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

Batters

It may be the world’s most depressing bounce-back season, but Eric Hosmer’s .262/.320/.425, 1.1 WAR projection would be his best season so far in San Diego. It’s shocking there are still six seasons left on Hosmer’s deal, short of an ill-advised opt-out after year five. Hosmer’s contract creates an awkward situation for the Padres, in that he represents the starting player most in need of an upgrade. Josh Naylor already projects to be as good a player and Ty France, projected at second, has a higher-projected OPS+. I actually held my breath to see if Aderlin Rodriguez, a minor league free agent who spent 2019 in El Paso, also projected to have a better bat (he didn’t).

Outside of Hosmer, there’s very little to complain about. Jurickson Profar had a weak 2019, but ran a BABIP nearly 20 points below the average pitcher’s, so ZiPS is highly skeptical that represents anything near a true ability. It would have seemed crazy to trade for Trent Grisham a year ago, but he was one of the players who most outperformed their projection, finally putting up a terrific minor league season (albeit in a supercharged offensive environment). Read the rest of this entry »

“I am, as I’ve said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary.” – Billy Joel

The Cardinals are never really thought of as a small-market franchise, but in terms of the size of its media market — which is where the money comes from — St. Louis ranks between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Yet historically, the Cardinals have been able to punch above their weight, and built a fanbase much larger than you would expect from the size of the city.

One of the ways they’ve been able to do this is by building a consistent culture of winning. They don’t always make the playoffs, but the Cardinals are rarely a lousy team. There’s almost certainly no one alive who remembers a 100-loss Cardinals squad, unless I’m drastically underestimating the probability that one of the few remaining 116-year-olds was a Cardinals fan in 1908. The last time the team even lost 90 games was nearly 30 years ago, in 1990. And while I roll my eyes at the Best Fans in Baseball business, during the team’s three-year stretch without a playoff appearance from 2016-18, their longest drought in 20 years, attendance at Busch Stadium was practically unchanged.

Since John Mozeliak, now the team’s president of baseball operations, was named general manager after the 2007 season, the Cards have reached the Platonic ideal of Cardinalia. Only once has a Moz-led team finished below 85 wins, but even in the 100-win season, the team didn’t feel like an unstoppable juggernaut; no Cardinal that year garnered serious MVP or Cy Young support. Instead, the team projected steady competence.

The Setup

The St. Louis Cardinals have been baseball’s most consistently above-average team in recent years. But how does one measure that above-averageness? I like to set 90 wins as kind of the benchmark for a very-good-yet-not-great team; like most humans, I’ve been programmed to like pretty numbers that end in zero. And since Mozeliak took over from Walt Jocketty, the Cardinals have been the closest to the 90-win mark year in and year out:

In a dozen years, the Cardinals missed 90 wins by a total of 42 wins. The 2019 Detroit Tigers missed 90 wins by a larger margin in a single year! And it’s not just chance either; in the 12 years of ZiPS projected standings, the Cardinals had the smallest difference between their 10th and 90th percentile win projections in six of 12 seasons. At the top end, only a single Cardinal since 2014 has been in the top five in the NL in WAR for a pitcher or a hitter: low-key NPB pickup Miles Mikolas in 2018. And by the same token, the Cardinals lows are quite high; only two teams in baseball received fewer replacement-level plate appearances or batters faced than the Cardinals:

After the 2018 season, their third straight year without postseason baseball, St. Louis had a new problem: how do you shake up this situation? And, from the point of view of the people paying the salaries, how do you make that happen without spending $300 million on a Bryce Harper or a Manny Machado? As with Matt Holliday and Jason Heyward, the Cardinals decided to aggressively acquire a star before signing him to a long-term extension. This worked well with Holliday, as the team was able to re-sign him after he hit free agency; they had less success keeping Heyward, a failure that, in hindsight, I’m sure they’re positively giddy about.

This time, the big move was Paul Goldschmidt, who had a year left on his contract. The price was steep, with Luke Weaver and Carson Kelly looking like real major leaguers, but it was a refreshing gamble from a team that tends to go the safe ‘n’ sensible route. Let’s name all the first basemen who were worth more wins from 2013-18:

…

[crickets]

So, the Cardinals expected they had secured their plug-and-play offensive powerhouse. The winter was quiet otherwise, with the team’s other big pickup being Andrew Miller, formerly of the Cleveland Indians. There was a real need for added bullpen depth, as the team’s relief corps struggled in 2018, ranking 26th in bullpen WAR. Miller was just as eager to wipe out memories from the previous season, one in which his ERA rose to 4.24 and his FIP to 3.51, both worsts since the Red Sox converted him to relief in 2012. The hope was that Miller, along with continued improvement from flamethrowing standout Jordan Hicks, would give the Cards a potent one-two punch in the bullpen.

The Projection

ZiPS projected St. Louis to finish a close second behind the Chicago Cubs, with a mean projection of 86 wins. While a few years ago it looked like the NL Central would struggle against the Cubs juggernaut, that team’s frugal payroll strategy and weakening farm system left them more of a jugger-not. (Yes, I’m ashamed of that sentence.)

There was no concern about their first-base acquisition, with ZiPS projecting a .270/.379/.479, 4.4 WAR line for Goldschmidt, putting him behind only Freddie Freeman and Cody Bellinger. ZiPS thought the Cardinals had a two-win player at every single position in the lineup, plus Jose Martinez and Tyler O’Neill.

But ZiPS had concerns about the rotation. The computer projected Carlos Martinez to be the team’s best starting pitcher, but due to injury, he was ticketed for the bullpen. The system was skeptical of both Michael Wacha, who was coming off 2018 injuries, and Dakota Hudson and his big fastball but erratic command.

The Results

The season got off to an auspicious start before it even actually began when St. Louis was able to sign Goldschmidt to an extension a week before Opening Day. And while the Cardinals eventually won 91 games — an unsurprising result for the eternal 90-win team — the specific events that got them the NL Central title were far from anticipated.

Imagine you woke up from a coma in November, were unable to access the internet, and asked me to tell you how the Cardinals did in 2019. Now, let’s say I was a bit of a jerk, and rather than just telling you the team’s record, I detailed the list below and made you guess how many wins the team ended up with:

• Paul Goldschmidt had his worst year since 2012, hitting .260/.346/.476, and failing to hit the three-win threshold despite playing in 161 games.
• Matt Carpenter struggled all year, hit .226, and ended up with 1.2 WAR.
• Michael Wacha had shoulder problems and an ERA near five.
• Carlos Martinez never got back into the rotation.
• Harrison Bader regressed significantly.
• Jordan Hicks needed Tommy John surgery.
• Miles Mikolas went from leading the NL in wins to leading the NL in losses.
• Jedd Gyorko barely avoided being released.
• Yadier Molina had his worst OPS since 2007. [2010 -DS]
• Andrew Miller pitched even worse than he did in 2018.

At this point, the doctors would kindly-yet-firmly ask me to stop, as you cried out, “Sweet mother of mercy, are we the Orioles now?”

But nope! 91 wins.

St. Louis needed a lot of quality production to win the division, even as one of the baseball’s weaker ones, but it was largely from unexpected places.

Jack Flaherty becoming a serious Cy Young candidate was a monster addition to the roster. I still like Luke Weaver, but appears the Cardinals picked the right young starting pitcher to send to Arizona.

And despite the setbacks to Miller and Hicks, the bullpen was a real plus for the team in 2019. Martinez may not have made it back to the rotation, but he stayed healthy after his May return and earned his 2.86 FIP. Giovanny Gallegos — one of ZiPS’s favorite little-known pitchers entering the season, who was projected for a 137 ERA+ (24th among all pitchers in baseball) — actually beat that lofty forecast. Fringe prospect Tommy Edman came up midseason, hit .304/.350/.500 while playing multiple positions, and finished the year worth more wins than Goldschmidt, Marcell Ozuna, or Carpenter.

The Cardinals rode into the playoffs and advanced to the NLCS after beating the Braves in an exciting five-game series, capped off with a 13-1 shellacking in Game 5 so forceful it might have knocked Atlanta out of the 2020 playoffs as well. But what the team did to poor Mike Foltynewicz didn’t continue against the Nationals, as the offense was shut down by Stephen Strasburg, Max Scherzer, and Anibal Sanchez.

What Comes Next?

It has been an exciting winter around baseball so far, but a very quiet one in St. Louis. The team extended a qualifying offer to Ozuna, but they don’t appear to be among the leaders bidders for his services. The team’s luxury tax number is around $179 million, and they have shown little inclination to push towards the $208 million limit. It’s likely the Cardinals will make a few lower-key free agent signings in the next two months — their signing on Tuesday of Korean left-handed pitcher Kwang-Hyun Kim is a start — but with the club having few gaping holes, it’s unlikely there will be any serious upgrades among those.

While that sounds like horrible news for the Cardinals and their fans, it’s unlikely they’ll will be punished for not being more financially aggressive. The Brewers, two games behind the Cardinals in 2019, have shown no movement towards a big-spending winter. And if the Cards and Brewers are being thrifty, the Cubs are being an unrepentant Ebenezer Scrooge, focusing less on how to get more outfield offense and more on finding trade partners for Kris Bryant. Pittsburgh is rebuilding, and while the Reds will likely improve to relevance — and have the best pitching staff in the division — the lineup is still a work in progress. Even treading water, St. Louis still looks to have one of the fastest boats in the division.

2020 ZiPS Projection – Jack Flaherty

How about some good ol’ fashioned fan service? If the season had lasted two months longer, it might have been Flaherty who ended up with the Cy Young award. He was a monster after the All-Star break, putting up a comically low 0.91 ERA and 2.22 FIP in the second half. Much of St. Louis’s late-season surge was due to the fact that Flaherty didn’t have a single bad game after early July. His improvement was largely the result of him developing a better feel for the rest of his repertoire. As he threw fewer fastballs, he saw both an uptick in velocity and an greater ability to get hitters to offer at pitches out of the zone. Being less fastball-reliant made Flaherty the best version of himself.



My colleague Craig Edwards went into greater detail the change in Flaherty’s approach that helped him get into baseball’s elite tier.

ZiPS Projection – Jack Flaherty

Year	W	L	ERA	G	GS	IP	H	HR	BB	SO	ERA+	WAR
2020	13	7	3.13	33	33	189.7	146	23	54	236	131	4.4
2021	13	7	3.04	34	34	192.7	146	23	54	240	136	4.7
2022	13	7	3.02	33	33	187.7	141	22	52	236	136	4.6
2023	12	6	3.03	30	30	172.3	129	21	47	217	136	4.2
2024	11	6	2.95	29	29	167.7	124	20	46	215	139	4.2
2025	11	6	2.96	28	28	161.3	118	20	44	210	139	4.1

As far as regressions go, that’s a fairly mild one. 4.4 WAR is within a win of both Jacob deGrom and Scherzer, both pitchers who are rumored to be at least adequate at this baseball stuff. Jack Flaherty is a legitimate ace, even when his career .254 BABIP inevitably rises.

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Batters

Looking at the hitting projections, it’s not hard to see why the Dodgers didn’t go all-out to sign Anthony Rendon. Rendon, of course, would be an upgrade for any team, but it’s difficult to see how the Dodgers would have gotten maximum benefit. Their worst projected position is right field, manned primarily by Alex Verdugo, and with his projected WAR of 2.0 in 476 plate appearances, even he falls into the above-average category. And it’s possible that WAR slightly underrates the Dodger lineup simply because positional versatility is one of those things that we foggily know is meaningful, though exactly how meaningful we don’t quite know.

ZiPS has been keen on Cody Bellinger for a while. Indeed, this is quite an aggressive win projection for a first baseman. Bellinger’s career home run projection has gone well past 500 at this point, and ZiPS is even baking in a mildish drop in league home run totals, which we don’t know will actually happen. Read the rest of this entry »

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

Batters

ZiPS projects Ketel Marte to regress a bit towards the mean, but not by enough to prevent him from remaining a star center fielder. The outfield corners remain more troublesome, and I believe it is extremely dodgy to assume that a healthier shoulder will be enough to return David Peralta to his career-best 2018 form. Peralta’s quite old for a player with just five years’ worth of playing time — he’ll turn 33 late in 2020 — and it’s quite likely that some age-related decline will counteract a portion of the benefits of (hopefully) avoiding further injury. I’m a fan of Josh Rojas, but I’m not sure his value will really come as a starter in a corner outfield position, where I think his bat will be stretched a bit.

I really would have liked to see Arizona go after Marcell Ozuna, who may actually be underrated at this point, including by me; I was leery of a team chasing after two seasons after him failing to hit the three-win line, but after running his ZiPS projection and looking at my BABIP model (zBABIP), I may have been too hasty to dismiss him. ZiPS thinks Ozuna should have had a .316 BABIP in 2019 based on his profile (his actual was .259) and gives him a .281/.346/.509, 3.1 WAR projection in 141 projected games in Arizona.

The projections aren’t completely sold on Christian Walker, still seeing him as a league-average first baseman. Problem is, ZiPS also is a fan of Kevin Cron — his emergence was huge even by Pacific Coast League standards — and projects him as the slightly better player right now. If trading Walker at some point can get the Diamondbacks another corner outfielder or a starting pitcher, it’s going to be hard to say no to. I don’t think Arizona is a top offense, but I don’t think there are any serious holes at the moment, an impressive turnaround for a team that had an 86 wRC+ as recently as 2018. Read the rest of this entry »

12:03

Dan Szymborski: It’s a-me, Szymio!

12:04

Dan Szymborski: At a time I am aware of!

12:04

Dan Szymborski: Who knows with the Mets. I think it’s more likely a trade would happen in the spring than now.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Giants made two acquisitions Tuesday evening, signing pitcher Kevin Gausman to a one-year contract and acquiring infielders Zack Cozart and Will Wilson from the Los Angeles Angels for future considerations.

These moves aren’t quite as earth-shattering as the Gerrit Cole signing, but both have short term upside for the Giants, which is consistent with the team’s goal of not completely gutting the roster while rebuilding.

Kevin Gausman is a long-term favorite of mine, and the $9 million the Giants will pay him in 2020 strikes me as a reasonable risk to take given the upside he represents. His stint with the Braves in 2019 is one he’d be happy to forget thanks to the 3-7, 6.19 ERA line he put up in 16 starts. It’s very easy to lose sight of the fact that his 4.20 FIP was nearly two runs better than his actual ERA, which was inflated by a .344 BABIP. Gausman’s strikeout rate had faded in recent years, dipping to a lackluster 7.3 K/9 in 2018, so his 9.6 K/9 in Atlanta was roughly a 30% improvement, which generally portends pleasant results rather than what actually happened.

When looking at Gausman’s 2019 hit data, the ZiPS projection system expects a BABIP of .309 rather than his actual .334. That’s still on the high side, but is enough to drop his batting average against in Atlanta from .290 to .252. Batters actually had the lowest exit velocity against Gausman since 2015 at 86.9 mph, which partially explains why even a struggling Gausman didn’t see his homer rate tick up. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Chicago White Sox.

Batters

Yasmani Grandal was a tremendously important addition for the White Sox, giving the team an instant star behind the plate. He’s a good enough hitter that if the physical rigors of catching start to wear on him as he ages, he will still retain some value at first base or DH. ZiPS has been all over the map with Yoan Moncada, but believes that he’s finally turned the corner for good. I’ve declared this several times and been burned before, but I’m going to again make the claim, hopefully for the last time.

ZiPS sees Luis Robert and Nick Madrigal as instant contributors, though just how much the White Sox wring out of those positions will depend on how quickly they reach the majors in 2020. The computer thinks Danny Mendick is a serviceable stopgap who will have value as a utility guy when he eventually loses his job to Madrigal. The non-tendering of Yolmer Sanchez really makes the way the White Sox managed second base in 2019 seem odd in retrospect. If Sanchez’s performance was such that there was a chance the team wasn’t going to offer him a contract for 2020, why not give Mendick more time at second base? It’s not as if Sanchez’s projection got worse between September and November, so the team had to have been at least on the fence by late in the season. A more extensive audition for Mendick would have given the team more information. Read the rest of this entry »

“This is an unfair thing about war: victory is claimed by all, failure to one alone.” – Tacitus

Fair or not, among the general public, success in baseball means winning the World Series. The baseball-cultural definitions of dynasty and success have not evolved as the playoff system has grown larger and less designed to crown the best team. After seven consecutive division titles and no World Series championships, the Dodgers are perceived in large swathes of baseball fandom as being failures. As baseball is no fairer than the rest of life, the fact that the playoff system will naturally create a lot more failures than successes hasn’t shielded the team from criticism.

So after winning 106 games, the Dodgers find themselves in the awkward position of having to explain to fans that there’s no dark, underlying reason that caused them to win only two games in one particular five-game stretch in early October. There are no more key teaching moments in the NLDS loss any more than there were in any of the other 30 five-game stretches in 2019 during which the Dodgers won two or fewer games. Read the rest of this entry »

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

Batters

The 2019 Colorado Rockies ranked fourth in the National League in runs scored, which is actually a rather bleak ranking for a team that plays at Coors Field. “OMGTEHCOORSHANGOVER” has become a convenient excuse for the club’s struggles — at least when they accidentally suggest they’re aware there are struggles — but it’s become a bit of a crutch when talking about the team. There appears to be an effect, but a minor one, unlikely to be worth more than three-to-five points of OPS for Rockies hitters. ZiPS doesn’t take into consideration any “Coors hangover,” and if this were a big deal, then ZiPS would be systematically too optimistic on players going to Coors and too pessimistic on players leaving. But it is not.

I feel like we’ve been over this story a billion times, but very little has changed in Colorado. The team’s offense is largely reliant on having two-to-three players in any given season being MVP candidates, with Nolan Arenado and Trevor Story likely being those two players again in 2020. Ryan McMahon and David Dahl both receive projections that are kinda disappointing, but it’s hard to forget that Dahl’s injury history is long and the Rockies spent two prime development years jerking McMahon around. Read the rest of this entry »

The indefatigable Ken “Robothal” Rosenthal reported Wednesday afternoon that Zack Wheeler had agreed with the Philadelphia Phillies on a five-year contract. Reportedly worth $118 million in guaranteed salary, Wheeler will remain in Philadelphia through the end of the 2024 season, barring a trade.

In my Elegy for ’19 article talking about the Phillies, when discussing the future, my hope was that the team would continue pushing forward financially. While it would seem unlikely that Philadelphia would suddenly become overly thrifty, the club would be far from the first contender to suddenly get nervous about nearing the luxury tax threshold.

Wheeler was always expected to be a top starter. A first-round pick for the Giants in 2009, he was traded to the Mets at the 2011 trade deadline straight-up for Carlos Beltran. Wheeler had little trouble adjusting to the majors, putting up FIPs of 4.17 and 3.55 in 2013 and ’14 over 49 starts for the Mets. Doesn’t it feel a bit odd that a 3.55 FIP was just a little better than league-average as recently as 2014?

During spring training in 2015, Wheeler was diagnosed with a torn UCL, resulting in Tommy John surgery that cost him the entire season. Arm soreness during his rehab in 2016 delayed Wheeler’s comeback with the Mets until the next year. It wasn’t until 2018 that Wheeler really appeared to be picking up where he left off, throwing 182.1 innings with a 3.31 ERA/3.25 FIP, enough for 4.2 WAR. Last year featured much of the same good stuff, with Wheeler’s .311 BABIP likely being partially the fault of an unimpressive Mets defense. Perhaps most importantly, 2019 put Wheeler’s 2 1/2 lost years more comfortably in the rear-view mirror, something important for a team making a significant contract commitment. Read the rest of this entry »