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After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Batters
Dodger field players recorded the second-most WAR collectively in the majors this past season, and all but one (Chase Utley) of the club’s top-13 players from 2017 remains under contract for 2018. Unsurprisingly, the projections below are almost uniformly strong.

Both first baseman Cody Bellinger (607 PA, 4.4 zWAR) and shortstop Corey Seager (666, 5.7) remain subject to a Young Driver Surcharge when patronizing any of this country’s major rental-car providers. When not busy securing dependable transportation at a competitive rate, however, they occupy their time creating runs as professional ballplayers. ZiPS calls for that pair to produce roughly 10 wins just between the two of them in 2018.

If one is intent on identifying a weakness — or at least an uncertainty — within the depth chart, then left field appears to be the best candidate. Joc Pederson (475, 2.4) was optioned to Triple-A in mid-August and absent from much of the postseason, raising some questions about his job security with the present iteration of the club. Even he is forecast to produce wins at an above-average rate, however.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the perplexing potential end to Manny Machado trade rumors, then bring on former major leaguer and current fun-fact star/national treasure Johnny O’Brien to discuss his life and career with the Pirates, Cardinals, and Braves in the 1950s, becoming a reluctant two-way player (and experiencing immediate, surprising success), his signing by Branch Rickey, being a “bonus baby” and skipping the minor leagues, playing in the Harvey Haddix game, forming half of the only double-play duo of twins in MLB history, playing without his twin for the first time, playing for both great and terrible teams and both with and against baseball legends, being buddies with Bing Crosby, and more.

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Over the course of a few days during the winter meetings, it seemed like all that was happening was that free-agent relievers were signing multiyear contracts. And not just multiyear contracts — reasonably expensive multiyear contracts. Both Jake McGee and Bryan Shaw got three years. An incomplete selection of the relievers who got two: Brandon Morrow, Tommy Hunter, Juan Nicasio, Joe Smith, Anthony Swarzak, Steve Cishek, and Pat Neshek. These are all good pitchers. They deserve what they’ve gotten. But people are still relatively unaccustomed to seeing non-closers get $8 million a year. This is the bullpen age, indeed.

As the run on relievers was taking place, a common refrain was that teams were looking to sign the next Brandon Morrow, or the next Anthony Swarzak. Not that Morrow or Swarzak didn’t still get their money, but neither was considered valuable a year ago. They popped up, almost out of nowhere, and they became deadly weapons. So, teams figure, why wouldn’t there be other pop-up relievers? Why spend so much on a guy if you think you can find the next bullpen breakthrough?

Every team is looking for the next pop-up. It’s not easy to spot success before success. The Rangers think they have someone in Chris Martin, and I wrote about him, but he’s been terrific in Japan. It’s a different sort of gamble. Wily Peralta and Yovani Gallardo have signed with the Royals and Brewers, respectively, but they might still start. I don’t know if they’re necessarily considered the same kind of pop-up targets. This all leads me to Tom Koehler. I wanted to find a pitcher who’s been identified as a potential next Swarzak or Morrow. The Dodgers signed Koehler for $2 million, and if he hits all his incentives as a reliever, the salary tops out at $2.95 million. He’s under control for 2019, and the Dodgers see him in the bullpen.

Koehler, this past season, was bad. He had an ERA of almost 7. The bulk of his career has been spent as a starter, and there’s a perfectly good chance his 2018 goes off the rails. And yet the Dodgers think they might see something, something that could handle high-leverage situations. What is it the Dodgers are thinking? I’d like to give it my best guess.

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Episode 792
Kiley McDaniel is the former lead prospect analyst for FanGraphs.com and, more recently, a member of the Atlanta Braves’ front office. He’s also a future employee of FanGraphs.com and the guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 34 min play time.)

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The Indians have their Carlos Santana replacement.

On Thursday evening, Cleveland agreed to a two-year, $16 million deal with air-ball revolution poster boy Yonder Alonso. The contract includes an option for a third season.

There were a number of potential first-base fits for Cleveland in a deep class that included other left-handed options like Matt Adams (who reached a one-year, $4 million deal with Nationals), Mitch Moreland (two years, $13 million with Red Sox) Lucas Duda, and Logan Morrison. Eric Hosmer’s ask, and perhaps inconsistency, likely pushed him out of consideration for the club.

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Tom Hackimer loves Driveline, uses a Motus Sleeve, and is one class short of earning a physics degree from St. John’s University. In other words, Minnesota’s 2016 fourth-round pick is a pitching nerd. He’s also an intriguing prospect. In 43 relief appearances this past season, the sidearming 5-foot-11 right-hander logged a 1.76 ERA and 10.4 strikeouts per nine innings between Low-A Cedar Rapids and High-A Fort Myers. He followed that up with a strong showing in the Arizona Fall League.

Hackimer discussed his scientific and methodical approach, which includes slow-motion video and the modeling of his motion after Joe Smith’s, earlier this month.

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Tom Hackimer on being a pitching nerd: “Before I knew that I was going to be any good in baseball, I thought I would go to grad school and get a degree in civil engineering. I like to build things. That seemed like a logical step, as civil engineering would be building things on a bigger scale, such as bridges. I’ve always thought that would be cool.

“As it pertains to baseball… I try to build things that will help me. My senior year of college, I built sort of a pitch-tunneling device. At least that’s what it was in theory. It was basically a window that I could change the height of. I put it 20 feet in front of the mound and would work on throwing all of my pitches through it, wanting them look the same all the way up to that point, at least.

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Earlier this offseason, as part of an info-taining post illustrating the influence a single batter can exert on game pace, Jeff discovered that Marwin Gonzalez was taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r between pitches this past season.

I followed up shortly after that with a piece in defense of pitchers, as I suspected much of the blame for the slowing pace of play could be assigned to batters.

While the hot stove is slowly warming this offseason, let us not forget that the biggest change we’ll observe in major-league stadiums next season could be the appearance of pitch clocks. Buster Olney reported last month that the introduction of a pitch clock is a distinct possibility.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter (and bantler, again) about what they’ve learned about antlers and antler-rubbed bats, the Evan Longoria trade, Derek Jeter’s town-hall event with Marlins fans, and Jeff’s breakout-player pick for 2018 (and breakout player-picking philosophy). Then they debut a new Stat Blast theme song by Jessie Barbour, do a Stat Blast about Matt Adams, Adam Lind, and a player who shouldn’t have switch hit, and answer listener emails about paying minor-league players, Jason Heyward opting out, the Yankees’ prospects with Michael Schur in their rotation, what the Braves could do with their tiny international bonus pool, and a baseball Bachelor, then follow up on their discussions of a team with no coaches and Shohei Ohtani signing shenanigans.

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