People ask me what I do during the winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do: I stare at projections and wait for spring. Thankfully, Friday afternoon gave me the first opportunity to do that, as FanGraphs published their first of the 2019 projections, the Steamer set for all 30 teams.
It’s worth remembering what projections actually are. They’re not a bet or a prediction of what’s going to happen, but rather the midpoint of all possible outcomes given a player’s historical performance and age curve. There are error bars in every projection, but generally they’re actually fairly accurate.