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, we’ll continue with pitchers who could start this year for the Mets.
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 Steven Matz:
| Steven Matz | ||||||
| IP | Record | ERA | BB | K | WHIP | |
| 2016 | 132.1 | 9-8 | 3.40 | 31 | 129 | 1.21 |
| Projections | ||||||
| MLB.com | 165 | 11-7 | 3.33 | 38 | 160 | 1.17 |
| Steamer | 163.2 | 10-9 | 3.46 | 48 | 161 | 1.2 |
| ZiPS | 138 | 3.46 | 39 | 141 | 1.195 | |
| ESPN | 11-7 | 3.27 | 148 | 1.2 | ||
| Baseball Prospectus | 131 | 9-7 | 3.47 | 128 | 1.19 | |
| Sporting News | 148 | 10 | 3.34 | 38 | 147 | 1.17 |
| NBC Rotoworld | 166.2 | 12-8 | 3.46 | 39 | 157 | 1.18 |
| Rotowire | 165 | 10-8 | 3.44 | 46 | 149 | 1.212 |
| Baseball America | 137 | 8 | 2.30 | 29 | 131 | 1.26 |
| FBG 2017 | 150 | 12-7 | 3.41 | 36 | 146 | 1.22 |
| Average | 151.489 | 10.3-7.6 | 3.29 | 39.125 | 146.8 | 1.1997 |
Last year was a tough year for Matz. He came up in 2015 throwing fire, got injured, was out for a while, came back and had some solid starts in the playoffs. Last year his first start was horrific and then was great until injury ended his season, hurting his numbers in his last few starts of the season. With the exception of one provider, stats see his numbers being very similar to last year, with a few extra starts. This is interesting as it is tempering expectations.
It is worth noting that I’m down on someone right now who is projecting to post about a 3.30 ERA, which is how good the Mets rotation is. A few seasons ago I would have been completely fine with that.
Statistic Anomaly: Baseball America really is going all in with the Mets pitching corps. Yesterday they had Jacob deGrom with an ERA better than the rest and here they have Matz a full run below the average.
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
