2019 ZiPS Projections – Baltimore Orioles

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for more than half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Baltimore Orioles.

Batters

Well, at least expectations have been tempered quite a bit. After all, this is a team that finished last in the American League in runs scored with Manny Machado for half a season, and even if Jonathan Schoop was disappointing and Adam Jones is in steep decline, they at least combined for an OPS above .700, which is … something.

The short-term outlook for the Orioles is bleak. Probably the most humorous/interesting/sad projection is Chris Davis‘, who is essentially projected for a massive, three-WAR rebound, which will get him to…zero or at least close enough to zero to borrow its lawn mower. Cedric Mullins at least looks like he has some promise and Renato Nunez is fascinating in that it still feels like he could have a weird 30 homer-but-below-average-overall season.

It was disappointing how many at-bats the Orioles gave Caleb Joseph last year given how up-and-down Chance Sisco’s been; if he’s ever going to succeed in the majors, he’s going to have to learn how to get through a slump, and that’s not going to happen against Triple-A pitchers.

My gut tells me that of the players in the graphic, only Mullins really has much of a chance to be a factor the next time the Orioles are good. Sadly, I think the list of non-factors includes Trey Mancini, who feels a lot closer to Jim Traber than a Randy Milligan-esque surprise.

Pitchers

It’s kind of depressing, but unlike the departed Kevin Gausman, who has a few more miles per hour on the fastball and a splitter that is just filthy at times, I don’t think Dylan Bundy post-injuries really has the stuff left to be a viable breakout candidate. It strikes me as unlikely that he’s ever even half the pitcher the O’s hoped he would be; his slider can still be very good, but too much of his repertoire is crushable.

The question at this point is whether Bundy and Alex Cobb can be league-average enough to be traded, and while I’m down on Bundy from a ceiling perspective, I’m more optimistic about being able to answer that question with a “yes.” I think there’s a good chance Cobb can beat this projection. Why? Before he was shut down with blisters, he was having a quietly solid second half, which coincided with increased usage of his splitter, his bread-and-butter pitch throughout his successes with the Rays.

One of the few 2019 bright spots in Baltimore’s ZiPS projection is the bullpen. The team has had a knack for finding relievers who end up pitching better than their stuff suggests they will, and ZiPS largely sees the front half of the relief corps being surprisingly solid, though this will probably matter more for deadline trades than for the immediate future of the Orioles, with the possible exception of the wild-but-fascinating Tanner Scott, who hits the high 90s and seems a lot more familiar with where home plate rests than the natural Orioles comparison, Brad Pennington, did.

Bench and Prospects

I wouldn’t get upset about the relatively tame projections for prospects like Ryan Mountcastle and Yusniel Diaz. The Orioles are in the very, very early stages of a rebuild that will likely need to be one of the longer and more painful ones in resent memory if it is to bear fruit. The team is a lot closer to the bleak wasteland the Astros occupied when Jeff Luhnow took over after the 2011 season than teams like the Brewers that required lighter resets. Too much of the basics of franchise-building were ignored in Baltimore for too long.

As such, the O’s don’t really care about mean projections right now. They’re at the point where they’ll just shrug and take the guys that exceed those average expectations. It doesn’t matter right now if 18 of the team’s top 20 prospects are busts as long as they get to keep the other two. And no, the minor leagues are not deep yet. It’s going to require years of good drafting, not to mention a sustained commitment to amateur signings in Latin America, a 180 degrees shift from the malpractice that became a joke around baseball.

It’s also worth noting that the O’s have quite a few vaguely intriguing pitching prospects in A-ball who just missed this list.

One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth chart playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here at site.

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 2019. 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 I have made a mistake. This is very possible, as a lot of minor-league signings go generally unreported in the offseason.

ZiPS’ projections are based on the American League having a 4.29 ERA and the National League having a 4.15 ERA.

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

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