For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot. Rounding out the 2023 projections? The Tampa Bay Rays.

Batters

The Rays lineup presents a tale of two offenses. On the good side is a team with one of the best 2B/3B/SS combinations in the majors. Yandy Díaz had a monster 2022 season, basically as offensively amazing as it’s possible for a corner infielder with below-average power to be. ZiPS is low on Díaz relative to Steamer and The Bat, and his projection here is still excellent. It’s a real shame that he’s somehow still underrated in the eyes of fans, even in an age when most people realize on-base percentage is a thing. Díaz isn’t quite Eddie Yost or Eddie Joost in terms of pure walk rate, but he’s a mold-breaker along similar lines. With Isaac Paredes needing at-bats of his own and Curtis Mead aggressively pushing his way up from the minors, the Rays will almost certainly continue to use Díaz at multiple positions. I’d be happy with any of those three as my starting third baseman.

Brandon Lowe had a disappointing, injury-filled season, but it would take some severe recency bias to forgot that he was an elite second baseman in 2021, which wasn’t exactly an eon ago. Wanderkind Franco had his own injury problems in 2022, but he’s still very young, certainly young enough that you shouldn’t fret about it too much (yet). With some luck in terms of health, the Rays will have one of baseball’s best infields even if they get very little out of first base. Unfortunately, the computer doesn’t expect the Rays to get much out of first base. ZiPS has never been in on Jonathan Aranda, even after his most promising minor league season yet. Given the offensive explosion in the minors, ZiPS doesn’t translate his .318/.394/.521, 18-homer season for Durham as well as you might think, only having him at a .276/.341/.420, 12-homer season. Combine that with a poor debut and you can see why ZiPS really hopes that Aranda’s future is at second, not first. The player ZiPS does like is Kyle Manzardo, who gets a translation of .267/.346/.456 for his age-21 season, his first full pro campaign. Manzardo has a very good chance to be the top first baseman on the ZiPS Top 100 Prospects list next month. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the San Francisco Giants.

Batters

The Giants are a good team. They certainly didn’t feel like one for much of the middle portion of last season, but after a disappointing home sweep by the rival Dodgers in mid-September, they mopped up the Rockies and Diamondbacks and banked enough wins to get back to the .500 mark. Bringing in Michael Conforto as a decent starter/reclamation project meaningfully upgrades the outfield, and the Mitch Haniger signing was practically a bargain for a player who could be a top-tier designated hitter again if healthy. There’s a real solidity to the roster; no one on the infield has an impressive projection, but they have a lot of those guys on hand. Without even being aggressive, there are six or seven players on the team who could take one of the non-first base infield jobs and be at least passably adequate in the role. The problem here and in the outfield, however, is that the Giants can’t combine their 1.5-to-2.5 WAR guys together into three-to-four WAR players like piles of Legos. You could go full horror movie and try to sew David Villar to Wilmer Flores, but you won’t get an All-Star in the mix, just a couple of very angry players, an arbitration case, and a visit from the local constabulary. Platoons don’t really count here, either, as you can’t get a thousand plate appearances from a single platoon!

It’s not that Giants didn’t try. They were, after all, very close to inking Aaron Judge to a monster deal, talked seriously with pretty much every big free agent hitter out there, and were even the prospective employer of Carlos Correa before all of the drama that ended with the star shortstop returning to the Twins. So unlike a team with a need that it simply didn’t address, the Giants were cognizant of the weak part of their team — the lack of a big star to build around offensively — and tried very hard to correct that situation. The problem is that when the season starts, there’s no credit given for attempted WAR. Whether you fail to land a star after giving it the ol’ college try or because you’re the Cincinnati Reds, the result is the same: that player wearing someone else’s uniform. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Atlanta Braves.

Batters

If you’re wondering why Steve Cohen was willing to spend the GDP of a Pacific island nation on the 2023 Mets, you’re looking at the most compelling reason. The Phillies made the splash by bringing in Trea Turner, but that roster simply doesn’t cause terror in the eyes of their opponents. This one does.

What makes the Braves especially scary? A lot of times when you see a lineup this good, it’s a team full of guys nearing free agency, sure to depart due to the cost of keeping the band together. But these aren’t The Beatles of Abbey Road or Let It Be; Atlanta is still in the Revolver phase. Dansby Swanson was the one guy who departed, and though Vaughn Grissom is a projected downgrade, he still looks like a league-average player, which the Braves will be perfectly content with. In any case, Kyle Wright got Shelby Miller as his top comp, so maybe they can trade him for a new Swanson at some point!

Like the Mariners, the Braves do have that one unfortunate spot in left field. The combination of Eddie Rosario and assorted others feels out of place with the rest of the lineup, as if the Braves suddenly forgot the DH position existed and had to scramble internally once the local press noted that Joey Jo-Jo Junior Shabadoo didn’t sound like the name of a real player. As such, it would be nice if they added another outfielder, simply for depth, though it’s not strictly necessary unless an emergency situation happens, such as the loss of Ronald Acuña Jr. or Michael Harris II to injury. Yes, the Braves are an elite team with a lineup hole, but with players in the top tier at catcher, first, third, center field, and right field, and certainly a chance of that at second, this is a filthy batting order regardless.

Pitchers

The rotation isn’t as exciting as the lineup, especially after Max Fried and Spencer Strider, but the Braves get some very solid projections here. There are questions about the three pitchers in the back end of the rotation: can Wright repeat? Does Charlie Morton have a bounceback left? Can Mike Soroka stay healthy?

ZiPS is cautiously optimistic about all three of them, but the projections do like quite a few of the pitchers the Braves have in reserve. It sees Ian Anderson and Bryce Elder as legitimate major league starters and has a lot of positive math-generated feelings about Jared Shuster and Kolby Allard. Huascar Ynoa would have been included in that final group of reinforcements if not for Tommy John surgery already all but ending his 2023.

Even with the loss of Tyler Matzek to Tommy John surgery, the bullpen remains incredibly deep. Here’s a game to play: go down our depth chart for the Braves and find the names that ZiPS sees with an ERA+ under 100.

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You don’t get a reliever ZiPS doesn’t like — or even one with a projected ERA+ under 110 — until you get down to the eighth man on the depth chart, Dennis Santana. Go farther down and there’s still Nick Anderson (projected ERA+ of 111), Jesse Chavez (102), Jackson Stephens (106), Seth Elledge (100), Victor Vodnik (104), and Michael Tonkin (107) to go. The Gwinnett Stripers might have the 20th-best bullpen in the majors in 2023.

It’s not just ZiPS liking Atlanta because Alex Anthopoulos secretly deposits gold into my accounts in the Caymans; Steamer also ranks the Braves as having the top bullpen in baseball. The WAR projection on the depth chart would have been even better but for the fact that ZiPS uses leverage index and automatically had to reduce the projected leverage index of some of the pitchers, as there just weren’t enough high-leverage appearances to go around for everyone.

The Braves ought to be one of the teams competing to lead the majors in wins in 2023. And ZiPS believes they have the highest floor of all the reasonable contenders — the Mets, Cardinals, Dodgers, Padres, Yankees, Blue Jays, and Astros. This is an excellent team.

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 or have retired, players who will miss 2023 due to injury, and players who were released in 2022. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Death Dixieland Bubblegum Ska-Funk band, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.22, above 2022’s level of offense but lower than other years. Pitchers who appear to have a fairly definite change in the majors from start-to-relief or vice-versa from these projections will receive reconfigured updates in the spring.

Hitters are ranked by 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 that 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.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Miami Marlins.

Batters

Well, I guess we’re getting the bad news out of the way first! There is a lot to like about the Miami Marlins’ roster and almost none of it is contained in this section. I say almost none because Jazz Chisholm Jr. is a very talented player who is a blast to watch when he’s healthy and things are going well. Any pitch he connects with has the potential to be the perfect blend of velocity and launch angle. He combines that offensive ability with decent defense at second base, below-average glove work at short that still avoids being disastrous, and speed that will hopefully remain fully intact in 2023. And while you’ll notice Javier Báez on his comp list, his contact skills are less bleak and he’s nowhere near as over-aggressive.

If Chisholm is the Marlins’ Thelonious Monk, the rest of the lineup is, well, your neighbor’s tone-deaf 10-year-old son who got a guitar for Christmas and suddenly discovered Korn. There’s just no realistic scenario in which the offense is a significant plus for the team. The Fish’s third-best projected hitter is an over-30 catcher who had a .584 OPS last year. Using the ZiPS plate appearances, only four players in the organization project to have a 5% chance of a 4-WAR season in 2023. That’s fewer than teams like the Rockies and Pirates. What makes this especially unforgivable is that the Marlins intend to contend with this team now. There’s nothing wrong with a contender adding Jean Segura, but the team needs so much more than him; he’s not the finishing piece in an otherwise playoff-worthy lineup here. There’s no one in the organization who projects to be a difference-maker in the years before the pitching gets expensive, meaning that there’s no one in the organization who projects to be a difference-maker before Miami trades its pitchers to larger-market teams for prospects. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the St. Louis Cardinals.

Batters

Yesterday, I compared the Seattle Mariners to the St. Louis Cardinals. Today, it’s time for the real thing. The Cardinals possess that extra thumper I wish the Mariners had in the form of Paul Goldschmidt. Otherwise, the lineups don’t look all that dissimilar: Nolan Arenado plays an older superstar third base version of Julio Rodríguez while the rest of the lineup is low-key, solid, and not particularly exciting, at least at the plate. The Cardinals are rarely a bad team, and it would be tremendously challenging for them to be one in 2023. Want to know one of my favorite freak stats? The last time the Cardinals ranked worse than 20th in baseball in wRC+ was in 1978. From Whiteyball to Jockettynomics to Moneyball to Mozeliakanalia, the Cards almost always manage to score runs.

In any given season, Arenado and Goldschmidt will compete to be the best at their respective positions. Still, I would take the under on our depth charts’ playing time projections, as both are at the age where declines in playing time due to injury are expected, especially Goldschmidt. Add in Tommy Edman, who may be the most underrated shortstop in baseball, and better-than-league average performances pretty much everywhere else, and this is a team that should dominate every NL Central team other than the Brewers.

The Cards are so solid that they’re almost uninteresting, just as Mike Trout can sometimes seem a bit boring compared to more volatile (and flawed) stars. If there’s a weakness here, it might be the lack of usable depth in the high minors to serve as midseason reinforcements. Jordan Walker’s projection looks a little disappointing on the surface, but ZiPS has him with huge upside numbers in 2024 and beyond. The role player depth is thinner, though; a lot of the usual cast of Triple-A hangers-on have moved on in minor league free agency and ZiPS isn’t particularly impressed with additions like Taylor Motter and Juniel Querecuto. But there’s still time for the Cardinals to add more NRIs, so I wouldn’t necessarily call this a done deal.

Pitchers

You’ll notice a bit of a disconnect between the pitching staff’s projected WAR and ERA figures, with the latter a lot more fun than the former. This is a relic of the team’s outstanding defensive projections, even with Harrison Bader in New York. As a result, the ERAs are a lot lower than the FIPs across the board, and while ZiPS WAR gives more credit to a pitcher than just using FIP, in this case it’s mostly the defense.

That’s not to say the Cards have a bad rotation — it just lacks the exciting highlights the offense possesses. Once you accept that there’s a good chance that peak Jack Flaherty isn’t coming back, there’s nobody here who really blows you away, except maybe Jordan Montgomery during his run late last summer. It’s a quietly competent starting five and there’s more depth in the upper minors than there is with the lineup.

The biggest disagreements between ZiPS and Steamer appear to be in the bullpen. Where Steamer views the team’s bullpen as middle of the pack, ZiPS much prefers the team’s second-tier relievers, seeing Chris Stratton, Génesis Cabrera, and Andre Pallante as plus contributors, while Steamer thinks of them as closer to replacement level. Only the season will sort out which computer is correct.

My think the Cards are a 89-93 win team and not quite in the tier of the very best in baseball, but ZiPS disagrees, putting St. Louis in the same range as the Padres, Astros, Braves, Dodgers, and Mets. My personal feeling is that the Cards really need a true ace at the top of the rotation, but perhaps that’s just my inclination to play devil’s advocate. ZiPS has beat me before (see the Tigers last year!).

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