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.
At the start of the season, the Mets made things really difficult for Dominic Smith. They brought in Gonzalez (that was a fun month) and suggested that Bruce could play first. Eventually Dominic got his time to shine in Queens, but never really ran with it, but also the Mets kept trying out other people at first. It didn’t help that Alonso off in the minors was having a career year.
But was Dominic’s short time up in the majors as bad as we collectively remember it? Was it accurate compared to projections?
2018 Average Projections: 234 AB, .251/.308/.419
2018 Actual: 143 AB, .224/.255/.420
Normally I give PA’s, H’s and HR’s also but two computer programs had Smith playing a full season while the rest of them didn’t so the numbers didn’t make sense to include. You can see the individual projections here.
Smith wasn’t given a fair chance last year, but he was given a chance and performed below expectations (although better than his rookie year of .198/.262/.393). ESPN was the closest, predicting a .242/.292/.379 and Baseball Prospectus was the closest at slugging predicting it at .423.
I’m not sure what’s in the future for Dominic. The Mets have Frazier/Lowerie/JD Davis who can all play first base and then eventually, if not immediately, the Mets will have Alonso. Smith doesn’t really slot in any where else. If the Mets keep him, he probably opens the season as the back up first basemen in Syracuse. There’s a high chance he get’s traded though.
