2014 ZiPS Projections – San Francisco Giants

After having typically appeared in the entirely venerable pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections were released at FanGraphs last year. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the San Francisco Giants. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Oakland / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego / Seattle / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Texas / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
A haphazard inspection of the 29 ZiPS posts to have preceded this one reveals that only one field player (Mike Trout, at 9.5) is projected to produce as many wins in 2014 as Buster Posey. Andrew McCutchen also crosses the six-win threshold. Everyone else: less than that. Offensively, Posey has demonstrated excellent control of the strike zone and also power on contact. Defensively, he plays a difficult position and plays it well. That’s an ideal player, more or less.

Not entirely like Buster Posey is free-agent acquisition and probable left fielder Michael Morse. Other people smarter than the present author have questioned the wisdom of the Morse signing for the Giants. Germane to this post is that ZiPS renders objectively the reasons for those questions. Morse has one skill, his raw power, nor is ZiPS even particularly confident about that: the .162 mark projected here would only be fourth on the club, not much greater than the figures assigned to Roger Kieschnick and Brett Pill.

Pitchers
The starting pitchers in the depth-chart graphic below are arranged not in order of expected rotation slot, but rather by projected WAR according to ZiPS. They also include just the five pitchers most likely to begin the season in the rotation. Were that latter caveat removed, however, Ryan Vogelsong would be omitted from the list, replaced by either Edwin Escobar or Clayton Blackburn. Of note, also: after outperforming his defense-independent figures by three wins between 2011 and -12, Vogelsong’s runs-allowed WAR actually underperformed his traditional one this past year by 1.2 wins.

By both park-adjusted FIP and park-adjusted ERA, the Giants bullpen was one of the majors’ worst five last season. Given the relative paucity of innings thrown by relievers and the other vagaries associated with them, that sort of unfortunate achievement is prone to positive regression. In the case of the Giants, however, ZiPS isn’t particularly optimistic about considerable improvement. Beyond Sergio Romo and maybe Javier Lopez, much of the unit is expected to hover around a league-average ERA. Fine in a vacuum, that, but even average relievers generally outperform starters by about a run of ERA.

Bench/Prospects
Neither shortstop Ehire Adrianza nor catcher Andrew Susac are considered elite prospects — not even within the system, really, as their omission from the top 10 of both Marc Hulet’s and Baseball America’s organizational lists suggests. That said, their projections here — and also those produced by Steamer, as well — would seem to indicate that they’re skilled enough to contribute in some capacity at the major-league level. In fact, the Giants have a number of these sorts. Gary Brown, Adam Duvall, Joe Panik: all three of them are projected to record figures somewhere between replacement-level and average.

Depth Chart
Below is a rough depth chart for the present incarnation of the Giants, with rounded projected WAR totals for each player. For caveats regarding WAR values see disclaimer at bottom of post. Click to embiggen image.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here at site and author’s own haphazard reasoning.

Batters, Counting Stats

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Batters, Rates and Averages

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Batters, Assorted Other

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Pitchers, Counting Stats

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Pitchers, Rates and Averages

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Pitchers, Assorted Other

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Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2014. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.

Players are listed with their most recent teams unless Dan has made a mistake. This is very possible as a lot of minor-league signings are generally unreported in the offseason.

ZiPS is projecting based on the AL having a 4.04 ERA and the NL having a 3.81 ERA.

Players that are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information and a computer isn’t what should be projecting the injury status of, for example, a pitcher with Tommy John surgery.

Regarding ERA+ vs. ERA- (and FIP+ vs. FIP-) and the differences therein: as Patriot notes here, they are not simply mirror images of each other. Writes Patriot: “ERA+ does not tell you that a pitcher’s ERA was X% less or more than the league’s ERA. It tells you that the league’s ERA was X% less or more than the pitcher’s ERA.”

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in full release of ZiPS. Finally, Szymborski will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on depth chart to produce projected team WAR.