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.
Rene Rivera, who only had a cup of coffee with the Mets last off-season, is back in camp on a NRI deal to try to break onto the roster and get to Queens. He’ll need to play better than Tomas Nido. Rivera is the most likely candidate to upset Nido for his roster spot, although that is quite unlikely. What is likely though – Rene coming to Queens at some point this season. Unless the Mets need a long term roster fill in that would cause the promotion of someone like Ali Sanchez, Rivera should be the next one to get that call.
2019 Stats: 20 PA, 17 AB, HR, .235/.350/.412, -0.1 WAR, 91 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)
I think it’s highly unlikely that Rivera makes any of his playing time numbers, but his slash line seems like a safe prediction for him. His OPS projection is a solid 50 points better than Nido’s heading into the season. It feels like something bad has to happen to the Mets first for Rivera to see any sort of substantial playing time in 2020.
