2022 ZiPS Projections: Tampa Bay Rays

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 Tampa Bay Rays.

Batters

Which team in baseball has the best middle infield? I imagine most fans would likely say the Rangers (Corey Seager and Marcus Semien) or the Padres (Fernando Tatis Jr. and mostly Jake Cronenworth). The Rays are another possible answer, though. Wander Franco’s very quickly become a star, and Brandon Lowe is my pick for the most underrated second baseman in the game. I talked quite a lot about Franco’s outlook when he he signed his big ol’ contract extension, so I won’t rehash that here. Confusingly, Lowe wasn’t even one of the American League’s four Silver Slugger finalists at second base in 2021, as his .863 OPS apparently wasn’t up to the standards of DJ LeMahieu (.711 OPS, about half his games not at second). I would be surprised if the best middle infield came from a team other than these three.

The rest of the lineup looks, well, like a Rays lineup. There are very few players who aren’t underdogs for a spot on the All-Star team, the closest being Austin Meadows. Meadows always has to “beat out” his injury history, and when he does, as he managed in most of 2019, he’s a very dangerous hitter. When looking at the advanced hit data for Meadows, ZiPS thought he should have had a .282 BABIP in 2021, well above his quite disappointing .249. But that’s good news in a way; he was still an average player despite a down BABIP year.

The theme of being rock-solid but not spectacular persists everywhere else. Except for arguably at first base, ZiPS doesn’t see the Rays as meaningfully below-average anywhere. And these numbers aren’t really even that far from the likely floors, as the usual supporting cast of reserves and Triple-A talent is ready and waiting and will likely be buttressed by the Rays’ usual minor league signings, which they haven’t really engaged in much so far this winter. The last time Tampa finished in the bottom third of the league in WAR for position players was 2006:

Even great teams put up a stinker season once in a while, and only three have avoided finishing in the bottom-third for position players in the last decade. (As an organization, the Cardinals may be really good at this baseball stuff.)

Pitchers

The pitching staff might be even more Rays-y than the lineup. ERA+ projections above 100 are the rule here rather than the exception. Even when you filter out the players who are unsigned free agents and the pitchers with the most serious injury issues (Tyler Glasnow, Yonny Chirinos, Nick Anderson, Brendan McKay), you still end up with 18 pitchers projected over 100. Only Glasnow is practically guaranteed to miss most, if not all, of the 2022 season. The Rays pitching staff could all participate in an ill-conceived National Lick a School Doorknob Day and still have enough pitchers not on the roster to field an entire staff of above-replacement hurlers. Despite this depth, the highest WAR projection for a Ray is Shane McClanahan’s at just 2.0. Only the Twins and Pirates so far have a lower top-projected WAR.

Now, could any of these guys turn out to be a fairly conventional ace pitcher? ZiPS gives McClanahan and Shane Baz the best chances of doing that, should the Rays use them in a way that allows for that sort of thing. Of course, the Rays don’t do conventional very often.

If you’re looking for a deep-dive guy on the farm, ZiPS is quite interested in Ian Seymour, a second-round draft pick in 2020 out of Virginia Tech. A not-very-big lefty, Seymour broke out in the Cape Cod League in 2019 and struck out just under two batters per inning in his four starts in 2020. A fastball-changeup-slider guy (the changeup is his best pitch), he pitches on the third-base side of the rubber and comes right at righties, and had no real platoon splits in the minors in 2021. After dominating in A-ball last year, the Rays aggressively promoted him to High- and then Triple-A within three weeks, getting him five innings in each of his starts for 28 strikeouts against only six walks, 10 hits, and a single homer. It would be a very Rays thing if Seymour got 40 innings in a swing role late in the summer and ended up on a playoff roster, resulting in every fan having to suddenly look up who this guy is.

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.