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 Kevin Plawecki:
| Kevin Plawecki | |||||||||
| PA | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | OBP | SLG | |
| 2016 | 151 | 365 | 24.00 | 4 | 32 | 0 | 0.211 | 0.287 | 0.285 |
| Projections | |||||||||
| MLB.com | 165 | 14.00 | 4 | 15 | 0 | 0.218 | 0.339 | 0.623 | |
| Steamer | 53 | 5.00 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 0.226 | 0.321 | 0.614 | |
| ZiPS | 399 | 39.00 | 7 | 42 | 0 | 0.245 | 0.302 | 0.354 | |
| ESPN | 5.00 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 0.228 | ||||
| Baseball Prospectus | 98 | 10.00 | 2 | 10 | 0 | 0.236 | 0.297 | 0.361 | |
| Rotowire | 144 | 9.00 | 3 | 14 | 0 | 0.229 | 0.309 | 0.33 | |
| Average | 248.5 | 120.66667 | 13.666667 | 3 | 15.5 | 0 | 0.2303333 | 0.3136 | 0.4564 |
The Mets are in a strange place with Kevin Plawecki. He has hit in every level he has ever played in, but not the majors. That’s a shame for Kevin since Travis gave him many chances.
After d’Arnaud the Mets have Plawecki and Rivera. Rivera doesn’t hit much outside of the occasional homer, but his defense is amazing. The stat projections show what we know and fear about Plawecki. Little power (projected 3 homers) and little hitting for average (.230).
But catching depth is important.
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
