We continue a month plus long journey looking at as many stat projections for as many Mets players as it make sense to do so, starting with pitchers, working towards hitters. Specifically, w are nearing the end of Mets starters this year.
There are a lot of stat projection publications available on the internet and magazine shelves. Rather than trusting one (although if I had to pick one, it would be Baseball Prospectus), I like to average the projections together. In a perfect world, I would take data from the several years I’ve done this to figure out how to weight the projections in the average, but for now just a straight average will be fine. This tends to round out the higher/lower outliers while still allowing them to have a say in the conversation. Let’s take a look at the average projections for Zack Wheeler:
| Zack Wheeler | ||||||
| IP | Record | ERA | BB | K | WHIP | |
| 2014 | 185.1 | 11-11 | 3.54 | 79 | 187 | 1.33 |
| Projections | ||||||
| MLB.com | 80 | 4-4 | 3.60 | 68 | 38 | 1.33 |
| Steamer | 71.1 | 4-4 | 3.53 | 62 | 27 | 1.25 |
| ZiPS | 97 | 4.18 | 42 | 85 | 1.41 | |
| ESPN | 2-2 | 3.92 | 35 | 1.44 | ||
| Baseball Prospectus | 98.2 | 6-6 | 3.98 | 103 | 1.32 | |
| NBC Rotoworld | 109 | 7-6 | 3.96 | 47 | 112 | 1.35 |
| Rotowire | 39 | 2-2 | 4.15 | 18 | 35 | 1.462 |
| FBG 2017 | 150 | 10-8 | 3.87 | 62 | 152 | 1.32 |
| Average | 92.0429 | 5-4.6 | 3.90 | 49.83 | 73.38 | 1.36 |
Huge question, especially since this article was written on 2/26: what will Wheeler do this year? Does he start? Does he work out of the pen?
Wheeler hasn’t pitched since 2014, but you follow the Mets so you already know that. Wheels Up had a good year back then but it’s been a while and I’m of the mindset that anything the Mets get out of Wheeler this year is bonus. The consensus of the projection programs looks like they are looking at a player who missed the last two seasons. They are all over the place on innings pitched. They aren’t too far off on ERA and WHIP though, and those numbers would be reasonable and welcomed from a pitcher like Wheeler who missed so much time.
Sources:
MLB.com and Steamer Projections can both be found here.
ZiPS projections can be found here.
ESPN projections can be found here.
Seidler, Jarrett & BP Staff. (2017) Baseball Prospectus 2017. New York, New York:Turner Publishing Company
The Fantasy Baseball Guide (2017)
Sporting News Fantasy Baseball (2017)
Baseball America Fantasy Guide (2017)
Rotowire Fantasy Baseball (2017)
Rotoworld Fansty Baseball (2017)
Notes:
Article Written on 2/26, stats collected 2/19 and may have changed after collection. Not all sources above may have been used in this article specifically but were used in judgment calls for reliability of the data
