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.
If there was ever a year the Mets needed Tyler Bashlor to over perform projections, it was last year. The Mets were struggling with Edwin Diaz and Jeurys Familia and the bullpen was floundering. Bashlor had a 4.22 ERA over 32.0 innings the previous season with a nice 1.188 WHIP, but a poor 5.44 FIP. Which way would he go in 2019?
2019 Stats: 22.0 IP, 6.95 ERA, 7.26 FIP, 1.727 WHIP, 8.2 K/9, 7.90 DRA
(You can read what we wrote about him last year here)
As you can see from the chart, projections at the start of the year were split if he was going to get better (Baseball Reference, ESPN), stay about the same (ZiPS) or take a step back (Baseball Prospectus, Steamer). Baseball Prospectus was the most stark, ballooning his ERA up half a run and both them and Steamer saw similar increases in WHIP.
Those two projections end up winning thanks to Price is Right rules, Bashlor just couldn’t keep it together in the majors was fairly disastrous. As mentioned before, it’s a shame because there was room to propel himself up the depth chart if his performance warranted it.
In limited outings (5 games – 5.0 innings) he has a positive winter allowing only 1 run and 4 hits. He also had a good record in Syracuse last year, a 3.41 ERA over 37.0 innings. Maybe 2020 is the year he steps forward. I’m sure we’ll be having a similar conversation in a month or so when we start looking at 2020 projections.
