Kemp Projected to Propel Dodger Offense

So Nate Silver and the good folks at Baseball Prospectus released the 2007 Weighted-Mean PECOTA Projections yesterday. What's a PECOTA, you might ask? Just the dead on balls accurate projection system that some of us have been using to dominate our roto leagues for the past few seasons. While I won't spoil all of the surprises (and, really, you should subscribe to BP to get some of the best baseball content outside of Sons of Steve Garvey), I thought I'd pass along a couple of quick points of interest.

1. Matt Kemp's weighted-mean projection leads the Dodgers position players with a VORP (that's Value over Replacement Player for the uninitiated) to the tune of .295 AVG/.346 OBP /.507 SLG. Not too shabby of a forecast for a 22 year old.

2. Andy LaRoche, the 23 year old 3B prospect, projects to be the Dodgers' second-most valuable hitter with a VORP of 32.5 (.285/.356/.490). Furcal (30.2), Kent (28.2) and "Gentleman" James Loney (23.0) round out the top 5.

3. Baseball Prospectus has another metric called WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player). Loney's WARP projects to 3.7 Wins. While that may not sound like much, Beloved Nomar's WARP projects to just 2.6 Wins. So for the $X Million more a year that the Dodgers are paying Mr. Hamm, playing him over Loney over the course of the season could cost the Dodgers in the Win column. Given how tight the NL West is likely going to be (particularly with the Unit returning to the D'Backs), Grady would be better served to put his Beantown loyalties behind him and try to accumulate as many marginal wins as possible.

4. Finally, for those sadists interested in this kind of thing, J. D. Drew and Julio Lugo project to have a VORP of 19.6 and 15.6, respectively, for Boston. For that kind of money: Ouch.

Basically, hats off to Logan White for his terrific job in scouting. Now let's just hope that Trader Neddie realizes that his younger and cheaper players may even be the better ones.