Every spring I collect several projections sources and average them together to do a meta-projection. Last year I pulled projections from Baseball Prospectus, ZiPS, Steamer, ESPN, and Baseball Reference.
Amed Rosario‘s season last year is an interesting one. For a considerable portion of the season he struggled at the plate. Towards the end of the season, he started to put things together and pull his numbers closer to his average projection line.
2018 Average Projection: 490 PA, 464 AB, 123.8 H, 9.3 HR, .260/.301/.380
2018 Actual: 592 PA, 554 AB, 142 H, 9 HR, .256/.295/.381
2018 Last 42 Games: 186 PA, 177 AB, 53 H, 4 HR, .299/.328/.435
On August 16th, Rosario played both games of a double header and went 7-11 and that kicked off this late push where he started to really swing the bat better (before that day he’s hitting .236/.280/.355 and on his way to a really bad season, especially compared to his projected numbers). While the projections were a little lofty on him, he performed well (especially because of that late push).
The two closest projections where ZiPS and Steamer (which were also two of the projections closest to getting is playing time right as well, the average of which is weighed down from Baseball Reference who saw him playing half the season)
Rosario kicked off the off-season by playing with the MLB Stars team in Japan. He was highly touted for so long, his numbers almost paint a failed prospect due to the New York hype machine and the expectation that every rookie who is highly touted breaks in hitting .300 or 45 homers. Rosario anchored the defense last year, showed that his hitting talents are there.
In 2017 he hit around .240 and projections saw him hit the following year around .260, which he just about did. I’m curious to see what projections expect from him in the upcoming season.
