Thursday, May 10, 2012

2012 Mets Sustainability Numbers

Last night was about as good as it gets. Sweeping the Phillies with Halladay and Lee in the series, constantly coming from behind, bench players making big plays... this is a fun team to watch. After the game I started to think that this could really be a contending team. They don't feel like a team having a crazy unsustainable Spring run. But as we all know, feelings can be way off so I wanted to check the numbers and see how sustainable the 2012 Mets are.

I decided to look at the top 5 Offensive Mets right now according to fWAR, they are:

Player
fWAR
Wright
1.8
Nieuwenhuis
1
Tejada
0.8
Torres
0.6
Thole
0.5

These players have been among the most key to the 2012 Mets offense and are all having fantastic seasons so far. To judge their sustainability I decided to compare their 2012 stats to three factors: their career stats, their 2012 projections (using Bill James Projections) and the stats from their highest performing year. Let's take a look, first up David Wright:

Wright
AVG
OBP
SLG
Career
.302
.382
.509
Best Year (07)
.325
.416
.546
Projection
.290
.381
.480
Actual
.376
.475
.554

Verdict: Unsustainable. That being said he is still on pace for a career year. While his current numbers are outrageously high his numbers in the other three categories are very consistent. Anyone can look at his numbers now and predict he isn't going to be a .375 hitter all year but you can look at these numbers and say the bad years were aberrations and that we can expect big numbers from Dave this year.

Nieuwenhuis
AVG
OBP
SLG
MLE
.251
.339
.411
Projection
.260
.329
.409
Actual
.304
.379
.431

Verdict: Probably unsustainable but who knows with rookies. Because Cap'n Kirk is a rook we had to look at him differently than the other players. Instead of career and best year numbers, we have his Major League Equivalency number, basically this is a formula used to take minor league numbers and show what they would have been in the bigs. In addition Bill James did not have a projection for him so we used ZiPS. His current SLG % seems reasonable based on these numbers, his other two categories don't. Odds are he is going to regress but should still have an impressive season, that being said rookies are wild cards, who knows if he can keep it up.

Tejada
AVG
OBP
SLG
Career
.263
.342
.328
Best Year (2011)
.284
.360
.335
Projection
.261
.331
.334
Actual
.305
.362
.400

Verdict: Sustainable. Tejada has never played a full season or had a regular starting role until this year and he is fitting in great. His OBP should be sustainable based on the numbers. The odds are his AVG will dip a little but the numbers show he is capable of staying around .300. The big caveat here is that he will have more AB this year than ever in his career so who knows how things can change.

Torres
AVG
OBP
SLG
Career
.246
.321
.406
Best Year (2009)
.270
.343
.533
Projection
.249
.329
.391
Actual
.333
.429
.500

Verdict: Unsustainable. He has only had about 50 AB this season and while they have been stellar he probably can't keep it up. His BA is 66 points higher than he has ever achieved and his OBP is about 100 points higher than would be expected. I think Torres can be a valuable player on this team. He can steal bags, he can play stellar defense and he can sometimes hit for power but he wont be a .929 OPS guy.

Thole
AVG
OBP
SLG
Career
.277
.351
.358
Best Year (2010)
.277
.357
.366
Projection
.283
.361
.374
Actual
.284
.356
.370

Verdict: Super Sustainable. Just look at those numbers, he is dripping with consistency! The way he is playing now is the way I expect him to play all year. Thole doesn't get a ton of respect but he is a great on base guy and can bat for average. People expect Catchers to be able to hit for power, which he can't do, so he doesn't look as good but his numbers are excellent and he is a huge value to this team.

Overall I actually feel good about this squad. While some of these performances are unsustainable it is only because so many of them are off the radar good. With the exception of Torres I expect each of these guys to have great years. We also didn't look at the other side of the sustainability argument, Ike Davis. Just as we can't expect Wright to hit .375 it is unrealistic to think Ike will hit .179 all year. As the season goes on he will start to float back up to the Ike we remember. Add Murph to the mix hitting a wonderful .312/.351/.376 and you have a Mets team that could sustain some real success.


3 comments:

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    1. Tejada is currently slugging .400, not .328, so his numbers look a bit less sustainable.

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  2. Good catch, it's been corrected. I still think his performance will be sustainable. His AVG and OBP are close to the numbers, SLG will definitely drop though.

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