For the 20th 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 the penultimate team is New York Yankees.

Batters

If I’ve learned anything from two decades of projection work (and people getting mad at that projection work), it’s that fans are way too optimistic about teams when everything goes great and way too pessimistic after things have gone awry.
The 2022 Yankees were a good example of this. After a first half in which they went 58-23, good for a .716 winning percentage and a Pythagorean win percentage that nearly matched, ZiPS only projected the team to go 45-36 the rest of the way. “Knave!” they shouted at me on Twitter. “Vagabond! Miscreant!” OK, maybe they didn’t use those words exactly, but there was bewilderment and more than a touch of anger that I would disrespect the Bronx Bombers so. In the end, the Yankees actually were four wins worse than that projection in the second half.

And just like things are never as amazing as they seem when everything goes your way, the reverse is true, with the Yankees again being a good example. They had their worst season since 1992 in 2023, and based on how they’ve been talked about over the last six months or so, you’d think they were a glorified Triple-A team. But the Yankees weren’t that bad — they went 82-80 in a division without a true doormat team to beat up on. That record was all of seven wins below their preseason projection, a miss that barely merits raising an eyebrow, and certainly doesn’t justify floating Brian Cashman out to sea (or bunting more). Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th 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 the next team up is the Oakland Athletics.

Batters

The A’s are the most depressing team in baseball, hands down. They actually have some competition if we’re talking about the worst team in baseball, but neither the Colorado Rockies nor the Chicago White Sox feel quite as miserable as the A’s. How often does a player take the opportunity to go all-out on the team’s owner when they announce their retirement? Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th 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 the next team up is the Texas Rangers.

Batters

The Rangers led the American League in runs scored in 2023, and most of the players who contributed to that success are set to return to the lineup in 2024. Sure, Corey Seager might not repeat his monster season, but his performance should still land comfortably in star territory, and the Rangers could get a little luckier with his health. Evan Carter isn’t likely to post an OPS around 1.000 again, but that’s balanced by the fact that the team ought to get a lot more than 23 regular season games from him this year. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th 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 the next team up is the Colorado Rockies.

Batters

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: the Colorado Rockies will almost certainly be one of the worst teams in baseball in 2024, a prime candidate to get the top pick in next year’s draft lottery. There’s just no way around that conclusion, as the Rockies don’t have the same young depth or big league-quality role players that the Baltimore Orioles had on hand to make their initial burst in 2022 possible.

Still, the team has at least shown signs of life in their decision-making processes over the year or so. Gone — as far as I’m aware — is the ownership talk of winning 94 games. And young players are seeing the field. There were times Ezequiel Tovar struggled mightily at the plate during his rookie season, especially in the first month, but for once, the team avoided panicking and blocking a top prospect with the Chris Owings/José Iglesias-type veterans who hang around Triple-A looking for a big league job. And while it took the franchise a month to get him onto the roster, the Rockies looked for excuses to play Nolan Jones rather than searching for reasons not to. That paid off, with Jones enjoying an excellent rookie season that saw him improve more in the outfield than most expected. A lot of Colorado’s marginal prospects in their 20s struggled, but at least they played. None of Elehuris Montero, Alan Trejo, or Michael Toglia did all that well, but their playing time demonstrated a (possible) change in organizational thinking, as players like them have been marginalized in the past. Think back to Tom Murphy or Mike Tauchman during their time with the Rockies — the team could not have seemed less interested in seeing what they had.

Brenton Doyle rightly won a Gold Glove award, and the defense is probably mostly real; the ZiPS probability-based method for minor league performance had him at 11 runs better than average in 2022 despite this method being intentionally conservative because of its uncertainty. (For those curious, the highest-ranked outfielders in 2023 were Jorge Barrosa and Ceddanne Rafaela.) Doyle’s bat leaves much to be desired, but there’s a real argument to be made that given the size of the Coors outfield, this is a spot where the team should be willing to swap offense for defense.

ZiPS doesn’t expect Jones to regress too much in 2024 — the Sophomore Slump is a myth, but regression toward the mean is not — and projects considerable growth from Tovar, who was extremely young in his debut. ZiPS also expects a typical season from Ryan McMahon, and while it appears that Brendan Rodgers no longer has star upside, he’s a roughly league-average player when healthy.

That isn’t to say that this team has completely avoided mistakes. The Rockies actually made some trades near the deadline, which they almost never did in the past, but if they were ever going to get anything for Elias Díaz, it would have been last July. Coco Montes deserved a longer look, and I think he’d be an interesting pickup for someone (though he did pass through waivers in September).

As for the rest of the lineup… well, things don’t look great. At this point, neither Kris Bryant nor Charlie Blackmon project particularly well. This team is going to have one of the worst offenses in baseball again, and any long-term turnaround is going to require greater creativity than simply waiting for Zac Veen and Drew Romo, both of whom had disappointing 2023 seasons for a variety of reasons, to come and save the day.

Pitchers

Losing Germán Márquez and Antonio Senzatela to Tommy John makes this group look even worse than it is, but let’s be honest: their arm trouble isn’t what’s keeping the Rockies from being playoff relevant in 2024. Márquez seems the more likely to appear towards the end of the season, having had his procedure a couple months earlier than Senzatela in 2023. Of the pickups the team has made to eat some innings, Dakota Hudson is a groundball pitcher in front of what should be a solidly above-average infield defense, while Cal Quantrill typically isn’t crushable when he struggles. Along with Austin Gomber and Ryan Feltner, they’re basically here so that the games will end and the bullpen doesn’t have to throw 1,100 innings.

As for the bullpen… yeah. ZiPS likes Justin Lawrence, Jake Bird, and Jalen Beeks to be around average, with the rest of the relief corps — including any possible interesting minor leaguers — set to be off that standard. But again, like the Orioles from 2019-2021, the 2024 record isn’t the point. Instead of paying too much for relievers who were good two or three years ago, the Rockies should try to accumulate any halfway interesting young thrower under 25, even if they don’t have a clue, and see who has an epiphany. This is a method only lousy teams have the luxury to adopt.

Right now, ZiPS has Colorado in the 64-68 win range, depending on the assumptions you make about who will play, where, and when. The problem with the Rockies hasn’t just been that they’ve been a bad team, but that they’ve been a bad team with no idea of how bad teams become good ones. Being a bad team with a vision would be a tremendous upgrade over the club that frittered away the prime years of some good young talent during the disastrous Jeff Bridich era. And I’m not one who tends toward optimism with this franchise!

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.

Here are how the ZiPS percentiles worked out in 2023 for pitchers and hitters in in 2023. Percentiles are based on the projected PA or TBF.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2024 due to injury, and players who were released in 2023. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Belgian Death Metal Skiffle Band that only plays songs by Franz Schubert, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.33.

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 the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.

For the 20th 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 the next team up is the Chicago Cubs.

Batters

Are the Cubs back to their mid-2010s form? That’s a bit of a stretch, but these Cubs showed they have a live pulse, not falling out of playoff contention until the final week of the 2023 season. Cody Bellinger, one of the reasons the offense was so potent (third in the National League in runs scored), turned out to be one of the best pillow-contract signings of all time. Perhaps a little too good, as it was enough for Bellinger to decline his side of a $25 million mutual option for 2024. The Cubs could still sign Bellinger, but even if they do, it’s not a great bet they’ll get the same production as last year. ZiPS is a bit more optimistic than Steamer, but it still projects a returning Bellinger to “give back” some of his contact and a significant chunk of his power. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognosgtications. 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 the next team up is the Cincinnati Reds.

Batters

When I look at Cincinnati’s offense, I’m incredibly confused. By “confused” I don’t mean that the offense is lousy, just that its construction is utterly bizarre in a lot of areas. For example, even if you write Matt McLain and Elly De La Cruz in permanent marker at second base and shortstop, respectively, you still have a team that’s overflowing with plausible third base candidates: Jonathan India, Noelvi Marte, Spencer Steer, and Christian Encarnacion-Strand to start. Given this hot corner glut, the Reds signed… one of the best third basemen available, in the form of Jeimer Candelario, but not, mind you, to be the starting third baseman. And while he’ll see time there, it’s extremely likely he’s going to get a ton of time at first base and designated hitter. One of the main reasons to like Candelario is that he hits like he does while playing a very competent third base. The more time he sees at 1B/DH, the more it’s the equivalent of buying a sports car to use as a step ladder to change the light bulb in your garage.

What’s more, many of the players who’ll be shifting down the defensive spectrum doesn’t really have much in the way of synergy. Candelario, Steer, and Encarnacion-Strand are all essentially right-handed hitters in profile (Candelario has the splits of a right-handed batter), so it’s not like one of those sneaky Gabe Kapler platoons.

Given how much ownership has cried poor, I don’t want to discourage the Reds from spending, but if they’re going to grow payroll, why not spend to address actual team weaknesses? Spending more money and getting bang for your buck are not mutually exclusive propositions. When I expressed confusion on Twitter about the Reds earlier this offseason, I was assured by fans of the team that the roster would make more sense after all the trades they were certainly going to make. Well, those moves haven’t come.

But who knows? The Reds do have a lot of talent on the roster, even if their players are deployed in a rather odd way. McLain is terrific, and I think De La Cruz’s late-season drop-off removed the over-exuberance that he was going to be Fernando Tatis Jr.; he’s now about properly rated for what he is. Tyler Stephenson ought to have a better season than he did in 2023, and ZiPS projects the outfield to be adequate if healthy, though the computer can hardly be described as enthusiastic. ZiPS is kind of interested in Blake Dunn as someone who could eventually push Stuart Fairchild off the roster. As we’ve seen with them before, the Reds likely missed the window to get a good return for India, but he’s still probably a roughly league-average player and isn’t going to get any more valuable as a role player.

I’ll be generous and give the team the benefit of the doubt that there’s a plan to trade off some of the surplus talent here before it’s frittered away by time and attrition. But they’re running out of time to do it before the start of spring training.

Pitchers

ZiPS likes a lot of Cincinnati’s hitters, but it’s less enthusiastic about the pitching. That’s not so much a rotation problem, though several of the starters have worse projections than last year. It’s really odd that the Reds made a playoff run and it turned out that it have very little to do with breakouts from Hunter Greene, Graham Ashcraft, or Nick Lodolo, all three of whom were some combination of mediocre and injured in 2023. ZiPS is a believer in Andrew Abbott in the sense that he’s a deserving part of the rotation, but its expectations are tempered a bit. Greene, Ashcraft, and Lodolo all have worse outlooks than they did at this time last year, though that can hardly be a surprise.

[One of the Greenes came out as Green, and this has been fixed -DS]

Unlike some of the other Cincy signings, I really like the Frankie Montas pickup. There’s a good chance that he doesn’t contribute anything at all in Cincinnati, but the upside, given his history, is really quite interesting. I wish the team signed players like this more often, ones who represent a real jackpot for the team if they hit, say, their 70th percentile projections and stay healthy. The computer likes Nick Martinez as a useful swingman.

ZiPS absolutely hates the bullpen, though in the end, it has the group projected for the same 2.3 WAR that Steamer does. ZiPS likes Alexis Díaz, Fernando Cruz, and Martinez when he’s used in relief, but is lukewarm everywhere else.

I think the Emilio Pagán signing was the worst bullpen addition any team has made in free agency so far this winter, but I was surprised that ZiPS likes Pagán even less. I see this as a good example of a team thinking that the season before is the same thing as a projection, and ignoring the red flags. Pagán was basically successful because he suddenly went from being a terrible home run pitcher to a great one. Home runs allowed is a terrible stat, so terrible in fact that it makes xFIP useful, when it really should not be. Pagán has a long history of allowing a lot of homers in pitcher-friendly environments and actually had the worst average exit velocity allowed in his career in 2023. He remained a fly ball pitcher, and now he goes to one of the worst environments in baseball for a pitcher who allows a lot of flies. This is like the anti-Dodgers signing. That’s not a guarantee that Pagán will be lousy — relievers are quite volatile — but I really don’t like the odds.

So what does this all add up to? If the projections are to believed, about a .500 team, just where the Reds finished last year. Given the team’s young talent, I wish this franchise was taking a more practical approach to actually improving the roster.

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.