2019 Steamer Projections Now Available!
If life reveals anything, it’s that the best way to contend with the past isn’t to process it calmly and deliberately but rather to push it far away and pretend it never existed and hope blindly that the future will somehow facilitate better outcomes.
Today, FanGraphs is happy to participate in this very healthy and doctor-approved process by presenting the 2019 Steamer projections. The work of Jared Cross, Steamer represents the first opportunity of the offseason to peer into the gauzy mists of the future. The prorated version of the forecasts (known as Steamer 600) is useful, too, as a sort of quick estimate of true talent.
What does one find in the numbers? That Mike Trout remains strong in the baseball department, for one. And that free agents Bryce Harper and Manny Machado are likely to produce very similar age-26 campaigns. And that, whatever happens next week, Boston left-hander Chris Sale is the AL Cy Young favorite for 2019.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
lol Vlad as 14th best player in baseball in 2019. Go Jays!
Not ready yet.
That extra year of control would annoy me too if I wasn’t a Jays fan.
6th best if you look at Steamer600, he’s only that far down because he’s projected for 100 less PA than everyone else (service time…)
It seems more fair to call him the 6th best.
And considering he’s 19 and hasn’t played a game at the majors, there has to be a ton of uncertainty in that projection. I’d really love to see something like the 10%/90% probabilities for him.
It REALLY likes rookies as far as average goes – VG2 is your league leader, but also Daza (4), Eloy (8), Astudillo (9), Hampson (10), Fuentes (12), etc., get lots of love.
well i do like to see that giancarlo is 4th in these projections in wRC+
Fun fact: Steamer projected Stanton for approximately 65 home runs per 705 plate appearances in 2018. He hit 38.
Was there another projection that had him significantly lower?
So Steamer hates Ronald Acuña?
If you regress him to league average defense, I think he’s a 5 WAR guy.
Can you please add a tab under “Teams” to filter for free agents? Would be really useful being able to compare their projections on the same page.
When will this be available in the auction calc?
I’m always excited to see the Cleveland Steamer projections
Those projections stink.
These projections are garbage! Khris Davis hitting .239? Come on! Everyone knows he hits .247 every year.
This is impossible. As everyone knows, the International Bureau of Weights & Measures (the organization in charge of the metric system) actually defines the number .247 to mean “Khris Davis’ batting average.” Everything else is calculated out from there.
I’m not seeing Wander Javier on the Twins projection page. Can you please check your algorithm? Thank you.
He’s in rookie ball. Pump the brakes.
Do we know what kind of aging curve Steamer uses? For example, the Harper projection (4.9 WAR) seems bullish, given that Harper has reached that level once in 7 years. But if Steamer expects Harper to just be entering his peak at age 26-27, I could see that projection being more reasonable.
Harper has 30.7 war in 3957 PAs.
If you prorate it to 634 PAs which Steamer projects, it comes out to… 4.9 war.
I think it is fair to expect a player’s 26 y.o. season to have similar rate stats from 19-25 y.o. seasons combined.
I’d bet the under on Chris Sale pitching 202 regular season innings next year. Even if he’s healthy, the Red Sox will want to keep him fresh for the post-season.
Fun stuff arguing with Steamer.
Khris Davis hitting .239?! This thing’s busted.
I’m interested to see about international players potentially signing like Yusei Kikuchi and what their projections would be. Can we get a separate post on those players?
Can’t find Hyun-Jin Ryu
Sounds like a postmodern novel title.
I question how the fld and Def ratings are so horrible on JD Martinez. He played 32 games in the OF last year and i would expect that number to shrink. Saying he is a -1.2 for Fld and -17.2. for Def is WAY off. If he only plays the same amount in 2019 as he did in 2018, those numbers would extrapolate out to -6 Fld and -86 Def.