Dan Szymborski: Greetings friends! I am enjoying a balmy 14 degrees now, a full 24 degrees of warming in the last four hours!
12:03
Dan Szymborski: If only my mazda was a convertible so I could go enjoy the day
12:03
Datt Mamon: The Cubs seem like they’re poised to be better in 2026, so what accounts for an only 87 win projection?
12:03
Dan Szymborski: ZiPS doesn’t necessarily see them as better
12:03
Dan Szymborski: It already liked PCA a ton. Sees Bregman/Tucker swap a wash. No more excited about the rotation and nobody has a projection as good as Steele last year. Likes bullpen a bit better
12:04
JC: Does the qualifying offer have to be exactly the number provided by MLB or at least that number? Could a team offer $35m for a player that may want to reconsider going to the market?
In case you missed them, the 2026 ZiPS projections are now officially in the site’s projection database for your delight (or disdain), and reflect all of the signings and trades that have transpired this offseason. There’s still a week and a half to go before pitchers and catchers report, but with the full set of projections available, and it being so cold and snowy outside that I have little desire to leave my house, this seemed like a good opportunity to run the first set of ZiPS projected standings for the 2026 season. These, of course, aren’t the final projected standings, as there are likely to be significant changes between now and Opening Day. Instead, think of them as the “state of the preseason” projections.
These standings are the result of a million simulations, not results obtained from binomial or even beta-binomial magic. The methodology isn’t identical to the one we use for our Playoff Odds, which will launch soon. So how does ZiPS calculate the season? Stored within ZiPS are the first- through 99th-percentile projections for each player. I start by making a generalized depth chart, using our Depth Charts as a jumping off point. Since these are my curated projections, I make changes based on my personal feelings about who will receive playing time as filtered through arbitrary whimsy my reasoned understanding of each team. ZiPS then generates a million versions of each team in Monte Carlo fashion.
After that is done, ZiPS applies another set of algorithms with a generalized distribution of injury risk that changes the baseline plate appearances or innings pitched for each player. ZiPS then automatically and proportionally “fills in” playing time from the next players on the list to get to a full slate of plate appearances and innings. Read the rest of this entry »
For the 22nd 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, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the ultimate team is the St. Louis Cardinals.
Batters
If you looked up “.500 team” in the dictionary, you’d find, well, nothing. THAT’S NOT HOW DICTIONARIES WORK. But if they did have extensive listings of colloquialisms and an editor obsessed with baseball, you might see the 2025 Cardinals. Despite not falling behind by double digits in the NL Central race until late in the season, the Cardinals certainly never felt like they were ever realistically in any playoff race. At the same time, they were also never enough of a doormat team to be interesting out of ineptitude. The Cards spent the season basically playing out the string, in baseball limbo while fans waited out the swan song year of executive vice-president John Mozeliak, with most of the interest surrounding when/if various veterans would be traded.
While roughly a .500-looking team has some wild card upside, St. Louis has the look of a team with an incredibly low ceiling in the short term, like on the level of that room near the start of Willy Wonka’s factory tour. Only Masyn Winn is a high threat to put up a 4-WAR season, and he’s already at that level, not someone who can break out to that level. But except for right field, since ZiPS has long since thrown in the towel on Jordan Walker, the Cardinals also aren’t bad anywhere in their lineup, either. Brendan Donovan is extremely versatile, but he could be traded sometime during the season, if not before then, and players like Nolan Gorman and JJ Wetherholt can also collect plate appearances playing a variety of positions. Wetherholt’s first full professional season was a dynamite one, and he gets a strong projection entering his first year in the big leagues. ZiPS at least sees him as an upgrade on the departed Nolan Arenado in 2026.
ZiPS thinks Lars Nootbaar is still young enough to bounce back from a real down season in 2025. When that may happen, though, is an open question. Last fall, he had surgery to shave down his heels to remedy his Haglund’s deformities, and reading the first half of this sentence makes me wonder if my brain has actually finally lost its last connection with reality. Nootbaar’s lack of ability to do much against lefties limits his upside, but like most of the rest of the team, he’ll be… fine. Also in that wide range of adequacy is Victor Scott II, who plays defense well enough these days to carry his abysmal offense, and Alec Burleson at first, who needs a lefty-crushing platoon partner, though he did improve some against southpaws last season. The Cardinals’ catching situation could be really interesting, depending on when and if Iván Herrera gets back to playing catcher. Even if he doesn’t, he’s shown he’s a good enough player to have value as a DH, and Pedro Pagés hits just enough that he’s not a problem starting behind the plate.
Luckily, the mid- and long-term outlooks for St. Louis are sunnier. Wetherholt has already been mentioned, but ZiPS thinks bothJimmy Crooks and Leonardo Bernal could hold their own as major league catchers. Joshua Baez has a strong long-term ZiPS projection, and the computer sees him as someone who could (and should) replace Walker if/when the former top prospect doesn’t come around.
Pitchers
As with the starting lineup, the Cards look like they’re going to have a very deep rotation, but one that’s almost mindblowingly average. Michael McGreevy has the best projected ERA of the starters, which ought to tell you a lot about the state of the rotation. If you believe ZiPS, St. Louis could field about three major league rotations of starting pitchers with an ERA+ somewhere in the 90s. So there’s not a lot of difference between the guys we have as getting the bulk of the innings on the depth chart (Matthew Liberatore, Andre Pallante, Dustin May, Kyle Leahy, Richard Fitts), and the guys who aren’t (Quinn Mathews, Tink Hence, Hunter Dobbins, Ixan Henderson, Tekoah Roby if not for the Tommy John surgery). In other words, this group probably won’t crack the top 10 in starting pitcher WAR, but there are enough spares that it likely won’t be an embarrassment, either.
While that’s not great for the team’s chances to contend in 2026, that does suggest a path to long-term benefits. The deep stable of no. 3 and no. 4 starters is decidedly on the young side, all in their 20s, and at least some of them ought to develop into something better. Mathews is probably the best candidate to do so, as is Hence, even though there’s a reasonable chance that the latter pitches out of the bullpen in the short term. Liam Doyle didn’t get an official projection here because of his lack of professional experience, but if I instruct ZiPS to use his college translations, he has a very good long-term outlook, too.
ZiPS projects the bullpen as below average, but not in dumpster-fire territory. The computer only really likes three relievers, JoJo Romero, Matt Svanson, and Gordon Graceffo, and a fourth if you believe the Cards will use Hence in relief in 2026. Outside of that quartet, there are a lot of guys with projected ERAs just above four in relief, firmly in C- territory. It’s probably not quite this bad, as the multitude of starting pitching options means the pen will get some reinforcements if the top starters are healthy, so someone like Leahy could end up here after all. In any case, this is a middling bullpen, one that probably won’t approach the production of last year’s unit, which had the ninth-best relief WAR in baseball.
All told, ZiPS sees St. Louis as, you guessed it, about a .500 team.
Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.
Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2026 due to injury, and players who were released in 2025. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Ambient Math-Rock Trip-Hop Yacht Metal band that only performs in abandoned malls, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.16.
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. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.
As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on Bluesky. This last is, however, not an actual requirement.
For the 22nd 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, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the penultimate team is the New York Mets.
Batters
The Mets are a bit like an intellectual character in a 19th Century Russian novel. They’re well-read enough to understand why life just isn’t working, and while they make changes every winter, it always seems to come with the precognition that something will go horribly wrong, and there’s little recourse but to observe their own downfall. Yankees fandom is more transactional, and depending on how the season turns out, you either cheer the empire or curse Brian Cashman. Rooting for the Mets is existential; you go into every season with hope, but an unquenchable feeling that something will go horribly or maybe even comically wrong. Meaning as a Mets fan does not come from celebrating the team’s achievements, but the act of enduring and returning, year after year, with the knowledge that preparation offers no escape. Mets fans essentially become annotators of doomed worlds.
If every moment of Mets triumph is matched with an equal measure of Mets tragedy, the lineup may be in for some dark times when the worm turns. I actually think I’d rather have Pete Alonso for his deal than Jorge Polanco for his if I were the Mets, but the projections suggest that I might be wrong. Either way, this lineup looks extremely solid as a whole. Starting with two players, Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor make up for a lot of sins. But there aren’t really a lot of sins in the lineup. ZiPS thinks Bo Bichette is more valuable at third base than he was at shortstop, and he certainly has All-Star potential. ZiPS also forecasts decent bounce-back seasons for offseason trade acquisitions Luis Robert Jr. and Marcus Semien. Francisco Alvarez is coming off a near .800 OPS season, and under the new rules encouraging stolen bases, Luis Torrens’ value has increased because of his ability at preventing them, making him more than capable at holding up the lighter end of a catching tandem.
The DH situation isn’t amazing, with Mark Vientos getting the bulk of the plate appearances there, but only a few teams really get a ton of WAR from that spot anyway. Carson Benge certainly has upside, and while it’s not a particularly exciting projection, it’s not a bad forecast for a guy who hasn’t hit Triple-A pitchers yet. Brett Baty showed in 2025 that he can hit well enough to provide solid depth for the Mets. Jett Williams was also good depth in the infield, but he didn’t have a clear path to actual playing time in the majors in 2026 outside of a reserve role, so the Mets sent him to Milwaukee on Wednesday night as part of a trade to the get right-handed pitchers Freddy Peralta and Tobias Myers.
Pitchers
ZiPS expects the Mets’ pitching to be pretty good, giving the staff a bit of a bump from last year’s preseason projections. And that was before the trade for Peralta, who was the Brewers’ the most valuable pitcher. While Peralta’s not really a sub-three ERA guy — ZiPS thinks he’s legitimate a low-BABIP pitcher, but .243 is damned hard to maintain — he’s still an excellent pitcher who is a huge addition to New York’s rotation. Clay Holmes isn’t an ace, and he bled a couple strikeouts when he transitioned from the bullpen to the rotation, but his 2025 also demonstrates that his conversion to starting wasn’t just a mad scientist’s latest crazy plan. Nolan McLean looks like a much stronger bet going into 2026 than he did at this time last year, and while Jonah Tong didn’t have instant success in the majors, he also greatly boosted his stock, though we may not see a lot of it in the majors in 2026 unless the team is hit by injuries. Last year, David Peterson didn’t match his 2.90 ERA from 2024, but that never should have been the expectation anyway, and he’s a fairly dependable no. 2 starter type. Kodai Senga’s return went generally well, aside from nobody checking how the ghost fork graphic at the stadium would interact with a strikeout tally.
Sean Manaea ought to get back to effectively eating innings in 2026, and though he’s certainly not the headliner, the acquired Myers is a reasonable option to have in reserve. ZiPS is less excited once we get past Myers, to guys like Christian Scott and Cooper Criswell. But on the plus side, ZiPS thinks there’s a real chance that Jonathan Pintaro’s command will improve just enough for him to have a breakout in 2026.
ZiPS views the Mets as having an above-average bullpen, but one that’s below baseball’s elite. Maybe it’s just cognitive dissonance on my part, but I still have some worries about Devin Williams despite all the objective data suggesting he’s a great bounce-back candidate. And he is, but 2025 will still be in the back of my mind plus, you know, the Mets. Luke Weaver is a good bullpen no. 2 and fallback closer option, and A.J. Minter was at his Mintest last season. Brooks Raley gets a strong projection as well, and ZiPS is unaware of my extreme bias in favor of side-armers; Raley is more low three-quarters, but he’s at least side-arm adjacent. Criswell gets a significantly better projection as a reliever than as a starter. My silicon counterpart is rather meh on the rest of the bullpen, except for maybe Huascar Brazobán, but it still looks like a highly cromulent unit.
Despite last season’s collapse, ZiPS projects the Mets as a highly competitive team in the NL East, and one the league shouldn’t dismiss. Now, come September, six Mets could need Tommy John surgery, or maybe Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor are destined to get trapped inside a leatherbound book given to Carlos Mendoza by a library maintenance worker who looks suspiciously like M.R. James. But predictive algorithms and fuzzy clustering methods allow us to peek only so far behind the veil of fate.
Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.
Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2026 due to injury, and players who were released in 2025. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Ambient Math-Rock Trip-Hop Yacht Metal band that only performs in abandoned malls, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.16.
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. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.
As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on Bluesky. This last is, however, not an actual requirement.
For the 22nd 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, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the antepenultimate team is the Chicago Cubs.
Batters
ZiPS was a big believer in the 2025 Chicago Cubs, and it was right on point about most of their core talent. The problem, though, was that ZiPS wasn’t right about the Milwaukee Brewers, and though Chicago stayed in the NL Central race for most of the season, Milwaukee’s 14-game winning streak all but settled things by mid-August. Add in a five-game loss to the Brew Crew in the NLDS, and a successful season ended in underwhelming fashion for the North Siders. The Cubs went into the offseason looking to replace Kyle Tucker in the lineup and shore up the rotation a bit.
Generally speaking, the Cubs have a rather boring lineup in one manner: It’s mostly well-established players who are largely in the same roles as last season. Carson Kelly and Miguel Amaya, the latter swapped in for Reese McGuire, will be a competent tandem behind the plate. Dansby Swanson, Nico Hoerner, and Pete Crow-Armstrong will play terrific defense, with PCA adding a bunch of homers at the cost of a rather low on-base percentage. Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki are on the wrong side of 30, but not distressingly so, and the typically B+ corner outfielders will likely put up their typical B+ seasons. One can see why the Cubs felt they could afford to trade Owen Caissie to Miami for Edward Cabrera; he was going to have a hard time finding playing time, and Kevin Alcántara’s defense makes him a more versatile fourth outfielder.
Where there are changes are at third base and designated hitter (by way of Suzuki playing a lot more right field). Alex Bregman is more or less the Kyle Tucker replacement, with a bit less bat and a bit more defensive value. Moisés Ballesteros has a lot of offensive upside, but he’s not really exciting yet as a full-time designated hitter, and Matt Shaw loses significant value as a DH. ZiPS is optimistic about Tyler Austin after a mostly successful six-year run in Japan, though he doesn’t provide a lot of flexibility, as it’s been years since he’s played anywhere but first base. I say mostly successful because he wasn’t particularly durable in NPB, with his most notable — and amusing — injury coming when he smashed his head on the dugout ceiling while changing his jersey.
I’m actually not quite sure what happens with Shaw, who appears to have been musical chaired out of a significant role by the Bregman and Austin signings. I don’t know just how seriously the Cubs consider him a supersub. Swanson and Hoerner were both durable in 2025, so we didn’t get any sneak peeks at how the Cubs truly felt about Shaw’s ability to play the middle infield when the rubber meets the road.
I wonder if the Cubs will be particularly active with non-roster invitations over the next month; ZiPS doesn’t see a great deal in the way of reinforcements in the high minors. Guys like Scott Kingery are probably far too high in the ZiPS WAR rankings than the Cubs ought to be comfortable with.
Pitchers
ZiPS sees the Cubs as having a very deep rotation that’s also very deep in unexcitement. There’s certainly some upside here, especially in Edward Cabrera, but ZiPS largely views the team as having a whole lot of broadly average starting pitching options. The good news here is that if Justin Steele has any setbacks, ZiPS likes the team’s replacement options. Even with especially bad luck in the injury department, the computer thinks Javier Assad will be adequate — it has him with an ERA considerably lower than his FIP, though some of that is thanks to the stellar Cubs defense — and that Ben Brown and Jordan Wicks would both be far more acceptable as starters if called into duty than they’ve shown so far. Heck, if Colin Rea or even Connor Noland were forced into starting some games, that wouldn’t be an apocalyptic scenario for the Cubs.
While deep in meh, ZiPS is more enthusiastic about the Chicago bullpen. Now, as was the case with Assad, some of the bullpen’s projected sufficiency comes down to the defense behind it, but ZiPS largely sees these relievers as having ERAs below four, and generally well below that line. ZiPS especially likes Hunter Harvey, Daniel Palencia, and the relief version of Porter Hodge. In the case of Hodge, remember the rule not to freak out about one-year home run totals for otherwise competent pitchers. The only prominent relievers ZiPS looks at with a bit of a side eye are Ethan Roberts and recent signee Jacob Webb.
All in all, the Cubs look like a team with a win total in the low 90s. The only negative of that projection is that ZiPS feels similarly about the Brewers this time around. We won’t know the end of this story for another nine months.
Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.
Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2026 due to injury, and players who were released in 2025. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Ambient Math-Rock Trip-Hop Yacht Metal band that only performs in abandoned malls, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.16.
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. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.
As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on Bluesky. This last is, however, not an actual requirement.
Last year was my 10th year as a member of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, so while I’ve voted regularly in the end-of-year awards — nine times out of 10, in fact — this was my first opportunity to cast a ballot for a Hall of Fame election. I’m a huge believer in transparency when it comes to the voting for awards; every time I cast a ballot, I discuss my underlying reasoning at length. Because there is a lot of leeway and wiggle room in the official Hall of Fame election rules, votes come down to the interpretation and philosophy of the individual voters. For that reason, I wanted to take some space to discuss the philosophical decisions I made to determine who ended up with checkmarks on my submitted ballot. This isn’t really an analysis of the individual candidates; for that, you should consult Jay Jaffe’s extensive series, where he goes deep into each player’s career and legacy.
I’ve attached a picture of my ballot. Not the best one in the world since I cut off a few words of my obnoxious, meaningless “signing statement,” but since I sent my ballot off a month ago, there won’t be a better photo forthcoming! Unlike the year-end awards, which are conducted through Google forms, the Hall of Fame balloting process is old school. You physically open an envelope that contains a sheet of paper — made of these things called “trees” — and check boxes yourself before returning the whole thing through the good ol’ U.S. Mail. Thankfully, the whole exercise came with a pre-addressed, postage-paid envelope, as I don’t physically appear to be the owner of any envelopes or stamps. I will also note that I am aware that I have the penmanship of a seven-year-old. My handwriting has always been atrocious.
Anyway, you’ll notice that I voted for the maximum 10 players, and from the signing statement, you’ll see that I would have voted for 12 players if given the opportunity. In recent years, the BBWAA has issued proposals to the Hall of Fame to expand the number of players we’re allowed to vote for and to make all ballots public, but those requests have been turned down.
I’m not necessarily a Small Hall or Big Hall guy, but I do think it is important to keep the Hall consistent. What a Hall of Famer is is determined by who the Hall of Famers are. The obvious, inner circle players like Henry Aaron and Lefty Grove are a small minority of the Hall of Fame. What the Hall of Fame does have is a ton of guys like Ted Lyons and Waite Hoyt and Pee Wee Reese and Goose Goslin, those mid-range Hall of Famers who, if they were on today’s ballots, would be derided as Hall of Very Good Candidates by the extreme section of the Small Hall crowd. There’s this idea that modern inductees have watered down the Hall of Fame when, in fact, what the Hall is drowning in is endless inductees from baseball’s supposed Golden Age. Here’s my updated chart of the yearly percentage of position player plate appearances by future Hall of Famers:
Now, the final ruling hasn’t yet been handed down on those 1990s players, but just because the Veterans Committee exists to catch players who fall through the cracks doesn’t strike me as a good reason to let players fall through those cracks. I find the moral value of a great honor is diminished if the honoree has to wait an indefinite amount of time, or even worse, does not live long enough to receive it. It’s an absolute shame that Ron Santo and Dick Allen died without knowing that their careers would ultimately be recognized with baseball’s most prestigious honor. And with baseball’s increasingly illogically designed Eras Committees, it’s going to be harder to catch the BBWAA’s misses.
Even so, I don’t think that all of the players who are better than the worst Hall of Famers should be in the Hall. There are lots of pitchers better than Jack Morris and Rube Marquard who still would not get a Hall of Fame vote from me. If we voted in everyone better than Tommy McCarthy, who was essentially the 19th Century Juan Pierre, the Hall would have quite the influx of outfielders. But all 12 players I wanted to vote for in this election were players I felt were better than the bottom quartile of Hall of Fame inductees, meaning that if they were inducted, they would at least be part of the Hall’s large middle class.
One of the most convincing arguments Bill James ever made about the Hall of Fame came when he introduced the concepts of career value and peak value as different kinds of greatness. The Hall’s record of recognizing peak value is very spotty, and while Sandy Koufax, one of the best examples of peak value, was given his due, players like Johan Santana have frequently gotten the shaft. But when we talk about greatness, how good a player was at his best seems to be very important information. Miguel Cabrera would not have attained the 3,000-hit or 500-homer career milestones if he had retired after the 2016 season at age 33, but did anything that happened after 2016 really enhance his greatness on an abstract level? After 2016, he was mostly a DH who hit .262/.329/.381 and averaged nine home runs a year. Cabrera’s peak is what makes his career great, after all.
And that is why I checked the boxes for David Wright and Dustin Pedroia. Wright was healthy enough for about a decade to play full time, and over that period, he was perhaps the top third baseman in the majors.
Cabrera has the edge in WAR, and he had a better postseason record, but he also wasn’t a full-time a third baseman during this period. (He’s second among first basemen in the same years). It’s worth mentioning that Wright received more playing time during his 10-year peak than a lot of the competition, but he also had one of the highest WAR rates over that decade. He’s not the undisputed best third baseman during that span, but he certainly has a strong case for that title. That peak is enough for me. The case for Pedroia is similar.
Neither Wright or Pedroia is a slam-dunk candidate, but each is just over my foggy line.
I’m probably not going to get out of here without discussing how I consider performance-enhancing drug use or general rulebreaking/bending. Even more so than performance, there’s a lot of room for philosophical differences here, so let me emphasize that even though I personally feel that my stance is the best one — after all, why would I not go with what I think is best? — I certainly can’t objectively claim that it’s the right one. Let’s start with the text of the Hall’s so-called character clause, which is actually only just one sliver of a sentence:
Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.
Based on my knowledge of baseball and the Hall of Fame’s history, both in practice and when the rules were being discussed, I function under the belief that we’re talking sportsmanship and character related to their baseball-related life, not so much as a person on a wider level. The rules of the game are pretty important, and so I consider breaking baseball’s rules to be a demerit on a player’s permanent record. In this case, I believe PED rulebreaking to be something I am dutybound to consider after the summer of 2004, when steroid testing was first implemented. I don’t have the same feeling about pre-2004 PED use. Some people cite former commissioner Fay Vincent’s early 1990s memo about steroids as a reason not to vote for PED users in the pre-testing era, but as Vincent himself noted in an interview with Bernie Miklasz, he issued the memo only to make a statement. He pointed out that he didn’t have the power to implement any such rules against PED use without MLBPA approval.
“I sent it out because I believed it was important to take the position that steroids were dangerous, as were other illegal drugs,” Vincent said. “As you know, the union would not bargain with us, would not discuss, would not agree to any form of a coherent drug plan. So my memo really applied to all the people who were not players.”
In other words, Fay Vincent banned Pat Gillick and Dan Duquette from using steroids.
So I consider Barry Bonds’ testing positive for amphetamines in 2006 as a black mark on his résumé, as I do with Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez for failing PED tests. But I also view each black mark as merely a factor to be weighed in a Hall of Fame case, not as a binary “they cheated, so they’re out” scenario. In my eyes, Bonds, A-Rod, and Manny are all worthy Hall of Famers, and a little bit of dirt in their story doesn’t tarnish the tale.
On the other hand, I would not have voted for Pedroia or Wright if they had been found to have broken those rules. I did not vote for Ryan Braun, because I think his performance was on the wrong side of the dividing line, but even if he had a slightly longer peak, I still would not have checked his box because of his situation. I don’t really care about the efficacy of the cheating when it comes to a player’s Hall of Fame case; it makes no difference to me if Carlos Beltrán and the other members of the 2017 Astros actually benefited from their electronic sign-stealing operation. Rather, what matters is that banging on a trash can to relay signs that were stolen in real time via a video camera is a blatant form of cheating. Yet, once again, when considering the totality of Beltrán’s career, he easily belongs in the Hall of Fame, even with the banging-scheme demerit.
Now, I wanted to vote for 12 players, but I could only vote for 10. So, I asked myself: What is the purpose of the checkmarks on a Hall of Fame ballot? I view it as getting deserving players into the Hall of Fame. There are three ways that a single voter can impact a player’s chances of making it to Cooperstown: 1) if a vote helps a player reach the 75% threshold required for induction, 2) if a vote allows a player to exceed the 5% mark necessary to remain eligible for future BBWAA elections, and 3) if a vote adds to the percentage of ballots cast in favor of a player from the previous year, thereby building that player’s momentum of support. The last one is kind of weird, but it does seem to be the case that a number of voters wait for the bandwagon to be rolling behind a player before they get on for the ride, so I have to take that into consideration, too.
Ultimately, my final decision came down to the following question: Which two votes of my desired 12 would be the least impactful at getting a deserving player in the Hall of Fame? I concluded those to be for Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez. There was no chance that my vote would get either of them over 75%, keep them over 5%, or build enough momentum for them to eventually get elected. Most baseball writers have already made up their minds about how they will vote for players who used or likely used PEDs, and there aren’t enough new voters in any given year to make a difference. A-Rod and Manny are not Hall of Famers right now because they used steroids, not because writers are unsure about their baseball merit.
So, that’s my ballot, right or wrong. It’s OK to disagree with me — this would be a boring job if everyone agreed with me — but as I said at the top, I feel it’s my responsibility to you, the readers, to explain why I vote the way I do.
For the 22nd 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, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the preantepenultimate team is the Baltimore Orioles.
Batters
Baltimore’s pitching looked to be a problem entering the 2025 season, but the lackluster offense turned what was a good team with a run prevention problem into a losing club. After ranking second in the American League in runs scored in 2024, the O’s dropped to 11th in 2025, and suffice it to say, the pitching didn’t bail them out. A 75-87 record looks bad in a comparatively mild way given some of the clunkers the team has crafted since 1997, but it was one of the biggest O’s letdowns in at least my memory (I’m from Baltimore). But like the Blue Jays going into 2025 or the Yankees going into 2024, people tend to underrate good teams coming off of crappy seasons, sometimes horribly. There’s this belief that the lousy year is some baseline expectation and you have to start counting wins added from that point, which is a very poor way to make projections.
Have the O’s done enough with the offense? If the projections here are accurate, probably. With so many underperformances, some righting of the ship was always going to happen anyway, but the O’s didn’t just wait for the magic of regression to do the job for them. I don’t think the end of the Pete Alonso contract will be pretty, but he’s a legitimate big bat in a way the franchise tried to pretend Ryan Mountcastle was for a long time. Taylor Ward isn’t great, but you know who Taylor Ward is. The O’s are now in a position where they don’t needCoby Mayo or Heston Kjerstad to get back on track, though it would of course be nice. Read the rest of this entry »
For the 22nd 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, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Batters
Yes, the Los Angeles Dodgers were an excellent team in 2025, a statement that won’t come as a shock to anyone who was paying even a quarter-attention to baseball last year. The team was adeptly built to weather any storms, navigated said metaphorical weather, and then enjoyed a rotation that was mostly healthy come October, a welcome reversal from their 2024 postseason squad. The Dodgers repeated as World Series champions — the first team in the 21st century to successfully defend a title — earning their third trophy of the 2020s. They’ll look to pull off the three-peat next, something that has only been done once in the last half century (the Yankees from 1998-2000). And they have relatively good odds to pull it off: For the fifth time in the last six years (the 2023 Atlanta Braves being the only exception), ZiPS sees the Dodgers as the best team in baseball.
With that, I’m basically done talking about how great the Dodgers are. After all, this isn’t just a great team, but an obviously great one. There’s no mystery to their greatness. They have three future Hall of Famers in the starting lineup (Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, and Mookie Betts), with a fourth player, Will Smith, who could very well emerge as one. The pitching staff is phenomenally talented, though it admittedly comes with its share of injury concerns. All of these marvelous players get marvelous projections; there honestly isn’t much new to say about them. So instead, I’m going to talk more about what the Dodgers are not, and what could end up being their undoing. Or at least, their undoing by their own lofty standards, which would still probably mean something like a 90-win season.
The Dodgers have a seemingly infinite supply of both cash and brainpower, which is a potent combination, especially for their NL West rivals. But they aren’t a juggernaut in the sense that they dominate games or even short series; the superteam storyline is something that’s been filched from sports with less randomness and awkwardly applied to baseball. There’s a bit of Baseball Calvinism at play, in the sense that because the Dodgers won the last two World Series, some seem to believe that they were always fated to do so. The truth is, like any baseball team, they weren’t truly dominant. They lost 43% of their games during the regular season. In 2022 and 2023, they didn’t even reach the NLCS. And despite getting all of their stars onto the field in the World Series, they still only narrowly bested the Blue Jays. That’s just how baseball works.
And while the lineup is certainly star-studded, there are some risks. The offense is mostly driven by the four guys I mentioned above, and all four are on the wrong side of 30. Freeman in particular showed some signs of aging in 2025, as both his out-of-zone swing rate and his whiff rate jumped, especially the latter, and he’s never had elite bat speed. By the end of this season, he’ll have celebrated his 37th birthday. Betts didn’t experience a huge WAR drop-off thanks to him playing better defense at shortstop than he had any right to, but he’s also coming off the worst offensive season of his big league career and is entering his mid-30s. Smith doesn’t have as many games on his knees as a lot of backstops his age, but the presence of Ohtani and Freeman also means that if he’s too banged up to play catcher, he can’t just slot in at first base or designated hitter to keep his bat in the lineup. Then there’s Ohtani, who’s so amazing that he can practically only surprise negatively at this point.
Outside of the top four, the Dodgers are good, but hardly as intimidating. Max Muncy seems to refuse to age, and the recently signed Andy Ibáñez can spell him against lefties as needed, but time remains undefeated and will likely come for the third baseman sooner than later. Elsewhere, the outfield is rather ordinary, as is second base. And if fortune doesn’t favor the Dodgers on the injury or aging front, the projections suggest that Josue De Paula and Zyhir Hope might not be ready to remedy the situation in the short-term, as ZiPS has both of their 2025 minor league translations with an OPS just shy of .650. The lesser prospects in the high minors don’t really fit the bill, either, as ZiPS likes the team’s fringy guys at Triple-A a lot less than it usually does.
Pitchers
As noted, this is a talented rotation, but as with the lineup, there is some downside risk that can’t be ignored. Yoshinobu Yamamoto was the only Dodger to pitch enough to qualify for the ERA title last year, and the only other pitchers who threw at least 100 innings are either retired (Clayton Kershaw) or in St. Louis (Dustin May). Now, if Los Angeles is able to line up Tyler Glasnow, Ohtani, Blake Snell, and Roki Sasaki in consecutive outings behind Yamamoto, opponents will be grateful that there are no five-game series during the regular season. But as we’ve seen in recent years, the Dodgers have struggled to get all their arms healthy at the same time, and there’s no Emperor of Sports Movie Endings to ensure that they’ll be able to do so come October.
That’s concerning for a few reasons, not least because while there’s obviously still more offseason to go, the Dodgers’ starting pitching depth is decidedly thinner than it has been in recent history. In the past, one of the reasons ZiPS has seen Los Angeles as having a very high floor is that it has usually liked the team’s no. 8-10 starters. But after Emmet Sheehan and his 4.13 projected ERA if he’s used as a starter full-time, ZiPS sees the Dodgers’ spare rotation candidates as a decidedly below-average lot. River Ryan, Kyle Hurt, Gavin Stone, Justin Wrobleski, and Landon Knack all have projected ERAs worse than 4.50 as starters.
After years spent shoring up their bullpen with cleverness, the Dodgers have taken an unusually direct approach the past two winters: giving a great reliever a whole bunch of money. Last offseason, it was Tanner Scott (it hasn’t gone well). This time around, it’s Edwin Díaz, who is an awesome reliever, even if he’s unlikely to reach the heights of his 2018 or 2022 seasons again. ZiPS is pretty happy with the rest of the bullpen, seeing Alex Vesia, Scott (in a bounce-back season), Jack Dreyer, and Wrobleski as all comfortably above average. (You can add in Brusdar Graterol, who also gets a solid projection after ZiPS takes his injury into account.) The computer is a bit more squeamish when it comes to Blake Treinen and Brock Stewart, but it still sees them as having really solid upside. This ought to be a good bullpen.
Even accounting for the potential downside scenarios, the Dodgers look like the best team in baseball. Now, this being baseball, they’re still more likely to end the season with a loss than a champagne shower, but they’re as well positioned to make a deep run as their fans could possibly hope.
Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.
Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2026 due to injury, and players who were released in 2025. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Ambient Math-Rock Trip-Hop Yacht Metal band that only performs in abandoned malls, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.16.
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. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.
As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on BlueSky. This last is, however, not an actual requirement.
For the 22nd 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, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Toronto Blue Jays.
Batters
The Toronto Blue Jays were just two runs away from winning the World Series, so suffice it to say, 2025 was a pretty successful season. Even with a disappointing first year from Anthony Santander, the Jays were second in the American League in runs scored. The lineup wasn’t just potent at the plate, either, with the team’s position players leading baseball at 44 runs above average in FRV. The pitching, both the rotation and the bullpen, was fairly middling, but given what Toronto got out of its bats, the arms didn’t need to do that much to propel the team deep into the playoffs. Now the Jays seek to finish 2025’s job in a division that won’t make it an easy task. Not that they’re sitting around and waiting; less than a year after extending Vladito for a half billion dollars, they’ve shelled out another $336 million in guaranteed money this winter. Just for context, that’s nearly $100 million more than the rest of the AL East has spent in free agency combined ($249.6 million). Crashing past the final luxury tax threshold certainly fulfills any reasonable definition of going “all in” on winning.
Neither Andrés Giménez nor Ernie Clement has the offensive upside that the recently departed Bo Bichette does, but both are fine defensive players. ZiPS isn’t banking on Kazuma Okamoto being a star or anything, but he should hit for power and be a plus at third if his defense holds up. Completing the infield is Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and while his offensive output was well below his 2024 level, he was still a star-level first baseman last year. With both Davis Schneider and Addison Barger projected as basically league average starters at second and third respectively, there’s impressive infield depth here as well.
Even though he missed half the season, first recovering from offseason shoulder surgery and then a hamstring malady, Daulton Varsho still managed 2.2 WAR in 2025. Varsho is never going to put up impressive batting averages, but he has very good power for the position and plays good defense, and I think most of the remaining locals who were upset that he’s on the roster instead of Gabriel Moreno have quieted down by this point. The corner outfield positions are both in flux, with the exact mix of Santander and George Springer at DH undetermined, but between those two, Schneider, Barger, and Nathan Lukes, who is more than capable of taking the larger piece of a platoon, they ought to get at least average production in the corners and at DH. The Jays have been endlessly linked to Kyle Tucker, and he’d undoubtedly improve the team, but I’m not sure that they wouldn’t get a lot more bang for the buck by signing one of the top pitchers remaining.
Pitchers
Dylan Cease was a solid addition, and forms a quality 1-2 punch with Kevin Gausman. There’s also a lot of upside in Trey Yesavage — you saw how he pitched in the postseason — and a healthy Shane Bieber could be a big plus. But a pitcher with just a single year of professional experience, or one who comes with Bieber’s injury history, carries real risks as well. Cody Ponce is interesting, and a good risk given the upside, but you can’t completely ignore that before his huge season in the KBO, he really wasn’t very good at all in Japan. If José Berríos gets back on track, well, having too much pitching has never actually been a real problem; the Dodgers over the last five years could tell you about that. I can’t help but think that for as good as the Cease signing was, adding Framber Valdez or Ranger Suárez is still a good idea, as it would lower the rotation’s downside considerably and make the Jays the AL East favorite by a win or two.
Despite the middle-of-the-pack results last year, ZiPS is actually rather enamored with Toronto’s relief corps. While it doesn’t see the team as having a Jhoan Duran or Mason Miller at the top of the ‘pen, with the exception of Yimi García, the computer projects every pitcher with 30 relief innings on our depth chart to have an ERA under 4.00 as a reliever. That even holds true if you stretch things out further, to Chase Lee and Lazaro Estrada. The soft-tossing Tyler Rogers was the big bullpen addition, practically a unicorn in that he’s an exceedingly unusual submariner who doesn’t have significant platoon splits. I don’t think the Jays really need to do much else here, and their deep store of talent might even justify them trading a reliever or two if one of the contenders with bullpen issues fails to shore things up over the next two months.
All told, the Blue Jays look to be neck-and-neck with the Red Sox, and slightly better than the Yankees, in the AL East. As for the Orioles, you’ll have to wait for that ZiPS post later this week.
Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.
Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2026 due to injury, and players who were released in 2025. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Ambient Math-Rock Trip-Hop Yacht Metal band that only performs in abandoned malls, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.16.
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. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.
As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on BlueSky. This last is, however, not an actual requirement.
Dan Szymborski: Greetings friends! I am enjoying a balmy 14 degrees now, a full 24 degrees of warming in the last four hours!
