Orginally presented on February 4 for the Cleveland chapter of SABR (Society of American Baseball Research), an in-depth player/positional analysis was performed to see how the 2012 Indians will fare.  This is part one of a 15 part series that will be released over the following two weeks.  The rest of the research/analysis can be found here. 

Players have down years, continuing to ply their trade through injuries, personal issues, and other problems.  It happens all the time.  Look at Chicago White Sox slugger Adam Dunn.  Dunn, who signed a lucrative four-year, $56 million deal last offseason, battled his way through not only his worst professional season, but one of the worst years in modern baseball.

It happens.  No matter what analysis is done, no matter what variables are accounted for.  Players have off years.  It’s called being human.

In an effort to account for this, an additional three wins will be subtracted from the projected total for the Indians in 2012.  It’s a reasonable amount, about 17% of the team’s projected improvement.

It may or may not happen, but it’s best to at least account for our “humanness,” either the players’ or the analyst’s.