More on the Jacobs-Nunez trade

As Mike Jacobs and Leo Nunez are the talk of baseball -- Baseball Think Factory and Boys of Summer are the latest to weigh in on the trade -- we'd like to present, via RoyalsRetro of Royals Review, Jacobs's and Nunez's ZIPS projections:

2009 ZiPS Projection - Mike Jacobs
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             AB   R    H  2B 3B  HR RBI  BB  SO  SB    BA   OBP   SLG   OPS+  DR  
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2009         478  67  125  33  1  24  82  36 100   1  .262  .313  .485   106   -7
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Opt. (15%)   544  84  152  40  2  30 101  44 104   1  .279  .334  .526   122   -5
Pes. (15%)   412  43   98  24  1  17  60  28  94   0  .238  .287  .425    84  -10
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Top Offensive Comps: Rico Brogna, Gordy Coleman

2009 ZiPS Projection - Leo Nunez
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           W   L   G  GS   IP    H   ER  HR  BB  SO   ERA   ERA+
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2009        2   2  43   0   49   49   23   6  19  36  4.22   101
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Opt. (15%)  4   2  47   0   56   50   20   5  18  45  3.21   133
Pes. (15%)  2   2  36   0   39   43   23   6  19  27  5.31    81
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Top Comps:  John Verhoeven, Joey McLaughlin

ZIPS is a system developed by Dan Szymborski to project individual performance. You can learn much more about it here (download-able RTF file).

In his post, RoyalsRetro takes a sarcastic tone and tosses out this bit of preemptive mockery: "He failed to factor in grit though. Is Jacobs gritty? He is white. He has played for a contender. He is a former catcher. The signs of grit are there." No one's called Jacobs "gritty" yet, as far as I can tell, but when someone does... joke's on you!

As for us here, we'd like to focus on the positives from the trade, several of which detailed in yesterday's post. Here're more:

• As Boys of Summer points out, Jacobs's batting average on balls in play was an abnormal .260, which is about as low as Brian Bannister's BABIP was in 2007 (.262). The league average is around .300. When Bannister's BABIP strayed towards that mean this past season -- .310 -- it led to an increase of nearly two full earned runs allowed per nine innings (5.76 from 3.87). Why shouldn't we expect an equivalent jump in batting average -- let's say, oh, 20 points -- and whatever the equivalent of that would be in on-base percentage for Jacobs this year?
  
  
• Jacobs's OPS was .114 lower at Dolphin Stadium than on the road in 2008, which makes sense because Miami is an awful place to play baseball. For his career there's a difference of 10 in OPS+ in his home/away splits, which is significant. (In the interest of fairness, we'd like to point out that Kauffman Stadium was statistically as much a pitcher's park as Dolphin Stadium last season, but about 30 times prettier.)
  
  
• Have we mentioned Leo Nunez is a middle reliever who has a hard time staying healthy? Look, we all loved Nunez. The man has electric stuff, and he always gave maximum effort (though from a guy his size, that's kind of scary). But at the risk of besmirching his good name, this wasn't a big loss.
  
  Of course, if he turns into a dominant starter... but you didn't hear that here.
  

That's enough for now. Dayton's not done dealing though, so stay tuned.