Every spring at 213 we gather a whole bunch of projections for players and average them together to see what a conglomerate of baseball sources think a given player will perform over the year. It’s wholly unscientific – averaging averages and not weighting them for previous accuracy or amount of playing time they feel a player will see.
In pure coincidence (we’ve just been doing one of these review articles daily in reverse order that they were published in the spring) we end the decade reviewing the projections of the best Met in the last decade – Jacob deGrom.
Last year we wrote about how deGrom was coming off an absurd year. It was going to be completely normal for 2019 projections to show regressions because of how good he was in 2018. And the projections showed various levels of regression for the Cy Young winner:
2019 Stats: 204.0 IP, 2.43 ERA, 255 K (league leading), 2.67 FIP, 0.971 WHIP, 11.3 K/9, 7.3 WAR, 2.27 DRA
So deGrom won the Cy Young again. He was just phenomenal in 2019. Even though his numbers were not as good as 2018 (and there was no practical way they could be, he was on another level in 2018) – he actually improved his K/9 by 0.1.
ESPN was most progressive on deGrom this year, but they are almost always the most hyped at over predicting projections. Baseball Prospectus was quite off, almost uncharacteristically so. Steamer was the closest for WAR.
Ultimately, deGrom is just another level of pitcher. Who knows where the Mets would be without him. He defined the 2010’s for the Mets, debuting during the same week as Rafael Montero, who was projected as the Mets next big prospect. Jacob won a Rookie of the Year, has been an All Star 3 times, a Cy Young twice. It’s been a treasure to watch him.
I’m assuming the models in 2020 are going to project him to regress again. This time I’ll believe it a little less.
