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 year this article was not what we were expecting it would be. In 2018, Jacob deGrom put up, what Baseball Prospectus called, “video game numbers”. I agree. The only time I’ve ever seen stats like that was when I made a character in MLB the Show 2000-something when I was in high school and turned off my PSP after bad games to erase a bad perforance. Jacob was that good in 2018.
But the projections before his 2019 season didn’t agree and showed major regressions. But deGrom put up amazing numbers again and ran away with the Cy-Young for a second straight year. This year the projections are buying into deGrom. BP bought into deGrom so much that he’s the cover image of the 2020 annual, a gigantic honor that only a few players have received (2018 was the first annual to feature a player).
2019 Stats: 32 G, 204.0 IP, 2.43 ERA, 2.67 FIP, 0.971 WHIP, 11.3 K/9, 7.3 WAR, 2.27 DRA
(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)
Those numbers are amazing. Those numbers are what we expect from deGrom. The most difficult thing to project for deGrom, or really anyone, is WAR. Jacob had a 9+ WAR in 2018 and a 7+ WAR in 2019. I haven’t seen a Met yet though, while doing these projections for the last month, have a projected WAR of 6, which deGrom gets twice from BP and Steamer. BP of course, is usually more conservative on projections.
I feel like I take deGrom for granted on the Mets. Here’s to another year of showing the league what an ace can do!
