2021 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 nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Texas Rangers.

Batters

One initial note: ZiPS sees Globe Life Field as a fairly neutral park that leans just a skosh to the pitching side. We still have very little data about how the park plays and basing park factors on expectations tends to be a rather poor prognosticating urge.

The good news for Rangers fans is that, across the board and more than any other team in baseball, ZiPS sees Texas’ lineup in a more optimistic light than Steamer does. The bad news, of course, is that this represents the sunnier take on 2021. There’s no getting around the fact that this team will be in a fierce competition to grab the first pick in the 2022 amateur draft.

ZiPS anticipates a much better season in store for Joey Gallo, though one that just makes him a credible middle-of-the-order slugger rather than meeting any remaining star potential. It hurts to say it, but Gallo’s no longer all that young and it’s getting a little late in the day to talk about his future stardom. He’s put a lot of work into his plate discipline — he’s much better at laying off bad pitches than he was in his early years — but the fact remains that contact is a problem, and it’s unlikely to change at this point. That’s always going to put a hard ceiling on his batting average when he’s not having immense BABIP luck. Stardom would practically require him to smack 50 homers a year. A 40-homer Gallo pushes a team towards a pennant, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him doing that… in another uniform before next year’s ZiPS projections.

Nick Solak’s 2020 was a nearly-unmitigated disaster. He took a step backward in nearly every aspect of the game and as a super-sub, played a whole bunch of positions equally poorly, ending up with a profile that was less like Tony the Tiger (Phillips) and more like Tony the Tiger (cereal spokestiger). Now, his year obviously wasn’t grrrreeeat, but there were a lot of reasons to like him before last season. And really, the Rangers are probably going to need until May or June 2022 to win 90 games, so it’s not like they have any better choices than giving Solak another go.

It’s an open question as to whether Sam Huff will catch in the majors, but ZiPS is at least a believer in his bat. There’s no reason to just stick him in the lineup in 2021 — Huff needs high-minors experience to hone his defensive game and the Rangers are going nowhere — and the Rangers won’t. But he’s one of the few offensive bright spots in the organization. Also on the prospects front, don’t get too alarmed by the Josh Jung projection. He’s a 2019 draftee, after all, and his professional experience consists mainly of 40 games in A-ball. One shouldn’t expect a particularly exciting major league projection in the short-term based on that set of facts. Jung’s mainly here because he’s on our depth chart, though not because of any nefarious plot by my colleague Jason Martinez, but because of the abysmal position player depth throughout the organization.

Nate Lowe at least ought to be an upgrade on what Texas has been trotting out at first and hopefully, the team will give him a full shot rather than relegating him to a timeshare with Ronald Guzmán. Thankfully, both players hit left-handed, giving the team less opportunity to force an awkward platoon.

This is a bottom-five offense, arguably the worst in baseball, even. I’m going to have to check my inventory of zeroes; I used so many on that depth chart graphic that I may not have enough in reserve to run the Pirates.

Pitchers

Kyle Gibson is the team’s ace. That’s it, that’s the post.

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OK, I’m probably not getting off the hook that easily. Gibson is a suitable fourth starter for a team contending for a Wild Card spot, but when he’s your likely Opening Day starter, you’re going to have a bad time. If not for an ERA comfortably over five in 2020 (with peripherals to match), Gibson likely would have already joined former teammates Mike Minor and Lance Lynn in parks that look less like a home-and-garden center when the roof is closed. ZiPS does project something of a bounce-back campaign from him, just not anything terribly exciting.

Historically, the Rangers have put a lot of faith in pitchers from overseas, which has proven beneficial, from investing a large sum of cash for Yu Darvish’s services to bringing Colby Lewis back from Japan before repatriating failed prospects was cool. The latest signing along these lines is Kohei Arihara, who comes with practically no risk on a two-year, $6.2 million contract (plus the 20% posting fee). Arihara relies more on control and a deep repertoire than explosive stuff, so the upside for the Rangers is nowhere near what it was for Darvish. ZiPS doesn’t even give Arihara a projection on the same level as what Kwang Hyun Kim got before 2020, but it does see him as a legitimate mid-rotation hurler.

Dane Dunning is probably the best starting pitcher on the team and the only one with a projected ERA+ of 100. That projection is a bump from his forecast with the White Sox, reflecting a park that ZiPS sees as a better fit. Dunning does come with some risk — he’s 18 months removed from Tommy John surgery and doesn’t have a whole lot of major league experience as a result — but he’s probably the most interesting pitcher on the roster in terms of upside potential.

You don’t fully see it in the 2021 projection, but one pitcher ZiPS is interested in is John King, a name that you won’t find on many prospect lists unless they go really deep (he made Eric Longenhagen’s honorable mentions on last year’s Rangers list). At 26, he’s not a traditional prospect, but he pitched through a torn UCL his final season in college, and the Rangers drafted him as a draft-and-rehab guy. A control pitcher who relies on changing speeds effectively, King throws harder than most fringe prospects of this type, and throwing 93-94 mph instead of 90-91 mph is helpful. There’s probably not a high ceiling here, but ZiPS gives King a puncher’s chance at having a real major league career at the back of a rotation.

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.