2020 ZiPS Projections: Texas Rangers

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 Texas Rangers.

Batters

I should start by making one important note about the Rangers: I’m projecting using current park factors. The club believes that the wind patterns in Globe Life Field will keep it fairly neutral, though they also thought that before their current home opened. Keeping the old park factors until data tells me otherwise keeps the numbers in a similar context as past Rangers teams, making the raw, non-neutralized numbers easiest to read. And remember, that’s why we have park-neutral numbers included as well!

The increase in league offense, combined with Globe Life Park being a hitter-friendly environment, served to camouflage the problems with the Rangers’ lineup in 2019. The team’s wRC+ of 88 was in the pits of the American League, tied with the Orioles, though thankfully lapping the woeful Tigers’ mark of 77. The lineup that will open at Globe Life Field isn’t an identical one, but it features much of the same cast that had issues putting runs on the scoreboard last year.

Todd Frazier signed and probably won’t make anyone forget about Adrian Beltre. Frazier has value as a role player, but he’s not someone who represents a big step forward for the offense. On the contrary, according to the projections, too much Frazier would actually hurt the team if they can’t find enough playing time for Nick Solak at third base and other positions such as center field. ZiPS is on Team Solak, forecasting him for the second-most WAR among the team’s position players if the Rangers find him as much playing time as the projection does. Robinson Chirinos improves the team’s catching situation, but glove or not, Jeff Mathis will do his best to drag the position’s win total to zero. Outside of Nomar Mazara’s departure, many of the same players, likely with the same issues, will return.

ZiPS’ relatively disappointing win projection for Joey Gallo is more due to the number of plate appearances it projects than anything else. Gallo is one of the biggest points of disagreements between Steamer and ZiPS, with ZiPS projecting nearly 50 more points of OPS than Steamer, despite ZiPS projecting a slightly lower offensive level for the league than Steamer. (Similarly, ZiPS is a bigger backer of Danny Santana.)

In a way, Texas’ offense is the opposite of the Rockies’. Colorado always has a couple of superstars but has proven to be serially incompetent at finding a supporting cast. In Texas’ case, they’re still looking for those two guys who can put up four-to-six wins each in the standings. And that’s a problem because the A’s and Astros have found those, and more. It’s not as bleak as it sounds; there are few actively terrible players in the lineup. It’s just that each seems to have a fatal flaw that keeps them from being truly valuable. Ronald Guzmán can’t hit lefties. Rougned Odor‘s plate discipline is terribad, and he disappears for months at a time. Willie Calhoun‘s offense hasn’t developed and he’s likely a drag defensively. Elvis Andrus has regressed back towards being an overpaid stopgap. Shin-Soo Choo’s power is run-of-the-mill for a DH in 2019-2020 baseball. All these guys are interesting in some way, but as a whole, they’re just not all that good. Texas’s skinny rebuild continues and they’ll need to find some stars to pair with Gallo.

Pitchers

The results are a lot sunnier here. ZiPS has zero concerns about a top three of Lance Lynn, Corey Kluber, and Mike Minor, and with Kyle Gibson and Kolby Allard projected in average territory and Jordan Lyles vaguely average-adjacent, a little bit of luck could leave the Rangers with one of the better rotations in the league. If forced to guess where the rotation ranked right now, I’d guess somewhere in the ninth-to-13th range or so. It’s a good group, though I’d rather the team give Allard every opportunity to start unless they can figure out the black magic that the Brewers found with Lyles that the Pirates could not.

If the projections are any indication, the bullpen may have the highest ratio of WAR-to-fame of any in baseball this side of Tampa. Nobody’s projected to have a wild, Josh Hader/Aroldis Chapman line, but ZiPS does project José Leclerc and his chlidder to work more like they did in 2018 than 2019 and has him backed up by an almost grotesquely deep crew. If I’ve counted correctly, ZiPS projects Texas to have a whopping 12 relievers with an ERA+ of 100 or better. The only negatives are that two of the pitchers currently projected to make the bullpen in our Depth Charts, Nick Goody and Cody Allen, are not among that dozen.

ZiPS probably won’t project Texas to have a top five relief corps when all is said and done, but I’m confident they’ll end up in the top 10 and be a stable, dependable group in 2020.

Prospects

It’s a good thing that the Rangers have shown every indication that, like the Phillies before them, they plan to spend when the time comes. That is a good thing, because at least in the silicon eyes of ZiPS, there isn’t a lot of immediate help on the farm system. I’m not counting Solak as a prospect as this point, but if I did, ZiPS would send him a Valentine’s card on Friday.

Leody Taveras quickly taking over center field would be a nice result, and ZiPS continually has terrific minor league defensive translations for him, but we’re still waiting for that big offensive breakout. He made progress in 2019, but his bat still doesn’t project to get him to, say, the Rangers version of Byron Buxton, though perhaps I’m being greedy. ZiPS projects him to be a major leaguer, but as of right now, he still needs another offensive bump.

ZiPS likes Joe Palumbo well enough as a back-of-the-rotation guy, which I believe is the scouting consensus, but doesn’t see huge upside out of him, nor is he particularly young. On the fringier side, ZiPS is intrigued by Tyler Phillips, who I keep accidentally calling Trevor because of one of the characters in Grand Theft Auto V. He’s a nicer dude than the video game guy. His stuff isn’t terribly flashy, but I’ll give any 23-year-old with plus command a look-see.

One prospect the projections really like is Sherten Apostel, a big third baseman whose defensive reputation isn’t as poor as it usually is for guys of this ilk. ZiPS actually thinks his defense is fine — at least for now — and while he doesn’t have major league polish yet, his raw power is there, to the point that ZiPS thinks he’d hit 20 homers if playing full-time in the majors in 2020 (though still at replacement-level overall). ZiPS thinks he will be an almost-average third baseman at his best, and that’s good enough to justify keeping an eye on him.

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.