For the 18th 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

There are a lot of problems with the Colorado Rockies as an organization, but I think the biggest one is different than what ails most other poorly run franchises. It’s not parsimony; while the Rockies aren’t exactly the Mets, with a projected 2023 payroll around $163 million, they’re not the Pirates or the Marlins either. Playing in Coors make things trickier, but the team’s already shown they can find viable starting pitching — the biggest challenge in an environment like Denver — and they play in a beautiful park and city, and get consistent fan support. It isn’t even necessarily an analytics problem. While the top levels of the org clearly aren’t on board with the ways modern front offices think about the game — they have a department with sky-high employee churn — this is more a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself. The problem that plagues the Rockies is a lack of imagination.

What do I mean by imagination? With most bad teams, you can imagine the scenario in which they’re good. The Orioles looked like a pretty lousy club entering the 2022 season, but they also had the most high-upside minor league talent in baseball. The Reds have several young pitchers with impressive physical tools, while the Pirates have some interesting starters to go along with some good prospects and young big leaguers at key defensive positions. But if you look at the Rockies, especially the offense, there just isn’t ambition there. While it’s bad that this group projects as one of the worst lineups in the league, it’s even worse that they project as having the lowest variance of any team I’ve projected so far this offseason. It’s a bit like buying a lottery ticket; almost every time you play Powerball, you’re going to be a loser, but if you hit it big, you become fabulously wealthy. Nobody buys a Powerball ticket because the winning prize is a 1989 Mercury Sable. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th 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 Houston Astros.

Batters

The top of Houston’s lineup is dominated by four stars, all of whom could be one of the top three players at their position in any given season. Yordan Alvarez has been ZiPS’ favorite young slugger for a long time, and it’s definitely not seeing anything to make it question its algorithmic stance. Similarly, the system has always been in the Kyle Tucker fan club. Alex Bregman‘s peak was probably in 2018 and ’19, but he remains an elite third baseman, which isn’t easy given the quality at that position right now. We can also be even more confident now that Jose Altuve’s 2020 season was a blip we don’t have to worry too much about. And while he’s entering the downside of his career, he’s starting from a really high point. He bumped his 3,000-hit probability up from 34% to 46% in a single season, and that’s a milestone that’s hard to sneak up on by the back door. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th 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

When you look at Chicago’s offense, you see a lot of the parts of a 90-win team, but not all of the parts. It’s sort of like a birthday cake that’s been frosted, but lacks any decorations. It’s edible, but it isn’t really exciting quite yet. First base and third base are decidedly meh-minus positions, and I feel for poor Matt Mervis, since he keeps projecting for fewer plate appearances than a much worse-projected starter. (Incidentally, I’m only about 80% sure that Matt Mervis isn’t actually Matt Murton with a dye job and some cosmetic surgery trying to get some more service time in.) I’d still like to see the Cubs add at least one 1B/DH option before the season starts, someone like Michael Conforto. Unfortunately, the options there are dwindling.

Don’t get too alarmed by the Ian Desmond comp for Dansby Swanson. Individual comps are 99.9% fun and 0.1% meaningful compared to the large cohort of similar players, and in any case, Desmond aged even worse than the projections thought and Swanson gets a lot of his value from defense, which Desmond didn’t outside of the ability to stand at shortstop for awhile. I feel bad for Nick Madrigal, who had a second season ruined by an injury, this time to his groin, but a team trying to become more competitive can’t just hang around and wait to see if he can make his retro-1960s game actually work. I hope he eventually gets to a lousy team that has the flexibility to look at him. It’s hard to fault the Cubs for not giving him a lot of rope; he wasn’t a guy who came up through the organization and the player traded for him and Codi Heuer, Craig Kimbrel, isn’t someone the Cubs grumble about missing.

The funny thing about Cody Bellinger is that he’s probably a bit underrated overall right now. He had an abysmal 2021 and while one can hardly characterize his ’22 as a triumphant return to his prior glory, he was an acceptable starter in center field. Since he was a legitimate MVP-type just a few years ago, that’s always going to feel bad. Still, he’s 27, not 37, so the projection reflects that there’s at least some chance he has that upside still lurking in his bat somewhere.

Pitchers

ZiPS doesn’t see huge upside for literally anyone in the rotation, but it does see the top three of Marcus Stroman, Justin Steele, and Jameson Taillon as a very stable group. I’m certainly not putting the over/under for Taillon’s playing time anywhere near what’s on the depth chart, however. Sadly, ZiPS does not see Kyle Hendricks as more than a back-of-the-rotation innings-eater at this point in his career, but at least that’s the role he’s expected to fill now, rather than being the team’s de facto ace. Wade Miley is also a cut above the usual fourth/fifth starter [And is a free agent, duh. I had Drew Smyly on the brain. — DS], and ZiPS is a fan of some of the emergency options, like prospect Ben Brown (who I believe will end up in the ZiPS Top 100 prospects this year, though I’m not positive). ZiPS isn’t in on Hayden Wesneski yet, and I think I like him better than the projection does.

The bullpen looks to be a rather mediocre group, with few outright disasters in the projections, but also no real top-tier out-makers for high-leverage innings. Mark Leiter Jr. comes closest; if projected as a full-time reliever, he comes out forecast for a 3.07 ERA. ZiPS joins Steamer in its fascination with hard-throwing reliever Jeremiah Estrada.

In the AL East or NL West, this might be a team fighting for fourth place. But in the NL Central, the Cubs look a team that’s somewhere around .500, and the side of that record they finish on may come down to what happens on the injury front. The Cardinals and Brewers are still better, but it’s close enough that if the right cards flip over, the Cubs could make things interesting. Right now, I think they’re still one star away from forcing the division into a three-way dance.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2023 due to injury, and players who were released in 2022. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Death Dixieland Bubblegum Ska-Funk band, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.22, above 2022’s level of offense but lower than other years. Pitchers who appear to have a fairly definite change in the majors from start-to-relief or vice-versa from these projections will receive reconfigured updates in the spring.

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

For the 18th 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 today’s team is the Cleveland Guardians.

Batters

José Ramírez can make up for a lot of sins, but he can’t carry an offensive single-handedly. But luckily for the Guardians, he looks to have more help than in recent years, even with the surprising and quick decline and departure of Franmil Reyes. Andrés Giménez had a dynamite season, and the fact that he was 23 minimizes the chances that it was a fluke. He is projected to “merely” be worth around four wins instead of six, but people tend to be too quick in assuming that a breakout season represents a complete change in a player’s baseline; the past still matters for players who have breakout (or breakdown) seasons. I’d really like to see the Guardians swap Giménez and Rosario in the middle infield; I think the former is the better defensive player and is likely to be a bigger part of the team’s future than the latter. It’s not inappropriate at all to use him at the more crucial position, though I understand if Cleveland takes a “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” approach and avoids making a change. I do hope he serves as the backup option at short, even if it’s just to preserve flexibility with him for after 2023.

Steven Kwan also has regression toward the mean in the projection — a slightly more serious one than Giménez’s, given that he didn’t start off as high. I don’t actually think ZiPS is wrong on this on, given that it certainly didn’t hate Kwan going into 2022, projecting him at .287/.343/.426 before the season (and I wager most people would have taken the under on that line). As a left fielder without a lot of power, there’s simply only just so much WAR upside at the position. Like Adam Frazier, he is going to susceptible to a huge dropoff on a poor BABIP season, though I think he’s clearly a superior offensive player. Read the rest of this entry »

The Orioles made a low-key signing Thursday evening, inking second baseman Adam Frazier to a one-year, $8 million contract. Frazier struggled in 2022 after being acquired by the Mariners last fall for two minor leaguers, Corey Rosier and Ray Kerr. After a .305/.368/.411, 3.6 WAR season in 2021 that looked as if he had established a new level of play, he spent much of this past season in a fight with the .600 OPS line, a battle from which he narrowly proved victorious.

Frazier will take over as Baltimore’s starting second baseman; the main draw for his service is that he was a bit less disappointing in 2022 than the incumbent second baseman, current free agent Rougned Odor. In that light, one could make an argument that this signing represents an incremental improvement at a reasonable cost. I’m not entirely convinced of this. The O’s don’t start 2023 with the same in-house options as they did last spring, as Gunnar Henderson’s meteoric rise gives them another infielder, and one with massive upside. So the question is whether Frazier is actually much of an upgrade, if at all, over the players who would have likely received playing time at second otherwise.

To get an idea if 2022 or 2021 are closer to some abstract concept of Frazier’s “true” ability, let’s start with the ZiPS projection for him in 2023.

The good news is that Frazier is projected to bounce back somewhat to league-average levels of play. Steamer is generally in the same neighborhood, though it likes his bat a bit more and his defense a bit less. Alas, his projected rebound season is closer to ’22 than ’21, no doubt in large part because some of the fuel powering the latter was a BABIP more than 30 points better than his career average, as well as the fact that he just celebrated his 31st birthday a couple of days ago. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th 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 Arizona Diamondbacks.

Batters

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: ZiPS really, really likes the Diamondbacks. As I mentioned in the early standings run I did a few weeks ago, I actually went back and re-checked everything that was Arizona-specific to make sure that the optimism was correct, and while I can’t say for sure that the computer’s love for this roster is warranted, I can at least say that it was properly generated!

ZiPS was unsure just what to make of Corbin Carroll before last season, as he had very little professional experience, but he crushed it in Double and Triple-A in 2022, rocketing up in the projections as quickly as Gunnar Henderson did. He put up 1.4 WAR in just 32 games in the majors, so it’s not like it’s completely out of the blue. Since Carroll didn’t lose his rookie qualifications for 2023, he’s going to be one of the top few players on the ZiPS Top 100 Prospect list next season. ZiPS rarely projects a rookie to play this well; I feel like I gave almost the exact same lecture about Julio Rodríguez last year! Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Dan Szymborski: And here we are!

12:02

Dan Szymborski: I don’t anticipate labor peace

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Especially if, with so many teams over the CBT and the CBT only growing at 1.5%, teams are quiet in subsequent offseasons

12:05

Dan Szymborski: While I wouldn’t say it’s *just* bad luck, luck inevitably plays some role in these things

Read the rest of this entry »

The Giants made a giant splash on Tuesday night, signing the top free agent remaining, Carlos Correa, to a 13-year contract worth $350 million. One of the biggest free agents last year as well, he took a three-year deal with the Twins worth $105.3 million, but with an opt-out clause that allowed him to hit the open market if a second crack at it seemed like a good idea. After a .291/.366/.467, 140 wRC+, 4.4 WAR season in Minnesota, and an offseason with more owners more willing to make it rain than any year in recent memory, Correa took his shot. It was a well-aimed one.

BREAKING: Shortstop Carlos Correa and the San Francisco Giants are in agreement on a 13-year, $350 million contract, a source familiar with the deal tells ESPN.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 14, 2022

After Trea Turner got an 11-year, $300 million deal with the Phillies, and Xander Bogaerts landed $280 million from the Padres, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to see Correa comfortably clear the $300 million mark. While he didn’t have the best season of these three shortstops, he’s two years younger than Bogaerts and has a longer track record of success than the remaining elite shortstop, Dansby Swanson (and is a tiny bit younger). As I feel with the Turner or Bogaerts signing, this isn’t really a 13-year deal in a meaningful sense, and while the Giants will undoubtedly be overjoyed if Correa is still a star in 2035, that’s a long time from now. Spreading it out over 13 seasons allows his pre-benefit luxury tax number to be just under $27 million a year, something which seems like an unbelievable bargain right now. It’s technically a 25% pay cut from 2022!

Over 13 years, ZiPS actually guessed slightly less on this one, a departure from the big contracts signed this fall. ZiPS has seen enough in recent years to move to a piecewise function, valuing the first win at $5.26 million and subsequent wins at $9.33 million and a 3% yearly boost in both of those numbers. The percentage boost may seem miserly, but MLB’s salary growth has been short of inflation for a while and certainly way behind revenue growth, and helped by COVID, the average salary increased by only $70,000 between 2017 and 2021. MLB’s competitive tax threshold will remain a significant pain point, as will each number that puts a team into the next “tax bracket.” That first threshold barely budges over the life of the new CBA, only increasing 1.5% a year, from $230 million to $244 million.

In all, ZiPS projected a $382 million deal for Correa with the Giants, with $350 million getting you almost through the end of the 10th season of the contract (2032). The Twins apparently offered him a 10-year, $285 million agreement prior to his signing with the Giants; if Correa had an impeccable sense of timing, they displayed a rather poor one. Essentially, Minnesota was fighting the last war rather than the current one, offering a 2022 contract in 2023. Entering the 2022 season, the ZiPS projection for Correa with the Twins for 2023–32 amounted to $278.7 million.

How big a deal is Correa entering free agency at 28 rather than 30? A pretty big one. Below are the ZiPS projections for if I change his 2023 age.

Yes, Correa hit the market a year older, but he also entered it with an additional essentially healthy season added to his résumé. During his age 22–24 seasons, a series of injuries resulted in him only being able to play in 294 out of a possible 486 games. For a player that young, it was an extremely concerning development. But he played in almost every game in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and 148 games in 2021. He missed a handful more games in 2022, but these maladies were more of the freak variety: an injured finger from a ball hitting his hand twice in a May game against the Orioles, and a stay on the COVID-19 list.

The cumulative missed time had an obvious effect on his long-term projections, and after ranking second in projected rest-of-career WAR in ZiPS before 2017, he slipped out of the top 20 before the 2020 season. Correa now has a mean projection of 42.4 career WAR remaining. With it looking increasingly likely that Fernando Tatis Jr.’s days a shortstop are mostly over, that’s enough to give him a projection of the best eventual career WAR of any active shortstop, slightly edging out the Mets’ Francisco Lindor.

The Giants have been active in free agency this winter, signing Mitch Haniger, Sean Manaea, Joc Pederson, and Ross Stripling already. However, while all of these players can contribute a lot in an NL West race, none can reasonably claim the mantle of a star, let alone that of a franchise-leading talent. San Francisco previously tried to burn down the NL West with an Aaron Judge signing, but the Yankees swept in to keep their franchise slugger. Truth be told, I think Correa’s a better fit for the Giants. They arguably need a shortstop more than a star corner outfielder, and Oracle Park is noted for its cruelty to power hitters of all stripes. While Correa hits for power, too, he’s more of the gap-to-gap type than pure loft. I’m slightly bearish on the projected home run totals for Correa, but I think he’ll hit more doubles and triples into Triples Alley in deep right-center than ZiPS envisions.

There’s unlikely to be any position controversy, even with Brandon Crawford signed for another season. While I wouldn’t anoint Crawford the best shortstop in Giants history — that plaudit better fits Travis Jackson or George Davis — he’s almost certainly the most valuable one for the franchise since Horace Stoneham hired the moving trucks in 1958. But Crawdaddy turns 36 next month and came back down to Earth after a fantastic 2021 season. Even more importantly, he’s in a contract year, and when Correa finishes his time in San Francisco, Crawford will probably have been retired for a decade. He’s still a fine defensive shortstop and ought to be a compelling replacement at third base over Evan Longoria and Wilmer Flores.

Losing Correa no doubt has to be disappointing for the Twins, but if they were willing to spend $285 million on him, there are other players out there. $285 million might land you Swanson and Carlos Rodón, and if not, at least the vast majority of their salaries. The AL Central is up for grabs, and that kind of investment may make a bigger difference there than any other division in baseball. It would be a shame if the Twins simply put that cash back in their pockets.

After seeing 36 wins evaporate from 2021 to 2022 and with the Dodgers and Padres looking like first-tier contenders, the Giants had a choice either to go big or to accept their lot as NL West underdogs. They went big, giving out the largest payday, by far, in team history. While the Giants have given out big extensions before, they only signed a single free agent to a $100 million dollar contract between Barry Zito and now (Johnny Cueto). The NL West just got a lot more exciting.

For the 18th 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 next up is the Oakland Athletics.

Batters

Are the A’s the most boring organization in baseball? There are other teams that are in the basement, but the Rockies do outright nuttier things, the Pirates always have a highly interesting player or two, the Tigers bring in the occasional big-name free agent, and the Reds have a few compelling pitchers. Looking around the diamond, the A’s are safely above replacement level nearly everywhere, but outside of a few players, such as Esteury Ruiz, it doesn’t feel like there’s any upside scenario compelling enough to cancel out all of the bland, featureless gray. Not to pick on Jace Peterson, but he feels like a pickup emblematic of this team: he’s cheap and he’s been useful at times, but no matter what happens, he’s likely to just be the Jace Peterson we know. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th 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 today’s team is the Toronto Blue Jays.

Batters

When you look at Toronto’s lineup, there isn’t much to complain about. ZiPS disagrees with Steamer on some of the individual players, but the overs and unders are pretty even, meaning that ZiPS thinks this will be as potent a run-scoring squad as Steamer does. Among the most notable projections? Many of the worries ZiPS had about Matt Chapman were resolved in 2022, while my system is a bit concerned about Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s output after his Statcast data dropped back down to its 2020 levels. It’s still the projection of an All-Star first baseman, but it’s distinctly behind last year’s and certainly well off 2021’s elite performance.

Still, there are a couple of things to gripe about. Slowly transitioning George Springer to right field is a good idea given his age, and with Kevin Kiermaier signed, they’re at least moving him for an excellent defensive center fielder. Kiermaier has his own injury concerns, but there’s nothing keeping Springer from getting plenty of time in center as the Plan B. I think Springer is moving because the Jays have an option and the team is considering his health, as he’s actually held up very well defensively out there. But left field still projects as a “meh” position. ZiPS has never been a Gurriel fan, and the system agrees with Statcast that his 2022 batting average was a bit inflated; the loss of power is also very concerning. I’d love to see the Jays take a stab at a better option here, though players have been coming off the board quickly. Read the rest of this entry »