Trevor Rosenthal: VEB Projections Results

Editor's Note: Two years ago, Site Manager Ben Humphrey asked readers to provide predictions for Cardinals baseball players. Last year, he renewed that request, and although Ben is in blogger retirement, we at VEB renewed the request to predict how the Cardinals will do. The answers are now in, although projections are still out on many players if you have not yet made one.

Relievers can be difficult to project. They do not get a whole lot of innings, and a few bad outings or a bad stretch can color our view. Despite that, we asked you to make projections for relievers anyway. Trevor Rosenthal was the first member of the bullpen to be featured. At the time, we said this:

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Rosenthal has been an integral member of the Cardinals' relief core since 2013, and Joe Schwarz noted at the beginning of this month that Rosenthal has been the eighth most valuable relief pitcher by fWAR during this span.

Rosenthal's production didn't go unnoticed in 2015.  First, he was stupidly criticized by a lone, loud voice on Twitter for taking a few days of paternity leave when he and his wife welcomed another daughter into the world.  And second, he rebounded from a down year in 2014 and was one of the best relievers in baseball and made his first All-Star Game.  Here's a look at his 2015 stats:

You'd think a pitching line like that would put a closer in good graces with fans but that's not always the case.  You haven't experienced high-anxiety until you hang around Cardinals Twitter when Rosenthal is trying to close out a game in the 9th.  The second Rosenthal misses Yadi's glove everything starts boiling over.

DON'T YOU EVEN THINK OF BLOWING THIS GAME!

WHY CAN'T THINGS EVER BE EASY?!

[Cardinals win the game.]

WHEW!!!!

[Cycle repeats the following night.]

Fair or not, this is a reputation Rosenthal carried with him from 2014 when it seemed he almost always secured the final out with runners on base.  People weren't imagining things, the first batter Rosenthal faced in his appearances in 2014 hit .323/.403/.435.   In 2015, those numbers improved to the line of .210/.279/.323 and, per above, Rosenthal finished with a franchise-record 48 saves.  His strikeout rate improved slightly in 2015 and, more important, he improved on his ghastly 13.6 BB% in 2014.  Save for two meltdowns in Pittsburgh just before the All-Star break, Rosenthal was as steady as can be asked from a closer.

Heading into 2016, the Cardinals' bullpen is in solid shape.  Jonathan Broxton and Seung-Hwan Oh will hopefully help Kevin Siegrist and Seth Maness preserve any lead handed to them late in the game, and any production from Jordan Walden will be seen as a plus.  If Rosenthal can pick up where he left off that will be the icing on the cake.

Here is Rosenthal's player page at FanGraphs as well as the Cardinals 2016 ZiPS projections.

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We received 116 responses. After a brief discussion in the comments yesterday regarding me asking you to try and calculate WAR and the difficulty with that task, as well as the possibility of high number skewing the results, I have decided, for the purposes of these projections, to eliminate the highest and lowest 7.5% of WAR predictions and go with the average of the middle 85%. Rosenthal still ends up the highest in WAR for VEB, but for many of the other statistics, other projections are higher on Rosenthal. PECOTA "hates" him.

Thanks again to everyone who participated.