Monday, January 7, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, January 7, 2019 -- "Projection"

This is an excerpt from the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for more than 20 years.

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"Britton is an example of a player helped by the reliance on projection in valuing and signing free agents. Nathan Eovaldi is another. Eovaldi missed all of 2017 after his second Tommy John surgery and threw 111 innings in 2018 with an ERA of 3.81. Eovaldi’s new cutter, however, helped his fastball, which has always been impressive, and Eovaldi closed his season with some impressive relief work in October, of course, but his four-year, $68-million deal is maybe the first Statcast contract."