posted on Wednesday, January 16, 2008 1:11 AM by Jim

Toby Hall

ESSENTIALS
2007 RECAP

I challenge you to find anybody who was more excited than I when the Sox signed Toby Hall to a two-year deal Dec. 17, 2006.  And somebody who was more bummed out than I when Hall tore his labrum playing first base on my birthday.  Besides Hall, I mean.  And his relatives.

Hall was expected to miss the entire season, but he managed to make it back by mid-May.  Initial reports were mixed:  In his first game back against the Cubs, he committed two errors, but did go 2-for-3 with a double.  Unfortunately, there was plenty more of the former than the latter in the months to come.

He was far from 100 percent, and he played as well as you would expect from somebody with one and a half arms at a position where two is necessary.  The ugly particulars:
  1. His .466 OPS was the lowest of any AL player with 120 plate appearances.  In fact, he was the only player under .500.
  2. He threw out only three of 29 baserunners.
  3. He sported a 6.12 catcher's ERA.
  4. He only had three RBI all year, also the lowest total in the league.
  5. He had only one through 100 at-bats.
Oddly enough, his lowpoint of the season came during one of the Sox's best games.  He injured a fan with a foul ball, was doubled off first for no good reason after a single, and nearly tripped over himself trying to throw a runner out.  His night ended in the sixth inning, when Carlos Guillen conked Hall on the head with his follow-through, which resulted in a concussion.

With the way his 2007 played out, Hall might've been hoping for selective amnesia.

GOOD SIGNS

1. He was nowhere near healthy. He can only go up from here, right?

2. All things considered, he wasn't awful against lefties.  He was .288/.321/.341 against lefties, .185/.211/.222 against righties.  But somehow, he ended up with more plate appearances against righties (64 to 56).

3. He did throw out Brian Roberts.  Roberts was 50-for-57 in steals last year -- Hall was responsible for one of the unsuccessful attempts. (The others? Paul Bako and John Buck, but I wanted to come up with at least three things.)

BAD SIGNS

1. The 2007 season.  Do we have to say any more about it?

2008 OUTLOOK

It'll be a good season if...

First things first, the year will be off to a much better start if Hall only catches during spring training.  On a team with Paul Konerko, Jim Thome, Jermaine Dye and Nick Swisher, I can't think of one good reason why Ozzie Guillen would use him as an emergency first baseman.  Even Pablo Ozuna has three innings under his belt, for chrissakes.

And while we're going only by the lowest of standards, Hall will have "succeeded" if he reverses the declining performances by White Sox backup catchers. Remember when I charted the combined OPSes of Sox reserve catchers since 2001?  I updated the graph to include 2007, and it's even uglier:



A .516 OPS constitutes a "success" under the loosest of standards, so let's think more ideally.  Hall says he's 100 percent, so expectations should be 100 percent, too.

For starters, there isn't any good reason for Hall to have more than half his at-bats against righties.  Chris Widger, even in his productive 2005 that gave Ozzie reasons to play him out of turn on occasion, received more opportunities against southpaws.  The .288 average and four strikeouts in 56 plate appearances against lefties lead me to believe that he'll be able to get around on the ball better in 2008, which should increase his slugging and on-base percentages accordingly.

Before coming to the Sox, he posted an .833 OPS against lefties with the Dodgers and Devil Rays in 2006.  That's probably a little too high to expect, but I'd settle for the .750 OPS he posted in the two years prior.  Against righties, an OPS above .630 would be gravy, though he's capable of topping .650 realistically.

As mentioned in the A.J. Pierzynski preview, he'll have a tougher task in throwing out runners with Jon Garland off the staff.  Still, he shouldn't come anywhere close to his 10.3 percent success rate last year.  He entered 2007 with a career rate of 36 percent, but I suppose 1-out-of-4 would be at the low end of acceptable.  That will depend greatly on who he draws for starting pitchers, and expectations should be lowered for bad luck, say if he gets five Jose Contreras starts for every one of Mark Buehrle's.

PROJECTIONS

Toby Hall
 AB HR RBI
 BA
 OBP SLG OPS
2007 ZiPS
268
531.265.300.365.665
2007 BJS
 138 3
 11 .254 .295 .370 .665
2007 JCM
 145
 4
 17 .256 .302 .373 .675

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