HR and RBI Predictions

Well, it's getting down to the last month of the regular season and things are still tight in the AL West. Just for fun, I thought it would be interesting to predict the HR and RBI totals for the top HR hitters on the A's. Through Sunday 8-29-04, here are the top 7 hitters in terms of HR with their current numbers :

Eric Chavez - 27 HR / 63 RBI
Erubiel Durazo - 21 HR / 76 RBI
Jermaine Dye - 20 HR / 71 RBI
Eric Byrnes - 19 HR / 66 RBI
Bobby Crosby - 17 HR / 49 RBI
Scott Hatteberg - 14 HR / 75 RBI
Mark Kotsay - 12 HR / 54 RBI

There are 32 games left in the regular season. I based my predictions very simply by estimating how many at bats each player would get through the next 32 games and then figuring their At Bats per HR and At Bats per RBI to come up with a very rough estimation of their totals. My sloppy math has given me the following estimates for the HR and RBI totals at the end of the regular season :

Eric Chavez - 36 HR / 84 RBI
Erubiel Durazo - 27 HR / 97 RBI
Jermaine Dye - 25 HR / 89 RBI
Eric Byrnes - 24 HR / 85 RBI
Bobby Crosby - 21 HR / 62 RBI
Scott Hatteberg - 18 HR / 95 RBI
Mark Kotsay - 15 HR / 69 RBI

Obviously these are just guesses, but it is fun to speculate. A lot of different things could happen to push these numbers up or down. Chavez's bat could cool off - he is second in the league for HR during August - or Bobby Crosby could finish off the season with an outstanding month of September. But either way, at least the above gives you a rough idea of what I at least think the totals will look like.

Based on these numbers though, that means that Chavez, Durazo, and Hatteberg would all have career HR years.