River Avenue Blues states the obvious about Bill James' projections for Jesus Montero in 2011:
I’d say for Montero to approach his AAA line (and James' projection) in the majors in 2011, he’d have to be pretty consistently awesome for 6 months (with the expected normal peaks and valleys) as a 21 year old rookie catcher, in New York, playing on a team that expects to win the World Series (emphasis added). Good luck with that.
James is predicting a .285/.348/.519 for Montero, and if he did that he'd be in historic territory.
He should, however, easily eclipse the AL average line for catchers - .245/.312/.374 last season - and if he can manage to combine that with just slightly below replacement level defense, he should be a pretty good major leaguer in 2011.
I just hope we don't give him the Joba treatment........
- ESPN has a great post about the success (if you want to call it that) of long-term free agent contracts for pitchers over the last two decades. Sure, you can argue technicalities a bit, for example, the Red Sox traded for Pedro Martinez in 1997 and signed him to an extension, thus avoiding free agency altogether. But the point still stands - long term contracts are risky, and you can probably count on both hands the number of 5+ year deals that have worked out for teams.
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Andy Pettitte may or may not pitch in 2011, but he's announced he definitely won't pitch in 2012. All the more reason to give Joba a shot....