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 Paul Goldschmidt's career and his total career numbers, showing the statistics that I utilize in my projections.
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 separated from the rest 1) to highlight it and 2) to more easily come back to it for comparison purposes.
2019
682 PA - .259/.345/.474/.819
25 doubles, 1 triple, 34 homers
97 runs, 97 RBI, 3 SB, 1 CS
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)
743* PA - .306/.407/.564/.971
37 doubles, 3 triples, 40 homers
121 runs, 117 RBI, 10 SB, 3 CS
How could this happen? Mr. Goldschmidt does have a prior season above a 1.000 OPS, that is his ONLY season as good as the one listed out above.. So it's not unheard of for Goldy, but he's also rarely ever put together a campaign like this one - and he's finished top 3 in MVP voting three separate times.
*743 PA is an obvious flaw in my system...that's not happening.
THE BAD
(worst case)
614 PA
.250/.340/.463/.803
26 doubles, 2 triples, 28 homers
82 runs, 79 RBI, 7 SB, 2 CS
HAHAHAHAHA. This is what my projections have as the WORST Goldschmidt would be. That's 2019 Marcell Ozuna basically. Holy cow. No wonder this guy has been so good throughout his career. The doomsday scenario is Marcell Ozuna's second best season in the majors.
THE CERUTTI
(my system projection)
675 PA - .278/.375/.513/.888
31 doubles, 3 triples, 34 homers
100 runs, 97 RBI, 8 SB, 3 CS
In 2019, Paul Goldschmidt had the worst year of his career by rate stats. He still managed to drive 34 baseballs over the wall for home runs and both scored 97 runs AND drove in 97 runners in the process. He managed to gain enough MVP votes to finish 20th in the NL. That's 6 seasons in which he now has MVP votes.
Much like in my already published Yadier Molina projection, Paul Goldschmidt sees a modest bounce back with these projections. Funnily enough, the HR and RBI totals stay the same as 2019. I'll take those numbers every year. However, everything else is a huge bounce back.
Link back to all of my projections.