2019 ZiPS Projections – Cleveland Indians

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 Cleveland Indians.

Batters
Mind the gap! One wouldn’t think of the Colorado Rockies and Cleveland Indians as having similar front offices or philosophies, but they ended up in a similar place when it came to their offenses, with each boasting a of couple MVP-types who carried a disproportionately large portion of the load. Now, the Indians don’t have a replacement level Ian Desmond in the lineup, and the lesser lights don’t cost quite as much, but it still leaves Cleveland with a fairly unbalanced offense. The outfield is the biggest problem, with Michael Brantley, who did not receive a qualifying offer, still possessing the third-best batter projection on the team. While Cleveland’s still good enough otherwise that they can win the Central without much of a struggle — even if they trade a starting pitcher and go into the season with their existing outfield — it’s not ideal.

Pitchers
ZiPS really, really likes Shane Bieber. It likes him to such a degree that when I saw the nearly four-WAR projection, I fired up his profile page and checked the Steamer projection to make sure I hadn’t accidentally broken something. Like the time I initially projected Jose Molina to have a 1.200 batting average. I talked more about this in Cleveland’s Elegy for ’18 just a few days ago, but it’s understandable why the Indians are willing to talk pitcher trades. The team is still hopeful about Danny Salazar and while I can’t get in their brains, I suspect they feel the difference between Danny Salazar (or the other fallback options) and Corey Kluber or Trevor Bauer is smaller than the difference between nothing and the prospects they could get in return. While I would’ve preferred the team to at least give Brantley a qualifying offer and pinch pennies a few years down the road, one can at least understand their thinking.

Bench/Prospects
There’s no savior coming to bail out Cleveland’s outfield. ZiPS was already worried about Bradley Zimmer before his shoulder surgery and does not think Bobby Bradley is likely to be an above-average major league player. Nolan Jones‘ projection is promising given that he played at Hi-A, which is something at least. There are a lot of very competent role player-types in the system, but ideally, you wouldn’t see a Max Moroff or an Andrew Calica this close to the top of the table.

Things are brighter in the near-term on the pitching front. Triston McKenzie’s projection isn’t exciting yet, but he just turned 21 towards the end of the season, so there’s a lot of time for him to grow. Plus, there are better comps for him after his disappointing no. 1 comp, Arnie Gooch. Walker Lockett didn’t have a great debut — you can kinda tell what happened, in that the pitch classification algorithms didn’t recognize his sinker as a sinker — but his control wasn’t a problem in the minors. Something bad has probably happened if he gets anywhere near those projected innings in the majors rather than in Triple-A, but given the performance of the typical fifth starter, he’s probably useful if there’s an emergency. James Hoyt, who signed to a minor-league contract, gets a shockingly good projection. His 3.30 FIP from 2017 earned him only the smallest sip of coffee in Houston in a season marred by oblique and knee injuries (though he did pitch well for Fresno when healthy).

One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’s depth chart playing time, not the playing time that 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.