Over the past week and a half, we’ve published our annual preview of the upcoming season, ranking each position based on a blend of our projections (a 50/50 split between ZiPS and Steamer) and our manually maintained playing time estimates. The result was a document nearly the length of Infinite Jest (I am only somewhat kidding), so if you missed any of the posts, or would like to refresh your memory of what all it is that we’ve said, you can use the handy navigation widget above.

Today I’m going to summarize the results of the rankings. Before I get started, a brief note. I will throughout this post make reference to our Team WAR Totals. We maintain a total of projected future value by position, which updates regularly throughout the season. As such, the totals you see there may vary slightly from what you see on the positional power rankings, mostly because they are aware of injuries and transactions that have altered playing time estimates since the power rankings went live. I’ll provide a snapshot of those totals at the end of the post, but when you see that they are a little different here and there, don’t be surprised. Now you know why, and will be prepared. Now on to some trends.

First, we’ll take a look at where each team stacked up across positions. This table is sortable, so feel free to poke around.

Eight different teams check in with at least one first-place finish (the Angels, Astros, Braves, Brewers, Indians, Nationals, Red Sox, and Yankees). Only Cleveland (three) and Boston (two) can boast more than one such finish, though they present interesting and opposing case studies in how best to construct a roster. The Red Sox are one of eight teams (more on the others in a moment) that has six or more categories in which they rank in the top 10. The Red Sox are tops at both designated hitter and right field (J.D. Martinez and Mookie Betts: pretty good at baseball!) but are also sixth at shortstop, second in left field, fifth in center field, and fifth in their starting rotation. They have an incredibly deep, well-rounded team, though I would be remiss if I didn’t mention their bullpen, which came in at 27.

The only team among the eight I referenced above with a worse positional ranking was the Athletics, whose catching corps of Josh Phegley, Nick Hundley, Chris Herrmann, and Beau Taylor are projected to combine for a solitary win. Meanwhile, if you toggle over to the Team WAR Total projection for baseball’s remaining free agents, you’ll see that Craig Kimbrel accounts for 2.0 WAR of the All-Unemployed Team’s 2.2 relief WAR. He has the same projection as Edwin Diaz. The two of them only trail Aroldis Chapman and his 2.2 projected WAR. Those things are all facts that are being stated near to facts about the Boston Red Sox. Just some bullpen facts for your enjoyment.

Cleveland, on the other hand, has concentrated its wins rather sharply. Having Jose Ramirez and Francisco Lindor on the roster means the Indians are ranked first at third base and shortstop; Corey Kluber and Co. mean that their rotation is projected to be the best in baseball. But things fall of sharply from there. As I noted in my right field preview, Cleveland’s outfield is a mess, projected to be better than just the Tigers, Orioles, Royals, Giants, and Marlins in terms of its production across all three spots. They enjoy a weak division, but they also have a surprising thin margin for error given their advantage over bad competition, and it looks like their strategy will be tested early, with Ramirez dinged up while Lindor’s timeline for return is uncertain after he sustained an acute ankle sprain on Tuesday. Cleveland will almost certainly still find its way to October baseball (going into today, they had an 86.8% chance of winning their division according to our playoff odds), but its fate upon arriving there is far less assured.

I want to spend some time on the teams at the top and bottom of these rankings. The Yankees and Dodgers tally nine (nine!) positions a piece in those positions’ respective top 10s. The Astros can count seven. We’ve already talked about the Red Sox. That is impressive (there are five teams that don’t have a single top 10 finish), but it doesn’t necessarily give you a complete picture. The Cardinals are projected to win 86 games, tied for fifth-most in the NL with the Phillies, and they only have four top 10 finishes, as do the Giants, who we expect to win just 75 games. Ordinal rankings can make small differences appear larger than they are or obscure large gaps. But even with that proviso in mind, the Yankees and Dodgers impress. The Dodgers have four positions not just in the top 10, but the top five! They’re third at catcher, fourth at third base, second at shortstop, and fifth in right field. They don’t play with a designated hitter, being famously a National League team, but their projected 1.3 wins at DH in our Team WAR Totals page, which uses the expected value from pinch hitters to arrive at its NL DH forecast, is better than the Tigers’ 0.2 wins at the position, and the Tigers’ lineup is almost entirely composed of designated hitters playing out of position.

Meanwhile, the Yankees have a staggering six positions in that position’s top five. Their bullpen is first; their starting pitching is second. Right field comes in second; center field is in third. They’re fourth at DH and fifth at catcher. The Dodgers are projected for 93 wins and, despite an increasingly tough division, have an 85.9% chance of repeating as NL West champs. The Yankees have the best projected win total in baseball (97), and even with the Red Sox and Rays nipping at their heels, have a 62.2% chance of winning the division, not to mention the best odds to win the World Series. Contending teams can be balanced and pretty good at a lot of things, or they can be really good at a few things and cross their fingers about the rest. But the question the Yankees and Dodgers, and to a slightly lesser extent, the Astros and Red Sox, pose is: what if you were just really, really good at everything? Very good teams have faltered before, but at least on paper, this is the creme de la creme.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are the Orioles and the Marlins. The Orioles’ average power rankings position was 26.09; the Marlins’ was 25.90. If we were to pretend that Baltimore had suddenly transferred to the National League and thus lost the DH (at 14, it was their only position ranked in the teens or better), that average drops to 27.3. We don’t have to belabor the point; Orioles and Marlins fans have suffered enough. But jeez are they bad.

As we’ve discussed, the rankings by themselves are helpful, but not totally helpful. We need some additional context to see how close and far apart these are to get a better sense of relative strengths and weaknesses, and to see how the last week of activity and injury affects things (poor Steven Souza Jr.). Remember, the NL DH values reflect expected value from pinch-hitters.

The Yankees are good. The Dodgers are good. The Astros, Red Sox, and Nationals are good. The Indians play in the AL Central. The Cubs and Cardinals are going to beat up on each other all season long; ditto the Phillies and Mets. The bad teams are very, very bad, and the middle is thin. It’s baseball in 2019. Tomorrow, real baseball with real stakes will be played in US time zones. We’ll look back and feel silly about some of these projections and haughty about others. We hope you’ve enjoyed this year’s installment of the positional power rankings and that the format provided you with something useful. We hope it helped to pass the time. We can’t wait to watch baseball along with all of you this season. It’s almost here.

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We wrap up the position player portion of the positional power rankings with a look at the right fielders.

The top half of this list features some of baseball’s brightest stars, including two reigning MVPs (Mookie Betts and Christian Yelich), a $330 million man (Bryce Harper), and one of the game’s most vivacious personalities (Yasiel Puig), not to mention one of its literal biggest stars (Aaron Judge). There are a number of very talented young guys here (Cody Bellinger, Eloy Jimenez, Michael Conforto, Mitch Haniger) some of whom can boast of hardware of their own, and all of whom could become part of that star tier, even if their wattage isn’t nearly as bright as that of the Betts and Harpers of the world. There are also some platoons that could bear fruit, but outside of the top five teams, I’m struck by how much sameness there appears to be in the middle, as many teams are fielding aging veterans playing out the string, some of which are interested in winning, and others of which are decidedly not. An extreme to note: the Marlin’s right field situation is the only position player group currently projected for negative wins. Poor Curtis.

Welcome to the 2019 positional power rankings! As is tradition, over the next week and a half, we’ll be ranking every team by position. This is always something of a funny exercise. You read FanGraphs every day (thank you!) and are well-versed in the goings on of the offseason, glacial though they may have been at times. You probably know that Bryce Harper is on the Phillies, and that Manny Machado is a Padre, and that Brian McCann found his way back to Atlanta. You probably recall that Craig Kimbrel, who was tied with Kenley Jansen for the best individual reliever projection in last year’s iteration of this series, is still unsigned. You almost certainly do not remember every 30-something free agent who ended up on the Texas Rangers, but that’s ok. I’m the managing editor of FanGraphs, and I’ve been surprised by a few of those guys while watching spring training action. All of that is to say, you know what’s going on. And yet the anticipation of the season, the sound of wooden bats, and those clear, sunny days, makes you want to read even more about baseball and what it might look like over the next seven months or so. This is our answer to that impulse.

This post serves as an explainer for our approach to these rankings. If you’re new to our rankings, I hope it helps to clarify how they are compiled and what you might expect from them. If you’re a FanGraphs stalwart, I hope it is a useful reminder of what we’re up to. If you have a bit of time, here is the introduction to last year’s series. You can use the handy nav widget at the top to get a sense of where things stood before Opening Day 2018.

Unlike a lot of season previews, we don’t arrange ours by team or division. That is a perfectly good way to organize an exercise like this, but we see a few advantages to the way we do it. First, the positional rankings allow us to cover a team’s roster top to bottom, with stars and role players alike receiving some amount of scrutiny, while also placing those players (and the teams they play for) in their proper baseball context. By doing it this way, you can easily see how teams stack up against each other, get a sense of the overall strength of a position across the league, and spot places where a well-deployed platoon may end up having a bigger impact than an everyday regular who is just ok. We think all of that context helps to create a richer understanding of the state of things and a clearer picture of the season ahead. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 857

Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen joins the program to discuss MLB’s recent rule changes, what they portend for baseball, how they will alter the aesthetics of the game, and how necessary they are for its health. We then turn our attention to the Houston Astros and all the many rumors that surround their approach to scouting and player development, before devoting some time to a consideration of FanGraphs’ recent trip to the greater Phoenix area, and the baseball games we watched while we were there.

Be sure to follow FanGraphs’ dedicated prospect twitter account, FanGraphs Prospects, for prospect-related news and pre-draft and spring training updates to The BOARD.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @megrowler on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 1 hour 5 min play time.)

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In January, we put out an open call for contributing writers. The response we received was overwhelming. Over 500 people submitted applications, and we are very grateful that so many smart, passionate baseball writers wanted to be a part of what we do here. It made for some really difficult decisions (and a rather long hiring process), but we are very excited to welcome six new contributors to our ranks.

A quick note to those who applied but weren’t hired: please keep writing. A number of people who have come to work for the site weren’t hired on their first go, but kept getting reps elsewhere on their way to making us regret having passed them by initially. Just because there wasn’t a home for you at FanGraphs this time around doesn’t mean that there won’t be one later, and in the meantime, public baseball analysis will be made better by your good words and good work.

And so, without further ado, allow me to briefly introduce the writers whose work will be debuting on these electronic pages soon.

Rachael McDaniel
Rachael has written at Baseball Prospectus, Vice Sports, and The Hardball Times, authoring work encompassing a whole range of baseball topics past and present. Rachael is currently in the creative writing program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and following the conclusion of the academic year, will assume the role of managing editor of The Hardball Times in addition to writing at FanGraphs as a contributor.

Twitter handle: @rumhamlet

Devan Fink
Devan has spent the last two years as a featured writer at Beyond the Box Score and the previous four years blogging for his own website, Cover Those Bases. He loves analyzing the latest current events and trends in baseball, ranging from the most minute aspects of the game to the largest, most impactful tendencies league-wide. Outside of baseball writing, Devan is currently a senior at James Madison High School, where he serves as an editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, The Hawk Talk, and as the captain of the debate team. He will be attending Dartmouth College next fall, where he plans to study quantitative social science. Devan resides in Northern Virginia with his parents, brother, and his four-year-old cockapoo, Ike.

Twitter handle: @DevanFink

Sung Min Kim
Originally a broadcast journalism student at Maryland, Sung Min took a sports writing class as a fun elective and went from there. Since his debut at The Hardball Times, he has been writing about the Yankees at River Avenue Blues. He has also written about Asian baseball for publications like VICE Sports, The Sporting News, Baseball Prospectus, and The Athletic. Sung Min will explore different aspects of Asian baseball while also writing about major league subjects.

Twitter handle: @sung_minkim

Ben Clemens
Cardinals fans may recognize Ben as a writer from Viva El Birdos. He always wanted to play baseball and be a famous writer growing up — he got ‘baseball’ and ‘writer’ at least, though he’s still working on ‘play’ and ‘famous.’ Working in financial markets made him interested in the decision-making and game theory aspects of baseball; he’s now answering the truly important questions, like whether Matt Carpenter should swing more on 3-0. He lives in New York but will soon be moving to San Francisco.

Twitter handle: @_Ben_Clemens

Audrey Stark
Audrey attended her first MLB game in June 2003 with her Girl Scout troop. While watching Albert Pujols through binoculars from an upper section of Busch Stadium II, she realized that baseball was the best sport on the planet. Audrey began writing for SBNation in 2016 at Beyond the Box Score; she has also contributed to Viva el Birdos and Federal Baseball. She has a degree in political science.

Twitter handle: @HighStarkSunday

Octavio Hernandez
Once a beat writer in the Venezuelan Winter League before becoming the assistant GM for Leones del Caracas in that same league, Octavio currently works for Diablos Rojos del Mexico as the chief of the Advanced Metrics department. Now he’ll return to his roots as a writer, focusing on Latin American major league players along with providing some insight into what’s going on in the Mexican League and the Caribbean Winter Leagues. He is a man with a mission: to help Latin American baseball get on board with advanced metrics. He hopes you will join him on his ride.

Twitter handler: @octaviolider

You’ll begin to see work from these six writers appearing at FanGraphs soon. We hope you’re as excited for them to get going as we are.

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FanGraphs is headed to Arizona for spring training, and we want to share a few drinks and some baseball talk with our readers. So come join us today, Friday, March 8 from 7 to 10 pm at the Two Brothers Scottsdale Tap House & Brewery. We’ve reserved the upstairs loft, and will have appetizers for everyone. It’s a great chance to meet other baseball fans and chat with a bunch of your favorite FanGraphs writers.

If you plan on joining us, we would appreciate you RSVPing using this handy Google form, so we know how much food to order.

Details
Friday, March 8 from 7 to 10 pm
Two Brothers Scottsdale Tap House & Brewery, upstairs loft
4321 N. Scottsdale Rd, Scottsdale

FanGraphs/RotoGraphs Attendees

• David Appelman
• Alex Chamberlain
• Sean Dolinar
• Craig Edwards
• Dylan Higgins
• Jay Jaffe
• Brad Johnson
• David Laurila
• Eric Longenhagen
• Kiley McDaniel
• Al Melchior
• Meg Rowley
• Paul Sporer
• Rian Watt
• Jeff Zimmerman

We hope to see you there!

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Episode 856

Having announced his imminent departure from FanGraphs for the Tampa Bay Rays, Jeff Sullivan joins the program one last time to discuss his experience as an online baseball person, the future state of what Jeff has called “the one good place on the internet,” and the geography of Florida spring training. Plus, Jeff shares what he can about what he’ll be doing for the Rays, and I share an Emotional Tale designed to make Jeff squirm.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @megrowler on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 46 min play time.)

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