With the end of the Winter Meetings comes the Rule 5 draft, where every team dreams about acquiring Johan Santana for a token sum of cash and often ends up with…less, or possibly nobody at all.

The highlights from the list of players taken in Rule 5 drafts, or its predecessor-drafts, is mighty impressive. On the sunny side, you have two Hall of Famers (Hack Wilson, Roberto Clemente), a couple of players who should have gotten more Hall of Fame attention (Johan Santana, Darrell Evans), and more than two dozen All-Stars. But that isn’t the likely result and getting those types of players involved a GM who didn’t understand the rules (Syd Thrift/Bobby Bonilla), predating of minor league affiliations (Wilson), or an older “bonus baby” rule that is no longer in effect (Clemente). Teams do pay attention to this kind of thing, so you see more teams protecting young, low-level players with upside rather than older, minor-league journeymen who may give a team a larger short-term boost.

But value can still be found. Brad Keller has a 3.08 ERA in multiple roles for the Royals and any of the playoff teams would have been happy to have him on their roster. Odubel Herrera, Delino DeShields Jr., Joe Biagini, Justin Bour, and Tommy Kahnle are all fairly recent picks and all have had some success in the majors. Here are the ZiPS projections for the players taken in this year’s Rule 5 draft; we’ll have full scouting reports on them soon.

The Orioles aren’t playing for 2019 of course, but I’m not sure that Jonathan Villar is actually the preferable candidate to be starting even if they were. Martin has a reputation as a glove man and the rudimentary, craptacular defensive measurements available for minor leaguers generally agree with this, while Villar is extremely stretched as a shortstop and isn’t part of Baltimore’s future. Martin did hit .300/.368/.439 for double-A Midland, but ZiPS is still going to need to see him to be sold. It would be a shame if in a rebuilding year, the O’s carried both Martin and Drew Jackson, and didn’t let either get full-time at-bats. Both are more interesting than Steve Wilkerson, who the Orioles can actually send down to the minors.

Connor Joe, who you may have seen erroneously listed as a catcher, still has some versatility, with experience at third, second, and first base, as well as in the outfield, though he’s not a plus defensive player at any of those positions. He may stick as a 25th-man in Cincinnati, a team that is short on experienced role players and would likely prefer players like Nick Senzel or Shed Long to play full-time when they’re called up. Drew Ferguson gets the best projection of the hitters and is a welcome as an additional spring training option given San Francisco’s paper-thin outfield, which will probably begin the year with three of Steven Duggar, Mac Williamson, Austin Slater, Chris Shaw, and Mike Gerber if the season started tomorrow.

The Royals picked up Sam McWilliams and Chris Ellis, the latter by way of the Texas Rangers. Ellis’ projection as a starter is not good, but as a fastball-slider pitcher, he’s long been expected to end up in relief if he ever makes it to the majors, and if that happens with the Royals, he’ll likely be the last pitcher on the roster. If Josh Staumont’s control ever improves, I think Ellis would find himself on the bubble fairly quickly. McWilliams has a more starter-friendly repertoire of pitches — Eric will surely have more on this — and he gets what amounts to a fairly impressive projection, relatively-speaking. I don’t want to predict that he’ll be Brad Keller, but the Royals may use him as a swingman in 2019.

Texas is doing more of a rebuild-lite than a full teardown, but the back of their bullpen might be able to squeeze in Romano; I don’t expect that the team will seriously look at him as a starter in 2019. Three of the four pitchers are genereally already used as relievers in the minors: Reed Garrett, Travis Bergen, and Brandon Brennen all project to be above-replacement level, though safely below-average (average ERA+ for a reliever tends to be somewhere around 108). Garrett throws a good deal harder than he did back in the days when he was a sorta starting prospect, but I think his lack of exploitable platoon splits gives him less of an obvious role in the majors right now than the other relievers. Bergen is the most interesting pitcher to me in that he missed most of the three seasons going into 2018 due to injuries, so his dominating 2018 in the minors is essentially all we have. He’s not a hard thrower and the limited data means his outcome is volatile, but you want volatile in a Rule 5er in most cases, given that the mean projections are never going to be exciting. Plus: left-handed!

Elvis Luciano is a rarity among this group, a throwback to other very young pitchers snagged from the low minors. He’ll be 19 in February, throws hard, and there’s enough projection there that the Blue Jays may be happy to just keep him and play with more-or-less a 24-man roster. This plan is subject to change if Toronto is actually good, something I think they will not be. Given his complete lack of upper minors, even that limited projection is likely crazy-optimistic.

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

Batters

Obviously, the top of the offense is extremely strong, with reigning MVP Mookie Betts and one of the most dangerous hitters today, J.D. Martinez, who can be forgiven for being relatively one-dimensional when that one dimension involves a 170 wRC+ and an OPS over 1.000. But there were some cracks in the back-end in 2018, with Eduardo Núñez a stretch as a full-time second baseman and Mitch Moreland inevitably cooling off after a hot start to finish with the Usual Mitch Moreland Stats. The team brought in Steve Pearce and Ian Kinsler to dampen these issues. Pearce’s tenure was much more successful, but he also remains a role player heading into his late-30s, albeit a very good one. I remain hopeful about Rafael Devers‘ future given that most players his age are still in the minors, but you can’t just wave away the fact that he regressed significantly both at the plate and in the field in 2018. Boston’s three-headed catcher-beast contributed defensively, and did a better job framing than dirty cops in a Brian De Palma movie, but you’d still like their bats to improve to a more normal version of terrible than we saw last season.

The good news is that when your highs are high and your lows are low, it’s easier to make a significant addition than it is if you have a team that’s fairly average from top to bottom. J.T. Realmuto would be just about the perfect fit for the team if the Marlins were motivated to make a reasonable trade. I suspect the Red Sox will be content with Moreland and Pearce at first as they more pressing needs on the roster. And Pearce probably was the best first baseman available in free agency, unless you’ve received some weird news from the future about how 2019 was the The Summer of Duda.

Pitchers

There’s not a lot to complain about in the rotation, so long as everyone is healthy. All five starters are projected to have ERAs better than league-average, and ZiPS, like Steamer, is cautiously optimistic about Nathan Eovaldi’s future, even though 200 innings shouldn’t be the default expectation for a pitcher with his injury history. Some depth would be nice, but Steven Wright is likely a perfectly capable emergency option and the bullpen, as constituted, is probably a below-average group. Even a diminished Craig Kimbrel is a tough reliever to lose. ZiPS thinks a lot of the no-name relievers can be adequate, especially Colten Brewer, a hard cutter/curve hurler picked up from the Padres a few weeks ago.

Bench and Prospects

The problem with the Red Sox farm system is that while it’s far from empty, trades and successful graduations have depleted the upper minors considerably, to the point that if the team is looking for a mid-season reinforcement, they’re more likely to call up a prospect rather than trade them for a more veteran solution. Sam Travis now has a .713 OPS in nearly a thousand Triple-A plate appearances; ZiPS has almost written him completely off as a prospect at this point. And there are no starting pitching prospects that are all that interesting for 2019. That Rusney Castillo has one of the best projections of the players currently at Triple A at .269/.304/.370 is a pretty good example of just how thin the high minors currently are. The big exception here is Michael Chavis, who ZiPS sees developing into an average third baseman with power upside, though not intriguing enough to be a better option than Devers in 2019, or a good enough hitter in the short-term to make Moreland and Pearce uncomfortable.

One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth chart playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here at site.

Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2019. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.

Players are listed with their most recent teams, unless I have made a mistake. This is very possible, as a lot of minor-league signings go generally unreported in the offseason.

ZiPS’ projections are based on the American League having a 4.29 ERA and the National League having a 4.15 ERA.

Players who are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information, and a computer isn’t the tool that should project the injury status of, for example, a pitcher who has had Tommy John surgery.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected 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 which appear in 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.

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

Batters
Sure, you can buy an All-Star, but making one of your own is so much more satisfying. After years of rebuilding, in which Freddie Freeman stood mostly alone in the offense, the Braves added Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuña, both legitimate stars who will be with the Braves well into the 2020s. Josh Donaldson was just about the perfect addition to the team — after all, you can pay almost anything for a one-year contract without singeing your fingers too badly. Sure, there’s risk with the former AL MVP given his age and recent injury history, but he won’t block Austin Riley and the Braves have the perfect Plan B in Johan Camargo, who may very well be a super-sub type for the team in 2019. Absent Atlanta giving a whole lot of money to Bryce Harper to possibly become the NL favorite, I’d personally prefer they just plunk Camargo out in left and not worry about Adam Duvall, whose limited window as a legitimate starter has likely closed. No doubt some will bemoan the loss of Nick Markakis, but the team was right to ride his first half heroics and move on after his .701 OPS second-half.

Pitchers
Let’s get the very minor bad news out of the way: ZiPS doesn’t see any of the Braves’ starting pitchers as likely to match up against a deGrom or a Kershaw or a Scherzer, not even Foltynewicz. But that’s very minor bad news, because even if no individual pitcher has better than a coin flip’s chance of being a star in 2019, the Braves’ enviable young depth can help them compensate for their lack of a true staff ace. The Braves are playing Plinko on The Price is Right, only Drew Carey gave them a hundred of those little disks. ZiPS actually projects the 11th-to-15th best starting pitchers in the organization (Max Fried, Joey Wentz, Wes Parsons, Ian Anderson, and Kyle Muller) to not be that far from league average, which is a filthy, disgusting horde of pitching to have if the projections prove true. In fact, The Braves may find themselves in the odd position of having too much pitching to sort through in Triple-A. A few will end up in the bullpen, of course, but Atlanta can go into the next few trade deadlines and offseasons with enough interesting pieces to make a competitive offer for any player another team is willing to trade.

Bench and Prospects
The offensive prospects aren’t quite as strong, but Riley looks like he’ll be a legit major leaguer in the not-too-distant future and Christian Pache has tremendous upside; the Braves would surely be happy if he matched the on-field contributions of his number one comp. The only real concern I have here is with the dearth of the kind of position player reinforcements that most teams try to stock at Triple-A, but there’s still plenty of time for Atlanta to get those minor-league signings in. Veterans like Lane Adams, Preston Tucker, or Xavier Avery, while unlikely to move the needle too far, are still handy to have around in a “break-glass-in-case-of-emergency” situation. I’d also like to see another arm or two in the bullpen; players like Sam Freeman are hardly bad pitchers, but the Braves are a legitimate contender, and I think they’re only a couple of lucky breaks with the pitching staff away from being in the conversation for the best team in the National League.

One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth chart playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here at site.

Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2019. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.

Players are listed with their most recent teams, unless I have made a mistake. This is very possible, as a lot of minor-league signings go generally unreported in the offseason.

ZiPS’ projections are based on the American League having a 4.29 ERA and the National League having a 4.15 ERA.

Players who are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information, and a computer isn’t the tool that should project the injury status of, for example, a pitcher who has had Tommy John surgery.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected 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 which appear in 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.

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

Batters
Mind the gap! One wouldn’t think of the Colorado Rockies and Cleveland Indians as having similar front offices or philosophies, but they ended up in a similar place when it came to their offenses, with each boasting a of couple MVP-types who carried a disproportionately large portion of the load. Now, the Indians don’t have a replacement level Ian Desmond in the lineup, and the lesser lights don’t cost quite as much, but it still leaves Cleveland with a fairly unbalanced offense. The outfield is the biggest problem, with Michael Brantley, who did not receive a qualifying offer, still possessing the third-best batter projection on the team. While Cleveland’s still good enough otherwise that they can win the Central without much of a struggle — even if they trade a starting pitcher and go into the season with their existing outfield — it’s not ideal.

Pitchers
ZiPS really, really likes Shane Bieber. It likes him to such a degree that when I saw the nearly four-WAR projection, I fired up his profile page and checked the Steamer projection to make sure I hadn’t accidentally broken something. Like the time I initially projected Jose Molina to have a 1.200 batting average. I talked more about this in Cleveland’s Elegy for ’18 just a few days ago, but it’s understandable why the Indians are willing to talk pitcher trades. The team is still hopeful about Danny Salazar and while I can’t get in their brains, I suspect they feel the difference between Danny Salazar (or the other fallback options) and Corey Kluber or Trevor Bauer is smaller than the difference between nothing and the prospects they could get in return. While I would’ve preferred the team to at least give Brantley a qualifying offer and pinch pennies a few years down the road, one can at least understand their thinking.
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