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2020 Projection Series - Justin Williams

Writer's picture: Ben CeruttiBen Cerutti

Justin Williams (by @cardinalsgifs)

Please check out the Projections Primer, to see how I come about getting these projections.


Prior to getting started, I want to take a look at the last three years of Justin Williams' career and his total career numbers, showing the statistics that I utilize in my projections.

Justin Williams' MINOR league stats (and 1 major league PA)

The 2019 season is our most recent sample size and professional sports are often reduced to a "what have you done for me lately" business. Here is his 2019 season (majors only) separated from the rest 1) to highlight it and 2) to more easily come back to it for comparison purposes.


2019

N/A


This year, I plan to incorporate a couple of (I hope) interesting items to go along with the mean (average) projection. I am going to be adding in "THE GOOD" (an everything goes right)" projection and "THE BAD” (an everything went wrong)" projection prior to giving THE CERUTTI (my actual projection). THE GOOD is basically if a player is 10% better in a few of the listed categories while THE BAD is basically if a player is 10% worse in a few of the listed categories - based on THE CERUTTI projection, which is my 50th percentile-type projection that gets made every year by other projection services like STEAMER or ZiPS.

 

THE GOOD

(Best case)

413 PA - .276/.338/.427/.766

20 doubles, 1 triple, 12 homers

47 runs, 59 RBI, 5 SB, 2 CS


If it was assured that Justin Williams could give us this line in 2020, I would be very hopeful they would get rid of Fowler and let Williams be that 4th/5th OF bat that plays almost exclusively against RHP.


THE BAD

(worst case)

341 PA - .226/.281/.339/.620

12 doubles, 1 triple, 7 homers

32 runs, 40 RBI, 3 SB, 2 CS


This is what I'm worried about with Justin Williams right here. That's a slightly worse version than his 2018 line in the minors and a MUCH BETTER version of his 2019 AA line prior to getting the emergency call up to AAA because of lack of players available to the manager to play OF.


THE CERUTTI

(my system projection)

375 PA - .251/.310/.389/.699

16 doubles, 1 triple, 10 homers

39 runs, 49 RBI, 4 SB, 2 CS

 

I'm not a huge Justin Williams fan. However, I feel like this lack of fandom is basically due to 1) my projections never having liked him and 2) looking at his HUGE ground ball rates in the minors. He reminds me of an Eric Hosmer offensively, in a way. Hosmer has good power when he can lift the ball. Hosmer can go through stretches where he hits ground balls less often and gets on a HR binge, but then reverts back to what he is all too often. I hope that Justin Williams can break that trend and become more of a line drive guy. He doesn't have Bader or Thomas or O'Neill type speed to become a high BABIP guy consistently and beat out all the grounders he produces.


I hope he can continue to change that outlook in the Cardinals' organization and be the big power bat that he expects to be at the major league level. His spring training homer that he hit this week shows that he can really mash a ball a long ways when he gets a hold of one.


Link back to all of my projections.

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