On pace for...

It's always fun to take a look at the "on pace for" numbers that ESPN provides. They're not not the most sophisticated projections in the world, as they just take a players per game production so far and extend it for the remainder to the regular season, but interesting none the less. I wanted to see how production so far has compared to last year's numbers.

To start out, I picked a set of thresholds based based on what I considered "good production" for each stat and how many players hit the thresholds last year - they are: 90 runs, 30 home runs, 95 RsBI,and 30 stolen bases. For background about the projected numbers I'm going to present in a little bit,  here are the 2012 totals for players above the aforementioned thresholds, along with the overall leader in the statistic. These totals are only for the AL, as our league is an AL only league, and therefore the NL doesn't matter. I mean seriously, pitchers hit over there.

	Threshold	2012	Leader	Total
Runs	90	13	Trout	129
HR	30	15	Cabrera	44
RBI	95	11	Cabrera	139
SB	30	9	Trout	49

Before we get in to the projections, it is important to note that we should expect there to be more players above these thresholds than over the course of the 2012 season. We're working with a small sample size here, so a burst of production can dramatically change the overall projection. For example, Jonny Gomes' 5 RBI night last night led to a 24 RBI increase in his projected season totals. Without further ado, here are the projected numbers of players above the thresholds:

	2012 #	2013 proj #	Threshold
Runs	13	22	19
HR	15	16	7
RBI	11	23	19
SB	9	6	7

So as predicted, we're seeing more players projected to reach 90 runs and 95 RBI in 2013 than we saw in 2012. Home runs are about equal and the projected number of 30 base stealers is down a bit. Again, I want to emphasize that this is a small sample size, and a single stolen base and a few games played is the difference between being projected to steal 35 and 28 bases over the course of the season, so these numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt. The overall decline in stolen bases was noted before this season, however, in 2013 we've seen another marked drop in stolen bases. Our rudimentary analysis seems to back this up, as well.

Now the real fun begins, as we get into the leaders. Again, because we're looking at a small sample size, we'd expect our projected 2013 to top the actual 2012 leaders.

	2012 leader		2013 projected leader
	Name	Total	Name	Proj.	Current
Runs	Trout	129	Jackson	162	31
HR	Cabrera	44	Reynolds	51	10
RBI	Cabrera	139	Cabrera	193	37
SB	Trout	49	Ellsbury	57	12

What really stands out to me are the two teammates, Austin Jackson and Miguel Cabrera, who are on pace to demolish the leaders from last year. But just how impressive are these totals from a month and a half? Here are the two best monthly totals for runs and RBI from last year, from Mike Trout's June and Josh Hamilton's May.

	Name	Monthly total	Projected
Runs	Trout	32	199
RBI	Hamilton	32	185

Note the projections differ due to the difference in games played for the Angels and Rangers in July and May, respectively.

So we can see that while Austin Jackson has been fantastic in the first five and a half weeks of the season, what he's doing was outdone by Mike Trout's best month. On the other hand, Miguel Cabrera is actually outperforming Hamilton's best month from last year, which is just nuts. While Cabrera hasn't been hitting as many home runs so far this year (6, on pace for 31), everything else about him has been spectacular.