2020 ZiPS Projections: Miami Marlins

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 Miami Marlins.

Batters

I’ll share the good news first: The Marlins won’t have a good offense, but there are fewer gaping holes now than there were in 2019, when the team was able to outscore the Detroit Tigers, but couldn’t say the same of anyone else. (The team with the third-fewest runs, the San Francisco Giants, scored nearly half a run more per game than Miami did.) A lot of the team’s worst offensive performances — Curtis Granderson and Martín Prado combined for more than 600 plate appearances for some odd reason, hitting .183/.281/.356 and .233/.265/.294, respectively — are being replaced by players the Marlins brought in this winter. In Marlins terms, adding Corey Dickerson, Jesús Aguilar , Matt Joyce, Brandon Kintzler, and Francisco Cervelli constitutes a veritable orgy of spending. Along with players like Matt Kemp and Sean Rodríguez, who are signed to minor league deals, all of these guys are veterans, known quantities with few surprises.

That’s the bad news. Miami did improve their offense, but not by enough for it to actually matter in any real way. I don’t typically encourage teams to stand pat in the face of a bad roster, but all of these “improvements” are essentially dead ends. Very few of these players, if any, will be around for more than a year or two, and even fewer of them have real upside remaining. Risk is the best friend of a rebuilding team; certainty is the currency of the contender. The Marlins needed to upgrade their offensive talent, but it ought to have been with more Nomar Mazara types. I’m skeptical Mazara will ever have that breakout, but if he does, the White Sox are in a position to score massively, as the Blue Jays did with Jose Bautista.

The worst offensive projection in the starting lineup goes to Lewis Brinson, of whom ZiPS has officially been skeptical for more than a year now. Playing him is still the right move — see what I said above about risk — but he’s got to show significant progress in some aspect of offense if he doesn’t want to get swept away by the next wave of prospects. (That prospect probably won’t be Magneuris Sierra.)

Pitchers

The Marlins didn’t show the same lust for cheap veteran additions with their pitching, likely because this is a much more interesting bunch. ZiPS doesn’t see any of the starters as an obvious candidate to breakout, but it generally likes most of them to be in that league average, 96-100 ERA+ starter range.

ZiPS still isn’t quite sure what to make of Sandy Alcantara, whose strikeout rate didn’t match his velocity, even with his command improved from what it was in the minors. His projection is more serviceable than exciting, but the Marlins will take serviceable at this point. ZiPS is more optimistic about Caleb Smith and Pablo López; both are projected to improve from their 2019 lines.

And the Marlins have a highly interesting/entertaining bullpen, even with the loss of Nick Anderson and Tayron Guerrero, a pitcher who both throws 99 and has no idea where 99% of his pitches are going. It’s a fastball/slider feast in Miami, with only the White Sox pen throwing harder than the Marlins did in 2019; no team threw more sliders. ZiPS sees Jeff Brigham as a breakout candidate and Jose Urena as thriving in a full-time relief role. Ryne Stanek is a fun and versatile arm who I hope the Marlins don’t simply typecast in an eighth-inning role.

Prospects

ZiPS is ready for Sixto, and I don’t mean Lezcano. Sixto Sanchez conquered the Southern League last summer and though he has stuff that should be ringing up more minor league batters, he’s been young for his levels. The computer likes Sanchez’s long-term upside and thinks he’d actually be fine if he pitched in the majors right now, though I’d prefer the Marlins take the long view and iron out his flaws. The prize in the J.T. Realmuto trade, there’s little chance he doesn’t get a full slate of chances.

Jazz Chisholm is a 70 name, even if he’s not a 70 prospect. Chisholm is unlikely to ever be a star given some of the holes in his game, namely the Conan the Barbarian approach at the plate. He swings hard, often, and inaccurately, but ZiPS is tantalized by his power upside to such an extent that it has his peak “true” slugging percentages in the .470 to .480 range, which is quite nice from a shortstop. Problem is, it also comes with projected batting averages in the low .200s and on-base percentages under .300. It may come down to just how his glove plays in the majors; I don’t think the tradeoffs for the power are likely to be worth it if he has to move very far down the defensive spectrum. Zac Gallen is the better player, but I think the Marlins were right to seek a riskier player with an interesting ceiling.

Braxton Garrett had a promising return from Tommy John surgery, enough to make him relevant to the projections pretty quickly. ZiPS now sees him as a fourth starter with upside. Fastball/changeup lefty Alex Vesia is a relief prospect who ZiPS is highly interested in. His fastball’s not in Stanek territory, but neither is he Kyle Hendricks, and he struck out more than 13 batters a game at multiple levels in 2019, putting him on ZiPS’s radar. The system thinks he ought to be in the bullpen right now.

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.