Each year at 213, we take projections from several different places, average them together and then compare the line that spits out to the player’s performance from last year. We understand how unscientific this is – some projections try to guess playing time, some don’t, more playing time is weighted the same as less playing time, more successful projection producers are weighted the same as their counterparts, etc. At the end of the year we revisit the projections and see how’d they do.
Almost lost in Alonso’s amazing rookie year, deGrom’s back to back Cy Youngs and McNeil’s arrival as one of the better hitters in baseball was Michael Conforto. Conforto, very quietly, had a tremendous year on offense hitting over 30 homers, getting on base over a .360 clip and slugging nearly .500. According to Baseball Prospectus he was 22% better than the average hitter last year, which is very, very good. (A couple of years ago Nimmo had the best ranking in that stat on the whole team).
2019 Stats: 648 PA, 549 AB, 33 HR, .257/.363/.494, 3.5 WAR, 122 DRC+
(Citations: BP projections come from the Baseball Prospectus Annual, a must read for all baseball fans and can be purchased here. ESPN comes from their fantasy baseball projections and can be found here. Both ZiPS and Steamer are found on FanGraphs. ZiPS can be found here, Steamer can be found here. BR comes from the Baseball Reference for this specific player and is linked earlier in the article)
It looks like computer projections have Conforto putting up practically the same season, especially where it counts in OBP and SLG. A consistent Conforto is the backbone of this team and at some point the Mets are going to need to lock him up on a long term deal.
The only question is will the rest of the league recognize Conforto for what he is. He’s only been named to one All-Star game, 2017, but if he puts up the numbers he did last year again like the consensus of projections show, then he should be in the All-Star game every single year.
