2 Angels hitters who will surpass their 2025 projections, and 1 who will not

While we wait for the Angels to put the finishing touches on the roster ahead of spring training, it's time to consider season performance predictions for each individual hitter. FanGraphs' Steamer projections are out for the Halos, and while they give us an interesting window into how each player might perform, it's also important to understand their limitations.

Projections are an inexact science. While they're fueled by an algorithm, they look to the past to consider what the future may hold. With that comes limitations, so while they are a good baseline you can only take them with a grain of salt. With that said, there are two clear Angels' bats who will surprise you and overachieve their projections, and one who will be a massive disappointment.

Zach Neto will delight Angels fans by crushing his projections

2025 Steamer Projection: .252/320/.439, 113 wRC+, 21 homers, 3.5 fWAR

Those are solid numbers for Neto, no doubt, but they're essentially predicting that he will repeat last season's performance. In 2024, he posted a .249/.318/.443 line, 114 wRC+, 23 homers, and 3.5 fWAR. Are we really to believe that a former top prospect who is coming off a solid year and is entering only his age-24 season isn't going to improve upon last season's results?

Neto showed marked improvement in 2024 versus 2023, and beyond just improving year-over-year, he showed real improvements in season. Consider this, in 2024 his first-half was significantly better than 2023 with a 106 wRC+, but after the All-Star break Neto supercharged that performance to the tune of a 125 wRC+. In 2023, Neto only played a half-season's worth of games and posted an 88 wRC+. The algorithm feeds that in, and thus puts a damper on his outlook for 2025.

A couple of factors drove his second-half improvement. First, his walk rate nearly doubled from 4.9% in the first half to 8.6% while he maintained his strikeout rate which came in at 23.2% in the first half and 23.3% in the first half. Secondly, he cut down on soft contact going from a 15.4% rate to an 11.4% rate, and instead improved his hard contact rate by nearly the same amount, 31.1% to 35.5%.

He'll miss the first month or so of the season, so his counting stats might not exceed projections by much, but his improvements have been monumental since arriving in the bigs in 2023 and should only continue on the upward trajectory as he supercharges his path towards potential stardom.