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. For the last 4-5 weeks we’ve gone through a lot of Mets players seeing where projections were correct, underestimated or overestimated playing ability. The Mets mid-season tear-down, injuries, and a off-season trades made this journey into one filled with good byes.
We say good bye to this series of articles today with our last entry – Michael Conforto! So much next year is centered around Conforto. Let’s see how he fared compared to his projections.
2018 Average Projections: 503 PA, 415 AB, 109 H, 25 HR, .266/.355/.502
2018 Actual: 638 PA, 543 AB, 132 H, 28 HR, .243/.350/.448
From July 20th On: .273/.356/.539
On the whole Conforto performed below expectations, hitting about 20 points below the projected line, 5 points below the on base line (which is barely statistically significant) and slugging over 50 points his projected line.
That being said, his second half of the season is above the projected line in every category. No individual projection from last year (see them here) projected Conforto to struggle. The Mets are hoping that doesn’t happen again and the Conforto we had in the second half is the Conforto we get all year.
For a while last year it looked like Conforto was going to struggle to make 20 homers, he ended two shy of 30. Let’s see what he does next year!
