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.
We are in a stretch right now where we are reviewing projections for players who didn’t really impact 2019 at all although the thought back at the start of the year was, “maybe?”. Yesterday we reviewed the projections of Drew Smith who had TJ in spring training and didn’t pitch at all. Today we look at Jacob Rhame who struggled in the majors, in the minors, got a suspension in the majors for headhunting Hoskins (although how could someone with Rhame’s control at the time be headhunting), and then his season ended with shoulder nerve surgery. Let’s take a look at what we wrote last year, his projections for the season (below) and his 2019 stats (also below):
2019: 6.1 IP, 4.26 ERA, 7.95 FIP, 1.895 WHIP, 7.1 K/9
Right now, Rhame doesn’t really factor in the 2020 season unless if something major changes since his surgery. He was acquired in Curtis Granderson trade (2017) and never quite panned out (a theme so far of the 2017 prospect acquisition sell-off, a predictable trend when a team tries to shed salary instead of getting better)
Steamer seemed to have the right idea that he would see little play time. ESPN and Baseball Reference were more on my line of thinking of playing time for last year. We can’t look at his major league ERA to understand how much he struggled, the sample size is too small. In the minors he had an ERA of 5.49 and WHIP that was more reasonable at 1.27 (but in AAA, not the majors). Let’s see how he feels in spring, right now he is on the outside looking in for a roster spot.
