Lucas Duda. Is he a top 10 first basemen? Is he in the upper half of the second ten? I’m a believer that as Mets fans we have a huge bias against Duda, due to his streaky nature. I think if you cover up his stats, hitting 27 homers with a .244 batting average but with a .352 OBP, we would be all over a player like that, until we hear that it is Lucas Duda. Over the last two years his defensive has improved from catastrophe to average/slightly above average. That being said, the highest I saw him in any fantasy magazine this year was 12, so there you go. Here are his projections for this year:
| Player: | Lucas Duda | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projection Source: | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS |
| MLB.com | 494 | 71 | 30 | 79 | 1 | 0.249 | 0.342 | 0.492 | 0.834 |
| Steamer | 466 | 64 | 23 | 70 | 2 | 0.238 | 0.34 | 0.436 | 0.776 |
| ESPN | 501 | 72 | 30 | 77 | 1 | 0.25 | 0.356 | 0.493 | 0.849 |
| ZiPS | 542 | 70 | 28 | 86 | 2 | 0.249 | 0.349 | 0.49 | 0.839 |
| PECOTA (BP) | 605 | 74 | 25 | 83 | 2 | 0.239 | 0.336 | 0.436 | 0.772 |
| Sporting News | 478 | 66 | 26 | 75 | 0 | 0.245 | 0.345 | 0.458 | 0.803 |
| Baseball America | 512 | 71 | 25 | 77 | 3 | 0.246 | 0.347 | 0.449 | 0.796 |
| Rotowire | 502 | 71 | 28 | 79 | 1 | 0.281 | 0.38 | 0.51 | 0.89 |
| MLB Yearbook | 454 | 64 | 26 | 73 | 1 | 0.244 | 0.351 | 0.476 | 0.827 |
| AVERAGE: | 506 | 69.22222222 | 26.77777778 | 77.66666667 | 1.444444444 | 0.249 | 0.349555556 | 0.471111111 | 0.820666667 |
I was concerned about the amount of outlets that feel Duda for some reason won’t have the vast majority of playing time at first. I think that’s a mistake. That being said, it was nice to see two different projections seeing an increase in his power from the previous year, which is not a usual occurrence in projections. Overall, I think his projections are fair.
Notes:
Both ZiPS and PECOTA (BP) do not provide AB’s, so those are PA’s instead.
MLB.com and Steamer data can be found here.
ZiPS data can be found here.
ESPN data can be found here.
Baseball America data is from the 2016 Preview Fantasy Guide
Sporting News data is from the 2016 publication of Sporting News Fantasy Baseball
Rotowire data is from the Fantasy Baseball Guide 2016 published by Rotowire
MLB Yearbook data is from the 2016 Major League Baseball Yearbook
PECOTA (BP) data is from the Baseball Prospectus 2016 Annual
