2019 ZiPS Projections – Pittsburgh Pirates

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 Pittsburgh Pirates.

Batters

The depth chart graphic for the Pirates (as seen below) pulls off a neat little trick. In this case, it manages to highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of the Pirates in one bite-sized scoop. Pittsburgh is excellent at finding just below average to average talent for peanuts, and average or better talent for whatever is a little bit better than that (perhaps Chex Mix?). It keeps the Pirates from ever truly returning to the Kingdom of Reekdom they reigned over from 1993 to about 2010. Having a roster Ryanfull of free one-win players, two-win players who are paid like one-win players, and three-win players who are paid like two-win players means you have a highly efficient roster. But it’s a highly efficient roster that will generally win between 77-85 games.

What the Pirates missed in their best days, and largely are missing today, was the willingness to add stars. The low payrolls of the rebuilding era never really gave way to short-term payroll ceilings well above the team’s long-term comfort levels. Everyone who has read me over the last five years knows I’m not a Royals apologist, but Kansas City did do this one thing much better than the Pirates did, even if the players Kansas City chose weren’t exactly my favorite. Chris Archer has star upside, but the Pirates had to trade players with star potential to bring him in. If the small market model doesn’t have a path to league-average payrolls, it necessitates an immense amount of success on the player development side. Sometimes, you just need to spend money instead of prospects.

There aren’t a lot of surprises in the hitting projections, but it is a very deep group. ZiPS has an amusing tendency with Pittsburgh to pick unnecessarily cruel, Pirates-related comps. Jung Ho Kang and Kevin Kramer are projected to be able to replace any injured Pirates infielders without the team losing a beat, and ZiPS remains a fan of Starling Marte over the long haul. This team may have the smallest gap between their ideal starting lineup and a starting lineup comprised of their Plan B’s of any team in baseball.

Pitchers

ZiPS is still optimistic about Chris Archer, but it’s now at the point where it expects him to fall short of his projected FIP. He’s only underperformed by 0.22 runs of ERA over his career, but ZiPS believes that given his defenses, he should have been over-performing his FIP, not falling short of it. The projections are increasingly optimistic about Trevor Williams, believing that he’ll continue to do better with home runs than most pitchers do with his hit profile. But it’s understandably not buying his .261 BABIP allowed in 2018 as near his actual ability.

Of the low-key reliever breakouts from 2018, ZiPS is a believer in Richard Rodriguez, a skeptic about Edgar Santana, and on the fence about ex-Giant Kyle Crick. The computer still does not understand why Michael Feliz isn’t much better at preventing the other team from scoring than his results to date have been.

Bench and Prospects

ZiPS uses a Total Zone-esque approach for minor-league defense, and it continues to back up the scouting reports for Ke’Bryan Hayes that rave about his defense. It doesn’t show up in the projections yet, but ZiPS sees a strong probability that Cole Tucker develops into a 10-12 home run hitter just as Royce Clayton, his top comp, did for awhile. Ryne Sandberg and Eric Young, Classic Edition, round out his top three. No, he doesn’t actually have a one-in-three chance of becoming a Hall of Famer. As sleepers go, the favorite of ZiPS may be Dario Agrazal, a well-built righty with a hard sinker but no real pitch that puts away batters (strikeouts are better than grounders). He’s not really on the prospect radar — the Pirates would not have snuck him off the 40-man roster if he were — but he does interest ZiPS and remains worth keeping an eye on. Groundball pitchers with hard sinkers who don’t strike guys out sometimes work out surprisingly well.

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.