Who Will Be The 2014 Statistical Leaders?

Every offseason, I like to highlight the projected Defensive Runs Saved leaders based on Baseball Info Solutions’ defensive projections. Here is that Stat of the Week from a couple of weeks ago. This year, I thought it would be fun to also give a little attention to hitters and pitchers we project to lead baseball in various categories. These leaders are based on the Bill James Projections spring update.

First, here are the projected hitting leaders:

An encore power performance from Chris Davis may be the only thing that stands between Miguel Cabrera and another Triple Crown season in the American League. We project Cabrera to lead all of baseball in both batting average and RBI but fall one home run short of Davis and two home runs short of Giancarlo Stanton for best in the game. Still, Cabrera’s leads are hardly unassailable, as we project Mike Trout for a .331 average and Paul Goldschmidt for 128 RBI, both very close to Cabrera’s projected totals. Meanwhile, Trout has a sizable lead over Goldschmidt (113) and Cabrera (107) in projected runs scored.

On the pitching side, we project Clayton Kershaw to have a healthy cushion of four wins over Jose Fernandez and Adam Wainwright in second place. After the first two Australian games, Kershaw already has a lead, although his current DL stint could cause him to lose that head start. Kershaw also has the lowest projected ERA among starters at 2.50, but several relievers best him there in fewer innings. Craig Kimbrel is the standout. He leads all relievers in projected ERA and saves. Finally, Yu Darvish could fall a tad short of his projected 277 strikeouts if his neck injury causes him to miss a few starts at the beginning of the season. However, his projected 40-strikeout lead over Chris Sale allows him plenty of leeway in defending his strikeout crown from 2013.