We first looked at Geovany Soto's 2010 projections and we'll work our way through the team.  You can find all of these player projections by clicking on the link on the menu.

Derrek Lee got off to a terrible start in 2009.  In 19 April games, Lee hit just .189/.253/.284.  He had only 4 doubles and a home run.  Things turned around when the calendar turned to May.  Here is what we wrote about Derrek Lee's 2009 season.

From May 1 until the end of the season Lee hit .325/.415/.627 with 34 home runs, 32 doubles and 2 triples. In 2005 Lee hit .335/.418/.662 so he was close to as good as that season.

Lee is an interesting player in that his wOBA has hasn't been very steady since joining the Cubs. Since 2004 his wOBA has been .367, .446, .360, .391, .360, and .412. Lee's 2006 (.360 wOBA) was largely the result of his broken wrist, but in 2008 he was showing some signs of decline. Oddly enough, Lee's defense improved during the 2008 season. His career UZR/150 is 0.1. From 2004 to 2007 it was -1, -3.7, 1.9, and -0.5. It jumped to 5.2 in 2008 and remained 4.7 in 2009.

There was a bit of luck involved last year. His BABIP was .333 while his xBABIP was .308. You'd think that Lee's line drive rate would have been higher than his career average, but that is not so. His career average is 21.3%. Since joining the Cubs it had been 18.9%, 22%, 20.3%, 20.6%, and 21.5%, but in 2009 it was 19.2%. He also hit a lot more fly balls than he normally does. His GB/FB rate was 0.77 (1.33 in 2008, 1.08 in 2006 and 2007). It seems Lee must have made an effort to elevate the ball more. His FB% had declined every year since 2004 and was down at 33.7% in 2008. Since 2002 Lee had not had a higher GB/FB rate than 40.9%, but in 2009 he hit the ball in the air 45.7% of the time.

I'd like to amend the part on his UZR.  Two seasons of UZR data is as reliable as one season of batting stats.  While there's a distinct possibility that Lee has improved a bit defensively, we need to be careful about coming to conclusions based on such a small sample. So let's just say that we're still unsure if Lee has really improved or not.

(click the link below to read more)

Let me explain what I've done below and how it's different from Soto.  I've used the same projections with exception of the defense.  Defensive stats for catchers are very unreliable at this point.  For the other position players I've taken the average of CHONE's defensive projections, Jeff Zimmerman's UZR projections from BtB, CAIRO's UZR projections (UZR/150 scaled to the projected number of games played), and a weighted average of Dewan's plus/minus runs saved availabe on Bill James Online.  I've also used a 4-year weighted average for baserunning using Baseball Prospectus' EQBRR.  I'm rounding both defense and baserunning to the nearest whole number.  I haven't used an aging curve for the baserunning projections because there simply isn't much difference from one year to the next once you get into your mid 20s.  A player's peak baserunning age is 22.  Scroll down toward the end of this pdf file on tangotiger.net if you want to see a chart of baserunning at certain ages.

OK, now that all that is out of the way, let's take a look at Lee's projections that are currently available.  I should add here that when additional projections come out I'll add those to the players I do at that time, but I won't be updating these pages.  The differene between 4 or 8 projection systems in an average is going to be very minimal if the projection system is any good.  Below are Lee's baserunning numbers over the last 4 years:

Lee isn't the most gifted baserunner in the world.  He was an above average baserunner from 2001-2003, but since then he's consistently been below average with the exception of 2009.  We can project Lee to be worth -2 runs on the bases.

Lots of people seem to think Derrek Lee is a really good fielder.  He's won a couple gold gloves.  We've already shown he's league average in UZR in his career.  Rally's Total Zone has him just below average.  Dewan has had him as above average.  He probably didn't deserve his gold gloves, but he's an OK fielder.  What about 2010?

What Lee loses on the bases he makes up for with his defense.  Lee is a difficult player to project in my opinion.  He's been rather inconsistent in his career, especially with the Cubs.  As we saw last year, he's still capable of being a great hitting 1st baseman.  We also saw early last year and in 2008 how he's capable of being only a decent hitting 1st baseman.  I wonder if part of the inconsistency has been injuries.  Obviously Lee had the wrist injury, which hurt him in 2006 and 2007.  He's had neck problems throughout his career.  Anyway, here are Lee's batting projections.

CAIRO expects Lee to fall back to what he did in 2006 (.360 wOBA) and 2008 (.360 wOBA).  The other 3 see him closer to 2008 (.391 wOBA).  We projected 608 plate appearances for Lee in 2010. His value is below.

2.9 WAR seemed low to me, so I decided to calculate it myself rather than using the WAR spreadsheet from BtB.  I used a .338 league average wOBA.  I got 2.7 WAR so it's definitely not low.  Lee is being paid $13 million in his final year of the 5-year contract he signed after the 2005 season and his projected value is exactly $13 million.

If 48.6 wins is a replacement level team, the Cubs are now up to about 54 to 55 wins after doing Soto and Lee.