2023 ZiPS Projections: Cleveland Guardians

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and today’s team is the Cleveland Guardians.

Batters

José Ramírez can make up for a lot of sins, but he can’t carry an offensive single-handedly. But luckily for the Guardians, he looks to have more help than in recent years, even with the surprising and quick decline and departure of Franmil Reyes. Andrés Giménez had a dynamite season, and the fact that he was 23 minimizes the chances that it was a fluke. He is projected to “merely” be worth around four wins instead of six, but people tend to be too quick in assuming that a breakout season represents a complete change in a player’s baseline; the past still matters for players who have breakout (or breakdown) seasons. I’d really like to see the Guardians swap Giménez and Rosario in the middle infield; I think the former is the better defensive player and is likely to be a bigger part of the team’s future than the latter. It’s not inappropriate at all to use him at the more crucial position, though I understand if Cleveland takes a “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” approach and avoids making a change. I do hope he serves as the backup option at short, even if it’s just to preserve flexibility with him for after 2023.

Steven Kwan also has regression toward the mean in the projection — a slightly more serious one than Giménez’s, given that he didn’t start off as high. I don’t actually think ZiPS is wrong on this on, given that it certainly didn’t hate Kwan going into 2022, projecting him at .287/.343/.426 before the season (and I wager most people would have taken the under on that line). As a left fielder without a lot of power, there’s simply only just so much WAR upside at the position. Like Adam Frazier, he is going to susceptible to a huge dropoff on a poor BABIP season, though I think he’s clearly a superior offensive player.

As you may have already seen in the Padres projections, ZiPS is a big Josh Bell skeptic. In fact, he has one of the projections that falls furthest from his recent stats of any player so far; he’s not a big loft hitter, and he hit the ball a lot less hard than he did in previous season. ZiPS just doesn’t think he has the plate discipline skillset to be Mark Grace. What ZiPS does like is the upgrade at catcher to Mike Zunino and Bo Naylor.

Even with a couple of down spots in the lineup overall, there aren’t really any gaping holes in Cleveland. The White Sox may regret going into this offseason simply expecting a bounceback season; just as most of Chicago’s offense has worse projections than before 2022, the Guardians’ are largely better. Every good season has some elements of good fortune, but it was a lot more to it than that.

Pitchers

Like the offense, there are data-based reasons to like most of rotation better going into 2023 than a year ago. I don’t think Shane Bieber is the pitcher he was two or three years ago, but he got through the season healthy, throwing 200 innings, and it’s reasonable to be a lot more confident about his contributions now. He’s lost some velocity, and I don’t know if he’s going to get much back, but he compensated well, mostly relegating his changeup from the main cast to a recurring character as he’s comfortable with his curve and cutter against lefties. There’s significant disagreement between Steamer and ZiPS on Triston McKenzie, and while neither projects him to match his 2022 numbers, ZiPS is more optimistic and thinks he might get some lost strikeouts back to boot. The rest of the rotation is unexciting, but the projections are generally solid and the computer likes a lot of the depth, from Joey Cantillo to Peyton “Love is a” Battenfield.

There’s a limit on how bad a bullpen can be when Emmanuel Clase is the guy getting the highest-leverage innings. ZiPS basically thinks he has a good shot to be the best reliever of this generation, though with any pitcher, health is always going to be that hidden X factor. And luckily for the Guardians, the bullpen isn’t bad after Clase. Sam Hentges gets an excellent projection, and ZiPS is as high on James Karinchak about as much as possible for a guy who walks as many batters as he does. ZiPS doesn’t start to feel uneasy until you get to the very end of the bullpen.

Overall, White Sox pitching probably has the higher upside, but the Guardians are better equipped to survive if things go wrong. And with pitchers, things go wrong more often than not. If I were a Sox fan, I’d be a bit worried that the team is missing its moment; Cleveland is now at least Chicago’s equal and has far better reinforcements in the minors.

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 or have retired, players who will miss 2023 due to injury, and players who were released in 2022. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Death Dixieland Bubblegum Ska-Funk band, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.22, above 2022’s level of offense but lower than other years. Pitchers who appear to have a fairly definite change in the majors from start-to-relief or vice-versa from these projections will receive reconfigured updates in the spring.

Hitters are ranked by 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.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.