Before trading for Cespedes, the Mets late summer push was going to rely on bringing up Conforto, who provided some pop. Conforto had a nice rookie campaign hitting 9 homers in under 200 PA’s and batting .270. His hitting continued in the post-season, including a World Series game where he smacked 2 homers. He looks to see the majority of playing time in the outfield this year, and to be part of a special Mets outfield in terms of hitting between himself, Cespedes and Granderson. Let’s take a look at what the models think he’ll do.
| Player: | Michael Conforto | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projection Source: | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS |
| MLB.com | 470 | 66 | 22 | 69 | 2 | 0.277 | 0.344 | 0.502 | 0.846 |
| Steamer | 472 | 56 | 18 | 65 | 3 | 0.258 | 0.319 | 0.434 | 0.754 |
| ESPN | 527 | 68 | 19 | 71 | 1 | 0.264 | 0.33 | 0.45 | 0.78 |
| ZiPS | 610 | 85 | 26 | 87 | 1 | 0.255 | 0.32 | 0.466 | 0.786 |
| PECOTA (BP) | 587 | 66 | 22 | 78 | 1 | 0.25 | 0.316 | 0.438 | 0.754 |
| Sporting News | 506 | 60 | 17 | 71 | 3 | 0.271 | 0.325 | 0.433 | 0.758 |
| Baseball America | 355 | 51 | 12 | 49 | 4 | 0.285 | 0.354 | 0.459 | 0.813 |
| Rotowire | 463 | 68 | 17 | 60 | 1 | 0.268 | 0.327 | 0.451 | 0.778 |
| MLB Yearbook | 513 | 73 | 23 | 78 | 1 | 0.273 | 0.339 | 0.485 | 0.824 |
| AVERAGE: | 500.3333333 | 65.88888889 | 19.55555556 | 69.77777778 | 1.888888889 | 0.266777778 | 0.330444444 | 0.457555556 | 0.788111111 |
The models agree that he won’t see all the playing time out there, which makes sense, the Mets do have 5 outfield players and Conforto is the first choice to come out late in a game so Cespedes can slide over and Lagares can take over center. That being said, I reject the Baseball America notion that he’ll only 355 ABs. They all see Conforto continuing his power but they disagree about his average some going way below and some going way above what he did in his rookie campaign. In my opinion, I think the average of .266 sounds about right.
Notes:
Both ZiPS and PECOTA (BP) do not provide AB’s, so those are PA’s instead.
MLB.com and Steamer data can be found here.
ZiPS data can be found here.
ESPN data can be found here.
Baseball America data is from the 2016 Preview Fantasy Guide
Sporting News data is from the 2016 publication of Sporting News Fantasy Baseball
Rotowire data is from the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2016 published by Rotowire
MLB Yearbook data is from the 2016 Major League Baseball Yearbook
PECOTA (BP) data is from the Baseball Prospectus 2016 Annual
