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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Philadelphia Phillies. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / Miami / St. Louis / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
The advantage, for a club, of embracing mediocrity is that it permits them to allocate plate appearances and innings to players who possess both clear strengths and obvious weaknesses. Odubel Herrera (609 PA, 3.6 zWAR) is perhaps the purest expression of this strategy and its benefits in all of baseball. Acquired by the Phillies in the Rule 5 draft and promptly handed a starting role at a position he’d basically never played, Herrera has produced roughly four wins each of the last two seasons. Szymborski’s computer suggests something approximating a third consecutive four-win campaign is probable. He’s an unambiguous success story.

Beyond Herrera, there isn’t much in the way of present impact talent. Maikel Franco (581, 2.6) is the only other likely starter to receive a projection better than two wins. Of some interest perhaps is the forecast for Cesar Hernandez (541, 1.7). The author of a four-win season in 2016, he’s forecast for only about half that in 2017. This isn’t surprising, necessarily: a not insignificant portion of Hernandez’s value last season was the product of a .363 BABIP and +13.9 UZR. ZiPS calls for a .340 BABIP and -1 fielding mark, instead.

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Episode 710
Dave Cameron is the managing editor of FanGraphs. On this edition of the program, he examines the possible value (both for team and player) of converting starting prospects like Edwin Diaz to relief; discusses the Royals’ attempts to hedge against the loss of half-a-dozen players to free agency; and speculates wildly on the number of talented younger players who’ve left the game due to fear of pitcher velocity.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 40 min play time.)

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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Miami Marlins. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / St. Louis / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
In every season from 2011 to 2014, right fielder Giancarlo Stanton (484 PA, 3.8 zWAR) produced the highest WAR total among Miami’s field players. In 2015, he produced the second-highest WAR total on the club — less due to his own shortcomings, however, and more to the .383 BABIP that allowed Dee Gordon (606, 2.1) to record a career-best offensive season. Stanton was almost unassailably the club’s top position player for a period of five years.

The 2016 campaign marked a departure for Stanton, however, from the top of the club’s leaderboard. Limited by injury to just 470 plate appearances, Statnton also produced the worst offensive season of his career. He finished sixth on the team in wins. At the same time, Christian Yelich (638 PA, 3.8) recorded his second four-win season over the last three years. Now the two receive the same win projection, is the point of these whole two paragraphs.

One note: Yelich is located at center field on the depth-chart image below, Marcell Ozuna (602, 2.5) in left — because that seems like the club’s probable alignment in 2017. The two are projected at the opposite positions, however. Generally speaking, there’s about a 10-run difference in the positional adjustment between left and center over the course of a full season. That would render Yelich (projected for +6 runs in left) about a -4 defender in center; Ozuna (projected for -3 runs in center), a +7 fielder in left.

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Episode 709
Dayn Perry is a contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and the author of three books — one of them not very miserable. He’s also the unlikely hero on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 13 min play time.)

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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the St. Louis Cardinals. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
On Monday, the author of this post published the ZiPS projections for the Milwaukee Brewers. Among the findings one might have extracted from that document? No Brewers position player receives a forecast greater than 2.8 wins for 2017. Not much better than average, in other words.

Examining the numbers presented here, one finds a similar trend. Among those players currently employed by the St. Louis Cardinals, no batter is projected by Dan Szymborski’s computer to record more than 3.1 wins in 2017. Which is to say, not much better than average.

This might comes as a surprise. While the Brewers weren’t particularly good in 2016 and aren’t expected to be particularly good in 2017, the Cardinals missed the playoffs by a single game in 2016 and have comported themselves this offseason — as they have in many other, recent offseasons — as a team that intends to compete for a World Championship.

Pitching is one variable that separates the Cardinals and Brewers, of course. Another is sheer volume of competent pieces, though. The Cardinals appear to have a distinctly egalitarian approach to roster construction. While none of their starting field players is projected for more than 3.1 wins, all of them are forecast for more than 2.2 wins. They are infested with competence.

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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager (675 PA, 5.4 zWAR) won the National League’s Rookie of the Year Award with ease in 2016. Were a similar award to exist for second-year players, Seager would be the favorite to win that, as well. ZiPS calls for Seager to record less gaudy BABIP and fielding numbers in 2017, but that’s to be expected. At the most basic level, a projection system is a regression machine. BABIP and fielding runs require large samples before they begin to represent true talent. As a second-year player, Seager lacks that kind of sample by definition.

Here’s some other news, though: ZiPS also projects a nearly three-point improvement in Seager’s strikeout rate, from 19.4% this past season to 16.7% in 2017. This does not appear to be a product of regression to the mean. It can’t really: the lowest strikeout rate National League batters have produced over the last three seasons is 19.9%. Szymborski’s computer, in other words, appears to be calling for actual improvement. Or perhaps a different sort of regression — regression to Seager’s 2015 numbers, when he made more contact in the minors and (for a brief stretch) majors. In any case, two propositions are true: both (a) Corey Seager is very good and (b) this section, which is intended to provide a brief overview of all the club’s starting field players, has failed to do that.

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Episode 708
Dave Cameron is the managing editor of FanGraphs. On this edition of the program, he discusses an innovation (care of Baseball Savant) in the measurement of outfield defense; examines Milwaukee’s rebuilding strategy through the lens of the club’s 2017 projections; and considers the optimal balance between fastballs and secondary pitches.

This episode of the program either is or isn’t sponsored by SeatGeek, which site removes both the work and also the hassle from the process of shopping for tickets.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 40 min play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Milwaukee Brewers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / New York AL / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
Milwaukee general manager David Stearns has dedicated the first year-plus of his tenure with the Brewers to a pursuit of affordable pieces that might contribute to the club’s next winning season, while trading away the most valuable pieces of its most recent one. The ZiPS projections here reflect the results of that endeavor. On the one hand, no field player is projected to record more than three wins in 2017. (Jonathan Villar, at 2.8 zWAR, is best acquitted by that measure.) On the other hand, 20 positions players receive a forecast of 1.0 WAR or better.

For context, consider: three of the National League’s playoff clubs from 2016 have been included thus far in this series of ZiPS posts. By comparison, only 16 of the Cubs’ position players receive a projection of one win or better. Only 13 of Washington’s do. And only 10 field players for the San Francisco Giants are expected to cross the one-win threshold, per ZiPS. Milwaukee, in other words, has gathered a large collection of players whose median probable outcome is slightly below average. Given the youth of that group, however, and the vagaries of the world, some of those players will develop into average or better players.

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