Back of Joe Dillon's Baseball Card

[Brawndo the Thirst Mutilat]

In case Hall gets his wish and is traded, and in an effort to help those skeptical of Joe Dillon's effectiveness taking Hall's spot as the RH half of a platoon with Branyan understand why many of us are more sanguine about his abilities than they are, I present the back of Joe Dillon's baseball card in the bizarro-world where some crystal ball-possessing team brought him straight out of retirement to the major league level. Thus, his 3 season AA and AAA rampage can be processed and understood by those who only believe in the existence of major league batting statistics.

What I did is I went here:

http://www.minorleaguesplits.com/mlecalc.html

and fed Dillon's minor league stats from '04, '05, and '07 (he was in Japan in '06) into Jeff Sackmann's incredibly handy little gizmo. It wanted to know the league in which the stats were achieved as well as the team so it could consider park effects in addition to making league adjustments. I told it to translate those numbers to a neutral park major league context, and this is what it spit out:

Year	Team	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	K	SB	CS	AVG	OBP	SLG
04	CAR	121	19	34	10	0	7	23	10	31	2	2	0.285	0.345	0.535
04	ABQ	416	61	103	27	5	21	55	34	92	10	3	0.248	0.312	0.486
05	ABQ	367	51	99	17	0	16	46	43	64	9	1	0.270	0.360	0.455
07	NAS	332	54	90	23	1	16	58	37	37	5	1	0.272	0.348	0.489

I kept the team column from the "actual" universe, so you can easily see which numbers translated to what if you go to B-R or the baseball cube. Enjoy.

[rluzinski]

My understanding is that ZiPS makes all the necessary calculations, doing the appropriate regressions and adjusting for age. Their projection for him:

 

.280/.338/.449/.787

 

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/oracle/discussion/2008_zips_projections_milwaukee_brewers/

 

If he were part of a platoon, we should expect something a bit better.

[TooLiveBrew]

Thanks for that, BTTM (& rluz). Hard not to like Crazy Joe... or ZiPS. Does .285/.350/.475/.825 sound about reasonable if he were the LHP side of a platoon?

[JoeHova]

.350/.450 is definitely reasonable for Joe D. as a platoon guy, imo. Then again, ZIPS had Bill projected even better than Dillon and he's crapped out so far. Anything can happen, I guess.

[brewerinvegas]

I'm projected to hit .475 in the majors base on my little league stats.

[JET15]

I'm projected to hit .475 in the majors base on my little league stats.

 

Yeah, but you're juiced. Look at the size of your head in that avatar.

[brewerinvegas]

That's just gigantism brought on by too much nerve tonic.

[bucky2win]

I'm projected to hit .475 in the majors base on my little league stats.

Yeah, but you're juiced. Look at the size of your head in that avatar.

Best comment ever!

[steve267268]

I know you guys are big fans of statistics, and it really is intriguing. But these are human players, not robot players. Just as Billy Hall has fallen off the last couple of years, Joe Dillon could have a monster season from a platoon. Or he could also be awful. I bet Rickie was projected to be a pretty darn good hitter too. For me, if Ned and Doug are confident enough in Joe Dillon to fill Hall's spot, then so be it. Good players pop up out of nowhere all the time, why not Joe Dillon? He might not have five great seasons in a row, or even have a great season ever again, but he could have one this year facing only lefties.

Whatever happens, i'm just glad that we are no longer employing the Magruder's of the world... Counsell doesn't count, at least he LOOKS like he should be able to hit.