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 Wilmer Flores:
| Wilmer Flores | |||||||||
| PA | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | OBP | SLG | |
| 2016 | 335 | 307 | 38.00 | 16 | 49 | 1 | 0.267 | 0.319 | 0.469 |
| Projections | |||||||||
| MLB.com | 270 | 35.00 | 12 | 36 | 0 | 0.263 | 0.311 | 0.448 | |
| Steamer | 288 | 33.00 | 12 | 40 | 1 | 0.264 | 0.307 | 0.438 | |
| ZiPS | 477 | 56.00 | 15 | 63 | 1 | 0.262 | 0.303 | 0.42 | |
| ESPN | 50.00 | 16 | 59 | 1 | 0.263 | ||||
| Baseball Prospectus | 226 | 25.00 | 8 | 28 | 0 | 0.267 | 0.319 | 0.469 | |
| Sporting News | 349 | 42.00 | 15 | 52 | 1 | 0.275 | 0.309 | 0.439 | |
| NBC Rotoworld | 284 | 36.00 | 10 | 39 | 1 | 0.271 | 0.321 | 0.433 | |
| Rotowire | 358 | 42.00 | 17 | 49 | 2 | 0.263 | 0.303 | 0.45 | |
| FBG 2017 | 347 | 40.00 | 14 | 45 | 1 | 0.285 | |||
| Average | 351.5 | 316 | 39.888889 | 13.222222 | 45.666667 | 0.8888889 | 0.2681111 | 0.3104286 | 0.4424286 |
Wilmer finally had the breakout season last year that were hoping for. It was just hard to see it under the uneven playing time, injuries and a constantly changing lineups. In 300 or AB’s though, he slammed 16 homers and hit .267. He is projected to hit just as well next year with slightly lower power in about the same AB’s.
The good news for the Mets is Flores is the super utility player they need. The bad news for the Mets is so Jose Reyes. And the outfield is constantly sliding around too, so the lineup will be constantly changing, but this seems to be where baseball is heading anyway.
It would be nice to see if Flores can do this again.
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
