It is projection season now and, though not all of the Reds projections have been posted yet (ZiPS is still missing), we’ve reached a point at which it’s interesting to look at what they say and what they can tell us.
The first thing to note is that projection systems all generally assume there will be regression to the mean. Take, for instance, Mike Trout. In five full seasons, he has posted only one season with less than 9 WAR. However, every projection system (including the FanGraphs Fans projection, which is the only one that uses crowdsourcing) has him posting a season below 9 WAR.