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Community Projection: Neil Walker

Use this thread to predict the outcome of the 2011 season for Neil Walker. Guess his 2011 average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage, and I'll compile the first 20 into a community projection.

Here are the results of the projections so far. The Lyle Overbay projection is now complete.

Player Community ZiPS
Chris Snyder .232/.324/.388, 25% caught stealing .215/.324/.381
Lyle Overbay .261/.346/.432 .244/.336/.423

Again, we're very close to ZiPS, although again, the community thinks Overbay is going to have a higher average. (The ZiPS projection assumes he's playing in Toronto.) All in all, there isn't much to quibble about. I wondered about how to balance Overbay's league switch (which presumably helps him a bit) with the fact that he posted a .478 slugging percentage at home last year and a .392 slugging on the road in a year when balls were flew out of the Rogers Centre. A lot of that was righties Jose Bautista and Vernon Wells going nuts, but lefties like Overbay and Adam Lind got boosts too. Overall, it's probably a wash, especially since PNC Park doesn't play badly for lefties. So it seems reasonable to predict that Overbay will post a line similar to the one he posted last year, which was .243/.329/.433, possibly with a couple extra points of batting average in there since he's a .274 career hitter, and also with a bit less power. In other words, I like the community's projection, but I think I like ZiPS' a bit better.