2020 ZiPS Projections: Minnesota Twins

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 Minnesota Twins.

Batters

In my opinion, closing the deal with Josh Donaldson salvaged the Twins’ offseason. The team didn’t make any big moves last winter, disappointingly starting 2019 with a lower payroll than in 2018, but it did make several lower-key additions. With the Indians engaged in crippling levels of inaction, the Twins were able to “steal a march” on Cleveland and surprise them from behind. Minnesota had a quieter winter in the early going of this year and my worry — from their point of view that is — was that the Twins might enabling the White Sox to do to them in 2020 what they did to Cleveland in 2019.

Adding Donaldson, and moving Miguel Sanó to first, closes up the final hole in the starting lineup. Now, the Twins lineup resembles a classic Cardinals lineup, in the very best sense. There are no superstars — not even Donaldson — but the lineup is stacked, with every single starter projected to be at least league average. And there might be some upside remaining in Byron Buxton and Sanó. Like the best St. Louis teams, ZiPS sees the Twins as having ample backup plans at most positions, with Willians Astudillo, Marwin Gonzalez, Alex Avila, and even Jake Cave and Tomás Telis/Ryan Jeffers as more-than-capable fill-ins.

I’m very happy to see that ZiPS, like Steamer, has become a true disciple of Luis Arraez. His 2019 projection of .268/.309/.354 was more than respectable for a player who only had a couple months of Double-A experience and who was on the edges of prospect status. Arraez blew through that quickly, hitting .344/.409/.401 in the minors and .334/.399/.439 in 92 major league games. And remember, the offensive explosion in the minors was home run related, something that didn’t much benefit Arraez, who had all of six professional homers when the Twins called him up (and none in 2019). I didn’t have an American League Rookie of the Year vote, but Arraez would have been either second or third on my ballot. I’m know it’s likely that ZiPS is projecting Arraez to lead the league in batting average, but so be it; I don’t put my thumb on the scale.

Pitchers

While I love the Donaldson signing, I would much rather have seen them sign the Josh Donaldson of pitching. The top of the rotation is solid, with José Berríos and Jake Odorizzi, and Rich Hill and Homer Bailey aren’t bad pickups, especially as the team waits for Michael Pineada to come back from suspension, but there are too many interesting question marks behind Berríos and Odorizzi. That’s a more palatable situation for a rebuilding team than a contending one. The Twins are still one, possibly two pitchers away from me feeling comfortable with their roster. The rotation is unlikely to be a disaster because they also project to have a lot of reasonable back-end options, but the whole complexion of this group changes with Zack Wheeler or Hyun-Jin Ryu in there.

The bullpen looks a lot like the offense in that there’s nobody really dominant apart from Taylor Rogers, but it’s not really weak anywhere either. ZiPS likes a lot of the team’s Triple-A bound relievers, with pitchers like Ryne Harper, Danny Coulombe, Andrew Vasquez, Blaine Hardy, and Cody Stashak all having the potential to add real value to the parent club if needed.

Prospects

While ZiPS still sees Royce Lewis ending up with more career WAR than Nick Gordon, that gap is much narrower than scouts’ perceptions of the two middle infielders would suggest. ZiPS thinks Lewis has a lot more upside than Gordon, but also a fairly large chance of being a total bust; ZiPS translates his 2019 minor league performance at .193/.234/.305, coming off a .228/.276/.339 translation in 2018. ZiPS thinks Gordon is a safer bet, but doesn’t see a great deal of upside, pegging him basically as a one-win starter for most of his career. Given where the Twins are right now, if they can land a real difference-maker on the mound with a package centered around Lewis or Alex Kirilloff, I would pull that trigger in an instant.

ZiPS is more optimistic about the pitching prospects. Both Brusdar Graterol and Lewis Thorpe received projections suggesting they could pitch right now in the majors without the least bit of embarrassment, forming part of the Twins’ ample supply of third-through-fifth starters. And if you’re looking for some interesting names of the fringe prospect variety, ZiPS gives a better than 50/50 shot that either Griffin Jax or Bailey Ober have at least one league-average season as a starter in the majors. Now, I’d be skeptical of Ober until he passes the Triple-A test — he looks like an NBA power forward with a fastball that’s maybe better than Jered Weaver’s — but I like giving players who don’t fit the mold but play well every opportunity to pass or fail on merit.

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.