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.
Last year I debated writing this article. Ten Days before it published, Drew Smith had season ending Tommy John surgery. I already pulled his data for the year though (I pull everyone’s in the same 3-day span, usually when during a mid-winter break from teaching). Ultimately I decided last year that since the Mets were operating as if Smith was part of the plan, then his projections are important. I went through the same internal debate this month, because there’s nothing to review for Smith – he obviously didn’t pitch in 2019.
Smtih may be a factor for 2020. Not a contributing piece we can depend on yet – he needs to get healthy. But if he is healthy during this season, and with the Mets lack of action on the bullpen front, they are going to need every lightning in the bottle they can possibly catch. So here are Drew’s projections from last year followed by his 2018 stats:
2018: 28 IP, 3.54 ERA, 3.66 FIP, 1.429 WHIP, 5.8 K/9, 0.5 WAR, 3.62 DRA
Who knows what, if anything we’ll get from Smith this year. All we can hope for him personally that he’s healthy and then any positive performance by him will be gravy. His 2018 season feels like forever ago, and it’s easy to forget that he showed promise and interest. Here’s wishing we get to see him on the field this year.
