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 Chicago White Sox.

Batters

The 2025 White Sox performed the very weird dual feat of being one of baseball’s most improved teams compared to 2024 and losing more than a 100 games. There wasn’t much in the way of quality baseball on the South Side, but the Sox actually had enough things go their way this time around that they didn’t perform at the low end of their talent level. There were even a few things to like about the team, enough to motivate fans to turn on a game out of more than morbid curiosity.

One thing you’ll notice when looking at the depth chart below? No negative numbers! That’s a pretty low baseline, but the Sox have added enough talent that they’re clearly better than any of the teams in the International League. There are still questions about Colson Montgomery, and he likely won’t ever be a favorite to put up a good batting average or on-base percentage, but his power arrived and he can credibly play shortstop. The power has most certainly not arrived for Chase Meidroth, but he’s shown he can hack it at second base, he’s fairly disciplined at the plate, and he’s a pretty solid contact hitter. He doesn’t have a lot of star potential, but if the batting average creeps up a bit, he can be a useful OBP-heavy second baseman.

The White Sox haven’t figured out their catcher spot yet, but Kyle Teel probably has the best average outlook and the highest upside, so hopefully he’ll be given every chance to push out the competition and seize control of the job. Surprisingly, ZiPS thinks Luis Robert Jr. still has a decent amount of upside left, and the Sox might as well play him and see, since I don’t believe any team is going to be willing to pay the Pale Hose what they’d want to part with him. Miguel Vargas is fine as a stopgap third baseman, and he showed that many analysts had given up on his bat too quickly, but he’s still too much of a tweener: not good enough defensively to be plus at third, and not really interesting as a hitter if used at first base or designated hitter.

Of all the left-fielders in baseball, Andrew Benintendi is one of them. Lenyn Sosa will mostly play first base since the White Sox don’t have an obvious place to play him otherwise and he kinda hits, and right field and DH will largely be populated by whoever’s hanging around on the roster and isn’t starting elsewhere.

This offense will almost certainly be one of the worst in baseball in 2026, but I’d much rather watch this group than the one the team had entering 2024.

Pitchers

Chicago’s pitching staff was actually kinda adequate-ish in 2025, enough so that they mostly kept the games interesting. Shane Smith won’t make anyone forget Garrett Crochet, but he took a big step forward this season, and the team ought to be able to just stick him in the rotation and watch him pitch like a reasonable no. 2 starter. (I will note that there’s a bit of a disagreement between ZiPS and Steamer on Smith, with ZiPS the sunnier projection.)

Noah Schultz’s outlook has come down quite a bit in the projections thanks to some walk issues that popped up this year. In his first stint with Double-A Birmingham in 2024, he never allowed more than two walks in an outing, but he did that in seven different starts this year in his second Double-A go-around. He had mixed results after getting promoted to Triple-A Charlotte, but his time there was plagued by tendinitis in his knee. Still, Schultz only turned 22 a few months ago, so it’s too early to panic about his projection.

The rotation is basically no. 4/5 starters as far as the eye can see: If you couldn’t see the names on the projections for Davis Martin, Sean Burke, Jonathan Cannon, and Duncan Davitt, you probably wouldn’t be able to guess who is who. But on the plus side, the Sox are deep with these kinds of pitchers, and if a couple of them can have Smith-sized breakouts, the rotation might start to come together for the next few years. Hopefully the team is patient with Schultz and Hagen Smith, as neither of them is likely to be successful in the majors right away.

In terms of the bullpen, ZiPS is easily the most intrigued by Grant Taylor and would like to see him eventually get a chance at starting. But he ought to be fine in the ‘pen, and Jordan Leasure, Mike Vasil, and Brandon Eisert are an unexciting trio, but at least the games will end. The projections aren’t great, but for my part, I’m probably the most interested in seeing a healthy Prelander Berroa, as I still think that he’s one of the more interesting arms in the org.

The White Sox might keep their losses in the 90s in 2026, but I’d probably place the likelihood of a Cinderella season as being far lower for them than a lot of teams in that tier, such as the Nationals. While it’s not the kind of thing you actually want to say in a press release, I hope the Sox aren’t too obsessed with the exact number of wins they get next season, and focus on making their team a long-term contender instead of, say, pushing for .500 in 2026. We’ll see.

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 Texas Rangers.

Batters

Finishing the season with an exactly .500 record seems a fitting fate for the 2025 Texas Rangers, a team that spent most of the year jumping into and out of the playoff race, until their demise was eventually sealed by an eight-game losing streak in September. The oldest team in baseball this year, the Rangers got a lot of production out of their core performers, but a pitching swoon in August and September, and holes at the offense-heavy positions, left the team short of its goal of getting back to the playoffs and grabbing a second World Series trophy. That 2023 championship campaign is the only season in the last nine in which Texas finished with a winning record. 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 Detroit Tigers.

Batters

This year was like two very different seasons in one for the Detroit Tigers. Through July 8, their high-water mark in 2025, the Tigers had the best record in baseball, and held an imposing 14 game lead over the Twins and Royals. Over the final three months of the season, however, they barely played .400 ball, and won less often than any of the White Sox, Pirates, or Nationals. While the threats from the Twins and the Royals didn’t prove to be fatal, the Guardians made up a 15 1/2 game gap to grab the division at the last moment, and the Tigers just barely snuck into the postseason on the strength of a tiebreaker with the Astros. By comparison, the humiliations of the 1978 Red Sox and 1969 Cubs (nine games) were minor. While the Tigers were able to get revenge against the Guardians in the Wild Card round, they were bounced by the Mariners in a 15-inning Game 5 nail-biter in the ALDS. But in what might end up being Tarik Skubal’s final season with the team, the Tigers don’t have much time to brood on the summer of 2025. 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 Cincinnati Reds.

Batters

Much like during the 2020 COVID season, the 2025 Reds finished just above .500, barely squeaked into the playoffs, and got bounced from the Wild Card round in two games. At least this time around, they actually scored runs! But the lineup was a recurring problem in the regular season, the biggest reason Cincy needed a late-summer collapse by the Mets in order to play October baseball. The lineup’s 13.2 WAR ranked 26th in baseball, with Elly De La Cruz and TJ Friedl combining for more than half of that total. Finishing 21st in home runs isn’t good for a team that plays in one of the best home run parks in the majors today. 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 Pittsburgh Pirates.

Batters

From a pure talent standpoint, the Pittsburgh Pirates are in better shape than their 71-91 record this season might suggest. Still, the organization always feels like it’s on a giant treadmill because when the time to increase the level of investment comes, the push is always extremely underwhelming. The Pirates have actually gotten slightly better at committing to payroll (slightly!), but when they do spend, they frequently do so in rather unproductive ways. 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 Athletics.

Batters

The A’s lineup has made great strides over the last few years, the difference between this graphic and the one from two years ago is nearly night and day. Now, there is no megastar at the top of the WAR stack, but the A’s are pretty solid in most places, aren’t truly abysmal anywhere, and have decent depth options all over the diamond. While this is still far from an elite run creation machine, there’s enough quality surrounding Nick Kurtz and Brent Rooker that this is the type of lineup that could pull its weight in a playoff contention scenario. Even some of the lesser positions like the Max Muncy-led third base amalgamation or the mix-and-match assortment in center field at least project to somewhere around average.

If there’s a disappointment in the projections, it might be Jacob Wilson, for whom ZiPS sees quite a bit of regression coming in 2026. A big part of it is that Wilson’s approach of excellent contact/soft hitting has a fairly poor developmental history in recent decades, and players of this type, if they become too “see ball, hit ball” can fall off quickly like David Fletcher or Luis Arraez. Just like plate discipline should be a means to an end, so should ultra-high contact.

ZiPS also remains a Tyler Soderstrom skeptic and just isn’t as in love with Lawrence Butler as other projection systems have been.

When I talk about the depth, I’m not just being nice; there are a lot of projections for players in the high minors that suggest that they could be fill-in candidates without completely embarrassing anybody. Joshua Kuroda-Grauer might be one of the most interesting. He’s hardly a household name, but the method I use to estimate defense from hit-location data absolutely loves him, and he has the makings of a really solid pairing with Wilson up the middle. The projections also think that Leo De Vries is just a year or two from being a legitimate major league starter. Also in good news for a lineup on a John Fisher-owned team, none of the key players are nearing big free agency paydays that the A’s simply would not match. These guys should be around for a while.

Pitchers

The pitching staff is considerably less impressive than the offense, but even this group has much better projections overall than it did a year ago. Before this past season, I mused that the A’s had kind of lost their knack for developing an endless stream of moderately competent, soft-tossing fourth starters, and it was hurting their chances at getting out of the bottom of the AL West. There are still no aces on the team or, really, any no. 2 starters, but ZiPS thinks the A’s now have a boatload of 90-100 ERA+ starting pitchers, and a few of them (like Luis Medina and Luis Morales) have actual fastballs that they can use to retire major league hitters. What a concept!

I’m not sure that Luis Severino will still be on the roster three months from now, let alone the beginning of August, given his feelings about the stadium situation and potential value for a contending club, but Jeffrey Springs and Jacob Lopez are acceptable mid-rotation starters, and the team has a number of useful fallback options, such as J.T. Ginn and Henry Baez. ZiPS still holds out some hope on Mitch Spence, and is really in on Gage Jump, who has a decent shot in the projections to be the best A’s pitcher 18 months from now.

A Mason Miller-less bullpen is definitely an emoji sad face. While ZiPS sees the pen as a decidedly below-average group, there are far fewer negative WAR projections here than there were last offseason, and the top four of Hogan Harris, Michael Kelly, Justin Sterner, and Elvis Alvarado projects out as…fine…ish. But the bullpen will be a larger worry when the team gets closer to contention.

So, where do the A’s look to be right now? Probably slightly better than the 76 wins they finished with in 2025. But an awful lot would have to go right with the pitching to make this team anything but the fringiest of wild card contenders in 2026. I mean, sure, the A’s could sign Dylan Cease and/or Ranger Suárez, but we all know they’re not actually going to do that. On the bright side, at least these A’s are probably going to be Sacramento’s best major league baseball team ever.

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.