Before the season I began I complete wrote off Moss’ 2012 season as a fluke year that will never happen again and that I would be surprised if Moss would get more than 300 plate appearances for the A’s, but obviously I was wrong as he was a borderline top ten first baseman. Moss was able to achieve his .256 batting average in multiple ways. First, the A’s platooned him against left handed pitchers (with Nate Frieman). Second, his strikeout rate reduced 2.5 percentage points from the prior year. Most importantly, the strikeout rate and swing and miss rate (WHIFF) decreased substantially during the second half of the season (table below).

Another reason why he performed better during the second half is the percentage of plate appearances against left handed pitchers dropped. In the first half 19 percent of his plate appearances came against lefties while in the second half it was only 14.7 percent. Based on the data I bet he’ll continue to get less at-bats against lefties, which will suppress his runs and RBIs, but they’ll inflate his batting average. I believe he has room to more than a .256 hitter next year based upon his second half results and the fact the A’s are not going to bat him against lefties. Lastly, what’s extremely interesting is the swing and miss (WHIFF) rate only decreased three percentage points while the strikeout rate a little more than seven percentage points. That tells me he’ll always have a high strikeout rate, but it appears he became more selective at the plate and stopped swinging at “bad” pitches. If he for some reason were to leave Oakland, which is highly unlikely, he would have even more value. Below are his home-road splits the last two seasons (table below). For 2014 I expect 25-30 home runs with 80-plus RBI, 70-plus runs and batting average in the .280 range.

If you are looking for his statistical projections please go here and download my latest projections.