2021 ZiPS Projections: St. Louis Cardinals

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 St. Louis Cardinals.

Batters

Can we just say 87 wins and call it a day? It feels like that’s what I’ve been projecting for the Cardinals for the last 15 years or so. That’s an exaggeration, but not an extreme one: ZiPS hasn’t projected them outside the 85–90 win range in a full season since 2011. Going back to the first official ZiPS team standings in 2005 — I only did players in the initial couple of years — St. Louis’ projections have been below .500 once (2008) and above 90 wins once (2010). The lineup rarely has superstars at the top of the lineup, but the Cards have a knack for keeping their floor incredibly high.

It’s not looking like anything will be all that different this year, pending any moves made this winter. The first thing to talk about is the loss of Kolten Wong at second base, practically the poster boy for the club’s “low ceiling, high floor” way of life. I’m not a fan of declining the option year for Wong, but the way the roster is built, it’s not going to cost many wins: He gets the third-best projection on the team, but Tommy Edman, the replacement as of this moment, isn’t far behind. It strikes me as unlikely that Matt Carpenter was ever going to be displaced at third by Edman if Wong stayed around, after all. ZiPS is a fan of José Rondón, signed to a minor-league contract, and thinks he’d be a perfectly adequate replacement for Edman as an all-purpose substitute. I don’t think it’s far-fetched that this happens, either: The Cards have that high floor largely because they can sniff out useful role players for free.

ZiPS expects Dylan Carlson to be fine, if unspectacular, as a starter, but has a veritable bounty of worries about Dexter Fowler in right. In about a thousand plate appearances over the last three years, he’s at a decidedly unenticing 0.4 WAR, and he turns 35 before Opening Day; it’s unlikely that this is just a small road bump in his career. It’s entirely possible, though, that an upgrade isn’t deemed necessary in a division in which nobody seems in the mood to push their stack of chips. I think that would be a mistake, and I’d love to see some of the funds not being used on Wong going toward a big addition. Marcell Ozuna has a .281/.350/.512, 4.1 WAR projection in St. Louis and history with the team, or St. Louis could close a Nolan Arenado deal and move Carpenter to right. Either would be fine!

It’s increasingly looking like no deal will be made to bring back Yadier Molina; he doesn’t appear to be pleased by the team’s offer. It’s awkward to part on uneasy terms with a big part of your franchise history, but if there’s no willingness to spend money aggressively this winter, it’s hard to justify going with Molina over Andrew Knizner. Nobody can sign the 2011 Yadi, just the 2021 version.

Pitchers

In nine starts in 2020, Jack Flaherty allowed more than twice as many runs (22) as he did in the second half of the 2019 season (10). Obviously, that level of performance was unsustainable, but it’s hard to characterize last year as anything but a disappointment for the former Cy Young contender. If not for Adam Wainwright looking like he was in his prime and Kwang Hyun Kim exceeding expectations, the rotation would have been in much more difficult straits.

The good news is that Flaherty is likely to have a better 2021, and ZiPS sees him getting back to All-Star levels. His 4.11 FIP in 2020 better describes his abilities than the ERA near five, and the projections have him beating that number handily as well. One note of caution: Unusually, ZiPS thought a lot more of Flaherty’s advanced data than StatCast did. Generally the various estimators ZiPS uses are in the same neighborhood as MLB’s, but it’s not the case here for some reason. Remember, I said caution, not panic!

As for Kim, while his 1.62 ERA was more than two runs better than his FIP, ZiPS does see him as a valuable No. 2 starter. ZiPS was out on a bit of a limb on Kim before last season, projecting him with an ERA of 4.00 in 2020 as a full-time starter, more positive than any prognosticator than I remember. As it turned out, Kim’s 3.88 FIP was identical to the 3.88 ERA ZiPS translated for his 2019 season with the SK Wyverns of the KBO. Suffice it to say, nothing that happened in 2020 changed how the algorithms feel about him.

I have to think there’s a real chance that Carlos Martinez blows his projection completely out of the water. The conditions of his 2020 were unusual enough — coming back from a COVID-19 stint while simultaneously returning to starting — that a brutal set of outings may be fouling his projection more than they ought to. But the projections are what the projections are, and my thumb is not part of the algorithms.

ZiPS likes the team’s bullpen a lot more than Steamer does, as Andrew Miller, Ryan Helsley, Kodi Whitley, and Tyler Webb all get much better projections from the former. Also getting a much better projection is eternal ZiPS favorite Giovanny Gallegos. Where the systems do agree is that the depth drops off significantly after the front-line names: ZiPS sees a big plunge once you get past Whitley and maybe Seth Elledge. A low-key signing would be advantageous here; someone like Chaz Roe would be a hoot. After watching Miller and Roe sliders, batters may not be able to see a straight line against Gallegos in the ninth.

 

 

 

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.