I debated about writing this article, but decided to do what I do most years and write it anyway. Drew Smith had Tommy John surgery about 10 days ago and won’t pitch at all this season. I had already pulled all the numbers for Smith before the injury (I pull everyone’s numbers over the same 3-day span, it’s hectic).
Ultimately I decided to write this projection article because the Mets operated this off-season as if Drew Smith was going to be a part of this team, which informed the decisions they made on who to pursue and who to not pursue to some degree.
Drew Smith was acquired in the trade with the Rays that sent Lucas Duda south. Smith made his debut last year and unlike a lot of other pitchers who debuted out of the pen last season, Smith was successful:
2018: 28 IP, 3.54 ERA, 3.66 FIP, 1.429 WHIP, 5.8 K/9, 0.5 WAR, 3.62 DRA
He had an opposite K/9 for what you would expect in this era of baseball (but one that matched his WHIP) yet he was still able to get hitters out and keep the run damage low. Computers thought he would have done this in 2019:
(Citations: 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. )
For the most part the projections saw a little regression, (outside of Steamer who saw more than a bit) which is normal. This would have been his second season so only a small amount of regression from projections, especially out of the pen, is unusual. Usually if a player has a cup of coffee and is successful, the next year stats project out much worse (which seems to be what happens to Lugo every year we do this article series).
Alas Smith won’t get a chance to show us his stuff this year. We wish him a speedy recovery and hope he comes back stronger in 2020 (and probably mid-2020 at that).
