2018 Pod Projections: Whit Merrifield — A Review

As has now been an annual tradition, I published a series of Pod Projections before the season begin, and then compared my projection to the rest of the systems available on the player pages. We’ll start the reviews with Whit Merrifield, who came out of nowhere in 2017 to become a fantasy stud, swatting 19 homers and stealing 34 bases. Let’s see how he performed compared to my projection and the computer systems.

Plate Appearances: 645 Projected | 707 Actual

Welp, 700+ plate appearances is what happens when you remain healthy all season and bat leadoff 72% of the time. I did hedge slightly given the risk that his 2017 breakout was a fluke and he loses playing time to Adalberto Mondesi. Turned out, both could start at the same time, as Merrifield proved his versatility, appearing in center field 30 times, in addition to appearing at the corner outfield and infield spots.

BB%: 5.2% Projected | 8.6% Actual

Woah, I did not see this walk rate spike coming. Merrifield posted a tiny 4.6% walk rate in 2017, as the combination of swinging more frequently than the average bear with his strong contact skills meant that his plate appearances typically wouldn’t last long enough to draw a base on balls. This season, he reduced his swing percentage to just a bit higher than the average, but also whiffed a bit more often. Better patience + worse contact skills = more walks. Though I’m not sure the skills change justified this much of a walk rate surge.

K%: 15.8% Projected | 16.1% Actual

Merrifield made slightly worse in-zone contact, but better out-of-zone contact than 2017, resulting in worse contact overall. That worse contact, plus the aforementioned increased patience, led to the marginal jump in strikeout rate which was pretty close to my projection.

GB%/LD%/FB%: 40% / 22% / 38% Projected | 34.9% / 29.8% / 35.3% Actual

Man, talk about participating in the fly ball revolution, Merrifield’s fly ball rate skyrocketed from 29.8% to 40.5% from 2016 to 2017, which corresponded with his surprising power outburst. I will always regress a player’s projection after a dramatic change, but typically acknowledge some of the change is real and end up with something closer to the prior season than the seasons before. That’s what happened here, but he missed my grounder and fly ball rates because he went line drive crazy! That’s not a typo, he actually posted a near 30% LD%, which ranked third in baseball. If he posted a more normalized LD% like I projected, he would have likely come real close to my exact batted ball distribution.

BABIP: .312 Projected | .352 Actual

How to crush your BABIP projection — hit liners nearly 30% of the time. It’s really that simple. Though surprisingly, he popped up far more, nearly double the frequency as 2017. That obviously didn’t affect his BABIP much.

HR/FB Ratio: 7.5% Projected | 6.5% Actual

This was the big question. His HR/FB rate more than tripled from a measly 2.9% in 2016 to 9.4% in 2017, which made him a fantasy star. But how much of that power spike was real and sustainable? I projected most of it was real given his validating xHR/FB rate, but had to account for the possibility of some regression given the sudden spike and pedestrian minor league rates.

Runs and RBI: 80 and 66 Projected | 88 and 60 Actual

Almost nailed these projections! I was actually only off by two R + RBI, which is cool. He beat his runs projection simply because of the higher PA total, while he missed my RBI projection because he batted leadoff far more often than I expected. My forecast assumed he would bat second all year, with Jon Jay (who eventually departed) hitting first.

SB: 23 Projected | 45 Actual

Wow, I did not expect this. Merrifield never even showed the speed he displayed in 2017, let along what he ended up showing this season! He was also 29, which is not an age you expect to see increasing steals totals. I guess the Royals figured that with such little power (they ranked 26th in baseball in home runs) and a pitcher friendly ballpark, they need to run often to manufacture runs. The added steals certainly boosted Merrifield’s fantasy value and more than offset the decline in homers.

Below is a comparison of the preseason projections and 2018 actuals:

I highlighted the system that was closest to the actual. Sadly, I failed to “win” any of the metrics, but was close on most.

So we all undershot his batting average as no system expected him to hit above .285. That’s because the highest projected BABIP was just .317, meaning no system gave much credit to his .361 2016 debut. Most of the systems were pretty close on the strikeout rate, all of which figured a slight step back from 2017. Not surprisingly, no system saw that walk rate spike coming. We all projected an improvement off his weak 2017 season (though some systems less than others), but no one even projected a 6% mark.

Yeah, the Fans are always an optimistic bunch, so they missed on the homers and were the only group to overshoot the runs scored projection. No system projected Merrifield to steal more bases than in 2017, with the ever-optimistic fans the only group projecting another total in the 30s. Oops, he actually stole in the 40s.

So while all the projection systems did a fairly good job on Merrifield, especially considering how out of nowhere he came from in 2017, and projected he would again be a valuable fantasy asset, he actually earned his owners a profit. I would imagine this is the case for like 95% of leagues. Looking ahead to 2019, it’s clear that his value hinges on that stolen base total. He’ll be 30, so don’t bet on anything close to a repeat. I might even have a hard time projecting 30+ steals again. But a downside of 10 homers and 25 steals is still fantastic.