2022 ZiPS Projections: Baltimore Orioles

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

Batters

The history of the post-Earl Weaver Orioles has not been a happy one. Over his first stint with Baltimore, from 1968 to ’82, they were the winningest team in baseball, with 1,570 total wins, and averaged four wins per season more than the next-best team, the Reds, during that stretch. At no time during this era did the O’s finish below .500, and that even leaves out their last World Series championship in 1983. Weaver wasn’t just one of the best managers in baseball, but a very modern manager who used what analytics were available at the time.

But the failure of the O’s isn’t just a failure of managing. Weaver was great, but the team’s assembly line of young talent was a pivotal piece to the puzzle. While there are certainly some notable successes, the Orioles simply haven’t produced that much talent over the last 20–30 years. It certainly didn’t help that they placed a low priority on finding talent in Latin America for a long time, depriving them of a source that pretty much everyone else in baseball happily accessed.

You see those problems when you look at this offense. For a team rebuilding since mid-2018, the collection of offensive talent in the majors and high minors just isn’t all that impressive. The O’s have thrown a lot at the wall, but they have mostly ended up, over the last three years, with a lot of below-average-but-above-replacement hitters. Cedric Mullins appears to be working out, but they mostly seem to find useful players for the back of the 26-man roster or emergency Triple-A options, like Anthony Santander and DJ Stewart, but who have little real upside. Sadly, this even goes for Ryan Mountcastle to a degree; 33 homers was an impressive tally, but it’s not all that exciting for a first baseman who isn’t doing much else. Adley Rutschman looks terrific, but how much player development credit should you really get for drafting the consensus best college prospect with the first pick in the draft? If you won your fantasy league in 2015, I doubt you bragged about how clever you were to draft Mike Trout with the first pick.

Looking at the projections for the lineup, where is the likely source of upside outside of Rutschman and Mullins? There are simply a lot of players already in what should be their prime years who you hope to have a league-average season. Baltimore doesn’t look at all like a team ready to pounce like the 2015 Cubs or Astros, the 2018 Braves, or the 2020 White Sox. Now, Mike Elias took over a desolate, dysfunctional organization, and you can’t flip a switch and turn on an entire scouting operation in Latin America, but at some point, the O’s can’t win if they develop as many new players over five years than the Rays seem to do every year or two.

Despite the doom and gloom, there are some positives here. ZiPS likes Jordan Westburg as much as Steamer did and sees him becoming a league-average player at shortstop fairly quickly. It also likes Gunnar Henderson quite a bit as well, seeing his power develop very soon. Based on last year’s career projections, both are likely to rank in the ZiPS Top 100 prospects, as will Rutschman and one pitcher. It just feels like the O’s should be farther along right now.

Pitchers

On offense, at least, the Orioles have been able to corral a decent quantity of one-to-two WAR hitters. On the pitching staff? Not so much. It’s not a good sign when the fourth-highest WAR in a list of projects was a fellow that was designated for assignment a few months before (César Valdez).

I’m a fan of John Means, but he’s not particularly young and already in his arbitration years, so I expect him to be pitching in another uniform by the time the Orioles are actually good. ZiPS was a bit disappointed in the small regressions in his velocity and swinging-strike rate and doesn’t see the same strikeout upside that it did a year ago. Speaking of disappointments, ZiPS would likely have been happier if the Orioles couldn’t cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s in the last-minute signing of Jordan Lyles. Hopefully, the Orioles have abducted whoever was on the Brewers who had the magic formula for getting performance out of him.

Grayson Rodriguez was quite dominant across two levels in 2021, and the projections suggest a pitcher who could be a no. 3 starter in the majors right now. The O’s would be silly to use him that way in 2022, as letting him finish honing his impressive repertoire in the high minors is more important. One good indicator for his future is a lack of significant platoon split, for which he can likely give a lot of thanks to his changeup’s screwball-esque movement. Minor league translations can’t scout, but a heavy platoon split, especially for someone who will be used as a starter, can be a statistical implication of something missing from their toolkit.

ZiPS is less excited by D.L. Hall, but it’s not hard to understand the projection system’s lack of enthusiasm: he missed half the season in 2021, and unlike Rodriguez, he has significant control issues. Even with the disabled list being changed to the injured list, I can’t help but think a pitcher going by D.L. is really taunting the Fates.

From a developmental standpoint, I think Baltimore was arguably hurt more by the loss of 2020 than any other team. Everyone missed out, but the O’s had an impressive stable of pitching in the high minors, none particularly young or elite, that they would have liked to see in Triple-A and Double-A and who just needed the innings. Combined with decidedly mixed results, I’m not sure we know much more about the futures of Zac Lowther, Keegan Akin, or Dean Kremer than we did two years.

It remains to be seen how Drew Rom’s ho-hum velocity plays at Triple-A — the path of a young crafty veteran lefty prospect is a craggy one — but ZiPS is at least intrigued for the moment.

The O’s are almost certainly going to be the last-place team in the American League East in 2022. The real test will be if they are at least an interesting cellar dweller.

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 2022 due to injury, and players who were released in 2021. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a big band orchestra that only plays nu-metal versions of baroque cantatas, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.36, similar to the post-June substance-enforcement environment.

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 that 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 2022.

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.