Michael Bourn Projections

The rumors of the Mets signing Michael Bourn have continued longer than I would have expected and at this point have to be taken seriously. I thought it would be useful to take a look at his 2013 projections and see what we are potentially getting ourselves into. I used two projection systems both found on Fangraphs: the Bill James annual predictions and the Fans predictions, which are basically crowd sourced player projections. Here is what we got for Bourn:

Projection	BA	OPS	SLG	WAR
Bill James	.273	.344	.363	no projection
Fans	.277	.348	.369	4.7

These numbers are nothing shocking and generally in line with what Bourn has done most years. He is also projected to steal between 40-49 bags differing by system and have a K% of around 20, right in line with his average. Bourn's strikeouts are an interesting question. How much should we care about a guy who strikes a lot if he still gets on base at a rate of better than league average? His career OBP is a respectable .339, he overcomes his prodigious striking out with good hitting and speed. He has a career BABIP of .343 and outperforms league average almost every year. This is far too consistent to be luck, he is just legging out singles most guys can't make. I think at the end of the day his OBP makes his K% less of a worry but it makes me imagine how awesome he could be if cut down the strike outs.

Bourn's other big skill is stealing, which I think we should not factor in. Bourn has pretty reliably gotten caught stealing around 25% of the time which is a pretty bad rate. The value of a steal is much less than the detriment of being caught stealing and having a guy get caught one out of every four times is not something I am all that interested in.

At the end of the day I don't see this signing happening. If it does and it gets done for reasonable years and money Bourn can be a very useful player for the team as they slowly march towards relevance.