Once again, it’s time for me to fire up my computer and crank out the yearly team-by-team ZiPS projections. This is where I’d normally do my shtick, but we have a lot to get to, so imagine a quote from a 19th century personality, an allusion to a 13th century battle, and a 1980s pop culture reference, and then cram them all together for your own haute couture Szymborski pablum! We’ve got business to take care of, so no time for shenanigans.

ZiPS is a computer projection system I initially developed in 2002–04. It officially went live for the public in 2005, after it had reached a level of non-craptitude I was content with. The origin of ZiPS is similar to Tom Tango’s Marcel the Monkey, coming from discussions I had in the late 1990s with Chris Dial, one of my best friends (my first interaction with Chris involved me being called an expletive!) and a fellow stat nerd. ZiPS quickly evolved from its original iteration as a reasonably simple projection system, and now does a lot more and uses a lot more data than I ever envisioned it would 20 years ago. At its core, however, it’s still doing two primary tasks: estimating what the baseline expectation for a player is at the moment I hit the button, and then estimating where that player may be going using large cohorts of relatively similar players.

So why is ZiPS named ZiPS? At the time, Voros McCracken’s theories on the interaction of pitching, defense, and balls in play were fairly new, and since I wanted to integrate some of his findings, I wanted my system to rhyme with DIPS (defense-independent pitching statistics), with his blessing. I didn’t like SIPS, so I went with the next letter in my last name, Z. I originally named my work ZiPs as a nod to CHiPs, one of my favorite shows to watch as a kid. I mis-typed ZiPs as ZiPS when I released the projections publicly, and since my now-colleague Jay Jaffe had already reported on ZiPS for his Futility Infielder blog, I decided to just go with it. I never expected that all of this would be useful to anyone but me; if I had, I would have surely named it in less bizarre fashion.

ZiPS uses multi-year statistics, with more recent seasons weighted more heavily; in the beginning, all the statistics received the same yearly weighting, but eventually, this became more varied based on additional research. And research is a big part of ZiPS. Every year, I run hundreds of studies on various aspects of the system to determine their predictive value and better calibrate the player baselines. What started with the data available in 2002 has expanded considerably. Basic hit, velocity, and pitch data began playing a larger role starting in 2013, while data derived from StatCast has been included in recent years as I’ve gotten a handle on its predictive value and the impact of those numbers on existing models. I believe in cautious, conservative design, so data is only included once I have confidence in improved accuracy; there are always builds of ZiPS that are still a couple of years away. Additional internal ZiPS tools like zBABIP, zHR, zBB, and zSO are used to better establish baseline expectations for players. These stats work similarly to the various flavors of “x” stats, with the z standing for something I’d wager you’ve already guessed.

How does ZiPS project future production? First, using both recent playing data with adjustments for zStats, and other factors such as park, league, and quality of competition, ZiPS establishes a baseline estimate for every player being projected. To get an idea of where the player is going, the system compares that baseline to the baselines of all other players in its database, also calculated from whatever the best data available for the player is in the context of their time. The current ZiPS database consists of about 140,000 baselines for pitchers and about 170,000 for hitters. For hitters, outside of knowing the position played, this is offense only; how good a player is defensively doesn’t yield information on how a player will age at the plate.

Using a whole lot of stats, information on shape, and player characteristics, ZiPS then finds a large cohort that is most similar to the player. I use Mahalanobis distance extensively for this. A CompSci/Math student at Texas A&M did a wonderful job showing how I do this, though the variables used aren’t identical.

As an example, here are the top 50 near-age offensive comps for World Series MVP Corey Seager right now. The total cohort is much larger than this, but 50 ought to be enough to give you an idea:

Ideally, ZiPS would prefer players to be the same age and position, but since we have about 170,000 baselines, not 170 billion, ZiPS frequently has to settle for players nearly the same age and nearly the same position. The exact mix here was determined by extensive testing. The large group of similar players is then used to calculate an ensemble model on the fly for a player’s future career prospects, both good and bad.

One of the tenets of projections that I follow is that no matter what the projection says, that’s what the ZiPS projection is. Even if inserting my opinion would improve a specific projection, I’m philosophically opposed to doing so. ZiPS is most useful when people know that it’s purely data-based, not some unknown mix of data and my opinion. Over the years, I like to think I’ve taken a clever approach to turning more things into data — for example, ZiPS’ use of basic injury information — but some things just aren’t in the model. ZiPS doesn’t know if a pitcher wasn’t allowed to throw his slider coming back from injury, or if a left fielder suffered a family tragedy in July. I consider those sorts of things outside a projection system’s purview, even though they can affect on-field performance.

It’s also important to remember that the bottom-line projection is, in layman’s terms, only a midpoint. You don’t expect every player to hit that midpoint; 10% of players are “supposed” to fail to meet their 10th-percentile projection and 10% of players are supposed to pass their 90th-percentile forecast. This point can create a surprising amount of confusion. ZiPS gave .300 batting average projections to three players in 2021: Luis Arraez, DJ LeMahieu (yikes!), and Juan Soto. But that’s not the same thing as ZiPS thinking there would only be three .300 hitters. On average, ZiPS thought there would be 34 hitters with at least 100 plate appearances to eclipse .300, not three. In the end, there were 25; the league BA environment turned out to be five points lower than ZiPS expected, catching the projection system flat-footed.

Another crucial thing to bear in mind is that the basic ZiPS projections are not playing-time predictors, at least with players without firm possession of a full-time job in the majors. By design, ZiPS has no idea who will actually play in the majors in 2024. ZiPS is essentially projecting equivalent production; a batter with a .240 projection may “actually” have a .260 Triple-A projection or a .290 Double-A projection. But telling me how Julio Rodríguez would hit in a full-time role in the majors in 2022 was a far more interesting use of a projection system than it telling me that he would only play a partial season (in the end, quite obviously, he played a full year). For the depth charts that go live in every article, I use the FanGraphs Depth Charts to determine the playing time for individual players. Since we’re talking about team construction, I can’t leave ZiPS to its own devices for an application like this. It’s the same reason I use modified depth charts for team projections in-season. There’s a probabilistic element in the ZiPS depth charts: sometimes Joe Schmo will play a full season, sometimes he’ll miss playing time and Buck Schmuck has to step in. But the basic concept is very straightforward.

What’s new in 2024? Outside of the typical calibration updates, there’ll be an extra table in this year’s projections. Don’t worry, the 80/20 splits are returning, but I’m adding split projections into the team-by-team rundowns as well. Usually I create these for the benefit of companies using my projections for their baseball games and calculate it sometime in February. But this year, I successfully integrated that model into ZiPS and, after repairing all the things I broke doing so, platoon splits are now being spit out with the usual array of numbers.

Have any questions, suggestions, or concerns about ZiPS? I’ll try to reply to as many as I can reasonably address in the comments below. If the projections have been valuable to you now or in the past, I would also urge you to consider becoming a FanGraphs Member, should you have the ability to do so. It’s with your continued and much appreciated support that I have been able to keep so much of this work available to the public for so many years for free. Improving and maintaining ZiPS is a time-intensive endeavor and reader support has enabled me to have the flexibility to put an obscene number of hours into its development. It’s hard to believe that ZiPS is now 20 years old. Hopefully, the projections and the things we’ve learned about baseball have provided you with a return on your investment, or at least a small measure of entertainment, whether you’re delighted or enraged.

The first of MLB’s major awards to be announced for 2023, the Rookie of the Year awards, were given out Monday evening, with Arizona’s Corbin Carroll and Baltimore’s Gunnar Henderson taking the laurels in the NL and AL races, respectively.

Getting inappropriately annoyed with year-end awards — more specifically in 1995, the year Mo Vaughn beat Albert Belle in the AL and Dante Bichette confusingly finished second in the NL — was one of the things that got me reading Usenet. A high schooler at the time, I had little idea that it was the start of a surprising career path. And even back then, I was frustrated that the writers who voted for these awards didn’t always make convincing arguments about their picks and, occasionally, offered no justifications at all.

I still believe that this kind of transparency is crucial for the legitimacy of any type of award. This is ostensibly an expert panel; if it’s not, there’s no purpose for the award to exist. As such, a secret ballot is not appropriate the way I believe it is for, say, a presidential or parliamentary election. So, as usual, this is my explanation (or apologia depending on your point of view) of why I voted the way I did. I don’t expect 100% of people to agree with my reasoning, which I doubt has happened for any opinion I’ve expressed ever, but that doesn’t mean I don’t owe you, the reader, the details of my vote.

This is my fifth Rookie of the Year vote. Previously, I gave my first-place votes to Spencer Strider, Trevor Rogers, Pete Alonso, and Corey Seager. This year, my ballot, starting at the top, was Carroll, the Mets’ Kodai Senga, and the Reds’ Matt McLain. Let’s start at the top. I’m also including preliminary 2024 ZiPS projections because, hey, why not? (They didn’t have any bearing on my vote, nor did the preseason projections.)

The Easy Part: Corbin Carroll

My last two first-place votes were close for me, and it took a while to decide on them. But this one was the easiest since Seager in 2016 (and I’m not forgetting Alonso versus Michael Soroka). Everyone expected Carroll to steamroll the league, and that’s just what he did. And while he didn’t have a Mike Trout-esque rookie season, who does?

For much of the season, Carroll logically was part of the MVP discussion, though by the time September rolled around, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Mookie Betts had an obvious advantage, with Freddie Freeman and Matt Olson being clearly superior, too. But if I had voted for the NL MVP, Carroll would have still landed somewhere in the back of my ballot. He hit .285/.362/.506, clubbed 25 homers and stole 50 bases, and played all three outfield positions at least respectably. He is the type of player for whom the phrase “speed kills” makes sense, because his skill set is broad enough that he can actually weaponize that speed. For the season, he was seventh in sprint speed, had dominating baserunning numbers beyond stolen bases, and in 90-foot splits, he was bested only by Elly De La Cruz.

The Still Pretty Easy Part: Kodai Senga

I’m inclined to like Senga considerably more than his WAR simply because he has a significant history of outperforming his peripherals in Japan as well, so there’s more basis for believing in his ERA than for the typical pitcher in this position. Because of that, I’m closer to bWAR on Senga (4.4) than I am to fWAR. If forced at gunpoint to name the Dan’s Brain WAR for Senga, I’d probably put him at 3.8–4.0 or so. Also, that’s a very weird use of a firearm.

There’s always a writer or two who complains about Japanese players being eligible for the RoY award, but I think the idea that they shouldn’t be is preposterous. Nippon Professional Baseball appears a bit closer to the majors than Triple-A ball in the U.S. is — something like Triple-A 1/2 — but it’s a very different kind of league. While Triple-A hitters may be easier than NPB hitters, you’re also facing a rather different style of play and plate approaches, and now that some of the recent rule changes have hit in the majors, Triple-A ball is roughly a not-as-good MLB.

Despite facing different types of hitters, a spate of different rules, and against the backdrop of New York pressure and a collapsing team behind him, Senga was one of the few players who could really be counted on there. He had some issues with walks early on, and to his credit, he adjusted. But it wasn’t actually his control that was the issue; he actually threw more strikes earlier in the season! Instead, the issue was that after putting up an out-of-zone swing rate above 30% in each of his last two seasons in Japan, he was down in the low-20s early on with the Mets. As time went on, he got a better feel on how to lure MLB batters to their doom; in the second half, his 31.1% out-of-zone swing rate was right where it was in Japan.

The Excruciating Part and the Fifth Wheel: Matt McLain versus Nolan Jones versus James Outman

I don’t see Rookie of the Year as necessarily meaning Most Valuable Rookie, but as Best Rookie. As such, in a kind of small-scale examination of Hall of Fame candidates’ peak versus career numbers, I don’t necessarily think measures against replacement are as important as in the MVP voting, which has directions that more strongly imply an emphasis on quantity.

Outman was probably the most valuable of the three hitters I listed above, but he also got a lot more playing time, winning the job from the start. Both McLain and Jones out-hit him from a quality standpoint, with a 128 wRC+ from McLain, a 135 from Jones, and a 118 from Outman. I might discount this if there were evidence from their minor league time that the major league time was flukier, but both played in Triple-A just about how you’d expect from their actual major league performances. Outman was an excellent player and a big part of why the Dodgers survived the loss of a lot of players, but I would have him fifth in a larger ballot because he wasn’t quite as good as McLain or Jones. Per WAA on Baseball-Reference, both McLain and Jones were well ahead of him.

McLain versus Jones was very difficult for me, and I went back and forth on it the entire Sunday I made my vote (the last day of the season). And it still wasn’t an obvious result, more a 51%–49% judgment; if asked on a different day, I might have said Jones instead of McLain. But at the end of the day, I had to pick one. McLain hit almost as well as Jones did and played the hardest non-catcher defensive position. I don’t like deciding based on small things, but it’s inevitable if the big things can’t settle the score. The slight nudge to McLain comes on the balance of having the more valuable defensive versatility (2B/SS for him versus 3B/OF for Jones) and the fact that he played for a team that was playing higher-leverage games all season, with a deep roster of prospects that could push him off a job at any time. The Rockies, meanwhile, were a basement dweller without a lot in the cupboard.

Jones may have just missed my ballot, but it’s no negative reflection on what was an excellent season. I was quite perturbed that he didn’t start the season in Colorado, with the Rockies apparently deciding that Mike Moustakas was nine years better in age than Jones, but they at least weren’t stubborn after he crushed pitchers in the Pacific Coast League. That wRC+ of 135 was an OPS+ of 138 if you like the simpler approach, and both numbers are park-adjusted, so he was Actual Good, not merely Coors Field Good.

Short on Pitching: Bobby Miller, Eury Pérez, and Andrew Abbott

Outside of Senga, no pitcher was close to making my ballot, though these three came closest. The Dodgers should be greatly pleased about having Miller’s services, but his numbers weren’t enough to balance out a rather low innings total. Pérez not being called up until May was a handicap, and while the Marlins being cautious with his workload to the extent of giving him a bit of a mini-vacation in July may be good for his future, it’s hard to give a Rookie of the Year vote to someone who threw less than 100 innings. Abbott’s mid-rotation performance was absolutely needed by the Reds, but again, not quite enough.

The Sixth Man: Patrick Bailey

Of the rest of the field, the closest to making my ballot was Bailey, who was absurdly good defensively in 2023. I could have voted for a player short on playing time; I clearly did with McLain and was close with Jones. But to vote for a hitter at any position who slashed .233/.285/.359 over Outman, McLain, and Jones, I’d need a lot more certainty with defensive numbers than I have. We’ve made great progress in evaluating defense, but it remains extremely volatile, meaning that we simply can’t count on a small sample of defensive data to the same degree as a small sample of offensive data.

I have little doubt that Bailey is an elite defensive catcher, but just how elite is crucial to advancing him over the others with only 97 games played. And it was just a bridge too far for me; if he had been the catcher at the start of the season, there would have likely been a little more flexibility on how to deal with a defense-only candidate.

The Best of the Rest: Spencer Steer, Francisco Alvarez, Elly De La Cruz, Ezequiel Tovar

Steer played the entire season but was basically a league-average starter — something that had value, but he was clearly behind several others in quality. Alvarez hit a lot of homers (25) but was rather one-note in his offensive contributions, though he really surprised with his framing numbers. Tovar was brilliant defensively, and it was nice to see him as a Gold Glove finalist, but his offense was well behind his glove.

De La Cruz was arguably the most exciting of the prospects, maybe even more than Carroll, but he still has some serious holes in his game that were exposed with time in the majors. At the very least, he’s going to need to shore up his plate discipline or become better at effectively connecting with junk in the way Tim Anderson was able to do at his peak.

The last of the extant pre-divisional era franchises to not have won the World Series has finally hoisted their own trophy, as the Texas Rangers shut down the Arizona Diamondbacks, 5-0, to score the team’s first championship. Texas’ starter, Nathan Eovaldi, was shaky in the early going, but every last one of Arizona’s runners were stranded on the basepaths, and the shelling of Paul Sewald in the ninth sealed the deal with insurance runs.

If you just watched the starting pitchers, Eovaldi and Zac Gallen, for the first five innings on Wednesday night, you might be surprised that the series didn’t find its way back to Texas. The Rangers entered Game 5 having won all five of Eovaldi’s starts this postseason, but it was Gallen who looked to have the advantage early on. Eovaldi’s control was spotty. He allowed five walks over five innings, the most free passes he’s issued in a decade, going back to when he was a hard-throwing Marlins prospect who had trouble putting away batters. Read the rest of this entry »

On the back of a seven-inning near-shutout from ace Zack Wheeler, three round-trippers, and a Bryce Harper steal of home, the Philadelphia Phillies convincingly beat the Arizona Diamondbacks, 6-1, to push the latter to the brink of oblivion. The Phillies got to Diamondbacks starter Zac Gallen often, scoring two runs in the first, a lead that Arizona never really threatened. The NLCS now heads back to Philadelphia, where the Diamondbacks have to win two games or all that will be left to do is to grab a couple cheesesteaks and a roast pork and fly back home for the winter.

The Phillies got things going quickly with a fun-filled first. The action started with a Kyle Schwarber infield hit and ended with a double steal. Totally Traditional Leadoff Hitter Schwarber’s little dribbler to third against the current iteration of the infield shift was way too far for third baseman Evan Longoria to reach in time, and he legged his way to first. While fans often overestimated the ease with which hitters could magically just go the opposite way during the shift’s heyday — as if that’s so simple against big league pitching — Schwarber actually was fairly good at it. Despite not being quick, even deceptively so, Schwarber ranks 20th since 2015 in groundball hits the opposite way against shifts and shades, with 38 of them in 69 attempts. That .551 BABIP is nearly 100 points above the league average of .460 over the same timeframe! Read the rest of this entry »

For the second night in a row, Houston’s bats came alive, powering the Astros to a 10-3 win in Game 4. The outcome of the game was only briefly in doubt, and by the middle innings, the Rangers had the mop-up crew on the mound to finish things off. With the series now tied at two games, the Astros have at least guaranteed that if they have to make a last stand in the ALCS, it will come back home.

Just over a day ago, the Rangers and their fans had to feel pretty good about where they stood: up two games to none, with Max Scherzer returning to start at home. ZiPS had the series at that point as nearly 80-20 in favor of Texas. The computer wasn’t working against consensus here; the simple truth of the matter is that having to win four of five games against any team is quite tricky. But the latest chapter of the Mad Max saga turned out to be a forgettable direct-to-DVD release, and Thursday night’s game was enough to put the Rangers back at square one in the ALCS.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m always a fan of a playoff series that we haven’t seen before, and oddly, the Astros and Rangers have never faced off in the postseason before. But we’ll finally get that battle for Texas supremacy this year in the ALCS, after the Astros shut down the Twins to win in four and the Rangers swept the Orioles and sent them back home for the peak of the steamed crab season. For this championship series, we also get a team without an obvious claim to superiority over the 2023 season, as both tied for the division at 90–72, leading to an unsatisfying Game 163-less conclusion based on head-to-head records.

Houston and Texas having never faced off in the postseason is one of those little accidents of history. The Senators/Rangers took until 1996 to make the playoffs for the very first time, and the Astros only moved to the AL before the 2013 season. Despite playing in the same league, the two franchises haven’t really had their periods of success overlap; 2023 is just the second season in baseball history in which the Astros and Rangers won 90 games in the same season, the only other time being in 1999 (when both teams lost in their respective divisional series). Read the rest of this entry »

If the Twins were supposed to be a speed bump on the Astros’ familiar path to the World Series, nobody sent them the message, as they got revenge for Game 1’s 6-4 loss with a convincing 6-2 victory that wasn’t even as close as the score. By winning Sunday, the Twins ensure that we’ll finally have at least one series this postseason that isn’t a sweep as the teams head to Target Field for Game 3.

While nearly everyone on the Twins contributed in Game 2, I don’t think many people will disagree with me when I say that this was Pablo López’s game. While he held the Blue Jays to one run in his Wild Card start, I wouldn’t call that outing a dominating performance. This one was. Against the Astros, a better offense than the Jays, López went seven strong innings, striking out seven and allowing six hits. Bill James’ Game Scores might not be a whiz-bang Statcast measure, but I think they do a great job of giving a general feel of starts from a historical, fan perspective, and López’s Game Score ranks very high among Twins’ postseason outings since the Senators moved to Minnesota:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies summarily dispatched the Marlins in two games this week in the wild card round, setting up a rematch with the Braves in the NLDS. On paper, Atlanta is the superior team, one that topped the majors with 104 wins this season and won the NL East by 14 games over Philadelphia. But playoff series aren’t won on paper, and baseball is the coin-tossiest of the major sports; its playoffs aren’t about crowning the best team, but the winning team — two correlated yet different things. The Braves had a 14-win advantage over the Phillies last year, too, and that didn’t keep Philadelphia from sending Atlanta back home on a midnight plane to Georgia in four games. The Phillies could easily do it again.

The Phillies didn’t come away with a championship in 2022, but anyone claiming that they had an unsuccessful season should have their pants checked for fire-related damage. Knocking out the Braves ought to have given them significant satifaction last year, given how Atlanta had come out on top in recent seasons. Both teams spent much of the mid-to-late 2010s in rebuilding processes, but the Braves had considerably more success; their 2022 playoff appearance was their fifth in as many seasons. Philadelphia, on the other hand, had trouble developing impact players at the rate Atlanta did; 2022’s postseason run was the franchise’s first in 11 years. Read the rest of this entry »

Whatever happens to the Twins for the rest of the playoffs, at least there won’t be any more talk about laundry-based curses. After five shutout innings from starter Sonny Gray, the Twins continued to keep the Jays’ bats silent en route to a 2–0 win in Game 2 to clinch the wild card series.

If nothing else, Wednesday’s game was a showcase of station-to-station baseball that’s generally unheard of these days. While a certain former All-Star shortstop broadcaster spent much of the game bemoaning Toronto trying to hit for power rather than stringing base hits together, the latter is the one thing the Jays were actually able to do, collecting nine singles on the day. But with the exception of Santiago Espinal, out at second on Matt Chapman’s double-play grounder in the sixth, all Toronto runners finished their innings stranded. The Twins didn’t do any better at hitting for extra bases, but aided by a walk allowed by José Berríos and then another by his controversial replacement, Yusei Kikuchi, their singles came at an opportune moment.

This was only the 21st game in playoff history to feature no extra-base hits, but only three games had more combined hits than the 16 for the Jays and Twins. Those were all higher-scoring affairs — two had 11 runs, and the third had a combined nine — so you can argue that there has never been a playoff game in which the absence of doubles, triples and homers was felt more. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s one thing to join a club, but it’s another thing to start your own club entirely. That goes doubly so when the requirements to enter your club are harder to obtain than a liquor license in 1928. Ronald Acuña Jr. had already earned his 40–40 membership last Friday. That was the hot club in town back in 1988 when Jose Canseco started it up, but with five members now, it’s not quite as exclusive as it once was. So Acuña started up his 40–70 club, and he gets the prime parking space. And still not quite 26, there’s more time to start up some new clubs.

I tend to have mixed feelings about these clubs in baseball. They’re undeniably cool, in the way we’re all attracted to round numbers, and the key clubs and milestones give us an underpinning to compare accomplishments across baseball history. There’s something satisfying about experiencing the game in a similar fashion to someone 30 or 50 or 75 years ago as a shared cultural event, and these number-based chases are a big part of that. On the other hand, they also tend to be somewhat arbitrary in their construction and focus on a different direction than the one I’m interested in: what numbers mean rather than what they are.

When I’m not thinking about how fun something like a 40–70 club is or a 50–50 club would be, I can’t help but ask myself, “Hey, wouldn’t the 46–68 club have been a lot more meaningful than 40–70?” And the HR–SB club, unlike hitting 400 homers, has the added baggage of comparing two very different things with very different values. At least the Triple Crown isn’t a bad model of offense if you don’t have OBP and SLG; homers, batting average, and RBI cover most offensive contributions, even if the weighting is rather inaccurate.

The 40–70 club isn’t something I’d give extra credit for in an MVP vote; Acuña’s homers and stolen bases are already part of his statistical record. But thankfully, I’m not an MVP voter this year, so trying to separate Acuña and Mookie Betts is a problem I’m relieved to not have to unwind. My colleague Jay Jaffe made an excellent case for why he might break the tie in Betts’ favor. I’ll give a counterpoint in Acuña’s favor, but it has little to do with club membership and more about defense. While there’s some additional value to Betts’ flexibility, at the same time, there’s simply far more uncertainty around defensive numbers than offensive ones.

But if you’re not tired already of the MVP arguments, I guarantee you’ll be exhausted with it nearly two months from now when the award is announced. So let’s talk about something more fun, like the chance that Acuña can manage to top himself in the future with more than a full healthy season back under his belt. Read the rest of this entry »