We wrapped up all the pitcher projections and now we can move on to the hitters!
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 Michael Conforto:
| Michael Conforto | |||||||||
| PA | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | OBP | SLG | |
| 2016 | 348 | 478 | 68.00 | 21 | 68 | 2 | 0.238 | 0.319 | 0.448 |
| Projections | |||||||||
| MLB.com | 220 | 34.00 | 9 | 31 | 2 | 0.255 | 0.328 | 0.441 | |
| Steamer | 293 | 37.00 | 13 | 43 | 3 | 0.256 | 0.329 | 0.451 | |
| ZiPS | 558 | 77.00 | 24 | 80 | 2 | 0.251 | 0.324 | 0.466 | |
| ESPN | 49.00 | 15 | 51 | 3 | 0.259 | ||||
| Baseball Prospectus | 324 | 39.00 | 13 | 44 | 2 | 0.253 | 0.329 | 0.454 | |
| Sporting News | 510 | 62.00 | 23 | 77 | 4 | 0.261 | 0.332 | 0.455 | |
| NBC Rotoworld | 335 | 49.00 | 18 | 58 | 2 | 0.265 | 0.339 | 0.482 | |
| Rotowire | 349 | 50.00 | 15 | 52 | 3 | 0.261 | 0.338 | 0.473 | |
| Baseball America | 460 | 60.00 | 16 | 58 | 3 | 0.241 | 0.31 | 0.411 | |
| FBG 2017 | 507 | 72.00 | 19 | 72 | 3 | 0.264 | |||
| Average | 441 | 382 | 52.9 | 16.5 | 56.6 | 2.7 | 0.2566 | 0.328625 | 0.454125 |
Well this is tricky. The Mets enter the season with one too many everyday outfielders. Michael Conforto is coming off a difficult year, and thanks to injuries in the Mets outfield, they got Jay Bruce. Now Conforto and Bruce are back. The projection programs are up and down to try to figure out how much play time Conforto will get this year. That being said, his slugging numbers seem constant, so they think he’s going to hit, and he’s projected to hit nearly 20 points better.
I would love to see Conforto play everyday. I just don’t see how it happens right now with the current construction of the team.
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 3/14, 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
