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 Lucas Duda:
| Lucas Duda | |||||||||
| PA | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | OBP | SLG | |
| 2016 | 172 | 153 | 20.00 | 7 | 23 | 0 | 0.229 | 0.302 | 0.412 |
| Projections | |||||||||
| MLB.com | 450 | 60.00 | 22 | 68 | 0 | 0.247 | 0.334 | 0.449 | |
| Steamer | 386 | 54.00 | 20 | 61 | 2 | 0.244 | 0.344 | 0.453 | |
| ZiPS | 382 | 50.00 | 20 | 62 | 1 | 0.242 | 0.343 | 0.477 | |
| ESPN | 58.00 | 23 | 67 | 1 | 0.243 | ||||
| Baseball Prospectus | 571 | 69.00 | 24 | 77 | 2 | 0.233 | 0.333 | 0.426 | |
| Sporting News | 415 | 60.00 | 20 | 68 | 1 | 0.248 | 0.343 | 0.454 | |
| NBC Rotoworld | 445 | 61.00 | 26 | 76 | 1 | 0.241 | 0.339 | 0.465 | |
| Rotowire | 383 | 54.00 | 21 | 61 | 0 | 0.243 | 0.34 | 0.467 | |
| Baseball America | 421 | 49.00 | 20 | 58 | 1 | 0.251 | 0.336 | 0.441 | |
| FBG 2017 | 508 | 72.00 | 28 | 84 | 1 | 0.26 | |||
| Average | 476.5 | 429.71429 | 58.7 | 22.4 | 68.2 | 1 | 0.2452 | 0.339 | 0.454 |
Want to know how the Mets can wreck the NL East this year? Lucas Duda. If Lucas Duda can come back healthy this year and go on a few more hitting streaks and few less “not hitting anything” streaks.
The projections look good! No one really expects Lucas Duda to go the whole season, which is concerning, but even in only 430 AB’s, he’s projected to hit over 22 homers. His average is looking to return to normal (~.245).
I’m pulling for Lucas this year! And it looks like the computers are too.
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
