2017 VEB Community Projections: Randal Grichuk

After the 2015 season, the Cardinals were pretty adamant that Randal Grichuk would be the starting center fielder heading into the 2016 season. Those offseason proclamations didn’t really last that long as Grichuk found his playing time compromised after an early season slump. He spent some time in the minors in June and then again in August.

Once the adversity was out of way, he got regular playing time because he started off fast instead of slow. Through four months of the season, he was hitting .216/.280/.414 with a wRC+ of 84 in 293 plate appearances. He only got 185 more plate appearances and walked just six times, but 12 homers and a .359 BABIP helped him to a 131 wRC+ during that time, balancing out his previous few months.

On the season, Grichuk got 478 plate appearances, hit 24 homers and had a final slash line of .240/.289/.480 with a very average 102 wRC+ and 2.2 WAR. VEB overshot things a bit last season with the projections. You can find ZiPS here, Steamer here, and Baseball Prospectus ($) projections on their player pages.

How will Grichuk do this season?

Thanks for all your help. If you missed any (Grichuk is the 12th player featured thus far), feel free to go here.