Earlier this month, I blogged about some pitchers that were difficult for me to project. I've also written an article about the difficulties in projecting Matt Holliday's 2009 stats. But none of the players in those two pieces came close to the hardest player to project this year.
No, that title goes instead to Dayan Viciedo, the 19-year old Cuban emigre who signed a four-year deal with the White Sox in December. What makes Viciedo so difficult to project is that there's a lack of useful statistical trail to guide us. We've dealt with that issue before, with the likes of Josh Hamilton, Alexei Ramirez and Mike Hampton, for assorted reasons.
Viciedo might be even more difficult, given his age. He first broke into professional baseball in Cuba for Villa Clara as a 15-year old. While that alone should put him on our radar, he also held his own initially, hitting over .300 as a 16-year old. However, according to BaseballdeCuba.com, his development his stagnated, to the point where he's had very little experience in international play, because Cuba has had better alternatives.
Finding stats for Cuban play has been extremely difficult. Both the English and Spanish language versions of BaseballdeCuba.com offer up partial stats, rather than a full accounting as you'd be able to see for any U.S. player, either in the minors or even in college, or for Japanese professional leagues. In the course of searching over the web for Viciedo's full stats, I sought out the help of a few other industry touts. Ron Shandler from BaseballHQ.com directed me to the above site. Todd Zola from Mastersball.com found a reprinting of his stats in the comments of a post at South Side Sox, a White Sox blog (I had also reached out to Clay Davenport from Baseball Prospectus, who had found the same stats.).
The next problem is then figuring out how those stats translate. Because we've had so few Cuban players come over, nor do we have the ability to really scout those players on a regular basis, there's necessarily a guessing game involved. Estimates on the quality of play there range from Low-A ball all the way up to Triple-A.
The final piece of the puzzle here has to be scouting - and while the teams have had some looks at Viciedo in his workouts, there's still precious little exposure to him right now. Much as the case was with Alexei Ramirez, spring training will be a pretty useful time. One thing to watch for is Viciedo's range and quickness - apparently at his last set of workouts before signing with the White Sox, he checked in at 262 pounds. That raises an obvious red flag - if he weighs that much as a teenager, how long is he going to be able to stick at the position?
My eventual projection for Viciedo took the pessimistic route. Viciedo probably needs more seasoning in the minors, and I've projected him to get that. While the White Sox don't have a slam-dunk option at third base right now, they do have choices in Wilson Betemit and Josh Fields (though Ozzie Guillen seemed to be so down on Fields that he opted to play Juan Uribe and his .296 OBP over him when Joe Crede got hurt). Look for some power from Viciedo, but also look for him not to hit for average or get on-base at a decent clip. I'm only giving him 183 at-bats in 44 games, hitting .235/.300/.404.
The team's investment in Dayan Viciedo will eventually pay off, but probably not in 2009, and I'm not expecting him to eventually be among the elite third basemen in the game.