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.
Juan Lagares was the longest tenured player on the Mets. The Mets were the first team to sign him and he stayed with the Mets until he was granted free agency last November. His career as a defensive superstar never saw him develop the hitting tools to be a starting centerfielder with the Mets and his injuries overtime started to eat into his ability to be the defensive stud the Mets need. The last two years the Mets have looked for Lagares-esque players for the roster (Keon Broxton, Jake Marisnick, etc). Last year when we went through Lagares’ projections we were wondering how he would split time with Broxton. Now we just look back at his time as a Met, thankful for the memories. His projections are below followed by his actual numbers:
2019 Stats: 285 PA, 258 AB, 5 HR, .213/.279/.326, .605 OPS, -0.7 WAR, 62 DRC+
Projections were surprising hyped on Lagares last season, having him near his career slash line (.254/.297/.361), positing a positive WAR and having him hit only 19% worse than the average major league hitter. When healthy, Juan didn’t impress. He made his homer total surprisingly, but saw his slugging dip (juiced ball?) and he posted his first negative WAR of the season. His DRC+ essentially has him 38% worse than the average player. Not one projection saw him slide this much.
He has given so much to the Mets. We wish him well here at 213 on whatever comes next!
