Every spring at 213 we gather a whole bunch of projections for players and average them together to see what a conglomerate of baseball sources think a given player will perform over the year. It’s wholly unscientific – averaging averages and not weighting them for previous accuracy or amount of playing time they feel a player will see.
Going into last year’s off-season the Mets needed to rework their bullpen (like this year and pretty much every year in this decade). Last season, the only lefty on the 40-man roster was Daniel Zamora (who we reviewed his projections last year) since the Mets traded Jerry Blevins (and were not going to resign him) during the season. So Justin Wilson seemed like a good pick up.
But it’s the Mets and Wilson had an on/off year with injuries which impacted his projections. We previewed Wilson here last year and summarized his projections in the following table:
In 2019, Wilson put up the following stat line:
2019: 45 G, 39.0 IP, 2.54 ERA, 3.91 FIP, 1.333 WHIP, 10.2 K/9, 1.3 WAR, 3.51 DRA
The concerning part of Wilson’s stat line, outside of his playing time, is the difference between his FIP and his ERA. His FIP is the only stat line significantly worse than projections, everything else is either significantly better or right around projected values. I’m not terribly concerned because his WHIP isn’t crazy.
So Wilson outperformed his projection Wilson also pitched about 20% less than originally thought, thanks to injuries. This is a positive sign for the bullpen heading into 2020. Will Wilson posting this line over an entire season save the pen? Absolutely not. But maybe with a manager who can better manage the bullpen and not over tax some players while under utilizing others, Wilson could bring some balance back.
