12:00

Dan Szymborski: Let’s start the madness. I mean chat.

12:01

Dan Szymborski: Blue Jays tomorrow. I was travelling back through snow and then had to dig out my driveway and my mom’s driveway. Measured nine inches on my back lawn.

12:02

Dan Szymborski: I think it’d be close

12:02

Dan Szymborski: But on the no side

Read the rest of this entry »

For the 21st 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 New York Mets.

Batters

It’s funny how a few months can change the vibes surrounding a team. After a disappointing 75-87 season in 2023, the Mets had a relatively light winter going into 2024. While the team didn’t squeeze every penny until it screamed like, say, the Marlins, Sean Manaea’s two-year, $28 million contract was the big ticket signing, with the rest of the free agents brought in came on one-year deals to fill specific short-term roster holes. The rather bland winter transitioned into an equally bland season. Or, shall I say, an equally bland start of the season. Because a funny thing happened on the way to the draft lottery: After dwelling below .500 as late as July 6, the Mets played nearly .600 ball in the second half, made it into the playoffs, and fell only two wins short of reaching the World Series.

By contrast, this winter has been a loud one, mainly due to the addition of Juan Soto, who signed the largest contract in professional sports. Soto’s addition gives the Mets one of the most feared offensive forces of this generation, and though the Mets didn’t struggle with run scoring in 2024, his addition likely wipes out the potential impact of any regression toward the mean from players like Mark Vientos or Francisco Lindor. With Soto on the team now, the Mets project as average or better at every single lineup spot. This sets up an odd kind of philosophical debate in which the Mets may be one of the teams that needs Pete Alonso’s 2025 services the least while wanting them the most! So is the life of a good first baseman heading to over-30 land and showing some early signs of fading.

ZiPS is a big fan of Jose Siri starting in center field for the Mets, and with Brandon Nimmo joining Soto at the corners, the outfield shouldn’t be a worry for the Mets. Vientos likely takes over at first in an Alonso-less world, with Brett Baty getting what is likely his last chance with the Mets. While I wouldn’t want to count on Baty working out, one has to take chances on players like him; remember when everyone was piling on the Mets before 2024 for having faith in Vientos? Over at second, Jeff McNeil’s on the downslope of his career and recovering from a broken wrist, but ZiPS thinks he’ll rebound enough to keep the position about league average. McNeil’s approach at the plate, which results in a lot of contact against pitches he really shouldn’t be swinging at, will continue to be maddening at times, of course; entering his mid-30s, he’s not likely to reinvent himself as a hitter.

Bottom line: By pairing Soto with Lindor, the Mets have a really good offense, one that may be just a skosh behind the elite ones.

Pitchers

ZiPS like the Mets’ offense quite a lot, but its cyber-feelings about the rotation are more mild satisfaction than enthrallment. Of the breakout soft-tossers from 2024, ZiPS much prefers former Met Seth Lugo to current Met Manaea. And yes, I’m old enough to still feel in my heart that it’s weird that guys throwing 92-93 mph are the soft-tossers. ZiPS does have confidence in Kodai Senga and the Clay Holmes Starting Experiment, and it sees David Peterson as a solid league-average starter. Where the computer doesn’t have much confidence is in Frankie Montas, but if he’s their fifth-best starter, they’re not doing too badly.

ZiPS believes the Mets have pretty solid starting pitching depth behind the front five, too, but oddly enough, not in the first two pitchers likely heading that queue: Paul Blackburn and Griffin Canning. The projections would much rather see Brandon Sproat get an aggressive call-up if an early need presents itself, and lesser prospect Jonah Tong also has a solid projection. Prospects like Blade Tidwell, Dom Hamel, and Nolan McLean also come out on par with or even better than the veteran backups.

As for the bullpen, ZiPS kind of sees a really polarizing unit, not all that different from what Steamer projects. Edwin Díaz, José Buttó, Reed Garrett, and Dedniel Núñez all project solidly, but then there’s a big step down to the next tier. Basically all of the WAR accrued in the ZiPS projections are from these top four relievers; of the remaining guys, ZiPS is especially skeptical about Danny Young, Génesis Cabrera, Blackburn or Canning in relief, and Chris Devenski. Getting a couple bullpen arms would benefit the Mets greatly, even though signing middle relievers wouldn’t be as sexy as landing Roki Sasaki. (Then again, maybe for the Mets it isn’t an either/or choice.)

The Mets look a lot like an 87-91 win team or so, with the possibility of adding a handful more wins with other moves this winter. I suspect the Braves and Phillies will have slightly better projections by the start of the season – unless New York pulls off another huge deal – but the Mets are right in the thick of it, and a division title is certainly a possibility.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2025 due to injury, and players who were released in 2024. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Ukulele Dixieland Jazz band that only covers songs by The Smiths, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.11.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on BlueSky.

For the 21st 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 Milwaukee Brewers.

Batters

The initial feedback from social media seems to be that folks are unimpressed with the ZiPS projections for Milwaukee’s lineup, but this is one of those occasions where multiple people can look at the same data and reach different conclusions. No, the Brewers’ lineup isn’t projected for a bunch of eye-popping WAR numbers like, say, the Dodgers’ is, but for the most part, they’re solidly above-average everywhere. Put a team like that in the NL Central and it’s very competitive. ZiPS prefers the Cubs’ offense overall, but you’ll see where the Brewers make up some ground when we get to the pitching. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 21st 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 Cincinnati Reds.

Batters

In return for their mini-free agent spree after nearly making the playoffs in 2023, the Cincinnati Reds dropped five wins, finishing 2024 with a 77-85 record. It wasn’t as bad as it looked — the team improved its Pythagorean record by five wins compared to the year before — but it felt lousy that only Nick Martinez really shined among their signings. Elly De La Cruz did break out in a massive way — he was a legitimate MVP contender for much of the season — but Matt McLain’s torn labrum and rib injury kept him away from the action.

A look at the depth chart graphic makes it pretty clear where the Reds are strong: Even with some regression toward the mean, De La Cruz is the team’s most important player, and if healthy, McLain will upgrade second base. Continuing the up-the-middle strength is Jose Trevino, recently acquired from the Yankees; he and Tyler Stephenson give the Reds an excellent tandem behind the plate. TJ Friedl in center gets a less exciting projection, but he’s still perfectly serviceable as a starter, and he’s the worst projected player of the up-the-middle quartet. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 21st 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 Detroit Tigers.

Batters

In a year with a few surprising playoff teams, the Tigers might have the best case to be called a Cinderella story. After a June swoon dropped them nearly 10 games below .500, the Tigers looked like a team playing for 2025, to the extent that with a losing record at the trade deadline, they traded away their second-best starter, Jack Flaherty. But a funny thing happened on the way to the MLB Draft Lottery: The Tigers suddenly started winning. Going 34-19 over the final two months was just enough to squeeze into the playoffs on the season’s final weekend. While Detroit eventually lost to the Guardians in the ALDS in five games, the Tigers did prevent the Houston Astros from reaching the ALCS, the first time that’s happened since 2016.

Looking at the lineup projections, one can see a big part of why A.J. Hinch would have been my pick for AL Manager of the Year, if I had voted in that category. The Tigers basically had one good offensive performance from a full-time player on their roster: Riley Greene. To get to basically being league average in terms of runs scored, the Tigers had to juggle a lot of players of incomplete value, with lots of platoons and matchup choices, in the way that Gabe Kapler ran the 2021 San Francisco Giants — though those Giants had a much better lineup.

But when the dust clears and you look at the projections rather than the 2024 accomplishments, there’s just a lot of average here. Some of the averageness has a lot of upside; there’s a good chance that Jace Jung will be a plus major leaguer, and if he’s over his early-2024 doldrums for good, Colt Keith will be too. Parker Meadows did enough to establish himself as a viable starter in center field. Kerry Carpenter’s a great big spoon in a DH platoon. Dillon Dingler and Jake Rogers are a quietly underrated catcher tandem. But after that, there are simply a lot of questions. ZiPS has no confidence in Wenceel Pérez, and the shortstops don’t combine for a very good projection even with the computer predicting some kind of, umm, bounce back from Javier Báez. The odds that Spencer Torkelson will become a foundational part of the lineup are a lot longer than they were a year ago.

This is a team that really needs to add another impact bat. There are a variety of spots in the lineup they can target, and players like Alex Bregman and Teoscar Hernández remain on the board. This is a team that has two years left before its Cy Young-winning ace Tarik Skubal reaches free agency, a team that plays in a division that has no big dogs; this is the perfect time to make a push. This is a team that could sign Bregman and Hernández and still be tens of millions of dollars below a $200 million luxury tax number. Jung and eventually Max Clark and Thayron Liranzo all project to be contributors in the majors, but 2025-2026 are too soon to realistically expect them to have star-level breakouts. There’s work to be done here.

Pitchers

Skubal projects as the best pitcher in the majors, so that’s a nice place to start. ZiPS is widely a believer in the rest of the rotation’s abilities, but not so much the rest of the rotation’s attendance. There’s a lot of injury risk in Alex Cobb, Casey Mize, and Reese Olson, and even Skubal’s just over a year removed from serious injury. Olson and Cobb both project with ERAs below four, Mize isn’t that far off, and Jackson Jobe, Keider Montero, and Matt Manning all project as legitimate starters in the majors. But how many innings will they get from this crew? That was a question that Hinch had to answer back in October, and he answered it by basically relying on Skubal and having the bullpen construct a Potemkin rotation behind him. That’s not a formula that can be repeated over 162 games. Maybe other needs and the possibility of extending Skubal prevent the Tigers from going after Corbin Burnes or pursuing a Flaherty reunion, but this is a team that just begs for a middling inning-eater. Kyle Gibson anyone? Really, the Tigers should give Justin Verlander the hard sell on one last season in Detroit to cap off his Hall of Fame career.

The bullpen, of course, projects to be terrific. What a change from a few years ago! The front four of Beau Brieske, Jason Foley, Tyler Holton, and Will Vest project to be as dominating a quartet as you’ll find right now, and Alex Lange will join them at some point later in the season, depending on his progress recovering from lat surgery. ZiPS also has a surprising fancy for Brant Hurter as a reliever. The only pitcher in the pen that the projections actually hate is Kenta Maeda, who struggled in 2024 before being exiled to the bullpen, where he was more passable. Given the work to be done elsewhere, I’m not sure the Tigers need to do much with the relievers but wish them a good holiday and look forward to their February return.

Right now, ZiPS projects the Tigers to be about a .500 team. A .500 team with some upside is a team to take seriously in the AL Central, and there’s still the theoretical possibility that the Tigers do more this winter.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.