2021 ZiPS Projections: Atlanta Braves

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Atlanta Braves.

Batters

How do you get to the playoffs easily with only one dependable starter? Pummeling the league into submission with your offense is a good place to start. The Dodgers led the National League in runs scored, but the Braves finished only a single run behind them. Marcell Ozuna’s one-year contract turned out to be one of the best moves of the winter. Unable to maintain the level of his 2017 breakout the last couple of years, he went out and topped even that season, hitting .338/.431/.636 and earning two-thirds of a Triple Crown by finishing third in batting average while leading the league in homers and RBIs. Sure, it wouldn’t have been quite the same in a 60-game season, though one could argue that batting average is harder to lead in over a short year due to being a volatile qualitative measure.

Atlanta now faces the challenge of replacing Ozuna’s production. That won’t happen in full, but newly minted NL MVP Freddie Freeman returns, as does the Ronald Acuña Jr./Ozzie Albies tandem, a pair of young stars that can quite literally match up with any such coupling in MLB history. Freeman did as much to push his Hall of Fame case forward as you can in 60 games and passed the halfway mark to 3,000 hits; he’ll likely finish in the 2,500-hit range, something he’ll likely need with around 400 home runs as a first baseman. By the time he retires, ZiPS projects him to have the fourth-most WAR for a 21st-century first baseman with around 60, but that’s not slam-dunk territory.

Acuña’s a superstar, and one has to remember that the top comp in his cohort is the young, dynamic Jose Canseco, not the plodding slugger the latter was late in his career. In a way, it feels almost fitting to have him comped to the first 40/40 hitter. Technically, Acuña has the talent to be the first 50/50 hitter someday, but there’s always that issue that the better a player hits, the more resistant managers become to letting them run the bases aggressively. Even Rickey Henderson’s attempts dropped over time!

There are still some offensive holes for the Braves to fill. Maybe holes is too strong a word, though I’m not sure Cristian Pache is a starter at this point (Steamer is even more skeptical). But there are, at least, areas for concern. One is in left, where Adam Duvall is best suited as a reserve and occasional pleasant surprise when he goes on a power run rather than an underwhelming starter. If the Braves aren’t into spending a lot of money — and no team really appears to be all that into this — Joc Pederson would be a fun acquisition. Duvall doesn’t have big platoon splits, but Pederson certainly does! At the very least, it would be better than calling Nick Markakis yet again.

Pitchers

The fate of Mike Soroka is again a big separator between ZiPS and Steamer — ZiPS being generally bullish, Steamer generally bearish. One of the big X factors is how well Soroka can continue to suppress homers, something ZiPS is fairly confident about given the hit data against Soroka in his rookie season. But it’s not quite as confident as it was before 2020; missing a year due to injury, even a non-arm one, has a nasty way of introducting uncertainty into the mix.

Due to Soroka’s missing season, Max Fried edges him out in the ZiPS projections, the computer seeing him as a solid No. 2 starter threatening to cross into ace territory. And Fried certainly was the team’s ace in 2020, putting up a 2.25 ERA in his 11 starts while the rest of the rotation combined for a bleak 6.44 ERA. That figure even includes Ian Anderson’s solid six starts towards the end of the year. ZiPS still thinks he could stand to shed a walk per game or so, and, like Fried, he isn’t projected to be anywhere near as effective at preventing round-trippers as 2020, but he does get a projection of a solid mid-rotation starter.

The good news is that ZiPS does not project the “other guys” to pitch anywhere near as poorly as 2020, which should effectively counter any regression from Fried and/or Anderson. Soroka’s return is obviously a huge part of that, but ZiPS likes Bryse Wilson and at least thinks Kyle Wright and Touki Toussaint will be better than replacement. Drew Smyly was terrific in his brief time with the Giants, showing better velocity than ever, but given his long-term injury record, the projections are going to be conservative for the moment. Between the most recent graduations and trades, the pitching prospect cupboard is finally starting to look a little short-stocked, but at least Atlanta is closer to knowing what it has long-term as it contends for the next half-decade.

One pedantic note for 2021: 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 2021 due to injury, and players who were released in 2020. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Finnish industrial death metal fourth-wave ska J-pop 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 assuming that the designated hitter will continue in force in 2021; if it does not, there will be widespread minor adjustments across the board come April.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article, or get angry at Dan on Twitter or something.