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

Batters

Ke’Bryan Hayes! Hayes has been a long-time favorite of ZiPS, with the computer already seeing him as a league-average player entering the 2019 season despite having topped off at Double-A Altoona at that point. In recent years, ZiPS has been using a probabilistic method derived from MLB’s Gameday data for minor-league defensive stats, generating a rough catch probability for every ball hit. Sadly, it’s not UZR and DRS, but it can generally tell the good defensive players from the poor ones, and it’s certainly better than some GB/FB-modified range factor or throwing up your hands in despair. ZiPS had Hayes as the best minor league third baseman from 2017-19, at 13 runs above average per season. Now, that doesn’t mean ZiPS is going to project him quite that strongly, due to the inherent issues with this kind of defensive estimation. But it does mean that there’s a high probability that his positive scouting reports are on-point and his good major league performance in a small sample was not a fluke.

Hayes was good defensively in the majors, and between him and Luis Robert, I felt pretty good that this methodology successfully identified minor-league glove standouts without any scouting data involved. What ZiPS did not see coming was just how solid Hayes was with the bat in his rookie season. If I had voted this time around, he likely would have gotten a tally on the back of my Rookie of the Year ballot. Hayes is not a big dude, but his power was impressive where previously it had been a work in progress. Five homers in 95 major league plate appearances isn’t a huge body of work, but he was in the top 20 in exit velocity, between Kyle Schwarber and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. A .700 slugging percentage isn’t in the future, but both ZiPS and Statcast think that he hit the ball like a .500 slugger in 2020. ZiPS isn’t fully there in 2021, but he’s one to watch.

Or should I call Hayes “the” one to watch? The general theme of Pittsburgh’s offense is that although there are few gaping maws of performance in the lineup, there’s a real dearth of impact offensive talent. Being uninteresting is arguably even worse than being lousy, at least from the position of an analyst. There’s a reason the 1962 Mets are fondly remembered by history for losing lovably, and the 1962 Houston Colt .45s are not. Bryan Reynolds and Adam Frazier are competent regulars, but there’s little upside here, and they feel more at home for a risk-averse contender with a single, specific hole to fill, such as Houston, Atlanta or Cleveland (if that team still counts). Colin Moran‘s not a difference-maker, just Josh Bell’s replacement as an uninspiring first baseman. As for Gregory Polanco, the best the Pirates can hope for is that he’s healthy, returns to 2017-18 form, and nets the team a couple of good prospects when he follows his former outfield teammates out of town. That Phillip Evans ranks so highly in this list should be a great deal of concern for the front office, though the de facto starting shortstop having a Pat Meares top comp is ZiPS being mean, not me. 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 nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Texas Rangers.

Batters

One initial note: ZiPS sees Globe Life Field as a fairly neutral park that leans just a skosh to the pitching side. We still have very little data about how the park plays and basing park factors on expectations tends to be a rather poor prognosticating urge.

The good news for Rangers fans is that, across the board and more than any other team in baseball, ZiPS sees Texas’ lineup in a more optimistic light than Steamer does. The bad news, of course, is that this represents the sunnier take on 2021. There’s no getting around the fact that this team will be in a fierce competition to grab the first pick in the 2022 amateur draft.

ZiPS anticipates a much better season in store for Joey Gallo, though one that just makes him a credible middle-of-the-order slugger rather than meeting any remaining star potential. It hurts to say it, but Gallo’s no longer all that young and it’s getting a little late in the day to talk about his future stardom. He’s put a lot of work into his plate discipline — he’s much better at laying off bad pitches than he was in his early years — but the fact remains that contact is a problem, and it’s unlikely to change at this point. That’s always going to put a hard ceiling on his batting average when he’s not having immense BABIP luck. Stardom would practically require him to smack 50 homers a year. A 40-homer Gallo pushes a team towards a pennant, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him doing that… in another uniform before next year’s ZiPS projections.

Nick Solak’s 2020 was a nearly-unmitigated disaster. He took a step backward in nearly every aspect of the game and as a super-sub, played a whole bunch of positions equally poorly, ending up with a profile that was less like Tony the Tiger (Phillips) and more like Tony the Tiger (cereal spokestiger). Now, his year obviously wasn’t grrrreeeat, but there were a lot of reasons to like him before last season. And really, the Rangers are probably going to need until May or June 2022 to win 90 games, so it’s not like they have any better choices than giving Solak another go. 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 nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Seattle Mariners.

Batters

Let’s go straight to the projection that will likely get the most grumbling: ZiPS does not think that Kyle Lewis is a budding star. It does like him better than Steamer does — it mostly comes down to ZiPS being more willing to believe he’s a .340 BABIP hitter — but not to the level where he projects as a good starter. He had a legitimately excellent rookie season, but it’ll take more than an abridged 2020 to convince ZiPS that the previous translations, generally in the .230/.270/.370 range, no longer have predictive value. That’s not to say Seattle should be actively seeking to replace or upgrade from Lewis. One of the “benefits” of being a rebuilding team is that you can give players chances to improve or show an improvement is for real, after all. But these projections see the 2020 AL Rookie of the Year race a little like 1992, with the runner-up, Luis Robert, playing Kenny Lofton and Lewis as Pat Listach. Bumping a projection up by 70 points of OPS from the results of a 60-game season remains an accomplishment.

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

Batters

I’m surprised that the Twins haven’t come to an agreement with Nelson Cruz, who seems almost immune to the ravages of time. The Twinkies dropped from second in the AL in runs scored to 10th, but that’s not Cruz’s fault: He hit .303/.397/.595 as the DH despite turning 40 in July. Is there a better fit for him than the Twin Cities? He’s well-liked in town(s), and this is arguably the franchise that needs his services most. That confluence of events tends to result in mutually beneficial contracts.

Without Cruz, Minnesota projects as a slight underdog to the White Sox, based on current rosters. Bringing him back and letting Alex Kirilloff get the bulk of playing time in left flips that standing to slight favorites. With few players signed, there are a lot of directions to go, but 40-year-olds don’t typically command enough resources that adding Cruz would preclude other moves. There is downside — Steamer and ZiPS massively disagree on his 2021 dropoff — but if he were a guarantee, he ought to get a one-year-deal at $25 million.

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

Batters

Can we just say 87 wins and call it a day? It feels like that’s what I’ve been projecting for the Cardinals for the last 15 years or so. That’s an exaggeration, but not an extreme one: ZiPS hasn’t projected them outside the 85–90 win range in a full season since 2011. Going back to the first official ZiPS team standings in 2005 — I only did players in the initial couple of years — St. Louis’ projections have been below .500 once (2008) and above 90 wins once (2010). The lineup rarely has superstars at the top of the lineup, but the Cards have a knack for keeping their floor incredibly high.

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

Batters

The 2020 Orioles were hard not to like. There was no reason to think they would be competitive, yet they hung around the edges of the playoff race until a 5–14 finish dropped them out of contention. I won’t lie: It was somewhat satisfying to this Baltimore native to watch the O’s beat out the Mookie Betts-less Red Sox for fourth in the AL East and take their first trip out of the basement since 2016.

It’s doubtful, though, that 2020’s surprising run was the leading edge of something bigger. Anthony Santander’s .261/.315/.575 campaign may have been enough to elevate him over the rest of the team’s deep stable of Quad-A sluggers, but a lot of the winning was due to good years from players like José Iglesias and Tommy Milone, who were never going to be part of the core going forward. What is encouraging is that unlike the Phillies of several years ago, the front office didn’t learn the wrong lesson from the team’s ephemeral success, resisting any July attempt to stockpile random veterans.

The makings of a competent offense are present more so than in recent offseasons, with much fewer negative WAR projections. The larger problem is that there’s just not a lot of star talent in this lineup. Adley Rutschman is the team’s best chance to swim against that current in the short-term, and there’s a great deal of potential remaining in Ryan Mountcastle‘s bat, but other prospects like Heston Kjerstad, Gunnar Henderson, Jordan Westburg, and Terrin Vavra are going to take a little longer. And as great a story as Trey Mancini’s comeback from colon cancer is, by the time the O’s are ready to compete for real in normal seasons, he’s likely going to be in another uniform. 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 nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Chicago Cubs.

Batters

I would argue that the current Cubs squad is a lot like The Godfather: Part III. Brilliance has been supplanted by mere competence, and most of the results look unimpressive when compared to the team’s peak. Like the latter days of Michael Corleone’s criminal empire, the Cubs have fallen from dominance. The manager for those teams is in Los Angeles, the front office’s leading light is gone, and much of the supporting cast has moved on. You can even pretend that whatever sum the Cubs lost in 2020 is a parallel to the $600 million stolen by Don Lucchesi and Archbishop Gilday through International Immobiliare! Heck, maybe Joey Lucchesi will throw a no-hitter against the Cubs.

Some of the central components of the Cubs’ more potent offenses remain in Javier Báez, Anthony Rizzo, and Kris Bryant. But none of them can boast a 2020 anywhere near their best season, and only Rizzo was really a key contributor. All three are free agents after 2021, and with the Cubs crying poor, it doesn’t seem like any big contract offers are in the works. If anything, the speculation this winter has been more about trades than extensions, particularly with Bryant. The larger issue is that all three have seen their projections follow a downward trajectory in recent seasons, so even re-signing all three would be no panacea. 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 nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Tampa Bay Rays.

Batters

Whatever else you want to say about the Tampa Bay Rays, you can’t deny that there’s a consistent underlying structure to their rosters. They rarely have hitters ticketed for outright superstar seasons, but they always boast a stupendous amount of depth, with a horde of players every year projected to be worth between one and four wins. From 2014-2020 (the original, pre-pandemic version), ZiPS projected 185 player-seasons at four wins or greater, 69 of which started at five wins. Just five of those player-seasons belonged to Rays, and only one of those five was projected for more than 5 WAR (Evan Longoria’s 5.2 in 2014). A few teams did worse, but with the exception of the Minnesota Twins, they were all near the bottom of baseball in WAR over those seasons, while the Rays were a solid 11th.

To the Rays’ credit, this team construction reflects an understanding of their win condition. The front office doesn’t get to choose its budgets, so to win consistently on the resources it’s given, the team’s rosters practically have to be designed this way. The Rays need to hit on their young pitchers and keep the flow of Joey Wendles and Brandon Lowes and Yandy Díazi moving because they’re simply not going to go out and sign a Gerrit Cole or an Anthony Rendon. 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 nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Boston Red Sox.

Batters

The Red Sox took a great deal of heat for the zeal with which they traded Mookie Betts last offseason, practically advertising to the world their intent to deal him as if it were a point of pride. When was the last time you saw a restaurant send out a press release announcing that their food was going to get worse? However you feel about the wisdom of the trade, it was a significant short-term downgrade for a team that had nearly fallen off the proverbial cliff in 2019. As a bizarre silver lining, Boston struggled so much in 2020 that, even in a 16-team playoff, it seems unlikely that they would have made the playoffs if they had retained Betts. He wasn’t five wins better than his replacements, after all.

While Boston finished the season in last place in the AL East, even looking up at the Orioles, the offense didn’t really have a lot to do with that bleak result. Ranking 12th in baseball in wRC+ and 11th in overall runs scored doesn’t exactly reek of awesomeness, but it’s at least respectable, something .400 teams aren’t particularly known for. Nor was there a dramatic drop-off in Boston’s very ordinary defense. Some things did go right, but certainly not everything:

• J.D. Martinez and Michael Chavis were dreadful.
• Rafael Devers took a step back from his 2019 season.
• Andrew Benintendi’s ribcage strain could arguably be called his seasonal highlight.

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

Batters

To make the playoffs in 2020, the Marlins needed a few things to happen. First, some of their young starting pitching, the organization’s strength, had to take a big step forward. The other thing was that the offense had to become, well, an MLB-ready lineup. With a 2018 team wRC+ of 83 and 2019’s woeful 79, run scoring (or the lack thereof) was a serious drag on the team’s hopes. Doubling this humiliation is the fact that Miami’s punchless attack could be directly linked to the trades of Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich, Marcell Ozuna, and J.T. Realmuto.

But with the lineup improving to a 95 wRC+ and the pitching being a plus, the Marlins snuck into the playoffs for the first time since 2003. The temporary (crossing fingers) expansion to the playoff field and some fortune also aided, allowing Miami to play October baseball despite a record right around .500 and a Pythagorean record of 26–34. But again, flags fly forever!

The challenge is that the offense remains a team weakness, and it’s unlikely there’s any savior in the organization. While it would be incorrect to say that the Marlins didn’t get anyone solid in return for their quartet of traded stars — Sixto Sánchez is a wonderful young pitcher to have under your employ — it is fair to say that there’s a real chance they didn’t get any offensive contributors in these trades. Starlin Castro is already one (and wasn’t a prospect), and none of Jorge Alfaro, Lewis Brinson, Monte Harrison, Isan Díaz, or Magneuris Sierra were the reasons they made the playoffs. Miami did indirectly pick up a solid prospect by the transitive property of trade-ality — Zac Gallen was acquired in the Ozuna trade and was later swapped for Jazz Chisholm — but only Chisholm projects by ZiPS to have a 10-WAR career. Only two position players project to have at least 10 WAR remaining: Chisholm and Brian Anderson. The average in ZiPS is about five hitters per team, and a young team emerging from a rebuild ought to have more than this at this point. Read the rest of this entry »