Toronto Blue Jays’ Steamer vs. Reality: Positional Players

Sep 28, 2014; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Toronto Blue Jays right fielder Jose Bautista (19) hits a single during the third inning in a game against the Baltimore Orioles and at Rogers Centre. Mandatory Credit: Nick Turchiaro-USA TODAY Sports

Throughout December at Jays Journal, we took a look forward to the 2015 season of the Toronto Blue Jays with Steamer projections that had been forecast for each player.  These projections compile advanced statistics from a players’ recent seasons to provide a prediction of their performance in the year to come.  The Toronto Blue Jays future projections can be found here:

• Toronto Blue Jays Starting Pitchers
• Toronto Blue Jays Starting Lineup
• Toronto Blue Jays Second Base

As we always say, Steamer projections are not an absolute science, in fact they’re far from it, but they do offer an educated opinion on the trajectory that a player could be taking.  These are valuable when looking for a player who may be trending up or down, or when looking at which statistics were an outlier from a player’s norm.  Baseball fans often discuss a player as “underachieving” or “not meeting expectations”, so allow these Steamer projections to act as a (very) rough picture of what those expectations were.

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Several readers had mentioned a curiosity in the accuracy of past projections from Steamer, so we have decided to bring you a two-part series of “Steamer vs. Reality”.  This will show you each player’s projection for 2014 along with their actual stat line.  Some soared above expectations, some floundered below, and since even a dead clock is right twice a day, some statistics were predicted perfectly.  This shows the ability for projection systems to be more accurate with veteran players who have established performance levels, such as Jose Reyes.

Included in this list are Toronto Blue Jays who played 50+ games last season, while players such as Maicer Izturis were included for their potential involvement in 2015 and players such as Dalton Pompey were excluded due to the lack of  an MLB Steamer projection entering last season.  The Toronto Blue Jays’ offseason additions are also included on the final page.  The statistics taken from Razzball have been rounded to the nearest whole number where applicable.

C Dioner Navarro

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Navarro was a pleasant surprise in most categories this past season, especially in terms of games played.  Someone get a raise for the man who projected Navarro would steal three bases, by the way.  The Blue Jays took a calculated risk with Navarro, whose ability to hold up and produce for another full season was questionable, but the move certainly paid off.

C Josh Thole

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Thankfully Thole didn’t approach this projected playing time, or the Blue Jays would have been in trouble.  We all know the holes in Thole’s game, but you get from him exactly what you expect.  With Russell Martin likely to give the knuckleball a try with R.A. Dickey this Spring, Thole may become expendable.  A move of Navarro could change this, though, and put Thole into competition with A.J. Jimemez.

Next: Catchers, 1B, 2B and SS