Kris Bryant: what do you expect?

So for everyone that doesn't get it, if a player accumulates 172 days on the active roster or less, that player does not gain a year of experience in the eyes of major league baseball.  The Cubs will be doing this with Kris Bryant, giving them an extra year of team control over Bryant.  So this would mean Bryant will have missed 10 games, and the Cubs will have another year of arbitration control over Bryant.  This obviously leaves him with 152 possible games to enter, but here are his projections below.

Now I am definitely not going to complain about a rookie slugging .500 right out of the gate, but his games played seem incredibly short of what I am expecting.   Bryant does not have a significant injury in his past, and any issue he's ever had did not linger into last season.  I think a 145 game estimate is reasonable.  So I'm going to expand the projections from what each system thinks to a 145 game projection.

When changed to 145 game projections, you are left with this:

Those are some pretty monstrous projections and averaged out they leave you with a 31HR, 89R, 99RBI, 9SB, and a .260  season.  If you cherry picked what the worst-case scenario is according to his 145 game projections, it's a 28HR, 78R, 93RBI, 256 AVG.  I'LL TAKE IT!!!

So his game-by-game projection is monstrous.  If he's available in your league, you need to

1.     Leave this article and add him now

2.     Find a more competitive league

But back to Bryant, Yahoo has him projected as the 80^th most valuable player in my 6x6 league that adds OPS, I personally have him as the 69^th overall, $18.40 player, but I only used a 405 AB projection from ESPN.  All and all he's looking pretty dominant.   But when I sat down, I wanted to see if there was any way to paint this guy in a bad light.

The first thing I looked into was his projected strikeout rates, which range from 28-32%, so lets just say 30%.  The following players are the ones who had 30% K rates or higher with over 400AB in 2014:

• Tyler Flowers
• Mike Zunino
• Alex Avila
• Chris Davis
• Jarrod Saltalamacchia
• Drew Stubbs
• Chris Carter
• Adam Dunn
• Oswaldo Arcia

Collectively those guys, hit .227 last year.  Obviously this group is a group of players who really struggled last season, but most systems seem to think Bryant will strike out at a similar rate to those above players while thriving.  The good news is that many of them were still able to be successful sluggers last season, but it makes it harder to image Bryant managing a 260 average when only Drew Stubbs, who was blessed by the fantasy gods and gifted a 404 babip, managed that feat.

The second thing to check is where his projected 9.68 walk rate would leave him.  He would have been #58 out of the 209 hitters who had 400+ plate appearances.  That's a very high mark for a guy who is 1) known to swing and miss and 2) has so little professional baseball experience.

All in all the projection systems are on his side and so am I.  Kris Bryant was out homering other college teams in his last season at the University of San Diego.  The power is his calling card, and it's looking legendary already.  Spring training stats should never be something to buy a player on, but he certainly didn't put any doubt in our minds.  While it seems that Bryant is already owned in every league, as he should be up very shortly, and looks to mash.

As if he wasn't already talented enough, he has a remarkably short stroke for a guy of his size and hits the ball to all fields with authority, which makes me think with more experience, he should become a more and more reliable player in batting average once he learns his competitions repertoires.   I wish I could tell people to buy in on Kris Bryant, but its already too late, as a fan of baseball, just wait and see what this guy does in Cubbie Blue.