2022 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 a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Texas Rangers.

Batters

If you start by looking at the offensive comps in the chart below, you can see how quickly things go downhill in the batters’ projections. You start with two easy Hall of Famers and then about 40 seconds later, you’re reassembling the late-80s Braves. Now, the late-80s Braves eventually became the 90s Braves, something the Rangers are no doubt striving for, but getting from Point A to Point B isn’t a route you can just put into your car’s navigation system.

Signing Corey Seager and Marcus Semien is a great place to begin, though. Seager’s health record hasn’t been perfect, but it hasn’t been Eric Davis-like, either, and he still has a couple of seasons left of his 20s. Semien is a few years older, but after rightfully being a big part of the American League MVP race in two of the last three seasons, he starts off on a pretty high pedestal.

But when I say “begin,” I absolutely mean “begin.” The core of the Texas lineup outside of those two monster free agent signings is very weak, and most of these players are unlikely to be a significant part of the offense by the time the Rangers are actually a serious contender. Seager and Semien help today, but tomorrow is still the bigger draw.

Last year in this very space, I warned readers not be too distressed by the computer’s very bearish projection for Josh Jung. After all, with no 2020 time, his professional career consisted of about six weeks of middling play in the low minors. Jung turned out to be just fine in 2021, hitting a combined .326/.398/.592 in his stops at Frisco and Round Rock, completely shrugging off a stress fracture in his foot. His projection has improved by leaps and bounds compared to last year’s prognostication, to the point that he’s already projected to be a league-average player at third and one of the players who ought to still be in Arlington when the Rangers have their breakout. The fourth member of the infield, Nathaniel Lowe, also gets a projection that puts him in the middle-of-the-pack among first basemen.

While Texas’ infield is coming around, there’s still a lot to worry about in the outfield. Nobody in the left field hydra projects to carry their weight, and Kole Calhoun isn’t likely to be an answer in right. Adolis García hit for tremendous power in 2021, but he’s rather limited offensively outside of the dingers, and last year may represent his high-water mark. Leody Taveras was abysmal at the beginning of the season as the starting center fielder and was rightfully demoted, but he did enough in the minors — his power burst was particularly encouraging — to salvage his season overall.

Pitchers

Imagine the offensive projections, but with no additions comparable to Seager or Semien, and you basically end up with the pitching projections. I’m a fan of Jon Gray — ZiPS has always been on that particular train — but he’s “merely” a solid number-two starter rather than the plug-and-play ace that represented his upside back in his prospect days. Signing him of course improves things, but after Gray and Dane Dunning, the rotation looks incredibly shallow and is missing the kind of short-term upside that could get Texas to .500 in 2022. I wouldn’t call Glenn Otto’s projection terrific, but it may be the most interesting of the remaining starting pitcher projections, with the computer pegging him as an acceptable-if-unexciting mid-rotation starter. Otto doesn’t throw particularly hard and his repertoire isn’t terribly varied, but he ought to be able to eat some innings, a skill a rebuilding team can use. ZiPS doesn’t see much in the way of upside, however.

Relievers start to get interesting once they hit the 120 ERA+ range, but ZiPS doesn’t project any reliever here as a coin flip to hit that threshold. The closest is Brett Martin, a pitcher ZiPS thinks will have a much better strikeout rate than he did in 2021, as his various contact measures aren’t consistent with a pitcher who struggled to punch out batters last season. A post-Tommy John surgery José Leclerc still projects well, but the exact timeframe of his return is uncertain, and in any case, it’s probably not in Texas’ interest to push him to come back too quickly. If treated as a reliever-only — ZiPS still gives him a handful of starts based on his earlier career — John King projects in the same range as Leclerc and Martin, with a 4.02 ERA (111 ERA+). Some may be disappointed by Joe Barlow’s projection after his recent success, but it’s hard to expect any projection system to go all-in on a reliever based on a single season.

Texas hasn’t given any indication that they’re done spending, and the rotation especially may be very different come Opening Day. But how different should it be? Most of the most interesting starting pitchers are already gone, and at this point, I rather see what Otto, Spencer Howard, Cole Winn, and Brock Burke can do than go all-in to try to hit .500. Texas’ previous rebuild, which they attempted to execute very quickly, failed miserably, and I’d hate to see them try to hotshot contention simply because they’ve made a few big signings. The 2022 Rangers are almost certainly better than the 2021 Rangers, but patience is still a necessity.

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.