David Young wrote up the 2010 Matt Kemp player profile which followed up with the question to our community, what are your expectations for Matt Kemp?
This is what Matt Kemp did:
28 Home Runs
19 Stolen Bases
.249/.310/.450 - Triple State Line (Average, OnBase, Slug%)
107 OPS+
As you can see from David's story NONE of the projections systems came close to Kemp, at the lowest end Marcel had him with a .838 OPS, at the high end Bill James had him at .873.
How did the community do?
Highest - Julio Nieves - 910, Skunkburner -.909, Eric Stephen - .908
Lowest - Michael White - .830, Matthewmafa .838, Phil Gurnee - .851
Just like the expert projection systems none of us expected Matt Kemp to take the dump he took. On April 15th I'd say we all felt we underbid our projections. BHSPORTSGUY pointed out near the end of last year that Matt Kemp actually performed at the low end of the 10% projection from Baseball Prospectus's Pecota system which does not happen very often when injuries are not involved.
Everyone from the experts to the community at large expected Matt Kemp to be a star in 2010. He was nothing close to a star, but stars have had blips before. Just for fun I took a look at players in the HOF or on the HOF ballot to see who had had trouble in their age 25 year old season. Was basically looking for outfielders who were age 25 who had long careers but had an OPS+ <= 110. Only three players showed up.
Player OPS+ PA Year Age AB 2B 3B HR SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS
Marquis Grissom 110 707 1992 25 653 39 6 14 78 13 .276 .322 .418 .741
Al Kaline 108 629 1960 25 551 29 4 15 19 4 .278 .354 .426 .781
Kirby Puckett 92 744 1985 25 691 29 13 4 21 12 .288 .330 .385 .715
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 12/29/2010.
Before you dis Grissom and his 110 OPS+, don't forget to calculate his 78 stolen bases with only 13 caught stealing.
Grissom isn't much of a match. He never had Kemps power so I'm going to throw him out.
Kaline's only bad season from age 19 - 37 came at age 25, leading up to that season he had on OPS+ of 131. Safe to say Al Kaline was heads and tails shoulders a better player then Matt Kemp.
Kirby Puckett didn't became a major league regular until age 24 and simply wasn't any good until age 26, at which point he kicked his HOF career into high gear.
None of this really means anything, just thought it would be interesting to find out, but unfortunately it wasn't.
On the plus side Matt Kemp has had an OPS below .800 every even year and an OPS over .840 every odd year. I'm not great at math but my spider sense tells me that 2011 is an odd year.