to bad luck, less quality of contact or better positioning from defenses (or a combination of all three).

There is another statistic created by Bill James and others called Runs Created. The statistic measures a player's total contribution to a team's run total. Votto's total of 133 was fourth in the Majors and was higher than Goldschmidt, Cano, Choo, Carpenter and McCutchen. So you cannot convince me that he had a bad year.

Oh, by the way, that Runs Created total of 133 was one more than he had in 2011 and only eleven less than he put together for 2010 when he led the Majors.

Joey Votto was on base an incredible 316 times in 2013. Trout was his closest competitor in that category at 309. The 316 times on base was the highest total since 2004 (Bonds).

If that is a disappointing season, then I am sure that there are a whole lot of other fan bases that would love to take him off of the Cincinnati fans' hands. If a guy gets on base 316 times and only has 73 runs batted in and only 101 runs scored, then I would look more at his teammates for blame than him.

Joey Votto is one of the truly elite offensive players in the game. Perhaps his contract makes people expect more. His play was worth $30.8 million in 2013 as a first baseman (which garners no positional love) versus his $17.5 million salary. And people are complaining? I don't get it. I don't get it at all.

BBA Linkfest - General Marchmellow

Welcome to another installment of the BBA Linkfest where I take a romp around the sites of the General chapter of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. The General chapter is not beholden to any team or theme, but writes about baseball from all angles. So pour another cup of coffee and get ready for some good reading because here they come!

Shawn Anderson's Hall of Very Good has always served up interesting things on his site. This week, he catches Bryce Harper being a Good Samaritan.

TheNaturalMevs has been heavily preparing for this season's fantasy baseball drafts over at Diamond Hoggers.

Over at The Sports Banter, Mike Spiciarich dreams of what to him would be the perfect trade.

Hans Weisse of Dugout 24 looks at four great hitters to help you to become a better hitter yourself: Ty Cobb, Pete Rose, Hank Aaron and Alex Rodriguez.

Livan Hernandez officially retired this week. Michael Clair of Old Time Family Baseball recaps Livan's career "highlights."

Sully of Sully Baseball has to be the most consistent and prolific baseball podcaster of all time. There is nobody even close. And the quantity does not hurt the quality.

Baseball Cisco Kid Style really likes what the Braves did to lock up their young talent.

My buddy, Dan, of Left Field really loves Daylight Savings Time.

Mario Salvini of Che Palle! has a story of a Babe Ruth homer that occurred one hundred years ago.

Dan Day of The Ball Caps Blog has come full circle on the Chief Wahoo debate.

For a great preview of the 2014 Chicago White Sox, Mike Viso's of Through the Fence Baseball is thoughtful and well done.

Very few people have done more high-quality thinking on the Hall of Fame than Bryan O'Connor. His post on Replacement Level Baseball on the subject is outstanding.

Matt Whitener of Cheap.Seats.Please. has a very thorough 2014 preview of the AL East and is very informative and interesting.

Nobody can replace Mariano Rivera. But somebody has to be the Yankees' closer. Chris Carelli of The Baseball Stance gauges David Robertson's chance of succeeding in the role.

Justin Jabs of Baseblog introduces us to a new website that piques my interest.

We have already seen a preview of the AL East. Now we have the AL Central covered very well by Sean Morash of Off the Bench.

Speaking of the AL Central, Payoff Pitch drills down to give a preview of the 2014 Kansas City Royals.

I have misspelled Kenneth Matinale's name three straight times. His very good addition to the General Chapter, Radical Baseball, doesn't deserve that. Sheesh. Anyway, check out his post on Barry Bonds.

Spring has finally arrived for David over at BaseballRoundTable.com. I am jealous as I look out at 18 inches of fresh snow delivered over the last three days. David's post is fantastic though.

The always entertaining, highly informative High Heat Stats is also educational. For an example, check out Doug's college seminar on Run Shares.

Taylor of MLBeef made sure he will be watching baseball this summer.

I was tempted to link Clayton Richer's link to Keith Olbermann and that jerk's tirade on Barry Bonds. But instead, I went with a more fun link to a Jose Reyes rap linked on Baseball Hot Corner.

Justin Miller of insidetheMLB has a very interesting look at how many stars a team has to have to win the World Series.

I do not understand how baseball betting works. As such, Chuck Booth's piece over at MLB Reports on the Tampa Bay Rays' odds of winning the AL East confused the heck out of me. But if you get that kind of stuff, this post is for you.

Cover Those Bases has a nice retrospective on Rick Ankiel's career. Ankiel recently announced his retirement.

Pepper's Niko Goutakolis had a major announcement on his site the other day. Very cool for him and congratulations!

Last but the least, my last post was on the Cleveland Indians. Thank you kindly for your attention and I hope you clicked on a lot of these links because they deserve your support.

Have a great weekend.

The Yankees versus the Orioles

I wrote a full length article of how the Yankees match up with the Orioles over at It's About the Money. Both teams seem to be undervalued by projection systems and both will play a lot of games together.
Position by position match-ups and more. Check it out!

Are the Indians this good?

I struggle between thinking that Spring Training means diddly to seeing a team like the Cleveland Indians being 11-2 so far in their spring schedule and wondering if I should be impressed. I think that if everyone expected the Indians to be terrible--and they don't--then I would think nothing of the record. But in light of a surprising 92-win season in 2013, maybe the spring record means something and looks ahead to the season to come.

At first glance, the Indians did not seem to improve over a year ago. In fact, some notable subtractions lead you to wonder if the team's pitching will be weaker than a season ago. Gone are Ubaldo Jimenez, Scott Kazmir, Matt Albers, Rich Hill and Joe Smith--all to free agency.

Jimenez and Kazmir accounted for 61 starts and 23 wins and Kazmir was the team's only left-handed starter, something the team has none of this season. Joe Smith was one of their best relief pitchers in 2013, Albers had a good season and Hill was a LOOGY with occasional successes and failures.

The current rotation projects to be Justin Masterson, Corey Kluber, Zach McAllister, Danny Salazar and Carlos Carrasco. That has the potential to be a pretty solid rotation. Salazar has to take the next step in his development and Kluber and McAllister have to consistently show what they did in flashes a season ago. Masterson is not your typical ace and can be anywhere from terrific to mediocre depending on the start.

For depth, Tyler Cloyd has looked good this spring, Shaun Marcum has to come back from injury, T.J. House was already optioned, but he is the only left-handed option. And Trevor Bauer continues to baffle with why he cannot break through in the Majors.

The bullpen will benefit from a healthy Vinnie Pestano, who is very hard to hit when he is on, John Axford, who needs to find his old Brewers form and Josh Outman and Mark Rzepczynski from the left side. Rzepczynski must stay in baseball because his nickname, "Scrabble," is among the funniest ever!

The bullpen could be and should be as good as last year's model. If not, they are fairly easy to rebuild.

The only real upgrade on offense should be David Murphy in right field. Murphy, if you discount last year as a fluke, is a big offensive upgrade on what Stubbs gave the Indians last year.

The other offensive upgrades should come from within the team itself. To consider the team won 92 games with Nick Swisher, Michael Bourn and Asdrubal Cabrera all having seasons below their career norms. If two of the three bounce back, a lot more offense will be created.

Jason Kipnis has turned into a star, Michael Brantley is reliable and predictable and should have some new-found confidence with his new contract. Yan Gomes has taken over behind the plate and excelled last season while former starting catcher, Carlos Santana will play third if Lonnie Chisenhall cannot figure it out, or DH.

The bench should be very strong with Ryan Raburn mashing from the right side, Jason Giambi walking more than hitting and good utility options with Justin Sellers, Mike Aviles and funnyman, Elliot Johnson.

The pitching can be as good as a year ago or it could be worse. I cannot see it being better than 2013. But if it can be as good, then the offense should be better just with internal options having bounce-back seasons.

The wild card here is Terry Francona. I happen to think Francona is in the group of top five managers in baseball. His record with the Red Sox and with the Indians last season speak volumes of somehow getting his players to perform better than the average team.

Fangraphs has the Indians projected at 82 wins. That is a full ten wins less than a season ago. That is a pretty big drop-off. I am hard pressed to think they can repeat 92 wins, though I can never discount the Francona-effect. I cannot see them losing 80 games either as predicted.

I am pretty sure this is a good enough team to win 85 to 88 games. That will put the Indians in the hunt. Just don't expect the Indians to win 82% of their games, which the team is doing this spring.

Are the Phillies as bad as they look?

Spring Training results are meaningless. The statistics mean nothing. There is nothing to see here. At least those are the things we are told. But what if miserable Spring Training results follow a miserable season and do not even look up to snuff to reach the miserable win projections the computers have in store for them in 2014? Maybe they are not so meaningless.

The Phillies of 2013 lost 89 games. The pitching, which just a couple of years ago looked dominant for years, finished fourteenth out of fifteen teams in earned run average. The offense, which was considered worse than the pitching, finished twelfth in OPS. That is hardly a recipe for good things to happen.

And what has the team done to bolster its 2014 chances? They brought in A.J. Burnett, Roberto Hernandez, Marlon Byrd and Bobby Abreu. I don't know about you, but that wouldn't make me slap my knee and say, "Hot dang!" if I was a fan.

Burnett had better years for the Pirates, but he is just a few years from being run out of New York. Roberto Hernandez could not be fixed by the always fixing Tampa Bay Rays last season and was awful. Abreu is old and a wing and a prayer and Marlon Byrd rose from the dead last year for a very good season. Can he repeat it?

Top it off with Cole Hamels still being out of action all spring and shut down again recently and things are not looking good. So when I see a Spring Training record of 2-9-2, I do not see meaningless.

Cliff Lee is still slinging them from the left side and has been very good, but as usual, he has gotten no run support. Roberto Hernandez has looked okay but Burnett and hold-over, Kyle Kendrick have gotten cuffed around. Yes, it is early. It is always early. But it sure is troubling. Without Hamels, there is no fifth starter.

And then you get to the infield. So far this spring, the second basemen, shortstops and third basemen are a combined 25 for 176, a .142 batting average. Chase Utley has three singles and a walk in twenty plate appearances. Jimmy Rollins has two hits so far, one of them a homer. Cody Asche has three extra-base hits. But those are his only hits and he has struck out over 30% of the time. Freddy Galvis is batting .136. Kevin Frandsen is batting .158 and on and on it goes.

And then everyone is looking at the big guy at first base. Will he be platooned this season since he has lost the ability to hit lefties? Ryan Howard is batting .182 with two doubles and no homers and has struck out 37.4% of the time this spring. Meanwhile Darin Ruf is killing the ball. Good luck with that situation, Mr. Ryne Sandberg.

The outfield has been a slightly better story. Well...at least for two thirds of the outfield. Marlon Byrd and John Mayberry, Jr. are hitting well. But Domonic Brown is batting .091 with just two singles and a 30% strikeout rate.

Bobby Abreu was a nice story when first heard, but he is not hitting and looks old. And old describes many parts of the team. Rollins and Utley can still play up the middle, but their best years are behind them. Ryan Howard has not earned his keep in years with injuries and a bat that swings and misses way too often. Byrd will have to prove that despite his age, last year was not a fluke.

The bullpen should be okay, though Jonathan Papelbon has the bad habit of opening his mouth too often. But the overall pitching staff does not look promising at this point.

The projections have the Phillies finishing the same as a year ago with 73 wins and 89 losses. This is now Ryne Sandberg's team, but how much will that make a difference? He doesn't pitch and he doesn't bat. And the team did not get a significant boost when he took over last season.

Spring Training doesn't mean anything. That is what everyone says. And so I often have to caution myself from making too much of what I see. But what I see currently is a team that will be very fortunate to win 73 games. The 2014 Philadelphia Phillies look dreadful and it might be a very long season.

Expect Mike Napoli's numbers to dip

Mike Napoli was just one of the many things that went really right for the Boston Red Sox last season. A catcher for most of his career, Napoli moved to first base and surprised everyone with just how good he was over there. He also had a highly successful year at the plate. The bottom line was that Mike Napoli was the third best first baseman in the American League last season. Do not expect a repeat.

That seems like a weird statement in respect to the fact that his batting average and on-base percentage were nearly exact to his career average and his slugging percentage was twenty points lower than his career average. In light of those statistics, you would think his slugging would bounce back and after more than 3,200 plate appearances, his average and OBP would be good baselines.

But several things are troubling about making that leap. First was his strikeout rate. If you were told that of Mike Napoli, Adam Dunn and Mark Reynolds, Napoli had the highest strikeout rate of the three, would you believe it? Well, it's true. Napoli struck out 187 times in 578 plate appearances, or 32.4% of the time. This is the second straight season where he has struck out 30% of the time or more, so it is a definite trend.

Napoli has very good plate discipline and that kind of discipline does not regress quickly. So the best way to look at what is happening at the plate is to look at his contact percentage inside the strike zone.

After two straight seasons with a contact percentage in the strike zone of 78.7% in 2010 and 2011, that number dipped to 74.7% in 2012 and then down again to 72.4% in 2013. The four projections looked at for this piece do not expect the trend to continue to plummet but most predict a strikeout rate of at least 30% and that makes a lot of sense.

When your strikeout rate is that high, you better be highly efficient with your batted balls because you will have so much less of them than most players. In order to maintain a batting average of .250 or higher with those kinds of whiff rates, batted balls are everything.

That said, Mike Napoli had a very good time with his batted balls in 2013. His BABIP of .367 was easily the highest of his career and 57 points over his career average. Perhaps some of it is legit though. Napoli hit more line drives in 2013 than at any time of his career--by a lot!

In 2013, Mike Napoli's line drive percentage was 24.4%. It was the first time in his career that he was over 20%. His career average (dragged up with last year's numbers) is only 19.4%. So how do you explain the sudden surge of line drives? Was it playing first instead of catching and not being all beat up? Was it some new-found batting skill from better study or mechanics? Perhaps.

Or perhaps it was a fluke. Line drives, as mentioned in this space a million times, are gold to a batter. Nothing besides a ball going over the fence has more of a chance of being successful than a line drive. Lots of line drives will usually lead to a above average BABIP like Napoli experienced in 2013.

Napoli could repeat this new-found success. But the odds seem to be against it based on his career norms. And even with all those line drives and his very high BABIP, because of the strikeouts, he still batted only .259. With his walk percentage being terrific, any batting average for him of .245 or higher will lead to a very good on-base percentage. But if his line drive percentage goes back to norms, the strikeouts stay high, then his batting average will dip by twenty points or more with a more normalized BABIP.

Do not expect his slugging percentage to improve back to his career level of .502 either. Napoli's ISO has been dependent on where he has played most of his home games. It was in the .220 range with the Angels, much higher with the Rangers and then back to the Angels level with the Red Sox where Fenway Park is not the best place for lefty swingers to hit homers.

The projections for Mike Napoli look right. They are pessimistic compared to 2013. They do not expect his offense to be as good (or as valuable) and they expect his defense to decline. While the latter conclusion is suspect as he has become a very good first baseman, even these projections might be too optimistic for Napoli. The expectation here is for his OPS to drop from .842 in 2013 to the .780 to .800 range.