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.
Last season was a weird one for Tomas Nido. He wasn’t supposed to be the back up catcher, that was supposed to be Travis d’Arnaud. But that failed, and then the whole situation with Mesoraco failed and the Mets were left with Nido. Nido had the opportunity for a second season in a row to make his name known but he didn’t do with his bat.
Now he was preferred by multiple pitchers who requested that Nido catch them. And that’s great for Nido and is going to be a theme going into this season. The problem is he had such a bad season at the plate with a -0.7 WAR and a DRC+ that made him 42% worse than the average hitter in the league.
2019 Stats: 144 PA, 136 AB, 4 HR, .191/.231/.316, -0.7 WAR, 58 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)
The Mets did not go out to get another catcher and the catchers in camp are not going to give Nido a tremendous run for his money. If Nido can be better than Rene Rivera and David Rodriguez, then he’ll be on the team next year.
For what it’s worth, the computer programs see Nido taking a positive. Not a tremendous one, but they do have him breaking the .600 OPS plane which is huge. He’s not the worst behind the plate, he’s better than the other options the Mets have and it was clear from about the middle of the off-season on that the Mets weren’t going to try to replace him so here we are going into 2019 with Nido backing up Ramos.
