213 Miles From Shea

Every spring at 213 we gather a whole bunch of projections for players and average them together to see what a conglomerate of baseball sources think a given player will perform over the year. It’s wholly unscientific – averaging averages and not weighting them for previous accuracy or amount of playing time they feel a player will see.

Last year we wrote about how Michael Conforto had two seasons in 2018. He started off struggling but then turned a corner about a week after the All-Star break where he hit .273/.356/.539 for the rest of the year (.243/.350/.448 overall in 2018). Computers took his season, and his .251/.349/.476 batting line to that point and spit out the following projections:

2019 Stats: 648 PA, 549 AB, 33 HR, .257/.363/.494, .865 OPS, 3.5 WAR, 122 DRC+

Before we get into it, that’s a pretty line, right? Sometimes I feel like I take Conforto for granted.

On the whole, models undercut with Conforto. He way outperformed in OBP, which makes us happy thinking about his future. He also out slugged all of his projections as well. Baseball Prospectus and ZiPS were the closest in projecting his success. They split the difference on his WAR, and Baseball Prospectus exactly nailed his DRC+. I’m not surprised that the models under-projected Conforto once I saw his 2019 stats in comparison with his other seasons. He had his second best season, just behind his All-Star season.

This puts Conforto in an interesting position when it comes to projections for next year. All the major sources under-projected him, how do they correct and do they end up over correcting in 2020?

Every spring at 213 we gather a whole bunch of projections for players and average them together to see what a conglomerate of baseball sources think a given player will perform over the year. It’s wholly unscientific – averaging averages and not weighting them for previous accuracy or amount of playing time they feel a player will see.

Juan Lagares was the longest tenured player on the Mets. The Mets were the first team to sign him and he stayed with the Mets until he was granted free agency last November. His career as a defensive superstar never saw him develop the hitting tools to be a starting centerfielder with the Mets and his injuries overtime started to eat into his ability to be the defensive stud the Mets need. The last two years the Mets have looked for Lagares-esque players for the roster (Keon Broxton, Jake Marisnick, etc). Last year when we went through Lagares’ projections we were wondering how he would split time with Broxton. Now we just look back at his time as a Met, thankful for the memories. His projections are below followed by his actual numbers:

2019 Stats: 285 PA, 258 AB, 5 HR, .213/.279/.326, .605 OPS, -0.7 WAR, 62 DRC+

Projections were surprising hyped on Lagares last season, having him near his career slash line (.254/.297/.361), positing a positive WAR and having him hit only 19% worse than the average major league hitter. When healthy, Juan didn’t impress. He made his homer total surprisingly, but saw his slugging dip (juiced ball?) and he posted his first negative WAR of the season. His DRC+ essentially has him 38% worse than the average player. Not one projection saw him slide this much.

He has given so much to the Mets. We wish him well here at 213 on whatever comes next!

Every spring at 213 we gather a whole bunch of projections for players and average them together to see what a conglomerate of baseball sources think a given player will perform over the year. It’s wholly unscientific – averaging averages and not weighting them for previous accuracy or amount of playing time they feel a player will see.

Before the 2018 season, the Mets weren’t sure that Nimmo was a starter, and messed with his playing time early. He ended 2018 with a 123 DRC+, which was highest by a Mets batter that year. 2019 started off a bit the same for Nimmo, the consensus was that he was a starter but there was a debate about his defensive ability. He also got started off to a rough start to which we later found out that he was playing with a bad back. So he missed quite a bit of playing time but performed well once he returned. The projections below were originally posted/discussed here and they are followed by his 2019 stats:

2019 Stats: 254 PA< 199 AB, 8 HR, .221/.375/.407, 0.9 WAR, 100 DRC+

Again, lets remember that Nimmo started the season horribly, so coming back to still post almost a full point of WAR, to still beat his projections for OBP (which is what made his 2018 season so special) is a massive accomplishment.

Baseball Reference and ESPN were the most bullish on Nimmo’s OBP (and ESPN tends to be bullish about everything), so feels like a win for Baseball Reference (assuming that Nimmo’s drop in power was injury related). ZiPS was the closest for OPS, but they accomplished that by over-projecting power and batting average and under-projecting Nimmo’s walk rate.

We love Brandon Nimmo. We cannot wait to see what he does in another full season if he is completely healthy. We are also curious as to how computer projections going into 2020 handle Nimmo with his injuries in 2019 and projected health.

Every spring at 213 we gather a whole bunch of projections for players and average them together to see what a conglomerate of baseball sources think a given player will perform over the year. It’s wholly unscientific – averaging averages and not weighting them for previous accuracy or amount of playing time they feel a player will see.

I thought about not writing this article, but I think it’s important to remember how poorly the Mets treated Devin Mesoraco last year, and how it speaks to the organization as a whole. When we wrote about Mesoraco last year, the Mets catcher situation was a mess between Wilson Ramos, Travis d’Arnaud and Mesoraco. The Mets just bet on d’Arnaud over Kevin Plawecki, who they traded to the Indians. Travis was still trying to come back from injury. For what it’s worth, Mesoraco was projected to put up the following numbers:

Instead, the Mets forced him, essentially, into early retirement.

Instead of doing the right thing of releasing Mesoraco when he wouldn’t accept an assignment to Syracuse, the Mets put him on the restricted list which triggered Devin wanting to retire. There was some gentleman’s agreement that Mesoraco would be on the team if d’Arnaud was not ready for opening day and by the end of March it was becoming clear that he was not ready. So the Mets went from being stacked with the catchers to trading away Plawecki, angering Mesoraco (and potentially damaging their reputation to sign other veteran players), and an injured d’Arnaud.

The kicker is the Mets got rid of d’Arnaud anyway later in the season and went on to have a great year in Tampa Bay.

Every spring at 213 we gather a whole bunch of projections for players and average them together to see what a conglomerate of baseball sources think a given player will perform over the year. It’s wholly unscientific – averaging averages and not weighting them for previous accuracy or amount of playing time they feel a player will see.

We have a really fun one of these today, the 2019 Rookie of the Year – Pete Alonso!

It feels like a such a long time ago (last decade – hahahaha) that there was still a debate among the Mets brass at the start of 2019 what level Alonso would start his season. At the time we wrote the projection article last year (March 12th), Frazier hadn’t played in a spring training game and we were just starting to see what the Jed Lowrie Mets tenure would look like. On top of that, Alonso was having a spring training that could not be ignored, he needed to be called up.

The computers spat out the following projections for Pete, his actual numbers follow:

2019 Stats: 693 PA, 597 AB, 53 HR, .260/.358/.583, .941 OPS, 5.0 WAR, 141 DRC+

Alonso did so much better than everyone projected it’s difficult to describe in words. He got on base nearly 40 points more than the average projected number. He hit around 180 points better on OPS than projections thought. He was worth about 3.5 more wins than the average projection thought. According to DRC+ he was 41% than the average hitter, a great place to be at.

Pete Alonso had a historic season. We are curious to see how projection models adjust for his sophomore season.

Every spring at 213 we gather a whole bunch of projections for players and average them together to see what a conglomerate of baseball sources think a given player will perform over the year. It’s wholly unscientific – averaging averages and not weighting them for previous accuracy or amount of playing time they feel a player will see.

Throughout December we’ve reviewed the projections for tons of pitchers who started out Spring Training with the Mets, today we start hitters (amazing coincidence that it fell on the first day of the year). As with pitchers, we are doing these reviews in the reverse order that we wrote them in the spring, meaning we start with fringe players first.

Last year we wrote that Adeiny Hechavarria was going to be a long shot to make the team, but Todd Frazier and Jed Lowrie were nursing injuries. That sentence looks quite different after the season where Lowrie was injured for pretty much all of it. The projections for Hechavarria are in the following table followed by his stats as a Met, as a Brave (he was released in August) and overall in 2019:

2019 Mets: 151 PA, 142 AB, 5 HR, .204/.252/.359, .611 OPS, -0.2 WAR, 73 DRC+
2019 Braves: 70 PA, 61 AB, 4 HR, .328/.400/.639, 1.039 OPS, 1.1 WAR, 132 DRC+
2019 Total: 221 PA, 203 AB, 9 HR, .241/.299/.443, .742 OPS

Essentially, as a Met, Adeiny was under performing either by a sizable amount or a massive amount depending on what statistics you favor for this kind of thing. Baseball Prospectus, via DRC+, was projecting him 10% worse than the average player, he was performing 27% worse than the average player.

Then he got released, picked up by another team and like other players in the last decade, everything swung the other way. He actually finishes the year above average in all metrics that matter (OBP, OPS, WAR, DRC+). Going back to DRC+, as a Brave he was 32% better than the average player.

So on the whole, the projections undersold Adeiny a bit, but really he had two different seasons depending on which uniform he was wearing.

Every spring at 213 we gather a whole bunch of projections for players and average them together to see what a conglomerate of baseball sources think a given player will perform over the year. It’s wholly unscientific – averaging averages and not weighting them for previous accuracy or amount of playing time they feel a player will see.

In pure coincidence (we’ve just been doing one of these review articles daily in reverse order that they were published in the spring) we end the decade reviewing the projections of the best Met in the last decade – Jacob deGrom.

Last year we wrote about how deGrom was coming off an absurd year. It was going to be completely normal for 2019 projections to show regressions because of how good he was in 2018. And the projections showed various levels of regression for the Cy Young winner:

2019 Stats: 204.0 IP, 2.43 ERA, 255 K (league leading), 2.67 FIP, 0.971 WHIP, 11.3 K/9, 7.3 WAR, 2.27 DRA

So deGrom won the Cy Young again. He was just phenomenal in 2019. Even though his numbers were not as good as 2018 (and there was no practical way they could be, he was on another level in 2018) – he actually improved his K/9 by 0.1.

ESPN was most progressive on deGrom this year, but they are almost always the most hyped at over predicting projections. Baseball Prospectus was quite off, almost uncharacteristically so. Steamer was the closest for WAR.

Ultimately, deGrom is just another level of pitcher. Who knows where the Mets would be without him. He defined the 2010’s for the Mets, debuting during the same week as Rafael Montero, who was projected as the Mets next big prospect. Jacob won a Rookie of the Year, has been an All Star 3 times, a Cy Young twice. It’s been a treasure to watch him.

I’m assuming the models in 2020 are going to project him to regress again. This time I’ll believe it a little less.

Every spring at 213 we gather a whole bunch of projections for players and average them together to see what a conglomerate of baseball sources think a given player will perform over the year. It’s wholly unscientific – averaging averages and not weighting them for previous accuracy or amount of playing time they feel a player will see.

If there was ever a year the Mets needed Tyler Bashlor to over perform projections, it was last year. The Mets were struggling with Edwin Diaz and Jeurys Familia and the bullpen was floundering. Bashlor had a 4.22 ERA over 32.0 innings the previous season with a nice 1.188 WHIP, but a poor 5.44 FIP. Which way would he go in 2019?

2019 Stats: 22.0 IP, 6.95 ERA, 7.26 FIP, 1.727 WHIP, 8.2 K/9, 7.90 DRA

(You can read what we wrote about him last year here)

As you can see from the chart, projections at the start of the year were split if he was going to get better (Baseball Reference, ESPN), stay about the same (ZiPS) or take a step back (Baseball Prospectus, Steamer). Baseball Prospectus was the most stark, ballooning his ERA up half a run and both them and Steamer saw similar increases in WHIP.

Those two projections end up winning thanks to Price is Right rules, Bashlor just couldn’t keep it together in the majors was fairly disastrous. As mentioned before, it’s a shame because there was room to propel himself up the depth chart if his performance warranted it.

In limited outings (5 games – 5.0 innings) he has a positive winter allowing only 1 run and 4 hits. He also had a good record in Syracuse last year, a 3.41 ERA over 37.0 innings. Maybe 2020 is the year he steps forward. I’m sure we’ll be having a similar conversation in a month or so when we start looking at 2020 projections.

Every spring at 213 we gather a whole bunch of projections for players and average them together to see what a conglomerate of baseball sources think a given player will perform over the year. It’s wholly unscientific – averaging averages and not weighting them for previous accuracy or amount of playing time they feel a player will see.

We know Edwin Diaz‘s 2019 wasn’t pretty, we already know that going into his projections last year we were super excited. Things didn’t work for him last year. Who knows if it was his stuff, his mind, the seems on the ball or a combination of things, he was different than the Díaz we saw as a Mariner and he cost so much in that trade that the whole thing feels like a storm cloud that we can’t escape from. His 2019 projections are below followed by his actual performance:

2019: 58.0 IP, 5.59 ERA, 4.51 FIP, 1.379 WHIP, 15.4 K/9, -0.6 WAR, 2.94 DRA

Díaz was projected to be an elite reliever, he was not. Even Baseball Reference, who was so far away from all the other projections couldn’t predict his struggles. We all know from watching games it was the home run ball, and like many pitchers he saw his HR/9 balloon (2.3 vs a career 1.3) and he saw his strikeouts increase. He was quite a bit better at his K/9 than projected.

It’s difficult to predict why he struggled but he did struggle. His stuff is still so electric that maybe, maybe he bounces back for the Mets.

Every spring at 213 we gather a whole bunch of projections for players and average them together to see what a conglomerate of baseball sources think a given player will perform over the year. It’s wholly unscientific – averaging averages and not weighting them for previous accuracy or amount of playing time they feel a player will see.

(Important Note: This article was written on 12/22. There were rumors earlier this off-season that Jeurys Familia may be traded as a way to off load salary. So there’s a chance that some statements in this article may be made out of date if he is traded between 12/22 and 12/28).

Going into 2019, Mets fans were worried about the back of the rotation, the offense and not the bullpen. Between Familia, Diaz and Lugo, things looked good. Going into 2020 Mets fans are worried about the back of the rotation, the bullpen and not the offense. A lot of that deals with Familia’s fall this past year. We were worried about his WHIP last year, here are his projections followed by his actual numbers:

2019: 60.0 IP, 5.70 ERA, 4.88 FIP, 1.733 WHIP, 9.5 K/9, -0.4 WAR, 5.87 DRA

Last year we talked about the amount of variance in the data, from ZiPS thinking he was going to be amazing to Baseball Prospectus not being impressed.

They were all wrong. He did terrible. But it’s useful to look back at the numbers and think about what could be possible if Familia can put together a bounce back year.