Who is hot enough this Spring to carry it into the regular season?

Spring Training doesn’t often predict the regular season.  For example, does anyone really believe the White Sox are the worst team in baseball right now?

But there is one thing in Spring Training that can tell us something about the season ahead. A hitter that has a great Spring Training often goes on to have a better than normal season. In precise statistical terms, a hitter with a positive difference between their Spring Training slugging percentage and their lifetime slugging percentage of .200 or more alerts us to a step forward in the coming season.

We analyzed hitters with both a minimum of 175 career regular season at-bats and with a minimum of 35 Spring Training at-bats (through Spring Training games of Monday, March 27, 2006) and found 36 possible players for an above-average season.

The chart below shows the results.  Note we did not include statistics from the World Baseball Classic which may leave some players short of the minimum 35 Spring Training AB necessary for our analysis.