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. Today is our last pitcher projected to be a starter at times this season.
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 Seth Lugo:
| Seth Lugo | ||||||
| IP | Record | ERA | BB | K | WHIP | |
| 2016 | 64 | 5-2 | 2.67 | 21 | 45 | 1.09 |
| Projections | ||||||
| MLB.com | 110 | 7-7 | 4.01 | 36 | 77 | 1.24 |
| Steamer | 83.2 | 4-6 | 4.52 | 28 | 65 | 1.35 |
| ZiPS | 131.2 | 4.58 | 39 | 104 | 1.31 | |
| ESPN | 7-9 | 4.34 | 118 | 1.34 | ||
| Baseball Prospectus | 64 | 4-4 | 4.44 | 51 | 1.4 | |
| NBC Rotoworld | 115.2 | 8-6 | 3.89 | 33 | 100 | 1.28 |
| Rotowire | 142 | 7-9 | 4.25 | 48 | 117 | 1.338 |
| Baseball America | 131 | 7 | 3.92 | 35 | 100 | 1.21 |
| FBG 2017 | 125 | 1-0 | 4.17 | 40 | 88 | 1.2 |
| Average | 112.7 | 5.6-5.8 | 4.24 | 37.00 | 91.11 | 1.30 |
With Robert Gsellman, Seth Lugo saved the team down the stretch coming and being awesome. Unlike the Gsellman, the projection programs are pretty set on exactly how many steps back Lugo will take this year if given playing time. It is good to remember though that any team would love to have a pitcher with a 4.24 ERA as their 5th starter, and really Lugo doesn’t look like the 5th start.
It is remarkable how in range all of the projections are with each other, especially with a player coming into his second season with question marks on playing times and batter exposure to his pitches.
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
