2020 ZiPS Projections: Los Angeles Dodgers

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 Los Angeles Dodgers.

Batters

Looking at the hitting projections, it’s not hard to see why the Dodgers didn’t go all-out to sign Anthony Rendon. Rendon, of course, would be an upgrade for any team, but it’s difficult to see how the Dodgers would have gotten maximum benefit. Their worst projected position is right field, manned primarily by Alex Verdugo, and with his projected WAR of 2.0 in 476 plate appearances, even he falls into the above-average category. And it’s possible that WAR slightly underrates the Dodger lineup simply because positional versatility is one of those things that we foggily know is meaningful, though exactly how meaningful we don’t quite know.

ZiPS has been keen on Cody Bellinger for a while. Indeed, this is quite an aggressive win projection for a first baseman. Bellinger’s career home run projection has gone well past 500 at this point, and ZiPS is even baking in a mildish drop in league home run totals, which we don’t know will actually happen.

Gavin Lux’s long-term projection remains bananas and his presence gives the Dodgers a tremendous amount of flexibility in the trade market. The Dodgers could actually trade someone like Corey Seager without creating a giant crater in their lineup, assuming they had a partner with an extra starting pitcher who could make it worth it (Noah Syndergaard?).

The riskiest projection is Will Smith’s, whose emergence is still quite recent. Catchers tend to have odd, disappointing growth curves, so ZiPS is hedging its bets here. Even with significant regression, Smith projects as a significant plus for the team.

I am mildly amused that David Freese got his best projection in the years after retiring.

Pitchers

This is where the team has shed depth in the last few years, and they’ve needed that depth given how populated their injured list has been. Rich Hill and Hyun-Jin Ryu are unsigned, which leaves Los Angeles thinner than when you could literally fill a second rotation of major-league quality starters after their first one.

ZiPS gives Clayton Kershaw the slight edge in the projections, though this will be the last year for that unless their trajectories change. Rumors of Kershaw’s demise are premature — ZiPS still projects him with 26 WAR remaining in his left arm — but it’s undeniable at this point that he’s off his peak. You can see that in the comps, too, as his near-age comps have declined from the usual mix of pitchers like Sandy Koufax, Carl Hubbell, and Lefty Grove. Now, Koufax’s abrupt end to his career caused him to fall off the list, but the top end of Kershaw’s comp list has a lot more Hall of Very Good types, like John Tudor, Jerry Reuss, and David Wells. But hey, Walker Buehler landed the Tom Seaver comp, thus keeping the team in-line with the Hall of Fame comps in classic Mechanics.

The bullpen projects as solid, but unspectacular. ZiPS sees the team as having a very deep assortment of relief pitching, it’s just not in head-over-heels in love with many of them. Kenley Jansen’s struggles have pulled him out of the elite tier and Blake Treinen’s bounce back season is still in the To Be Determined category.

Prospects

The Dodgers always seem to have a ready stash of prospects who just happen to fit the team’s needs at the right time. Yasmani Grandal leaving and Russell Martin showing aging? Well, here’s Will Smith and Keibert Ruiz. Corey Seager only a couple years from free agency? Okay, let’s have Gavin Lux engage full beast mode in 2019. Pitching defections? Let’s just have Dustin May emerge as a top 10 prospect, and just three years from being signed from out in Fraggle Rock.

ZiPS thinks May could fit in the rotation right now, but the Dodgers will likely be conservative and continue to stretch out Julio Urías and take more looks at Ross Stripling. I’m still cautiously optimistic — from the POV of the Dodgers, of course — that Ryu ends up back with the team.

I thought ZiPS would ding Keibert Ruiz for a season of mixed results that ended early due to a broken finger. Ruiz’s .254/.329/.330 line at Double-A Tulsa as a repeater was unimpressive, but the fact remains he was still a catcher who couldn’t even legally drink until midseason. Just as ZiPS knows that young catchers develop and progress oddly, which has resulted in it knocking Will Smith down a peg, it also gives a lot of leeway to Ruiz. The day will come when the Dodgers have to choose between Ruiz and Smith, but it’s hard to have sympathy for a team struggling with having to figure out what to do with too many good young catchers.

If you’re looking for a few of those veteran minor league relievers who comes up to the majors and are perfectly average pitchers for a few years before being overpaid by the Rockies, Shea Spitzbarth is ZiPS’s favorite in the Dodgers’ system. With only average velocity to go with a loopy curve and a fosh-like changeup, Spitzbarth’s painful 25 innings in Triple-A probably kept him from getting serious Rule 5 consideration, but ZiPS sees something there and Steamer’s not all that far away from ZiPS. ZiPS isn’t buying Spitzbarth, but it is intrigued by another interesting minor league fringe player in Zach McKinstry, who hit .279/.352/.455 for Tulsa before a .382/.421/.753 Triple-A debut in 23 games. Couple that with the fact that McKinstry has played second, third, and shortstop extensively to go along with a few outfield appearances, and you have an interesting role player to watch.

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.