The speculation about Padres third baseman Manny Machado exercising his opt-out clause after the 2023 season came to a stunning conclusion over the weekend, as club and superstar agreed to an 11-year, $350 million contract. The new deal rips up the final six years of the contract that Machado signed before the 2019 season.

If nothing else, tally one team that is apparently not concerned with the short-term hiccups in baseball’s revenues due to the Bally/Diamond bankruptcy; the Padres are one of the teams with a regional sports network (RSN) that is affected. If revenues are up in the air, they have made sure that third base certainly is not, following an extension that will also keep Yu Darvish in town for all or most of the rest of his career. The Padres aren’t trying to be the Rays, the scrappy underdogs that hunt very large game with a sharpened stick; they’re trying to go toe-to-toe with the Dodgers at their own game. This is less David versus Goliath and more M. Bison versus palette-swapped M. Bison in “Street Fighter II.”

My colleague Jay Jaffe covered a lot of the particulars about the Manny situation in San Diego last week, so I’m going to skip the exposition. I think Jay and I both underestimated just how motivated the Padres were to ensure Machado stayed in mustard-and-brown for a long time. We had a ZiPS projection in that piece, but now that we know where he will play and for how long, I ran a new projection.

Let’s just say that ZiPS isn’t overly enthusiastic about the contract, valuing Machado’s future services at $181 million over 11 years. He is a superstar, but there’s a big difference between signing a player before their age-26 season and their age-30 season. Just to illustrate, here’s the projection a second time, but with Machado the age he was when he signed his initial deal with the Friars.

That’s a valuation over $400 million, a notable difference! The sad truth is that even for superstars, the 30s are more often than not a tale of significant decline. Just to illustrate, here are all non-active position players worth between 41–51 WAR through age 29 (Machado is at 46.6) and how they fared in their 30s.

ZiPS actually has Machado aging slightly better than the average player in this group, with an additional three WAR over about 1,000 more plate appearances. The three active players at the end of their careers that I chopped off wouldn’t make this any sunnier a list; none of Miguel Cabrera, Evan Longoria, or Andrew McCutchen have aged particularly well.

Some of the decreased projection is due to the fact that Machado is no longer a defensive star at third base as he was earlier in his career. Defense doesn’t decline as rapidly as people think at the non-speed positions, and the fact that Nolan Arenado’s glove has stayed quite steady gives him kind of a fallback position if his bat declines. Machado no longer has that luxury.

Despite my grumpiness as an analyst who inevitably has to play devil’s advocate, let me emphasize that I’m certainly not shedding any tears for the pocketbooks of team ownership. While speculating what the Padres’ analytics gang has for Machado over the next 11 years would be a wild-ass guess, I know enough to know that ZiPS does not generally give projections that are grossly different from ones that teams run internally. The team’s ownership group, led by Peter Seidler, was no doubt given all the information the team had internally of this type and is also aware of the revenue situation, his personal net worth, and the fact that the big jump in baseball’s luxury tax threshold from 2021 to ’22 is much, much smaller in subsequent seasons of the CBA. They take this risk with the eyes wide open.

Even as a risk, it’s hard to dislike this signing as a fan of baseball. It’s refreshing to see owners who want to keep their teams together, who prioritize putting the best team on the field right now, and who directly challenge another of baseball’s elite franchises. Baseball’s system of playoffs and revenue sharing incentivizes just sneaking into the postseason every year, and if I worked for a team, I’d recommend the same cynical view that is prevalent among franchises. So it’s nice to see a team with a little more ambition, one willing to be happy with the increases in team value rather than also requiring a healthy profit every season to boot.

There remains a big unanswered question in the form of Juan Soto. Keeping him may cost $40 million a year, and I now have to wonder just how far San Diego’s willingness to spend will stretch. Are the Padres really willing to already be at $200 million for 2025–27 with two starting pitchers under contract? The farm system has nowhere near the depth that it had a few years ago, after all; ZiPS had no Padres prospects in its Top 100. While our prospect team placed two, the farm system ranked 26th at the end of last year, and though the new rankings aren’t out yet, I can’t imagine they’ve moved up a ton. But we’ll worry about Soto later.

By signing Machado, the Padres have signaled that they’re here to win now, and that the current aggressive spending isn’t just the apogee between the fire sales that have peppered San Diego’s franchise history. They’re going after the Dodgers on their own turf, and that’s pretty cool. Now the win now team just has to do the hard part and actually win now.

For the eighth time, we’ve reached the point in the offseason where I run down the ZiPS Top 100 prospects. For those wandering in who may hear “ZiPS” and think of the University of Akron or possibly the popular Cincinnati burger spot, ZiPS is a computer projection system that crunches a lot of data about players and attempts to peer through the fog that obscures the future. More can be read about the system here or in MLB.com’s executive summary.

ZiPS is a useful tool, but the projections, whether for prospects or for baseball as a whole, are not intended to replace scouting. The purpose of ZiPS is to get the best answers possible from the data available, not necessarily to be the one-ring-to-prove-them-all-unified-field-theory-giant-Katamari-Damacy-ball of prognostication. ZiPS doesn’t see some things that scouts do. But by being able to process large amounts of data and instantly put those numbers into context and make adjustments, ZiPS also sees some things that scouts can’t. Computers and humans have different strengths, after all.

How well does it work? ZiPS, like human scouts, has its own share of gigantic misses (hello, Arismendy Alcántara), but it also has a number of notches in its virtual belt. ZiPS regularly ranked lots of future stars, such as Mookie Betts, Austin Riley, and Pete Alonso, significantly higher than consensus. Last week, a reader looked at Top 100 lists from 2018 onward and ZiPS did just as well as others, including naming the most players with 5 WAR so far (29).

Naturally, there is a lot of agreement between ZiPS and other lists when it comes to top prospects. Elite prospects tend to please both the scouts and the silicon, and 68 of this year’s ZiPS Top 100 overlap with the official FanGraphs Top 100. The ZiPS list should be used in addition to other lists, not in a mutually exclusive fashion.

I’ve adjusted the methodology of the rankings slightly, going with the interquartile mean for career WAR rather than the 50th percentile projection. That’s because, with the benefit of hindsight, it consistently slightly outperforms the 50th percentile rankings (though none of the actual rankings will be retconned for the ZiPS Cinematic Universe). ZiPS will still have a tendency to like high-floor, low-ceiling players more than scouts do. This is understandable given the nature of projections; scouts are optimistic by nature, traveling to Hagerstown or Kannapolis to see something special, not just to find a useful fourth outfielder or innings-eating fourth starter.

So, let’s get to the Top 100. The position listed reflects where the player has played the most recently; ZiPS is making no attempt to gauge where a team will choose to deploy a player, so take that into consideration:

To make it easier for fans to know whether they should be delighted or furious with me and Mr. Szymborski’s monster, I’ve also prepared a useful summary chart for each team:

For the second straight year, the Cleveland Guardians do extremely well here. The Baltimore Orioles ranking highly should be no surprise, even with Adley Rutschman graduating. The Cincinnati Reds better rank highly after dumping most of their team, and I’ve already talked about ZiPS secretly being paid off by the Diamondbacks. It’s jarring to see the Braves and Padres so low after how dominant they’ve been in the rankings previously, but a lot of that is the price of success; Austin Riley, Michael Harris II, Spencer Strider, and Vaughn Grissom would all be ultra-elite this year, but they’re all in the majors, a result the Braves no doubt prefer. As for the Padres, they’ve made a lot of trades in recent years, which will naturally reduce the level of talent in a farm system. The only other team shut out of the Top 100, the Detroit Tigers, can take some solace in the fact that they’re tied for third overall when you extend to 200 prospects.

Since a chart of 100 players is unwieldy, let’s break it down by position, and talk about a few of the highlights. Me saying “ZiPS says X” for 100 individual prospects would be rather boring, so please, put your questions in the comments if there are things you’re curious about! And for detailed breakdowns of the players as a whole, be sure to check out The Board. We’ll start with first base:

First base prospect lists just aren’t what they used to be. Teams are generally (rightfully) resistant to moving their prospects to first unless they have to. Generally speaking, there are two tiers of first base prospects here. The top four all rank in the ZiPS Top 200, then there’s a big drop-off from Matt Mervis at 189 to Niko Kavadas at 282. Triston Casas tends to be the consensus top first base prospect, but ZiPS likes Kyle Manzardo even more; he has one fewer year of pro experience, but the minor league translations are more impressive and because he’s younger, ZiPS sees more chance of a tantalizing breakout. ZiPS wasn’t overly enthused by Tyler Soderstrom’s performance, but is much happier when you take his age into consideration. ZiPS prefers Mervis to fellow Cub Trey Mancini, but Mervis finishes fourth here by virtue of being older than Manzardo, Casas, and Soderstrom, and the computer just not seeing as much upside as it does with those three.

No, ZiPS did not give additional points to Jorbit Vivas for having such a fun name. The second base list has some of the same characteristics as first base, simply because a lot of the “true” best second base prospects are currently playing shortstop. Vivas ranks 78th in the Top 100, while Adael Amador, a shortstop who ranks six places ahead of him, doesn’t even crack the top 15 at his position! Connor Norby, along with Jordan Westburg and Joey Ortiz, is why I’m sort of annoyed with the Orioles for making one of their few free agent signings second baseman Adam Frazier. Even by 2022 minor league offensive standards, a second baseman with a .960 OPS is someone you shouldn’t sleep on, and as a former second-rounder, it’s not like Norby doesn’t have a pedigree. Justin Foscue has been a ZiPS favorite for a while, with the computer seeing him a bit like Nick Solak if Solak had met expectations. There’s still a question about Edouard Julien’s ultimate position, but he has a fascinating offensive profile. The projections know to not go too nuts over walk-heavy minor leaguers, but Julien isn’t a passive, power-less bat; he hit .300 with 17 homers at Double-A in 2023. There’s a pretty wide range of possible outcomes when it comes to Julien, but with a little luck, his long-term projections would involve a higher batting average than the rather unimpressive mean projections he currently has.

Here’s where you can see some serious prospectage from top to bottom. I hope Orioles fans can forgive me for Gunnar Henderson ranking behind Corbin Carroll, but he’s still the best shortstop prospect among a very impressive group. And if he moves to second or third base, he’s the best prospect at those positions as well! Henderson had one of the biggest breakout seasons for a shortstop in prospect history in 2022, and it’s with good reason that he’s quickly moved into ultra-elite territory.

The most controversial projection here may be that of Orelvis Martinez, who ranks above some seriously high-quality shortstop prospects. Most of that is a dispute over position; there’s a real question whether he can stick at short or will move to third base. ZiPS uses a Total Zone-esque method for looking at minor league defense, for which I have the location/angle hit of every defensive play in the minors. This method nailed players like Luis Robert Jr. as minor leaguers, and right now, it thinks Martinez is below average but not alarmingly so. If he turns out to be Hanley Ramirez-esque at shortstop, he drops very quickly in the rankings given the competition here.

The Cincinnati Reds have accumulated a comical number of shortstop prospects. Elly De La Cruz, Noelvi Marte, and (surprisingly) Matt McLain all make the top 15. Edwin Arroyo missed, but he ranks 58th overall, and yet another shortstop, 2021 third-rounder Jose Torres, finishes in the Top 200. Spencer Steer and Christian Encarnacion-Strand, both higher-floor/lower-ceiling guys in ZiPS’ view, ought to feel a bit of urgency because someone here is inevitably going to join the fight for third base!

Jordan Walker doesn’t get the shiniest mean projection — ZiPS projects 1.8 WAR from him in 2025 — but his upside is quite explosive. If we look at the 75th-percentile projections for 2025 instead of the 50th, that 1.8 WAR jumps to 3.7 WAR. Simply put, ZiPS think there’s a decent chance that Walker puts up some obscene home run totals, even if that’s not necessarily the over/under line. ZiPS is a fan of Curtis Mead causing a position battle at third for the Rays, which I imagine will result in someone ending up in an outfield corner. I hope the presence of Coby Mayo discourages the O’s from prematurely moving Henderson to third like they did with Manny Machado when they gave priority to J.J. Hardy. Last year’s surprise third base inclusion, Bryan Ramos, maintains his rank, and ZiPS doesn’t know that the Dodgers will probably have Miguel Vargas play other positions more often than third in 2023.

ZiPS is going to be Super Annoyed if Francisco Álvarez spends a good deal of the season at Triple-A Syracuse, to a degree that humanity is fortunate I’m nowhere near smart enough to program Skynet. I like Omar Narváez, but Álvarez has a good chance to be something truly special, and there comes a point where the Mets are just wasting his time in the minors. Endy Rodriguez has leapfrogged way ahead of Henry Davis among Pirates catching prospects thanks to his 2022, and while it doesn’t have an effect here, I like that the Bucs are still occasionally using him at second base and in the outfield, which could make him some kind of Beast Mode Austin Barnes.

Bo Naylor’s power blew up in 2022, so it ought to be no surprise to see him rank so highly, and the Angels now have two catchers here, with Logan O’Hoppe likely being a semi-starter as a minimum in 2023. Harry Ford is one of the names on the list that really interests me. As an aside, I’m going to keep saying Harry Ford whenever possible because my dumb brain still calls him Henry Ford about half the time. ZiPS is a bit concerned about his defense; 14 passed balls and eight errors for Harry Ford is a lot in 54 games, and while Harry Ford’s not hopeless at controlling baserunners, it’s also not really a plus. But Harry Ford’s bat, which went from high school to full-season ball very quickly with few consequences, may end up playing anywhere. Harry Ford.

ZiPS sees Corbin Carroll as the class of the 2023 prospect contingent, a franchise player who the Diamondbacks should try to sign to a long-term deal as quickly as possible. (They appear to be doing this.) Jackson Chourio ranking second in the outfield group isn’t a shocker, and ZiPS loves his combination of power and speed. The first big surprise is Alexander Canario. ZiPS thinks his defense is better than the consensus in center field, and based on some of the advanced hit data from the minors, the system thinks he got totally hosed in the BABIP department. Add in impressive power upside and you have a pick that might look genius or absolutely crazy in three years. Remember, all of the projection misses remain Carson Cistulli’s fault.

The most notable projection here may be how low Nats outfielder James Wood ranks. In this case, ZiPS is designed to be skeptical about players with little minor league time — and completely agnostic about high schoolers yet to debut — and it’s actually fairly impressive that he ranks this highly. If all goes well, Wood has an easy path to the ZiPS overall top 10 in 2024. That is, if he doesn’t blow through the minors quickly; the Nats were certainly willing to give Juan Soto a chance very, very quickly, and if he continues to hit like this, it’ll be hard to not use Wood similarly. Colton Cowser slipped a lot after a rather weak Triple-A debut; without it, he’d rank 87th overall rather than tumbling to 105. One other big slipper is George Valera, who ZiPS still sees as a prospect despite dipping to no. 71 after placing fifth overall last year. The scouts seem to have gauged him better than the computer, at least in 2022.

Surprisingly, there’s quite a lot of agreement between the ZiPS list and the FanGraphs list at the top of the pitching ranks. Eight of the top nine prospects in ZiPS are basically the top pitching prospects on Eric and Tess’ list. I’d have liked to see Grayson Rodriguez stay at the top, but you can’t deny that 2022 added some additional uncertainty to the mix. A lot of the disagreement on the remaining pitcher, Daniel Espino, may simply come down to the fact that ZiPS isn’t aware that his shoulder problems have continued, which is something that should always frighten you about pitching prospects! Ricky Tiedemann may be the most impressive big jumper here, as it’s hard for a pitcher to rank this highly based on so few professional innings; that simply reflects his dominance in those innings.

Blake Walston is the first big surprise here, a low ceiling prospect who didn’t have an impressive season on the surface in 2022. But on a play-by-play level, ZiPS thinks his high BABIP and too-high HR/9 (.341, 1.35) weren’t actually earned from his pitching, and given how offense exploded in the minors, ZiPS is much sunnier about his recent campaign. ZiPS continues to like Matthew Liberatore, and he’s joined by two teammates, Gordon Graceffo and Tink Hence. Hence’s rank is more impressive than it looks for a reason similar to Tiedemann’s: he only has 16 starts above rookie ball! But what a 16 starts they were. Fourteen strikeouts per game with a low walk rate and just a single homer? Sign me up. More of this, and Hence will rank like Rodriguez or Eury Pérez in ZiPS (I checked). Drey Jameson and Ryne Nelson join ZiPS’ Arizona Bias Factory to give the team four of the league’s top 30 pitching prospects by ZiPS. Mason Montgomery is one of the ZiPS low-ceiling/high-floor specials; pitching in the Trop against the backdrop of a pitcher-friendly big league offensive environment, ZiPS sees Montgomery’s control as just good enough to give him a shot at crafty lefty territory.

Kodai Senga’s relatively low rank reflects the fact that he’s already 30 and has fewer years remaining than other pitchers who work out rather than indicating any skepticism about his abilities.

Comments? Questions? Complaints? The comment section is open!

[Note: Masataka Yoshida was originally not flagged as a rookie and left off the list due to the slight incompetence of the author -DS]

Despite three seasons until he hits free agency, the Pirates find themselves at a crossroads with Bryan Reynolds. Pittsburgh shipping out veterans as they approach lucrative paydays is a 30-year-old story, and as the team’s young(ish) star with the most service time, it’s no surprise that Reynolds would be the subject of constant, swirling rumors. He and the Pirates talked about an extension, but nothing came of it; seeking a little more clarity, the 2021 All-Star requested a trade. Luckily, unlike the Gerrit Cole situation, there hasn’t been a decisive break between player and organization, and Reynolds is still open to discussing an extension. But what kind of extension is realistic for Reynolds, and will the Pirates be able to field a contender while they have him?

Per The Athletic, the Pirates and Reynolds were about $50 million apart in their extension talks. Given that this $50 million isn’t, say, the difference between $300 and $350 million, it’s a notable separation. Pittsburgh’s offer was six years and $75 million, covering a few years of free agency; that would be the largest contract in team history, but that mostly reflects the ultra-thrifty approach of the Bucs, not some surfeit of munificence on their part. Compared to the eight-year, $70 million contract that Ke’Bryan Hayes signed, it seems downright miserly, given how far away Hayes was even from arbitration at the time.

Reynolds had a notable dropoff in play from 2021 to ’22, going from .302/.390/.522, 6.1 WAR to .262/.345/.461, 2.9 WAR, but a large chunk of that dropoff was to be expected given the pattern of what happens to players after career-best seasons. And in any case, there was never a chance the Pirates were actually going to offer him a contract consistent with the notion that he was a six-win player, because then you’re getting into Juan Soto territory. But as a three- or four-win player with a few years of arbitration remaining, it’s close enough for a deal to be plausible.

So let’s run the numbers. The current contract, a two-year deal to avoid arbitration, already covers the 2023 season, so we’ll focus the projection as an extension past this season. Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Dan Szymborski: SzymChat is *back* now that I’m firmly in the domain of the living.

12:02

Dan Szymborski: Players tend to be stubborn about dropping pinch-hitting.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: And with Albies, he isn’t *so* bad left-handed that the issue is likely to be forced.

12:04

Dan Szymborski: I mean, he’s still at around a .750 OPS left-handed

Read the rest of this entry »

The Oakland A’s and Miami Marlins pulled off a minor trade over the weekend, with the A’s sending former first-round pick A.J. Puk down to Florida while another former first-rounder, outfielder JJ Bleday, headed to the CurrentCorporateName Coliseum. Puk had arguably his best — and healthiest — season as a pro in 2022, appearing in 66 1/3 innings over 62 games, all in relief, while putting up a 3.12 ERA and 3.69 FIP for the A’s. Bleday’s season was notably less successful, especially after a July call-up that led to a .167/.277/.309 line with the parent club while basically being a full-time starter.

For the Marlins, the draw of bringing Puk in is obvious. As I’ve noted in the past, I’m generally leery of the Marlins trading offense for pitching, considering how little they have of the former. But in this case, it’s hard to really describe Bleday as “offense,” while Puk is coming off an very successful season. While Puk succeeding as a late-inning reliever isn’t the sexiest outcome given his status as a prospect, it’s an important building block considering the time he’s missed as a pro due to Tommy John surgery, a shoulder surgery, and an annoying biceps issue. Just the fact that he came out the other side of those maladies with his upper-90s fastball and command both intact is a pretty big deal in my book and ought to have made Puk interesting to most teams.

Puk’s actual role for Miami is far from set in stone. It would be tempting to just call him a late-inning reliever — he’s arguably the top lefty in the bullpen and is less heartburn-inducing than Tanner Scott and more explosive than Steven Okert. But it’s hard to definitively close the book on him as a starter given his pedigree, build, and desire to start in the majors. The A’s had hinted that they were willing to explore using him as a starter in the spring, though that’s no guarantee that the Marlins will have the same willingness. That said, it should also be noted that the Marlins have been very reluctant to move some of their explosive young pitchers with injury issues to the bullpen full-time. Puk the Reliever is a solid contributor, but not a star, while Puk the Starter could still achieve stardom if he managed to stay healthy. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2023 ZiPS projections have all been incorporated into the site, and while there will be some additions (platoon splits), changes (there’s a weird RBI bug affecting a handful of very poor minor league hitters) and updates to come, the player pages now contain the projections for the upcoming season. Our Depth Charts also reflect ZiPS along with Steamer, enabling David Appelman to crank up all the dials and flick all the switches, and you to blame me as well as Steamer when a team’s projection doesn’t look right to you!

Spring doesn’t actually start in the Northern Hemisphere until March 20 this year, but the real spring, baseball’s spring training, kicks off in a week when pitchers and catchers report. While it’s unlikely that these are the precise rosters that will eventually start playing exhibition games, the vast majority of the significant shifts in player talent have already happened.

So where do we stand?

Naturally, I used the ZiPS projection system to get the latest run of team win totals. Borrowing from my piece on the American League, the methodology I’m using here isn’t identical to the one we use in our Projected Standings, meaning there will naturally be some important differences in the results. 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 logic and reasoning. ZiPS then generates a million versions of each team in Monte Carlo fashion — the computational algorithms, that is (no one is dressing up in a tuxedo and playing baccarat like James Bond). Read the rest of this entry »

The 2023 ZiPS projections have all been incorporated into the site, and while there will be some additions (platoon splits), changes (there’s a weird RBI bug affecting a handful of very poor minor league hitters) and updates to come, the player pages now contain the projections for the upcoming season. Our Depth Charts also reflect ZiPS along with Steamer, enabling David Appelman to crank up all the dials and flick all the switches, and you to blame me as well as Steamer when a team’s projection doesn’t look right to you!

Spring doesn’t actually start in the Northern Hemisphere until March 20 this year, but the real spring, baseball’s spring training, kicks off in a week when pitchers and catchers report. While it’s unlikely that these are the precise rosters that will eventually start playing exhibition games, the vast majority of the significant shifts in player talent have already happened.

So where do we stand?

Naturally, I used the ZiPS projection system to get the latest run of team win totals. The methodology I’m using here isn’t identical to the one we use in our Projected Standings, meaning there will naturally be some important differences in the results. 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 logic and reasoning. ZiPS then generates a million versions of each team in Monte Carlo fashion — the computational algorithms, that is (no one is dressing up in a tuxedo and playing baccarat like James Bond). 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. Rounding out the 2023 projections? The Tampa Bay Rays.

Batters

The Rays lineup presents a tale of two offenses. On the good side is a team with one of the best 2B/3B/SS combinations in the majors. Yandy Díaz had a monster 2022 season, basically as offensively amazing as it’s possible for a corner infielder with below-average power to be. ZiPS is low on Díaz relative to Steamer and The Bat, and his projection here is still excellent. It’s a real shame that he’s somehow still underrated in the eyes of fans, even in an age when most people realize on-base percentage is a thing. Díaz isn’t quite Eddie Yost or Eddie Joost in terms of pure walk rate, but he’s a mold-breaker along similar lines. With Isaac Paredes needing at-bats of his own and Curtis Mead aggressively pushing his way up from the minors, the Rays will almost certainly continue to use Díaz at multiple positions. I’d be happy with any of those three as my starting third baseman.

Brandon Lowe had a disappointing, injury-filled season, but it would take some severe recency bias to forgot that he was an elite second baseman in 2021, which wasn’t exactly an eon ago. Wanderkind Franco had his own injury problems in 2022, but he’s still very young, certainly young enough that you shouldn’t fret about it too much (yet). With some luck in terms of health, the Rays will have one of baseball’s best infields even if they get very little out of first base. Unfortunately, the computer doesn’t expect the Rays to get much out of first base. ZiPS has never been in on Jonathan Aranda, even after his most promising minor league season yet. Given the offensive explosion in the minors, ZiPS doesn’t translate his .318/.394/.521, 18-homer season for Durham as well as you might think, only having him at a .276/.341/.420, 12-homer season. Combine that with a poor debut and you can see why ZiPS really hopes that Aranda’s future is at second, not first. The player ZiPS does like is Kyle Manzardo, who gets a translation of .267/.346/.456 for his age-21 season, his first full pro campaign. Manzardo has a very good chance to be the top first baseman on the ZiPS Top 100 Prospects list next month. 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 San Francisco Giants.

Batters

The Giants are a good team. They certainly didn’t feel like one for much of the middle portion of last season, but after a disappointing home sweep by the rival Dodgers in mid-September, they mopped up the Rockies and Diamondbacks and banked enough wins to get back to the .500 mark. Bringing in Michael Conforto as a decent starter/reclamation project meaningfully upgrades the outfield, and the Mitch Haniger signing was practically a bargain for a player who could be a top-tier designated hitter again if healthy. There’s a real solidity to the roster; no one on the infield has an impressive projection, but they have a lot of those guys on hand. Without even being aggressive, there are six or seven players on the team who could take one of the non-first base infield jobs and be at least passably adequate in the role. The problem here and in the outfield, however, is that the Giants can’t combine their 1.5-to-2.5 WAR guys together into three-to-four WAR players like piles of Legos. You could go full horror movie and try to sew David Villar to Wilmer Flores, but you won’t get an All-Star in the mix, just a couple of very angry players, an arbitration case, and a visit from the local constabulary. Platoons don’t really count here, either, as you can’t get a thousand plate appearances from a single platoon!

It’s not that Giants didn’t try. They were, after all, very close to inking Aaron Judge to a monster deal, talked seriously with pretty much every big free agent hitter out there, and were even the prospective employer of Carlos Correa before all of the drama that ended with the star shortstop returning to the Twins. So unlike a team with a need that it simply didn’t address, the Giants were cognizant of the weak part of their team — the lack of a big star to build around offensively — and tried very hard to correct that situation. The problem is that when the season starts, there’s no credit given for attempted WAR. Whether you fail to land a star after giving it the ol’ college try or because you’re the Cincinnati Reds, the result is the same: that player wearing someone else’s uniform. 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 Atlanta Braves.

Batters

If you’re wondering why Steve Cohen was willing to spend the GDP of a Pacific island nation on the 2023 Mets, you’re looking at the most compelling reason. The Phillies made the splash by bringing in Trea Turner, but that roster simply doesn’t cause terror in the eyes of their opponents. This one does.

What makes the Braves especially scary? A lot of times when you see a lineup this good, it’s a team full of guys nearing free agency, sure to depart due to the cost of keeping the band together. But these aren’t The Beatles of Abbey Road or Let It Be; Atlanta is still in the Revolver phase. Dansby Swanson was the one guy who departed, and though Vaughn Grissom is a projected downgrade, he still looks like a league-average player, which the Braves will be perfectly content with. In any case, Kyle Wright got Shelby Miller as his top comp, so maybe they can trade him for a new Swanson at some point!

Like the Mariners, the Braves do have that one unfortunate spot in left field. The combination of Eddie Rosario and assorted others feels out of place with the rest of the lineup, as if the Braves suddenly forgot the DH position existed and had to scramble internally once the local press noted that Joey Jo-Jo Junior Shabadoo didn’t sound like the name of a real player. As such, it would be nice if they added another outfielder, simply for depth, though it’s not strictly necessary unless an emergency situation happens, such as the loss of Ronald Acuña Jr. or Michael Harris II to injury. Yes, the Braves are an elite team with a lineup hole, but with players in the top tier at catcher, first, third, center field, and right field, and certainly a chance of that at second, this is a filthy batting order regardless.

Pitchers

The rotation isn’t as exciting as the lineup, especially after Max Fried and Spencer Strider, but the Braves get some very solid projections here. There are questions about the three pitchers in the back end of the rotation: can Wright repeat? Does Charlie Morton have a bounceback left? Can Mike Soroka stay healthy?

ZiPS is cautiously optimistic about all three of them, but the projections do like quite a few of the pitchers the Braves have in reserve. It sees Ian Anderson and Bryce Elder as legitimate major league starters and has a lot of positive math-generated feelings about Jared Shuster and Kolby Allard. Huascar Ynoa would have been included in that final group of reinforcements if not for Tommy John surgery already all but ending his 2023.

Even with the loss of Tyler Matzek to Tommy John surgery, the bullpen remains incredibly deep. Here’s a game to play: go down our depth chart for the Braves and find the names that ZiPS sees with an ERA+ under 100.

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You don’t get a reliever ZiPS doesn’t like — or even one with a projected ERA+ under 110 — until you get down to the eighth man on the depth chart, Dennis Santana. Go farther down and there’s still Nick Anderson (projected ERA+ of 111), Jesse Chavez (102), Jackson Stephens (106), Seth Elledge (100), Victor Vodnik (104), and Michael Tonkin (107) to go. The Gwinnett Stripers might have the 20th-best bullpen in the majors in 2023.

It’s not just ZiPS liking Atlanta because Alex Anthopoulos secretly deposits gold into my accounts in the Caymans; Steamer also ranks the Braves as having the top bullpen in baseball. The WAR projection on the depth chart would have been even better but for the fact that ZiPS uses leverage index and automatically had to reduce the projected leverage index of some of the pitchers, as there just weren’t enough high-leverage appearances to go around for everyone.

The Braves ought to be one of the teams competing to lead the majors in wins in 2023. And ZiPS believes they have the highest floor of all the reasonable contenders — the Mets, Cardinals, Dodgers, Padres, Yankees, Blue Jays, and Astros. This is an excellent team.

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