Mets 2017 ZiPS Projections released

The Mets are slated to have a big year offensively in 2017 with some surprise performances happening according to ZiPS Projections.

One of the most anticipated parts of the offseason for baseball nerds all around the world is the release of any and all types of projections for the upcoming year. Arguably the most popular one is ZiPS Projections that’s just released their predictions for the 2017 New York Mets.

While some of the projections listed make sense, a couple of them definitely stood out from the rest. ZiPS breaks down their projections into three categories (batters, pitchers, and bench/prospects).

Let’s take a look at how they see the Mets performing this upcoming 2017 season.

Batters

Right off the bat, they note the biggest projection – in my opinion – of the year: Michael Conforto is going to have a great season. Going off WAR exclusively, Conforto is tied with Neil Walker (3.0 WAR) as top contributors to the team after Yoenis Cespedes (4.1 WAR).

According to their projections, Conforto will hit for .251/.324/.466 over 558 plate appearances. I’m not exactly sure how they think he will get this many at-bats with Jay Bruce still on the team, but I’d totally be down to see that.

Conforto is also projected show some pop, hitting 24 home runs and 29 doubles. A strikeout rate of 22 percent isn’t great, but it’s consistent with the theme of the team: struggling to not strike out and make contact consistently, but when they do hit the ball, it goes far.

I’m also happy to see both Neil Walker and Asdrubal Cabrera projected to continue hitting the ball well. Walker’s 20 home runs along with Cabrera’s 17 would be extremely welcome from both middle infielders.

Pitchers

ZiPS is expecting the Mets rotation to not be as potent as last year’s because no one can stay at no. 1 forever…okay. I’d disagree in general simply because of how injuries took a toll on our rotation last year. Out of the original five, only two remained standing by the end of the year and we eventually had to depend on rookies down the stretch.

In an ideal world, that just wouldn’t be the case, and we’d see around 30 starts from Harvey, deGrom, Matz, and Syndergaard. Unfortunately, ZiPS only sees Noah making over 30 starts in 2017 with no one in the rotation reaching 200 innings pitched.

Syndergaard will continue to be the top starter in 2017. He’ll strike out 224 over 188 and 2/3 innings while posting a 2.91 ERA according to these projections.

Matt Harvey‘s struggles will continue somewhat, as the Dark Knight is projected to sport a 3.83 ERA. They may not have given as much importance to Harvey’s post-surgery outlook, so his projections suffered there.

They do like relievers Hansel Robles and Josh Smoker though, so that’s a nice surprise. Each one of them is projected to post over a 25% strike out rate after the season is done.

Bench/Prospects

The biggest surprise in this category is again an outfielder. Brandon Nimmo is projected to get 526 plate appearances somehow, and is slated to have a more productive year than Travis d’Arnaud, Juan Lagares, and Jay Bruce. Hey, weirder things have happened, so I won’t completely count any possibility out.

With baseball right around the corner, these projections only help fuel our desire for Spring Training to get started already. Only 11 days to go until the unofficial beginning with pitchers and catchers arriving at Port St. Lucie.