Tim Peterson has put up some eye-popping ERA’s in the minor leagues. In 2015, he posted a 1.69 over 21.1 innings in low A ball. The next year he posted a 3.03 between high A and AA. The following year he posted a 1.86 ERA over 58.0 innings across AA and AAA and last year in 38.2 innings in Las Vegas he posted a 3.49 which was among the team’s best. His major league debut stats weren’t the best:
2018: 27.2 IP, 6.18 ERA 5.76 FIP, 1.229 WHIP, 8.1 K/9, -0.4 WAR
If the Mets didn’t make any changes to their bullpen this off-season, Tim Peterson would either be starting the season in Queens or competing for a spot. He was lightly competing for a spot this year but really jockeying for a position on the depth chart. I would put him on a short list of players who could get called up whenever the Mets need a fresh arm. Here’s what computers think he’ll do:
(Citations: Baseball Prospectus (BP) projections are from the Baseball Prospectus annual which can you can get here. It’s highly recommended. ESPN projections can be found here. ZiPS can be found here. Steamer can be found here. Baseball Reference projections (BR) can found on the players BR page which linked elsewhere on this article. )
It’s interesting that there’s less variance in Peterson’s projections then Oswalt’s projections we looked at yesterday despite Oswalt having about 3x the amount of innings logged. The projections all saw Peterson will be better and if given a longer look last year his numbers would probably be close to the projected numbers above.
