We wrapped up all the pitcher projections and now we can move on to the hitters!
There are a lot of stat projection publications available on the internet and magazine shelves. Rather than trusting one (although if I had to pick one, it would be Baseball Prospectus), I like to average the projections together. In a perfect world, I would take data from the several years I’ve done this to figure out how to weight the projections in the average, but for now just a straight average will be fine. This tends to round out the higher/lower outliers while still allowing them to have a say in the conversation. Let’s take a look at the average projections for Jose Reyes:
| Jose Reyes | |||||||||
| PA | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | OBP | SLG | |
| 2016 | 279 | 255 | 45.00 | 8 | 24 | 9 | 0.267 | 0.326 | 0.443 |
| Projections | |||||||||
| MLB.com | 425 | 67.00 | 11 | 38 | 14 | 0.273 | 0.325 | 0.428 | |
| Steamer | 410 | 52.00 | 8 | 36 | 14 | 0.256 | 0.308 | 0.376 | |
| ZiPS | 456 | 59.00 | 9 | 39 | 16 | 0.267 | 0.316 | 0.391 | |
| ESPN | 69.00 | 10 | 42 | 22 | 0.261 | ||||
| Baseball Prospectus | 479 | 60.00 | 9 | 41 | 20 | 0.265 | 0.315 | 0.382 | |
| Sporting News | 484 | 64.00 | 11 | 40 | 14 | 0.269 | 0.309 | 0.377 | |
| NBC Rotoworld | 321 | 45.00 | 7 | 35 | 11 | 0.271 | 0.324 | 0.399 | |
| Rotowire | 467 | 69.00 | 8 | 46 | 21 | 0.276 | 0.341 | 0.392 | |
| Baseball America | 506 | 65.00 | 9 | 43 | 19 | 0.257 | 0.304 | 0.366 | |
| FBG 2017 | 503 | 73.00 | 10 | 48 | 13 | 0.261 | |||
| Average | 467.5 | 445.14286 | 62.3 | 9.2 | 40.8 | 16.4 | 0.2656 | 0.31775 | 0.388875 |
Jose Reyes turned the Mets season around last year. The team was struggling to put runs across the plate and Reyes sparked the lineup again. He wasn’t the same as the Reyes of the past but it was still pretty good. The projections put him at about double the amount of AB’s, so not quite a whole season, putting up reduced power numbers compared to last year but similar slash numbers.
Reyes does present an interesting problem for the Mets. When he plays, he is the logical lead off hitter. When he doesn’t play, the Mets don’t really know who should lead off. This will increase his playing time throughout the season and probably see him at different positions.
Sources:
MLB.com and Steamer Projections can both be found here.
ZiPS projections can be found here.
ESPN projections can be found here.
Seidler, Jarrett & BP Staff. (2017) Baseball Prospectus 2017. New York, New York:Turner Publishing Company
The Fantasy Baseball Guide (2017)
Sporting News Fantasy Baseball (2017)
Baseball America Fantasy Guide (2017)
Rotowire Fantasy Baseball (2017)
Rotoworld Fansty Baseball (2017)
Notes:
Article Written on 3/14, stats collected 2/19 and may have changed after collection. Not all sources above may have been used in this article specifically but were used in judgment calls for reliability of the data
