.304 Average for Austin Jackson?

i dont think aj is a .300 hitter to begin with.i also dont think hes going to improve across the board at a 50% level,however,i do think (hope) he will improve some this year.but,i do think that aj is closer to a .275-.290 hitter.as long as he can improve his obp i think hell be fine.

Is it reasonable to think that Austin may be able to reduce his strikeout total by half?

No. Not reasonable at all.

but it’s fun to look at none the less. A more reasonable figure would be 5-10%.

Career wise Jackson has had a rediculous BABIP with it being .340 this past season. His speed probably has a lot to do with this because he can leg out soft grounders more efficiently.

He does need to walk more, which is the easier way to impact his strikeouts. If he can increase that and maintain an above average BABIP (which will probably continue to regress, but should remain above average) than he’s probably a .275 hitter at best with a ceiling of .290.

With his defense, that’s a pretty good player to have on your team.

Hit about .280 this year. If he can do that I’d be happy.

While it’s certainly not reasonable for him to cut his strikeout total in half, I do think he could probably cut down about a third of his K’s, but even that is probably wishful thinking.

by the time you reach the ranks of the MLB, you generally are what you are. Some ballplayers — think Jose Bautista — burst through when they get older but it’s generally best to expect otherwise while hoping some coach will make a difference.

Strikeouts are simply part of Jackson’s game. Always have, and always will.

Click here for spreadsheet…not sure if you’ll be able to change data

Assuming PA’s go up a little bit because our overall offense is better, we’ll give him 680 PA’s. Take away about 20 SAC’s/HPB and 58BB’s (assuming a slight increase in BB% to 8.6%). That gives him about 601 AB’s. Assuming a drop to even just 24% in K% gives him 163K’s. Subtract K’s from AB’s and you essentially have Balls in Play of 438. Assuming a BABIP of .340 like last year, he’ll get about 149 hits. Divided by the 601 AB’s gives him a .248 AVG and .345 OBP. (Something is a little wrong in my math, but I can’t figure out what.) It’s pretty close though.

In order for Jackson to hit .300, it would probably be a combination of a lot of things going right. I don’t think that will happen, but I’m actually more concerned about OBP, which could become .350 if he can drop the K% to about 23% instead of 27% and/or raise the BB%.

Legendary Lloyd mentioned at the Tigers caravan that Jackson’s mechanics will change in spring training. His leg lift of the past will be toned down considerably, allowing Austin to go inside-out easier and start punching balls to RF more. Hopefully his lift to generate power last season gets shelved also. I liked Austin’s level swing of 2010 over what we saw in 2011.

This is a bit of a stretch for him, but it’s definitely not unheard of for an athletic player like AJax to develop that kind of modest power. Then he’s basically Mike Cameron with a bit less power and a bit more speed, which would be tremendous for the Tigers. He’ll never be an archetypal leadoff guy, but he’ll probably be in that spot for most of his career, unfortunately.

the problem with him using the gaps is, hes gotta hit it first!! bunting once in a while is something he SHOULD be doing.he should also be working on steals this winter.i cant count how many times i watched him at first base last season and he looked flat out confused.he also tried stealing a few times when he shouldnt have and got thrown out just to have the guy at the plate get a knock.i think working on stealing more will make a huge impact for us when he eventually gets on base.