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.
Jay Bruce came to the Mets last year as a major free agent signing, despite not making sense. The Mets just traded him the season before and then resigned him even though they needed a center fielder and Bruce is an extreme-corner outfielder. Then the Mets couldn’t get their first base situation right, so Bruce saw time there. But how did he do against computer projections?
2018 Average Projection: 557 PA, 521 AB, 119.5 H, 29.4 HR, .243/.313/.477
2018 Actual: 361 PA, 319 AB, 71 H, 9 HR, .223/.310/.370
Jay Bruce was battling injuries for most of last season, thus leading to a decrease in ABs but even with that his numbers took a massive slide, more so than the computers projected. The computers saw a drop (you can see that here), but he ended up hitting 20 points below average and fell over 100 points in slugging (although is OBP was strangely accurate).
Jay Bruce had a great year in 2017, he hit 36 homers, 29 for the Mets. It just wasn’t his year last year. We wish him the best!
