Phillies Projections: Who Outperformed Their 2016 Projections?

Predicting how a player will perform over a full season is a shot in the dark, but how well did those projections reflect how Phillies players performed?

Prior to every season, Phillies fans want to know how well the team will do that year. In recent years, we are hoping for improvements from the previous season. Taking a look back at the Phillies projections for 2016, some players outperformed while others underwhelmed.

Starting off with the team as a whole, their final record was surprisingly better than what was projected. Fangraphs projected the Phillies would be 66-96 in 2016, but they were five wins better than that with a 71-91 record.

Maikel Franco was the biggest underperformer compared to his projections. Steamer said Franco would rack up 2.9 fWAR this season with a .795 OPS and 28 home runs. Franco did hit 25 home runs, but his 1.4 fWAR and .733 OPS were well under his projection. They thought he would be carry a Fangraphs offensive value of 6.6, when he actually finished the season at -7.3.

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On the mound, Aaron Nola underperformed his Steamer projections to some extent. They expected him to post a fWAR of 4.1 when he actually finished with 2.8 fWAR. His 4.78 ERA and 1.31 WHIP were worse than projected, but his 3.08 fielding-independent pitching and 9.81 K/9 were actually better.

Nola’s FIP was far lower than his ERA, which benefits him since Fangraph calculates WAR using FIP instead of ERA.

If we compared his projected WAR to his 0.0 Baseball Reference WAR, which uses ERA instead, his season would be viewed far more negatively. However, that is comparing apples to oranges to some extent since the two sites calculate WAR differently.

While Nola and Franco disappointed this season, there were still plenty of Phillies who wound up outperforming their projections.

Steamer expected Odubel Herrera to regress to some extent, projecting a .737 OPS and 98 wRC+ from him. He definitely beat those projections this season posting a .781 OPS and 110 wRC+. Herrera was worth 3.8 fWAR this season compared to his projected 2.4 fWAR.

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Cesar Hernandez was the biggest outperformer on the Phillies roster this season. Steamer expected just 1.7 fWAR out of Hernandez; he wound up producing 4.4 in 2016. A lot of his value came from his defense; his Fangraphs defensive value of 16.1 this year far beat his projection of just 2.8.

Freddy Galvis wasn’t expected to play much this season as Steamer projected J.P. Crawford to appear in 105 games. Steamer, like most of us, expected Crawford to reach the big-leagues after a couple months into the season. Instead, he remained in the minors all year.

Since Galvis was projected to play in just 55 games to make way for Crawford, his regular Steamer projections aren’t worth much. However, they also offer projections averaged out to 600 plate appearances, and that is key for analyzing Galvis’s season since he wound having 624 plate appearances this year.

Galvis was expected to be worth just 0.5 fWAR this season due to his -19.7 offensive value. Despite hitting 20 home runs this year, Galvis still wound up with a 74 wRC+ and -18.7 offensive value. The reason he was worth 1.9 more wins than his projection for 2016 was because of his defense. Steamer expected him to be worth 5.4 runs on defense when he turned out to be worth 22.

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Projections can only go so far – look at this year’s presidential election – but they offer some gauge on how a player will perform. Some will be better, some will be worse. We always hope to see players do better than projected, and some Phillies did just that this season.