Fantasy Catcher Rankings: Steamer Projections for 2015

Projecting player stats for the upcoming season, for me, has always been a gut feel. Sometimes I have been on target, while other times, I have been way off. Attempting to predict how a player is going to perform is not an easy task. Projecting anything for which you have no control over is very hard. Just ask the weather forecasters after the failed "snowmageddon" here on the east coast on Monday and Tuesday.

One of the more well known projection systems out there is ZiPS, which are created by Dan Szymborski, and published over at FanGraphs. Another projection system which FanGraphs publishes for all to see is the Steamer projections. Here is more on Steamer from both the Steamer Projections website and from FanGraphs:

Steamer Projections is a projection system for baseball player statistics. The system was created and is maintained and operated by Jared Cross, Dash Davidson, and Peter Rosenbloom. Dash and Peter just graduated from college and are both former students of Jared – a high school science and statistics teacher. The three creators share a deep passion and interest for baseball and the statistics that are intrinsic to the game.

The project began in the Fall of 2008 at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, New York. Saint Ann’s offers its students an independent research program where they may embark on collaborative projects motivated by personal interest together with a teacher. The Steamer Projections system is the result of this program.

What began as an explorative academic pursuit soon became a passionate and time-consuming endeavor as we quickly began to expand and improve our system – and increase the requisite amount of work – as our skill and knowledge of the intricate process of statistical projection improved.

Now we are in the midst of working on the seventh iteration of our system, which has released a full set of projections for MLB players for each of the past five seasons by the end of March. We are still constantly tinkering on and tweaking Steamer Projections in the hope of making it ever more accurate and efficient. We are also investigating possible business partnerships with fantasy sports websites and MLB teams to leverage the predicative power of our system.  You can find our full pre-season and daily projections at www.fangraphs.com and at www.razzball.com.

Steamer - This uses the playing time projection from our (FanGraphs) depth charts. These are temporarily using playoff rosters, so there may be the occasional weird playing time allocation. Playing time may be updated on a nightly basis.

So let's take a look what the Steamer projections have in store for the catchers we ranked earlier this week:

Thoughts

Evan Gattis - Steamer seems to like Gattis' move to the Astros as they are projecting him to hit 28 home runs and drive in 79 runs. That's a top 3 catcher in my eyes and maybe I was too down on him.

Buster Posey - I think Steamer is right on the money with their projection for Posey, but he could easily outperform this projection should he see more than 30 starts at first base in 2015, as he has proven he is better hitter when at first than behind the plate.

Devin Mesoraco - news that the Reds are considering giving Mesoraco 145 starts in 2015 could make the Steamer projection look very low. He hit 25 home runs last season in 114 games, so he should easily replicate that should he play 145 games. There is talk that he could play some first base this season to 1) give Votto more rest, and 2) keep his power bat in the lineup. It s a trend that many managers are using to keep their catchers with big bats -Jonathan Lucroy, Posey, others -in the lineup and keep them fresh.

Andrew Susac - I think Susac sees more than 107 plate appearances in 2015, as Posey will start at least 30 games at first base this season.

Joe Mauer - I am not sure why Steamer still sees Mauer as a catcher, as Mauer caught zero games last season.

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