2020 ZiPS Projections: Arizona Diamondbacks

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Batters

ZiPS projects Ketel Marte to regress a bit towards the mean, but not by enough to prevent him from remaining a star center fielder. The outfield corners remain more troublesome, and I believe it is extremely dodgy to assume that a healthier shoulder will be enough to return David Peralta to his career-best 2018 form. Peralta’s quite old for a player with just five years’ worth of playing time — he’ll turn 33 late in 2020 — and it’s quite likely that some age-related decline will counteract a portion of the benefits of (hopefully) avoiding further injury. I’m a fan of Josh Rojas, but I’m not sure his value will really come as a starter in a corner outfield position, where I think his bat will be stretched a bit.

I really would have liked to see Arizona go after Marcell Ozuna, who may actually be underrated at this point, including by me; I was leery of a team chasing after two seasons after him failing to hit the three-win line, but after running his ZiPS projection and looking at my BABIP model (zBABIP), I may have been too hasty to dismiss him. ZiPS thinks Ozuna should have had a .316 BABIP in 2019 based on his profile (his actual was .259) and gives him a .281/.346/.509, 3.1 WAR projection in 141 projected games in Arizona.

The projections aren’t completely sold on Christian Walker, still seeing him as a league-average first baseman. Problem is, ZiPS also is a fan of Kevin Cron — his emergence was huge even by Pacific Coast League standards — and projects him as the slightly better player right now. If trading Walker at some point can get the Diamondbacks another corner outfielder or a starting pitcher, it’s going to be hard to say no to. I don’t think Arizona is a top offense, but I don’t think there are any serious holes at the moment, an impressive turnaround for a team that had an 86 wRC+ as recently as 2018.

Pitchers

Zac Gallen! The comps for Gallen are impressive, though remember that ZiPS is comparing Gallen to Greg Maddux’s baseline through 1988 and Dave Stieb’s baseline through1981; their respective Hall of Fame credentials came through further improvements. ZiPS wasn’t sold on Gallen after 2018, but it did translate his performance in the minors that season as a 9-8, 3.75 line with 119 strikeouts in 134.1 translated minor league innings. Gallen’s 3-6, 2.81 ERA debut in 15 starts was right in line with his 2019 minor league translations, which ZiPS had at a sterling 2.67 ERA and 103 strikeouts in 84.1 innings. ZiPS gave no other minor league pitcher a translated ERA under three in at least 50 innings (Sam Selman came close but fell short on innings).

Arizona’s rotation ought to be more effective than people think, with the worst projected ERA+s being from Merrill Kelly and Mike Leake at 93. A full season of Gallen and Luke Weaver will be an upgrade, but it’s still tough to make up for what Zack Greinke gave them, inspiring his trade to Houston. The bullpen projects in average-plus territory, and while I’d still like to have seen Archie Bradley given one last go as a starter, I can’t fault Arizona for leaving him where he’s been generally successful.

Prospects

The name that really made me do a double-take was Josh Green, a control pitcher from the 2018 draft. Green used his changeup and increased velocity to advance through the minors very quickly. But even given his performance in his first professional season, I was floored that ZiPS already thought of him as a league-average starter. So I ran the projection a second time, double-checked all the data, and came up with the same result. Still doubting, I looked at his Steamer projection and at a 4.52 ERA, it likes him just as much (I believe I’m projecting a slightly lower run environment than Steamer).

ZiPS doesn’t see Seth Beer as being quite ready yet, but Arizona doesn’t need to push him aggressively with Walker and Cron on the roster. One prospect ZiPS does see as about ready for the majors is Daulton Varsho, a rather rare catcher who has speed as part of his skillset. ZiPS projects a 5.2 speed score from Varsho in the majors in 2020, which is practically unheard of from the position in the divisional era as only two players who were primarily catchers put up a career speed score over five: John Wathan and Eli Marrero. (Craig Biggio would have fit in this category as well if he had stayed behind the plate.) Given that Varsho’s not a great defensive catcher, I wonder if Arizona will do the Austin Barnes thing with him and give him more experience at crucial defensive positions. He did play four games in center field; a catcher-center fielder isn’t something you see that often!

Many of Arizona’s best prospects are still in the low minors, just outside the edge of getting an official ZiPS projection (Kristian Robinson, Geraldo Perdomo, Alek Thomas), so the projection list doesn’t quite capture how much the farm system has improved. If Arizona has a productive season from a developmental standpoint, you’ll start to see this reflect in the 2021 projections.

One pedantic note for 2020: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth charts 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.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players that are unsigned, players who will miss 2020 due to injury, and players who were released in 2019. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in June to form a ska-cowpunk Luxembourgian bubblegum pop-death metal band, he’s still listed here intentionally.

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 the 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.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article.