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.
Going into last season, Yoenis Cespedes was a critical part of the lineup, the lineup only worked if Cespedes was his normal self. However, Cespedes was dealing with two major heel issues last year that it looks like the Mets wanted him to play through. That led to losing Cespedes for a good chunk of last year and probably half if not all of this year.
2017 Stats: 321 PA, 291 AB, 85 H, 17 HR, .292/.352/.540
2018 Average Projected: 519 PA, 487 AB, 131 H, 28 HR, .274/.332
2018 Actual:157 PA, 141 AB, 37 H, 9 HR, .262/.325/.496
Not surprisingly the projections were wrong about playing time (as they often are for injured players, even oft injured ones) and were a little too high on his slash line (as you would expect a player to be, playing through an undisclosed injury). You can read his projected stat lines here.
I’m curious as to how computer models handle his 2019 and his 2020 season. Next year they’ll have to handle if his July return time is correct (again, not likely only because it’s the Mets) and how much playing time he gets when he comes back (2/3 of 5 games a week?). Then, based on that, how does he project over a whole season in 2020, especially considering his age.
I guess we’ll find out in a few weeks!
