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2022 ZiPS Projections: Detroit Tigers

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Detroit Tigers.

Batters

ZiPS doesn’t usually catch me completely by surprise, but the Tigers’ 2022 offensive projections are, as a group, a solid step or two ahead of what I expected. In fact, the difference is enough to make me think a bit more positively about exactly where the Tigers are in the American League Central. Detroit didn’t hit all that well in 2021, but they were a galaxy ahead of a ’19 season when they literally scored about 200 fewer runs than the average offense. Last season, they almost clawed their way to the middle of the pack, and that was without really getting all that much good fortune. Sure, they got a very good year out of Jeimer Candelario and Akil Baddoo seemingly came out of nowhere, but nobody really hit a level of performance that looks like it will be a challenge to repeat. Read the rest of this entry »


2022 ZiPS Projections: San Francisco Giants

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the San Francisco Giants.

Batters

I feel a bit of disquietude when projecting the 2022 Giants. Following up on your biggest team projection miss in nearly 20 years of making said projections doesn’t feel great. Even worse is when your current projection is far closer to the previous year’s very wrong forecast than it is to the previous season’s actual win total. It’s a challenge to convince people that I didn’t write a model for sour grapes and reassure them that I’m an egalitarian who hates every team equally, no matter which one you root for!

In this case, I generally agree with ZiPS that the most significant regressions toward the mean will come on the offense. Let’s start with catcher. At least with the bat, Buster Posey matched some of his best seasons with his stunning 2021 campaign, this despite sitting out the entire 2020 season. With a 35-year-old catcher, it was already likely that some of those wins were going to melt off San Francisco’s total, but Posey’s retirement makes the position even more uncertain. Joey Bart is an outstanding prospect, but even just replacing Posey’s 2022 projection is going to be a tall order. ZiPS does like Bart’s bat a little better than Steamer does, but I don’t think he’s going to make fans forget their retired franchise player particularly quickly. Read the rest of this entry »


2022 ZiPS Projections: Seattle Mariners

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Seattle Mariners.

Batters

This is one case where just taking a glance at the depth chart graphic could lend the wrong impression. In the below graphic, two of the four most valuable ZiPS-projected hitters have their contributions split among multiple positions, with lesser players bringing down their overall numbers, and a third isn’t even on the depth chart. What’s more, the Mariners have reasonably good depth, especially offensively, and while the ceiling on most of the lineup isn’t exceptionally high, I do think they have a pretty high floor. I also don’t believe that Evan White has anywhere near enough remaining rope to get 300 plate appearances in 2022 if he matches his projection below. Read the rest of this entry »


2022 ZiPS Projections: Baltimore Orioles

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Baltimore Orioles.

Batters

The history of the post-Earl Weaver Orioles has not been a happy one. Over his first stint with Baltimore, from 1968 to ’82, they were the winningest team in baseball, with 1,570 total wins, and averaged four wins per season more than the next-best team, the Reds, during that stretch. At no time during this era did the O’s finish below .500, and that even leaves out their last World Series championship in 1983. Weaver wasn’t just one of the best managers in baseball, but a very modern manager who used what analytics were available at the time.

But the failure of the O’s isn’t just a failure of managing. Weaver was great, but the team’s assembly line of young talent was a pivotal piece to the puzzle. While there are certainly some notable successes, the Orioles simply haven’t produced that much talent over the last 20–30 years. It certainly didn’t help that they placed a low priority on finding talent in Latin America for a long time, depriving them of a source that pretty much everyone else in baseball happily accessed. Read the rest of this entry »


Cubs Add Marcus Stroman Right at the Lockout Deadline

The Sugar Glum Fairy had one last holiday treat for us before the lockout rudely intervened, with the Cubs signing starting pitcher Marcus Stroman to a three-year contract. After opting out of the 2020 season while recovering from a calf injury, he resumed his career without missing a beat, starting 33 games for the Mets with a 3.02 ERA and 3.49 FIP, good for 3.4 WAR.

Over three years, the total guarantee for the deal is $71 million, with $25 million coming in both 2022 and ’23 and a $21 million base salary for ’24. For each 160-inning season in ’22 and ’23, $2 million is added to the ’24 salary, making it a tidy $75 million. Stroman also has the ability to opt out of the final year of his contract, becoming a free agent after 2023. Let’s jump straight into the projection.

ZiPS Projection – Marcus Stroman
Year W L S ERA G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA+ WAR
2022 13 9 0 3.60 31 31 170.0 163 68 19 47 148 121 3.5
2023 12 8 0 3.71 29 29 155.3 153 64 17 44 132 118 3.0
2024 11 8 0 3.82 27 27 148.3 148 63 17 42 123 114 2.7

Nothing looks particularly odd about the projection or the contract. At the salary assumption I’m going with this winter ($7.3 million for a win with 3% yearly growth), ZiPS would suggest a $70 million deal over three years; over five, it suggests $109 million, putting Stroman’s valuation very close to both that of Robbie Ray and Kevin Gausman. Stroman, though, was not subject to a qualifying offer due to accepting New York’s qualifying offer for the 2021 season (Gausman was in an identical position, but Ray cost the Mariners a draft pick). I’m mildly surprised that he didn’t land a longer deal, but whether the fact that he didn’t was due to inability to get one or simply a desire to get another crack at free agency in the not-too-distant future in a normal winter is unknown to me. If I ran a team or the MLBPA foolishly accepted a bizarre proposal from owners that resulted in my computer setting all salaries, I’d be happy to give him five years at $109 million. (Note to any negotiators: the Szymborski cartel’s service fee is 0.05% of base salary)
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The Big Maple Heads to Boston

As the hours wound down on MLB’s collective bargaining agreement, the Red Sox took one last flier, signing left-handed pitcher James Paxton to a one-year deal worth $10 million, with a two-year, $26 million club option.

Never a bastion of durability — he’s never thrown enough innings in a major league season to qualify for the ERA title — Paxton’s had a particularly rough couple of seasons. In 2020, he underwent surgery to remove a peridiscal cyst, a type of spinal lesion, but last year’s late July start gave him enough time to be ready for the season. Unfortunately, when the season actually did get underway, he was missing about 3 mph from his fastball and suffered from significant soreness in his elbow. That soreness was diagnosed as a flexor strain, but there was no ligament damage found at the time. The New York Yankees had initially been hopeful that he’d recover to at least make a postseason appearance, but further setbacks prevented him from returning.

After signing with his old team, the Seattle Mariners, the 2021 season didn’t go any better. It only took five batters for an injury to knock Paxton out for the year, requiring Tommy John surgery. This can’t be described as anything but a brutal setback for a player who, from 2016-19, had finally settled into a pattern of being mostly healthy if used carefully. Read the rest of this entry »


Some Quiet Moves Were Made, Too: Rounding Up the Reliever Signings

Lots of money flowed ahead of this week’s unofficial lockout deadline, but not all of the moves involved swimming pools of cash. Among the many made were some low-key bullpen additions, usually by contenders, all of which arguably upgraded their respective bullpens. Let’s talk about some of the more interesting ones!

Michael Lorenzen to the Angels

Lorenzen signed a one-year, $6.75 million contract to head to Anaheim, a surprisingly juicy figure for a pitcher with an ERA well in excess of five for the Reds in 2021. As you may have guessed, his peripheral numbers were better. A FIP just over four isn’t going to evoke prime Craig Kimbrel, but it’s a good bit better than the rest of the disasters in Cincy’s bullpen. The drop in strikeout rate was scary, but ZiPS doesn’t think it’s real when looking at the Statcast data, estimating that you ought to have expected him to finish up with 12 more strikeouts than he actually racked up — an impressive number in only 29 innings. Among relievers, that was the second-largest negative deficit, behind only Keynan Middleton of the Mariners. Scouting can also pick up this sort of thing, which is likely one reason the Angels were so willing to drop this amount of money.

The other is that Lorenzen wants to explore being a two-way player more than he got to in recent years. The Angels are apparently happy to grant this wish, given they’re the home of arguably the best (simultaneous) two-way player ever in Shohei Ohtani.

Lorenzen’s .233/.282/.429 line doesn’t scream “spare outfielder,” but one has to remember that his at-bats have been widely scattered, hampering his offensive development. In addition, a healthy chunk of them came as a pinch-hitter, a role in which players hit considerably worse compared to games they start.
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Mariners Finally Land an Ace With Five-Year Deal for Robbie Ray

Cross another top starting pitcher off the list, as the Mariners agreed on Monday to a five-year deal with the reigning AL Cy Young winner, Robbie Ray, formerly of the Blue Jays. The contract, worth $115 million, also includes a no-trade clause for the first two seasons and an opt-out that Ray can exercise after the 2024 season.

It’s quite the reversal of fortunate for the lefty, who was coming off an unforgettable 2020 campaign; anybody would have a hard time wiping their memory of a season in which they walked eight batters per nine innings. The Jays will be sad to lose him, but in signing him last year for all of $8 million, they scored one of the top starters in baseball plus earned an extra draft pick as a chaser — and Ray’s replacement, Kevin Gausman, who was signed over the weekend, is a pretty good pitcher himself.

It’s hard to say that Ray emerging once more as a solid contributor in 2021 was a complete shock — ZiPS projected an ERA of 4.15, and I believe Steamer was in the same neighborhood — but few saw him returning to the pitcher he was in 2017. And while some regression toward the mean is likely, given the simple fact that his FIP was a run worse than his ERA, there are few danger signs lurking in the shadows. His fastball was as hard velocity-wise as it’s ever been, and it’s rare for a large improvement in walk rate to be a mirage. He was as hard to make contact as he usually is, but this time, batters couldn’t simply wait for him to throw a couple fastballs in the dirt.

ZiPS Projection – Robbie Ray
Year W L S ERA G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA+ WAR
2022 11 8 0 3.45 31 31 182.7 140 70 30 56 240 121 3.6
2023 10 7 0 3.53 29 29 170.7 133 67 28 53 219 118 3.2
2024 10 7 0 3.65 28 28 165.0 132 67 28 52 207 114 2.9
2025 9 7 0 3.64 26 26 151.0 121 61 25 47 189 115 2.7
2026 8 6 0 3.76 24 24 141.3 114 59 25 46 177 111 2.3

Like most of the big signings, the contractual terms seem to align with the reasonable expectations and the risk. Just like the Rangers aren’t paying Marcus Semien as if he’ll finish in third place in the AL MVP race again, Seattle isn’t paying Ray as if the baseline expectation is a Cy Young repeat. At $7.3 million per ZiPS WAR and 3% yearly salary growth, which I’ve been going with this over this offseason (though this is obviously a guessing game), ZiPS projects a five-year offer at $109 million, just under what he actually got. It’s a good price, and I think given where the Mariners are in the AL West right now, they could have justified spending quite a bit more if they had to in order to land him.
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Mets Add Marte, Canha, Escobar in Thanksgiving Weekend Shopping Spree

Like many Americans last weekend, the Mets took out their credit cards once the Thanksgiving turkey was digested, coming to terms with three free agents on multi-year contracts. Starling Marte, coming off the best season of his career, received the most lucrative package, a four-year deal worth $78 million. New York also clarified its third base situation considerably with the addition of Eduardo Escobar on a two-year, $20 million contract. And the team’s revamped outfield may have been completed with the final of the three signings, a two-year, $26.5 million pact with former Athletic Mark Canha. Neither Marte nor Escobar was eligible for a qualifying offer, and Canha did not receive one from Oakland, so the Mets have clear sailing in terms of draft pick compensation.

The Mets were busy, but then again, they kind of needed to be, given their losses in free agency. Coming off a disappointing 2021 season, a collective 11 WAR-worth of players walked off into the sunset of the open market, resulting in a lot of needs to address this winter. All three of these signings fill holes on the roster, and along with the obvious interest in Steven Matz given some very angry words, they indicate that the Mets are focused on adding as many pieces as they can (with Max Scherzer set to join the rotation as well; more on that to come).

A centerfielder entering his age-33 season isn’t typically the most likely candidate for a long-term contract, but like Lorenzo Cain when he signed with the Brewers, Marte starts from a high enough perch to give him plenty of room to decline before he’s a drag on the team. He never had that crazy breakout year that seemed possible in his early days with the Pirates, but he’s also never truly had a bad season; he was only below 2 WAR in 2017 due to a suspension stemming from a positive test for Nandrolone, and he was well above a two-win pace in the shortened 2020 season. His power has faded from his peak, but he’s compensated with improvements as a more selective hitter making more contact. Most veteran players aren’t quick enough to “unwind” launch angle gains and reap a benefit from hitting more high-BABIP grounders, but Marte is still very quick, finishing just out of the 80th percentile in sprint speed and above the 90th-percentile cutoff for speed to first base. Before he and Whit Merrifield did it in 2021, the last player 32 or older to steal 40 bases in a season was Alex Rios back in 2013.

ZiPS Projection – Starling Marte
Year BA OBP SLG AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SB OPS+ DR WAR
2022 .273 .334 .422 498 78 136 26 3 14 57 33 31 107 1 3.1
2023 .268 .329 .410 456 70 122 23 3 12 51 30 25 102 1 2.5
2024 .266 .325 .407 428 64 114 21 3 11 46 26 22 100 0 2.1
2025 .262 .319 .385 397 56 104 18 2 9 40 23 19 93 -1 1.5
2026 .257 .307 .370 346 46 89 14 2 7 32 17 14 86 -2 0.7

ZiPS projects decline from Marte, but the contract’s terms reflect that of a player in decline. At $7.3 million per win with 3% annual growth (which I’m assuming for other contracts in this article as well), ZiPS projects a $77.7 million deal over four years, basically indistinguishable from what he got. Brandon Nimmo had surprisingly good defensive stats in center for a change in 2021, but even if you think he’s now underrated defensively there, he’ll be excellent in right, and hopefully less injury-prone at a lower-impact position.
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Texas Signs Marcus Semien for Seven

Marcus Semien finally landed his long-term contract over the weekend, coming to an agreement on a seven-year, $175 million deal with the Rangers. The tritagonist of the AL MVP race in both 2021 and ’19 hit .265/.334/.538 with 6.6 WAR for the Blue Jays in 2021, playing in all 162 games for just the second time in his career.

The exact distribution of the money is not yet public, so we don’t know about opt-outs, options, buyouts, incentives, and the like. But whatever the fine print says, this is a big contract, and one that it looked like Semien would never be able to land. A late bloomer, he was not widely considered a top prospect around baseball, though he ranked 31st in the inaugural ZiPS Top 100 Prospects before the 2014 season after terrific all-around performances in ’13 for Triple-A Charlotte and Double-A Birmingham. But it was the outlier here, and the White Sox of the time were not a particularly imaginative organization. They didn’t see him, then error-prone, as a shortstop, and in any case, Alexei Ramirez had an ironclad hold on the position. This was the era in which the Sox seemed determined to play Gordon Beckham at second indefinitely, despite any performance-based reason for that strategy, and little attempt was made to find a role for Semien on the roster. He, along with Chris Bassitt and a couple others, was shipped off to Oakland after the 2014 season for Jeff Samardzija.

Oakland has never shied away from being the Island of Misfit Toys and found a better use for Semien, and like Marco Scutaro, a stathead darling from a decade prior, he turned out to be a low-cost, league-average infielder. With the help of Ron Washington, he improved immensely with the glove and nearly put up his first 4-WAR season in 2018. When his power broke out, as it did the following season, he was a legitimate contender for the AL MVP award.

The next time you hear bemoaning about how players always have career years right before they hit free agency, remember to keep the example of Semien in your mind. He finally made it the market after 2020, his age-29 season, but was coming off a relatively unimpressive follow-up to his MVP-caliber ’19, hitting .223/.305/.374. It was hardly a lousy year by any stretch — his 1.2 WAR represented a 3.1 WAR pace over a full campaign — but it was one to get the word “fluke” out there.

With the hope of a bounceback season in a year not drastically shortened by a raging pandemic, he signed a one-year deal with Toronto worth $18 million, positioning him to get one more chance to land a big deal. That bet paid off, and while the shape of his contribution changed between ’19 and ’21 — less batting average, an easier defensive position, more power — a second big season answered a lot of questions about just how good a player he was.
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