Joe Green was an odd case.
The start of his career is pretty easy: he struggles as a 23 year old, improves to claim a starting range by his mid-20s, has a few strong years … and then spends 11 years hitting very, very poorly as his career just refuses to end.
There a couple forces at play here. First, Green became a manager in his early 30s, and the long tail to his career was when he had the ability to add himself to the lineup (or use himself as a pinch hitter, whatever). Second, his best years have very scarce data (as does nearly everyone in the 1900s).
So, what to do? We’ve gone with a pretty standard bell curve that puts Green as a solid starting OF for 3-4 years, with a small handful of poor years on either side of that. Doing this means that we’re leaning very heavily on his 1909 season as an indicator of his actual skill level.
This leads to one of the rare projections where our career averages look drastically better than the player did in real life, a product of increased playing time during his peak and a total elimination of a decade where he struggled to hit over .200 most years historically.
He struck out a lot and rarely walked, but he did have some extra base pop, especially for the time.
Green was decent in the OF, with a strong enough arm and good enough range to play CF regularly. His speed didn’t really translate to the basepaths.
As you may guess, future revisions will hinge on the usage projections. If we have reduce Green’s production just slightly, he would fall below the level needed to hold down a full time job, and likely be out of the league by 1910 after being a 4th/5th OFer for a handful of years. If we have underestimated his production, he may regain more of the long tail he had historically. Even if the production overall is correct, we really have Green falling off the cliff in 1910–it would be completely plausible for him to have a shallower decline.
| Name | Joe Green |
| ID / Status | green-002joe / Draft |
| Pos | OF |
| DOB / i9s Career | 07/26/1878 / 1902 - 1912 |
| Birthplace | Chicago, IL (USA) |
| Height / Weight | 5'9" / 183 |
| B / T | R / R |
Batting Projections
| Year | AB | H | 2B | 3B | HR | BB | SO | SB | CS | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS |
| 1902 | 55 | 12 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 0.218 | 0.232 | 0.273 | 0.505 |
| 1903 | 184 | 43 | 9 | 1 | 1 | 10 | 28 | 3 | 2 | 0.234 | 0.273 | 0.310 | 0.583 |
| 1904 | 282 | 66 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 42 | 9 | 4 | 0.234 | 0.273 | 0.273 | 0.546 |
| 1905 | 405 | 125 | 18 | 7 | 2 | 29 | 68 | 16 | 7 | 0.309 | 0.355 | 0.402 | 0.757 |
| 1906 | 418 | 113 | 16 | 6 | 1 | 27 | 52 | 15 | 6 | 0.270 | 0.315 | 0.344 | 0.659 |
| 1907 | 520 | 154 | 21 | 5 | 2 | 25 | 53 | 18 | 7 | 0.296 | 0.328 | 0.367 | 0.696 |
| 1908 | 477 | 123 | 17 | 4 | 1 | 27 | 58 | 21 | 6 | 0.258 | 0.298 | 0.317 | 0.614 |
| 1909 | 499 | 152 | 20 | 5 | 2 | 26 | 65 | 27 | 8 | 0.305 | 0.339 | 0.377 | 0.716 |
| 1910 | 343 | 66 | 11 | 1 | 0 | 25 | 48 | 11 | 5 | 0.192 | 0.247 | 0.230 | 0.478 |
| 1911 | 211 | 37 | 7 | 0 | 1 | 14 | 38 | 6 | 2 | 0.175 | 0.227 | 0.223 | 0.449 |
| 1912 | 161 | 40 | 9 | 2 | 1 | 12 | 32 | 5 | 2 | 0.248 | 0.301 | 0.348 | 0.648 |