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 Atlanta Braves.

Batters

The foundation of Atlanta’s offense consists of Freddie Freeman, Ronald Acuña Jr., and Ozzie Albies. There’s little to worry about with this trio, short of the usual concerns about injuries. Albies and Acuña are still absurdly young, and the question isn’t whether they’ll play worse than in 2019, but just how much they’ll continue to grow. People tend to overrate the growth curves of young phenoms. Just because a guy hits 40 homers at 20 doesn’t mean he’ll 60 at age 27, though I do think Acuña will get his 40/40 year in 2020. While there’s always room for improvement, more typically, players who are great very quickly have limited additional upside. If we examined the greatest hitting phenoms in history — Mike Trout, Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr., Al Kaline, Mel Ott — we’d find they really didn’t grow as hitters after their early 20s. 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 New York Yankees.

Batters

That ZiPS gives the Yankees such a robust projection is hardly surprising. This is a team, after all, that won 103 games in 2019 despite missing most of their starting lineup, their ace pitcher, and a top reliever for large chunks of the season.

It’s unlikely the Yankees are going to win 110 games in this year. While the team did an excellent job furnishing Plans B through Z, players like Mike Tauchman and Gio Urshela likely performed at what might be thought to be the reasonable high-end of their expectations. Both project to be valuable in 2020, but not quite as spicy as they were in last season. Tauchman’s defensive projection remains quite aggressive, as the probability-based measure that ZiPS uses for minor league defense was a fan of Tock’s fielding, projecting him at around 10 runs a year as a center fielder in the minors. If only the Rockies could find a player like that! 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 Detroit Tigers.

Batters

The Detroit Tigers will continue to struggle to score runs. I don’t mean in the “occasionally getting shut out by the Orioles” sense, but more like when you’re watching Tigers games, you should channel flip when they’re at the plate rather than during the commercials. What makes this worse isn’t that they’re just awful offensively, but that there’s really almost no source of potential upside outside of Jeimer Candelario.

Jonathan Schoop and C.J. Cron are both legitimate major leaguers, but in this offense, they’re practically the centerpieces, and the most the Tigers can really hope for is that they’re good enough to flip for a prospect in July. Normally, I’d rather see lottery tickets instead of fill-in veterans since the offense will be absolutely wretched under any circumstances, but Detroit doesn’t really even have many of those types either. Nor have the Tigers done any sweeps of minor league free agency to find any; it’s been an extraordinarily quiet winter in the Motor City.

It’s kind of sad to see Miguel Cabrera with a negative number, but his power was non-existent last year and it’s hard to have value at designated hitter when your isolated power is the same as Hanser Alberto’s. Cabrera blasted the team’s lineup for his lack of power in 2019, but the truth is that Cabrera just isn’t a good hitter any longer. One of the most dangerous fastball hitters in baseball at one point, Cabrera only had an xSLG of .600 against fastballs in what Statcast calls the “heart” of the strike zone. That sounds like a big number, but the league as a whole was at .615. That number was .928 for Cabrera as recently as 2016, and at 17% of pitches thrown in the heart of the zone last year, pitchers gave him more fastballs down the middle than ever before in his career. He just can’t do much with them these days. 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 Cincinnati Reds.

Batters

Cincinnati’s 2020 offense will likely prove to be an interesting challenge for second-year manager David Bell. There’s the potential for a good offense here, but there’s an equal number of scenarios in which the team simply fails to score runs. Outside of Eugenio Suárez, the incumbent third baseman who I’m still amazed was purloined for Alfredo Simon, practically every player in the lineup has a real upside but also, significant questions about a major aspect of their game.

Does Joey Votto have another comeback season left in him? Votto has had downswings before, but the swoons were never anywhere near as deep his .261/.357/.411 line in 2019. 2020 will also be his age-36 season, which isn’t exactly a point in a career where you see many players come roaring back after a collapse. ZiPS does forecast a moderate 2020 recovery, but Votto the Star may be permanently in the rear-view mirror.

The outfield is a particularly devious puzzle to solve as rather than having two or three outfielders who are head-and-shoulders above the rest, the team has a large collection of average-ish players with wildly varying skillsets. They’re a bit like a giant vat of Legos in which the Star Wars set, the Raiders of the Lost Ark set, and the Requiem for a Dream set have all been tossed together, with some scattered Erector parts thrown in; you’re just trying to build a nice little house but keep finding lightsabers and fedoras. 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 Milwaukee Brewers.

Batters

There’s been quite a bit of turnover in the Brewers’ starting lineup, but the team has avoided opening any serious holes.

ZiPS was a fan of Orlando Arcia, but it’s hard to avoid the fact that he’s backslid developmentally at ages when he should have been breaking out. Even worse than not improving offensively, Arcia is probably a worse hitter than he was two years ago. Add to that that his glove hasn’t matched up to his minor league reputation, and good on the Brewers for seemingly moving on to Luis Urías, who ought to be a significant improvement. 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 Baltimore Orioles.

Batters

Don’t look away in cringing horror; the pitching projections are worse!

ZiPS actually projects every position to be above replacement level, which is something. If you’re a skeptic, you might just say that’s only because Trey Mancini is projected to get playing time at first and in right field, and while that’s accurate, can’t you just be nice for a few minutes?

You could probably call the Austin Hays‘ forecast a pleasant one, though obviously it’s not quite on the level of his .309/.373/.574 line from his 21-game stint with the parent club. Hays was clearly overmatched in his initial cup of joe in the majors in 2017, but the Orioles also promoted him very aggressively that season and he was never the sort of prospect you’d expect to skip Triple-A without issues. There’s also the possibility that his adequate line is underrating him; injuries create a lot of uncertainty and his 2018 season and much of his 2019 were marred by ankle and thumb injuries. 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 Houston Astros.

Batters

Let’s get the garbage receptacle in the room out of the way: there are no adjustments for sign-stealing related shenanigans baked into ZiPS. The simple truth is that the data to do so doesn’t really exist, and any adjustments made for an unknown effect on unknown players for an unknown amount of time would lack any precision. It’s one of those unknowables floating around in the aether that makes up part of the error bars.

Houston’s front-end offensive talent remains an absolute battering ram. The great players are, well, great, and there are few holes in the lineup, though there will be less offense behind the plate in 2020, and Gurriel’s age means he’s always a cliff-diving risk in any given season. 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 New York Mets.

Batters

They took a winding road to get there, but the Mets’ core offensive talent is all on the 25-man, all still under 30, and generally speaking, are all free from odd playing time restrictions once due to the presence of inferior veterans at their same positions. Jake Marisnick will likely get a lot of time in center, but given that Brandon Nimmo is coming off of injury, having Marisnick on the roster is smart; he’s a capable fourth outfielder and not famous enough or well paid enough that a healthy Nimmo won’t be able to wrest away the lion’s share of the playing time.

ZiPS didn’t like what it saw in Robinson Canó’s 2019; he now projects as one of the team’s weaker players, but there isn’t an obvious replacement at the moment. Jed Lowrie is still hanging around, at least until the Mets convince someone to take his contract (which is unlikely given the plethora of 1.5 WAR middle infielders still available), but his health is still iffy and he’d have to be clearly better to take Canó’s job. I don’t believe he is. Sadly, Canó no longer projects to finish with 3000 hits, though he’s likely already wrapped up his Hall of Fame candidacy in any case.

Pitchers

A Jacob deGrom–Noah Syndergaard–Marcus Stroman top of the rotation is a top three that can compete with that of any team in the majors. I’m not sure if the Mets have truly given up their strange dream to trade Thor, but as of right now, he’s a Met and that’s where he’s being projected. The Mets have at least six major league-caliber starters with the additions of Michael Wacha and Rick Porcello. The conventional wisdom is that Steven Matz is the odd man out one or the other, but I’m not convinced that’s the case. Now, Matz may very well be traded this winter, but I’m not sure it’s a given that he’s the one sent to the bullpen if he’s still a Met in April. I know Wacha joined the team with the intention of being a starter, but he’s also coming off injuries and a $3 million salary typically isn’t enough to have much leverage over what position you actually play.

The best news here is that ZiPS is projecting bounce-back seasons for Edwin Díaz and Jeurys Familia. Diaz looked awful in 2019, but who doesn’t look awful when allowing 2.33 HR/9 and a .377 BABIP? Based on the advanced hit data, ZiPS doesn’t think Díaz ought to have fared this poorly in either stat last season. After Díaz, it’s not the flashiest bunch, but the computer thinks they’ll far exceed their miserable 0.7 WAR from 2019, which was 24th in baseball and last among the contending teams.

Prospects

One problem for the Mets is that they don’t have a lot of short-term depth in the upper minors as injury replacements. That’s partially why they’ve been a Who’s Who of washed up outfielders at Triple-A the last few years. ZiPS doesn’t think Luis Guillorme will do much to force a change at second base, and doesn’t believe Andrés Giménez’s bat is quite ready, despite a glove that projects as above-average. Ronny Mauricio is farther off, and the computer doesn’t really have much to say about him at this point, but no matter what, it’s unlikely he shoots up to the majors in 2020. Of course, I said that about Juan Soto once!

The one prospect ZiPS is excited about in the short-term is David Peterson, the big lefty sinkerballer drafted in the first round in 2017. ZiPS thinks that Peterson is already in the same tier as Wacha or Porcello, but given that the Mets are likely contenders in 2020, it would be reasonable to expect the team to go with their most established players, rather than have Peterson adjust to the majors in games that matter. Like Porcello and Stroman, Peterson’s numbers are likely to be sensitive to the Mets infield defense, which will improve by having less of J.D. Davis in it.

He’s not really a prospect, but the Mets still seem inclined to let Tim Tebow get time in the upper minors for some reason, and they haven’t slammed the door on the possibility of actually giving him some kind of playing time in the majors. zDEF thinks that Tebow has improved defensively — my system estimated him at a ludicrously awful -25 runs in left field in 2017, the worst in my database — but he’s never done enough offensively to doubt the scouts who think he doesn’t have the skillset to contribute at the major league level. At least the Mets don’t have a significant prospect above Single-A for him to block!

One pedantic note for 2020: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth charts 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.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2020 due to injury, and players who were released in 2019. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in June to form a ska-cowpunk Luxembourgian bubblegum pop-death metal band, he’s still listed here intentionally.

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 the 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.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article.

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 »

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 »