There was a world of demands for Flores before the start of the 2015 season. The hope was the Mets would go out and via a trade or free agent signing get a marquee shortstop, but the Mets went in with Flores. We don’t really need to go into the details of what happened to Flores this season (they are documented everywhere). In 2016, the Mets have multiple players who can play shortstop, so the amount of playing time for Flores seems unclear, but were the projections right about 2015? Here’s what they thought:
PECOTA (BP): 314 PA, 30 R, 16 2B, 1 3B, 9 HR, 37 RBI, .255 BA, .288 OBP
PECOTA (MLB.com): 479 AB, 51 R, 14 HR, 58 RBI, .255 BA, .288 OBP
MLB.com: 450 AB, 54 R, 12 HR, 50 RBI, .262 BA, .304 OBP
ZiPS: 570 PA, 73 R, 24 2B, 4 3B, 17 HR, 80 RBI, .266 BA, .300 OBP
Steamer: 510 PA, 476 AB, 48 R, 22 2B, 2 3B, 15 HR, 57 RBI, .248 BA, .286 OBP
ESPN: .264 BA, 35 R, 8 HR, 32 RBI
Average: 465 PA, 468 AB, 48.5 R, 20.7 2B, 2.3 3B, 12.5 HR, 60.7 RBI, .258 BA, .293 OBP
(Originally posted here)
And here are his actual 2015 numbers:
510 PA, 55 R, 22 3B, 16 HR, 59 RBI, .263 BA, .295 OBP
Flores played a bit more than it was thought he would play (when looking at the data before averaging, you can see that the different providers were all over the place in terms of how much he would actually play). He did well, he actually for the most part beat the projections. He slammed 16 homers (I remember laughing last year at ZiPs when they thought he would hit 17 over 570 PAs which is really close to what he did), had a lot more doubles than projected and hit 5 points better and had pretty much the expected on base percentage. He put up really solid numbers.
His problem of course was defense, which is ultimately why his playing time will be cut to about 30-50% of what he had last year, but that’s ok. If he can put up similar numbers that are prorated for his playing time, that would still be a huge boost to this team.
