2018 Stat Projection Review: Michael Conforto

Today we start a yearly labor of love – stat projection review! We look at the stat projections from several sources including Baseball Prospectus, ZiPS, Steamer, MLB.com, Baseball Reference, etc to find out what the pundits think the Mets are going to do this season.

Michael Conforto
Source	PA	AB	H	R	HR	AVG	OBP	SLG	WAR
Baseball Prospectus	594		94.222	82	28	0.263	0.347	0.488	2.5
ZiPS	513		117	74	27	0.261	0.349	0.509	3.7
Steamer	450	389	101	61	22	0.26	0.35	0.492	2.9
ESPN		435	120.06	71	26	0.276	0.367	0.522
MLB.com		440	118.8	68	25	0.27	0.361	0.495
Baseball Reference	455	395	104	66	23	0.263	0.355	0.504
Average:	503	414.75	109.1803	70.33333	25.16667	0.2655	0.354833	0.501667	3.033333
2017 Stats:	440	373	104	72	27	0.279	0.384	0.555	3.6

What a difference a year makes for Michael Conforto. At this point last year Terry Collins was debating putting Conforto into Vegas or let him be the 4th outfielder. Then the season started and Collins rotated Conforto in and out of the lineup until it was clear he was putting up career numbers.

For the first month or so of the season, Conforto was rivaling Aaron Judge in OPS. Then Conforto suffered a bizarre, Mets-esqe injury.

Now for the projections, they see Conforto having a similar season, they mainly disagree with how much playing time he’ll get. For example, Baseball Prospectus at print still had Conforto playing a whole season. ESPN is the most bullish, but they run the most bullish normally.

The Mets season will depend on the numbers that Conforto is able to put up and how quickly Conforto can back to the field. At this point, I’m not expecting seeing him everyday in the lineup until the first week of June.