2020 ZiPS Projections: Cincinnati Reds

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 Cincinnati Reds.

Batters

Cincinnati’s 2020 offense will likely prove to be an interesting challenge for second-year manager David Bell. There’s the potential for a good offense here, but there’s an equal number of scenarios in which the team simply fails to score runs. Outside of Eugenio Suárez, the incumbent third baseman who I’m still amazed was purloined for Alfredo Simon, practically every player in the lineup has a real upside but also, significant questions about a major aspect of their game.

Does Joey Votto have another comeback season left in him? Votto has had downswings before, but the swoons were never anywhere near as deep his .261/.357/.411 line in 2019. 2020 will also be his age-36 season, which isn’t exactly a point in a career where you see many players come roaring back after a collapse. ZiPS does forecast a moderate 2020 recovery, but Votto the Star may be permanently in the rear-view mirror.

The outfield is a particularly devious puzzle to solve as rather than having two or three outfielders who are head-and-shoulders above the rest, the team has a large collection of average-ish players with wildly varying skillsets. They’re a bit like a giant vat of Legos in which the Star Wars set, the Raiders of the Lost Ark set, and the Requiem for a Dream set have all been tossed together, with some scattered Erector parts thrown in; you’re just trying to build a nice little house but keep finding lightsabers and fedoras.

Possibly the best outcome would be if the Reds fully explore Nick Senzel at shortstop. Even better would be a trade involving Corey Seager or Francisco Lindor, but you can hardly bank on a mega-trade like that, and the Reds have a real weakness at short. I like Shogo Akiyama, but his arrival makes it tough for Cincinnati to find playing time for both Senzel and Jesse Winker without sitting Aristides Aquino. I don’t see the Reds doing that; despite a rather poor minor league history prior to 2019, the fact remains that Aquino was second on the team in OPS. Even outside of a trade for a top shortstop, I think it’s quite likely the Reds trade one of the extra outfielders before the season starts.

One can see the lure of signing Marcell Ozuna. Ozuna’s not a star, but he’s an above-average overall outfielder who you can stick in the lineup and forget about.

Cincy’s offense ought to be better than the 12th-place they ranked in scoring in 2019 — while playing in a hitter’s park — but I think all the flipped coins have to come up the same way to get this team much above average.

Pitchers

Now, here is why the Reds are closing in on contention. It’s kind of weird how we got here, to a Reds team that’s powered by their starting pitching. Even stranger is that unlike teams like the Braves, Cincinnati didn’t get to this point by having their stockpile of farm system arms work out. In fact, very few of those young pitchers actually panned out.

The best, of course, is Luis Castillo, pilfered in the Dan Straily trade; if you had Straily now, you couldn’t even fetch the other Luis Castillo in return. At this point last season, it was an open question as to whether the “real” Castillo was the one who struggled early in 2018 or the one whose changeup came roaring back in the second half. As it turned out, it was the latter. ZiPS projects Castillo to be worth somewhere around four wins a year for most of the next decade, with his career outlook now passing 150 wins. (The traditional ones, that is, not the ones above replacement.)

Even with some regression projected from Sonny Gray, a better projected year from Trevor Bauer is enough to give the Reds a real argument for having the best rotation in the NL Central. Our depth charts already think so, and it does not appear that ZiPS is going to disagree much.

Some may wonder what the purpose of signing Wade Miley was, but that kind of depth is necessary for a team entering contention. Tyler Mahle looks like the odd man out at the moment, but pitchers being pitchers, someone will get injured and the team does not have much in the way of depth here.

ZiPS is less enthralled with the team’s bullpen. Only Raisel Iglesias projects to have an ERA+ of at least 120 and the quality drops off quickly after Cody Reed. It’s not a bottom-tier bullpen, but it could use at least one more significant arm. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a great offseason to shop for relievers, with a small free agent class resulting in some of its better arms, like Drew Pomeranz and Will Smith, signing very quickly.

The biggest X-factor here may be José De León. With significant injuries derailing his career — most notably a Tommy John surgery that cost him all of 2018 — and too many walks upon his 2019 return, ZiPS is being extremely conservative here. De León’s velocity sat in the low-90s in 2019, but pitching in relief may help that velocity rebound in 2020. He was a legitimate top prospect for the Dodgers at one point, so I like to think there’s still some upside remaining here.

Combine the pitching with the offense and the Reds smell like team bound for 85 or so wins in 2020. But that’s not bad news; this offseason, the rest of the division has largely behaved like they intend to put 85-win teams on the field also.

Prospects

The farm system is middle-of-the-pack, but not likely to make major contributions to the 2020 team barring trades that fetch other players. Of the 10 players with a future value of at least 45 on THE BOARD, only four are at Double-A or higher. Jonathan India doesn’t really have a position at the moment, as the team isn’t using him at shortstop and the outfield’s a bit too clogged to shove Suárez out there. Tyler Stephenson’s not ready to supplant Tucker Barnhart, and ZiPS sees neither Tony Santillan nor Jose Siri as above replacement-level.

Usually, teams have a few fringe prospects who interest ZiPS, but with the Reds, there isn’t really anyone aside from Alex Powers, a fastball-slider-change reliever who fared admirably in the Pacific Coast League. Perhaps Cincinnati will be more aggressive at signing veterans to minor league contracts in the final month of the offseason because there are plenty of open spots on the Louisville Bats.

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 who 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.