Over at my site, fantasybaseball365.com, I do an annual set of projections for the upcoming season. While every team is covered over there, here is where I’ll be focusing on the Red Sox player projections. These projections are done by hand, meaning I have no computer generated system in place. This way I am able to take into account factors like injury, position change, playing time change, etc. I’ll cover the whole Red Sox roster as we head toward spring training.
Kevin Youkilis 2011 Projection: 32-years-old on opening day 2011.
| AB | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS | HR | R | RBI | SB |
| 511 | .302 | .403 | .556 | .959 | 25 | 93 | 90 | 4 |
This one was one of the easy ones. Only a thumb injury kept Youk from finishing another steady season. If there was any worry, it would be over a sharp drop in line drive rate to around 16 percent in 2010. That drop, however, looks to be an outlier compared to the rest of his track record. His age (32) suggests that he won’t likely get much better than he already is, which is not a bad thing at all given his production over the last few seasons.
A healthy Youk should once again be worth five-plus WAR in 2011 and be a key piece to the Red Sox chances of contending for the AL East title.