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So, as you know, it’s been an exciting week. There is baseball! There is baseball, with major-league teams playing against other major-league teams, and sometimes non-major-league teams. Some players have hit dingers, and some pitchers have struck some guys out. Meanwhile, on this very website, we’ve launched 2015 playoff odds, having uploaded all the 2015 ZiPS projections. Those projections have been blended with Steamer to yield the somewhat familiar 50/50 projections that we ran with all last year.

Upon the addition of ZiPS, I ran a polling project I’d already run once before in the offseason. On Monday, I asked you to vote in polls about the 30 individual team projections. I wanted to see where people stand closer to the season, with fuller projections out there, and with a greater understanding of what the rosters are going to be. A polling project means nothing without analysis, so this is that analysis, with sufficient votes having rolled in. I don’t think waiting another few days would change anything. The post itself will probably go pretty quick, since there’s little that requires explaining.

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As of just a short while ago: 2015 playoff odds! The odds we ran through last season are back, with division chances, wild-card chances, World Series chances, and so on and so forth. With meaningful player movement basically complete, with few important roster competitions, and with both Steamer and ZiPS folded in, these are your preseason odds, missing only injuries that happen over the next four weeks. Granted, an injury to, say, Mike Trout could change things quite a bit, but these odds shouldn’t change very much before the real baseball starts. This is a big day for those of us who are obsessed with checking the page 20 times a week. Even though there won’t be a reason to do that for a while, it’s just nice to see the page populated with numbers.

The same page was populated with numbers last March. Numbers based on Steamer, ZiPS, and author-maintained team-by-team depth charts. Which is to say, numbers calculated by the same processes. It seems those numbers are no longer available on the internet, but I’ve had them saved in a folder, so I thought now would be a fun time to look at how the numbers have changed for each team since just before last season. In a way it’s a snapshot of the last 12 months. In another way it’s not that at all, but let’s not dwell on semantics. Relative to last year, who’s going into this season with bigger expectations? On the flip side, who’s most trying to focus on the bigger picture?

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As pitchers go, Craig Kimbrel’s been doing all right. Over the last three years, he leads baseball in adjusted ERA. “Well,” you say, “ERA can be misleading.” Absolutely so! Conveniently, over the last three years, he also leads baseball in adjusted FIP. “But,” you add, “FIP can be misleading in its own way.” Definitely. Observe, then, that, over the last three years, he also leads baseball in adjusted xFIP. For Craig Kimbrel, it’s been a clean sweep.

And he’s done it with two pitches: a really good fastball, and a really good curveball. Just using our pitch-type run values, the last three years, Kimbrel ranks second in fastball value per 100 pitches. He also ranks second in curveball value per 100 pitches. Usually you don’t want to read into this stat too much, because pitching sure is a complicated activity, but the right idea here is conveyed. Kimbrel has a good fastball, and he has a good breaking ball, and so he hasn’t needed anything else. He’s about as close to unhittable as a pitcher can humanly get.

With that in mind, this is delicious:

Meanwhile, Braves newcomer Jonny Gomes swung at some Kimbrel offerings and missed a few, including one that appeared to be a … changeup?
[…]
“Chris Johnson (another in the group that faced Kimbrel) told me he threw a couple of change-ups,” said Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez, who was watching pitchers on another field when Kimbrel threw.

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Hello, and welcome to something we’ve already done. Two months ago, I asked you what you thought of the American League team projections, then I followed that up by asking you what you thought of the National League team projections. Shortly thereafter, I analyzed all the results, and, what fun we had. What number of things we learned, about ourselves and one another.

I had an idea then I’d be re-doing the same project. Max Scherzer, for example, was still a free agent at that point. Same with James Shields. There have been trades and injuries. There’s been some added roster clarity. There’ve been a couple months of critical thought. And, very importantly, our projections page now includes ZiPS, in a 50/50 blend with Steamer. Previously, everything was based on Steamer and Steamer alone, and I know some of you have very strong opinions about that. Now Steamer’s been balanced, and our numbers reflect the new inputs.

So now I’m curious where you stand — even more curious than I was at the end of December. These are the current projected standings. They’re based on two projection systems and on the depth charts maintained by a group of FanGraphs authors. You can navigate to all the individual depth charts here, and while there will surely be injuries and while there will surely be waiver claims, it’s unlikely the league landscape changes significantly before Opening Day. So how do you feel about your favorite team’s projection? Does it seem right on, a little off, or somehow outlandish? There are polls, so many polls, embedded below, just begging for your participation, but hopefully I have made this post pretty easy to follow. Even though this time around I’ve combined both leagues into one huge polling maelstrom, if you get overwhelmed, I think it’s your own fault.

I’ll analyze the results before very long. There will only be results if you guys help me out! Do that, please. Participation was awesome the last time around. I’m hoping for a repeat.

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It’s a fascinating and volatile starting rotation in New York. CC Sabathia’s been awesome before, but he’s got injury questions. Same goes for Masahiro Tanaka. Same goes for Michael Pineda. Same, to some extent, goes for Ivan Nova. Nathan Eovaldi has fewer of the injury questions. Just last year he was an out shy of 200 innings. But Eovaldi’s still trying to get close to his ceiling. The upside for the other guys comes from their health. Eovaldi’s upside is somewhere in his arm.

And the Yankees, and Larry Rothschild, are committed to bringing that upside out into daylight. The current mission: polish Eovaldi’s third strikeout pitch. Before I get any deeper, I’d like to acknowledge Matt Tobin, who got me back thinking about Eovaldi in the first place. I want to talk some about the stuff we know he has, and I want to talk some about the pitch he might soon have. It’s the pitch that, very sincerely, might make all the difference.

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Earlier, I published a post including this graph:

Of all the things that stand out, perhaps nothing stands out quite like the Cubs. Over the last 10 years, they’ve won 55 fewer games than they’ve been projected to win, and while there are some quibbles you can have with blending all the years and all the projection systems, at the end of the day, projections aren’t too dissimilar and they haven’t changed super dramatically over the decade, and no one comes particularly close to matching the Cubs’ level of disappointment. At -55, they’re separated from the next-lowest team by 19 wins.

I don’t think there’s really anything predictive, here. I’d never bet on a given team beating or undershooting its next-year projection. Certainly not based on what it just did. But -55 seems worthy of investigation. What can we find out, about why this might’ve happened? What traits or events might’ve contributed to the Cubs coming off as such a disappointment?

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Do you like an origin story? This post was originally going to be about the nature of spring-training optimism. Among players, even, not just fans. It seems like, every single February, when players show up to camp, you get quotes from everywhere about how a given team has a great bunch of guys, and if they play the kind of baseball they’re capable of, there’s no reason the season can’t be magic. I started looking for such quotes for every single team. The way I figured, they had to be out there. And as a matter of fact, I even found one for the Phillies. The same Phillies whose own front office has finally admitted that the team is rebuilding, and contention seems years off.

In case you’ve somehow been in the dark, this year’s Phillies are supposed to be bad. I mean, they aren’t supposed to be bad, but they’re expected to be bad, relative to every single other team. FanGraphs has the Phillies projected for the worst record in baseball. So does Baseball Prospectus. I’m not telling you anything new. Probably going to be a rough year in Philadelphia. But, you know who has opinions? Jonathan Papelbon. Here, he talks to Jim Salisbury about the possibility of being traded.

Toward the bottom of the post:

Papelbon said the Blue Jays would “fit his criteria” because they project as a contending club, but he was quick to add that he believes the Phillies can still be a contender, despite management’s charting a rebuilding course.

“If we come out and play the baseball we’re capable of playing then I plan on being right here and righting the ship here,” he said. […] “My storybook ending here is sneaking into the wild card and getting hot in the playoffs with these Phillies.”

It’s not exactly “we’re getting those rings,” but Papelbon has a certain level of confidence, a level that isn’t shared by Cole Hamels or the people in charge. Papelbon doesn’t see this as an impossible mission. And, wouldn’t you know it — it’s not an impossible mission. Let’s talk about how teams do, relative to how they’re projected to do.

Read the rest on Just A Bit Outside.

I’ve got a post going up at JABO today. It might’ve already gone up, I don’t know — I’m writing this in advance, and I wrote that post in advance, and I’m not in charge of when they publish the content that’s been sent their way. But today, there is this post and that JABO post, and within the latter, you will see the following image:

You’re smart enough to get this. That’s a whole decade of information, showing single-season projected team win totals, and single-season actual team win totals. You observe both a relationship, and a fair amount of noise. I suppose I don’t need to spoil that other post. Read that other post, whenever it’s published. Read that other post twice! Click click click!

Yet seldom do we dig into historical team projections. There are reasons for this, but now that I’ve gone to the trouble of gathering all the necessary data, there’s some other stuff we can do. There’s a lot of other stuff we can do; I have done a small amount of it.

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Doug Melvin, a few days ago:

Melvin wouldn’t comment on the state of possible talks with the Phillies, but acknowledged the lines of communication have remained open with “K-Rod.”

“I don’t know if it’s active, but we still have conversations,” Melvin said. “Mark deals more with that. (Agent) Scott (Boras) keeps calling Mark.”

You know how this goes. Sometimes, Boras has problems finding the right level of demand among 30 baseball front offices. But he’s skilled enough to know that he’s always got more options, as, above 30 baseball front offices, are 30 baseball owners or ownership groups. Said executives are easier to persuade, as they’re in charge of the money, and they tend to know a little less about roster management. So, long story short, Boras has gotten the Brewers to make another commitment to Francisco Rodriguez, this one for at least two years and $13 million. It happened above the general manager’s head, but it’s not a nightmare; Rodriguez remains a useful pitcher, and the Brewers remain on the positive side of the be-a-seller threshold. This is an example of ownership caving, but it’s not a godawful fit.

As is often the case, what I find interesting here is less about the contract, and more about the player. The contract is fine. Maybe a little heavy, I don’t know. But Rodriguez himself has had a particularly fascinating career. So this is a good opportunity to call attention to the transition he’s largely been able to pull off. Rodriguez is still just 33 years old, yet he debuted when he was 20, and his career has had two distinct stages. Rodriguez, at least as a player, has evolved.

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