Every spring I collect several projections sources and average them together to do a meta-projection. Last year I pulled projections from Baseball Prospectus, ZiPS, Steamer, ESPN, and Baseball Reference. AJ Ramos projections will be hampered by injuries, which is a common theme for the Mets as some projections were able to correctly predict time loss due to injury, some did not, and some never attempted it (sometimes by design).
AJ Ramos struggled in every possible way for the Mets last year. We noted last year that his inclusion on the roster was a curious case. While the Mets started trading to rebuild in in 2017, they acquired Ramos, which went against the pattern of trading bullpen pieces to get prospects. Ramos inclusion gave Mets fans hope that the team would be trying to win immediately in 2018 otherwise, why get Ramos? But alas, between ineffectiveness and injuries 2018 was a year to forget for Ramos. Lets take a look at was projected and what actually transpired:
2018 Projected: 60 IP, 3.73 ERA, 3.86 FIP, 1.351 WHIP, 68.8 K, 32 BB
2018 Actual: 19.2 IP, 6.41 ERA, 5.19 ERA, 1.627 WHIP, 22 K, 15 BB
He would have had a solid year if he produced the projected line even though his projected line was worse than his career averages in FIP (3.41), WHIP (1.270) and ERA (3.07). What the projections were able to see was that he was going to regress, but they saw a normal regression, probably because they didn’t see the injury.
Baseball Prospectus was the only who saw a tremendous regression in ERA (4.02).
What’s surprising is his final 2017 line wasn’t particularly great with a 4.74 ERA, 4.47 FIP and a 1.632 WHIP which was eerily close to his 2018 WHIP. AJ’s 2017 actual stats was a better projection of his regression than any of the computer programs.
