Blue Jays FanGraphs Steamer Projections Analysis for 2022

Sep 20, 2021; St. Petersburg, Florida, USA; Toronto Blue Jays right fielder Teoscar Hernandez (37) celebrates with designated hitter Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (27) his solo home run hit against the Tampa Bay Rays during the second inning at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

With the MLB lockout already cancelling the first two series of the season, we’ll have to wait a little while to see the Blue Jays in action. However, that can’t stop us from trying to project how they will perform this season, and one of the most popular ways of doing so is FanGraphs’ Steamer Projections.

There are a number of different projection formulas that people use to attempt to project player statistics, with two of the biggest baseball stat sites, Baseball Reference and FanGraphs, each using their own formula, but for this analysis, I’m going to be looking at the Steamer Projections used by FanGraphs.

According to MLB.com, “Steamer is a system of projections developed by Jared Cross — a high school science teacher in Brooklyn — and two of his former students, Dash Davidson and Peter Rosenbloom. It is currently used by Fangraphs as its primary projection system for individual players.” As for the formula, they say that “Like other projection systems, Steamer uses past performance and aging trends to develop a future projection for players. It also uses pitch-tracking data to help forecast pitchers.”

FanGraphs currently has their Steamer Projections for every MLB batter and pitcher available on their site. I’ll be looking at their projections for some Blue Jays and giving my analysis of how accurate I think these projections are. I’ll be going through the infield, outfield, and starting rotation in their own sections, covering the players of note. I’ll be skipping a few players such as George Springer, Cavan Biggio, and Nate Pearson, since we’ve already covered their projections, along with a couple of others, in another article, which can be found right here.

One final note before we start. This isn’t a criticism of Steamer Projections, personally, I think that it’s one of, if not the best sabermetric-based projection systems. That being said, every system has its flaws because there are so many different factors that just can’t be put into a formula, so I’m bound to disagree with some of their projections.

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