2022 ZiPS Projections: Chicago Cubs

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 Chicago Cubs.

Batters

Losing Javier Báez, Anthony Rizzo, and Kris Bryant hurt the offense, but the drop-off may not be all that significant. The first two weren’t amazing offensively, simply solid. And even amid some of the surprising breakouts from their Quadruple-A players, the Cubs got little out of second base and right field; Joc Pederson may have had some 2021 heroics, but they happened in Joctober, not Jocpril or Jocly.

Nico Hoerner will hopefully suffer fewer injuries in 2022, and landing Nick Madrigal for Craig Kimbrel was a nice bit of GMcraft. Over at third, ZiPS gives Patrick Wisdom the best odds of repeating his 2021 of any member of the gang of journeyman breakouts the Cubs assembled. I’m happy for Frank Schwindel, and he totally deserved my third-place Rookie of the Year vote (one of two, with the other cast by Grant Brisbee), but he was always going to be hard-pressed to come anywhere near his 2021 again. Even this projection represents a mighty improvement from the 85 OPS+ he was projected for coming into the 2021 season. After all, the last time we saw Schwindel, he was hitting a pedestrian .271/.315/.458 combined at Double- and Triple-A in 2019.

The outfield won’t be terribly impressive, but at least Jason Heyward is unlikely to struggle anywhere near as much as he did last season. Ian Happ likely has some upside remaining; he’s no longer young, but his 2019 and ’20 performances were much more impressive.

I think the major problem with the Cubs offense isn’t that it has massive holes everywhere, but simply that the ceiling appears to be relatively low. Obviously, the Cubs aren’t going all-in on contention in 2022, even though contention is a possibility, but there just aren’t that many sources of upside here. Team Nick is the most interesting part of the lineup, but neither likely has MVP-type potential. The rest of the lineup’s mulligan stew of over-performing minor league veterans is a fun story, but few are poised to be anything more than a stopgap for a year or three. I don’t think it likely the Cubs are a bottom three offense in the National League, but it’s hard to see them getting any higher than sixth or seventh overall in a good season.

Pitchers

The rotation was a flaming dumpster full of miniature flaming dumpsters, each with a little stack of mini tires on fire inside. I discussed it when I wrote about the Marcus Stroman signing, but the 2021 rotation was basically the worst Cubs rotation of the last half-century.

The good news, of course, is that it’s relatively easy to improve from such an awful position. It’s akin to having the goal of simply being less snarky than I am; it’s barely an inconvenience. Kyle Hendricks is likely to have at least some sort of bounce-back season, even ticking up a couple of notches from his projection in my NL Central Elegy once all the final data was processed and ready to go in ZiPS. I think Stroman was one of the best values so far in our abbreviated Hot Stove League, while Wade Miley was legitimately effective with the Reds and a coup as a one-year, $10 million waiver claim. I’m certainly a lot happier with this top three than I was before last year.

Like Steamer, ZiPS is big on Caleb Kilian, seeing him as someone who is likely to be a contributor very quickly. Adbert Alzolay allowed too many homers, but ZiPS saw him as one of the game’s unluckiest pitchers in terms of round-trippers, giving up 25 versus only 18 zHR. In that department, he was behind only Andrew Heaney at +9. His walk rate has improved, something that ZiPS sees as sustainable. Kilian’s unlikely to be rushed into the team’s 2022 plans, but Alzolay gets a projection right around league-average, putting the Cubs ahead of the game for their fourth starter.

The bullpen isn’t impressive, but it’s roughly average. The Cubs are unlikely to spend all the money they’re willing to this offseason, so if they over-perform next year, I think there’s a good chance that they add some arms fairly quickly in-season rather than waiting until the end of July. The team’s not quite good enough where you want to be splashing cash on relievers, but they ought to be prepared.

It seems rather bog-standard to be down on the Cubs, but I honestly think this is a mid-to-high-70s win team as constructed. That’s a team that can be competitive in the NL Central in a good year, and I don’t think the team’s necessarily done making improvements. We’ll just have to wait a while to see!

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.