2020 ZiPS Projections: Seattle Mariners

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 Seattle Mariners.

Batters

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The 2020 Mariners are a bit like going to a failing mall. There are still some stores you remember scattered about, though the logos appear to be from another era. The fountain’s dry, and the shops mainly sell sunglasses. There’s an ear-piercing kiosk manned by a guy who looks like he missed the carnival employee bus and decided to move into the abandoned Caldor instead. Yes, this will all be hit by a wrecking ball and give way to a new open-air shopping district with a Kelenic’s Grille in a few years, but for now, you wander into the food court and feel your childhood memories being wiped out by the collective reek of old cinnamon, cigarettes, and shame.

OK then!

Mitch Haniger is the best player on the Mariners and one of the few above-average starters who still retains trade value, unlike most of the veterans left behind. Unfortunately, Haniger’s expected to miss the first month of the season with a core-muscle injury, though given that Haniger missed time in 2019 due to a testicle ruptured by his own foul ball, I’m sure he considers it an improvement.

On the positive side, Kyle Seager had enough of a rebound that his career is no longer in imminent danger. While age-32 is probably a bit too late to expect him to get to where he was a few years ago — possibly the most underrated third basemen in baseball — he returned from a wrist injury to have the second-best OPS of his career. With two years and $37 million remaining on his contract, the Mariners could theoretically pay most of the freight in a trade and get an actual prospect, but this is complicated by the fact that Seager’s team option for 2022 becomes a player option if he’s traded.

ZiPS projects Daniel Vogelbach to be an adequate designated hitter, but it’s unlikely he develops into a top-tier bat at the position the way Edwin Encarnación did. Still, Vogelbach enters the spring a near-lock for his job, something new for him now that the team can no longer entertain its curious obsession with Ryon Healy.

The back of the lineup will likely be ugly as the Mariners are still in the “see what sticks” stage of their rebuild. The team’s major league depth is essentially gone, though it’s better for the team to get extended looks at Kyle Lewis and Jake Fraley anyway.

Pitchers

Ask for a fifth starter tomorrow, and you will find me a Graveman. The pitching staff has even fewer highlights projected for next year than the lineup does. A second campaign of cromulence means that we can stop wondering if Marco Gonzales is for real, but without a lot of top-end upside, that confidence just makes it more likely that he follows Mike Leake out the door. Yusei Kikuchi did himself no favors in 2019, but he still retains enough of a record from his playing time in Japan for ZiPS to have not completely soured on him for 2020. The longer-term projections still give Justus Sheffield a solid shot at becoming a middle-tier starter, but those forecasts are much less confident that it’ll happen this year.

The bullpen looks mediocre, but it could at least experience a bit of an uptick if Austin Adams recovers from an ACL injury that will keep him out for a large chunk of the season. In truth, the Mariners have little reason to rush him back unless he’s completely healthy. He’s ZiPS’ favorite pitcher on the team; the system sees his acquisition as downright theft. There’s no reason to think he can’t come back and start where he left off. Another reliever that ZiPS (as well as Steamer) is fascinated by is splitter-chucking Zac Grotz, fished out of indie ball to surprisingly blow through Seattle’s minor league system. Grotz doesn’t throw hard, but he induces a lot of groundballs and if nothing else, Seattle ought to have a respectable defensive infield.

It’s very odd, and a bit sad, to see a ZiPS rundown for Seattle without King Félix. It was time. There’s a shocking number of pitchers who are listed here despite having been released by midseason last year by virtue of them being unable to find new employment. Jon Niese, Tyler Cloyd, Christian Bergman, and Sean Nolin may all very well have thrown their last professional pitches, at least in the United States (Nolin, for one, is heading to Japan for 2020).

Prospects

I think what raises my eyebrows about the Mariners the most is their stable of minor league relievers. While I haven’t crunched the exact numbers, I think that ZiPS is actually projecting the Tacoma Rainiers to have a better bullpen than the Mariners do. I don’t mean in the sense of rest-of-career value, but in straight 2020 performance. If Grotz is in the minors in 2020, you can likely add Sam Delaplane, Wyatt Mills, Joey Gerber, Aaron Fletcher, and Jack Anderson, all of whom ZiPS thinks could succeed in the majors right now and I’m like 98% sure ZiPS isn’t making any of those names up. Mills, in particular, interests me, a fairly hard-thrower with a violent sidearm delivery.

ZiPS is fairly confident that Logan Gilbert will be a mid-rotation starter, even more so than it is for Justus Sheffield. Jarred Kelenic’s 2020 projection isn’t quite “there” yet, but but fast forward three years and ZiPS sees him established as a .250/.320/.500ish center fielder. I doubt anyone will mind his top comp of Bobby Abreu, though in complete fairness Abreu wasn’t a walk machine at this stage of his development. Less interesting to ZiPS are Kyle Lewis and Evan White, neither whom ZiPS thinks will establish themselves above replacement-level. The Julio Rodriguez enthusiasts, of which there are understandably many, will be disappointed to see that he isn’t included among the projections here. I usually require a half-year of High-A stats before I do an official projection, other than a very rough WAR forecast for prospect ranking purposes. But never fear – the early returns are promising, especially for a guy who just turned 19.

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.