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Smith (born James H. Smith) could have been useful, in the mold of someone decent with the glove with a good command of the strike zone. The problem is he couldn’t, just could not, hit. So you have a nice gap between his BA and his OBP, but it’s still pretty marginal. He also struck out a fair bit, so it was pretty much a runner on first, or nothing.

Much better at 3B than SS, played a little 2B as well.

We’ve given Smith a few good years before his actual debut to shape his career a bit more, and to frame the rest of his career as attempts to “get back” to those early peaks. This results in an anomaly in these MLE’s: someone whose career stats are actually better than his IRL stats. It’s hard–Smith clearly held down a bit of a role on teams for a half-dozen years, but when you expand the limited season of the NeL teams into a full MLB season, someone’s not going to post a .000 BA, right? This makes Smith one of the more “fantastical” MLE’s, which I think is fine for this kind of very fringe player, but, of course, YMMV.

If he fell off the radar after 1905, that would make sense; 1907 as well. But we’ve kept him around for his useful fringe part year in 1908 before he falls completely off the cliff in 1909.

Batting Projections

Pitching Projections