Over the past week and a half, we’ve published our annual season preview, ranking the league’s players by position and team based on a blend of our projections (a 50/50 split between ZiPS and Steamer) and our manually maintained RosterResource playing time estimates courtesy of Jason Martinez and Jon Becker. If you happen to have missed any of those installments, you can use the navigation widget above to catch up.

Today, I’m going to summarize the results. We’ll look at some tables and pick out a few interesting tidbits in a moment, but first, it’s important to remember that this exercise captures a snapshot of how we project teams to perform now. Teams aren’t static. Since we began publishing our rankings, the Rockies traded outfielder Nolan Jones back to the Guardians, the team that drafted and developed him. The Brewers traded Mark Canha and Manuel Margot. Evan Carter, who burned so bright for the Rangers late in 2023, has been optioned as he tries to regain his stroke after an injury-riddled 2024 season. Drake Baldwin, our no. 11 overall prospect, and Cam Smith, no. 70, officially made their respective team’s Opening Day roster, as did Ryan Johnson, a 22-year-old right-handed pitcher who was drafted in the second round last year and has never thrown a pitch in affiliated ball (he ranked 11th on our Angels list as a 40+ FV prospect). And in a depressing callback to this time last year, when his signed with the Diamondbacks mere hours after our starting pitcher rankings went live, about 25 minutes after we published this year’s installment, Jordan Montgomery announced that he’ll be getting Tommy John surgery. Read the rest of this entry »

At first glance, this might seem like a list of the best pitchers in baseball rather than a list of the best rotations. That’s the thing I noticed most when writing this article; nine of the top 10 pitchers in the game according to our projections can be found on these 15 teams. It’s not that good pitchers inherently make for good pitching staffs, though that’s certainly part of it. It’s more that the concentration of top pitchers on top teams reflects a strategic optimization of limited resources.

A good pitcher on a bad team is just bad business in today’s game. Pitchers are highly sought after in trade, which makes them worth their weight in prospects, so to speak. They’re also fragile – one sore elbow, and bam, 18 months go down the drain. That gives teams with good pitchers but bad playoff chances a clear incentive: maximize the value of your top pitcher by trading them before they get injured. And rebuilding teams almost never sign top pitchers in free agency; it’s safer to anchor yourself around a hitter. Can you draft and keep one of these top-tier arms? Absolutely, and you’ll see some of those on this list, but the prevailing trend is that of established aces migrating towards contending teams. Read the rest of this entry »

I always get excited to take my first look at my half of the starting pitcher Positional Power Rankings. I come in with preconceived notions of each rotation, usually with a solid handle on the top eight to 10 options for every team, as I’m no doubt buried in multiple fantasy drafts when Meg sends everything out. And yet I never cease to be amazed. I’m not saying the projections are infallible, but seeing the numbers laid out versus my mental snapshot of each team is sobering. There are always teams I’m surprised to see in my section, and rankings that absolutely shock me at first blush. Read the rest of this entry »

There are some positions for which a cleaner, wider gap exists between the top teams and the bottom, where we can more definitively say that some teams are better than others. For instance, the combination of talent and depth that the Dodgers, Phillies, and Braves have in their starting rotations separates their projections from the rest of baseball in a meaningful way. Relief pitching is not one of these positions. As you digest the forecasts and player details below, make sure to note how thin the margins tend to be from one team to the next. Also know that relief inning sample sizes are small enough that this is where WAR is the least good at properly calibrating impact and value, a dynamic heightened in the playoffs when the remaining bullpens are all turbocharged by the way the postseason schedule allows for rest, or for an elite starter to work an inning on his bullpen day. Things like coherent managerial usage, roster management, and good or bad health luck tend to play a huge role in the way bullpens perform throughout a season, and those are factors we can’t totally control for here. Read the rest of this entry »

After wrapping up our position player rankings last week, we turn our attention to the league’s pitchers, starting with the bullpens in the bottom half of the reliever rankings.

It’s impossible to project relievers. The pitchers themselves are random enough, sprouting new pitches or gaining five ticks on their fastball with no prior warning. Pitchers also tend to get injured, especially the ones who go max effort on every pitch. And then there’s the randomness of 60-inning samples, where a fly ball sneaking just past the glove of a leaping outfielder can catapult an ERA from respectable to disastrous. This is all to say that the task of forecasting a bullpen’s performance over the course of a single year is destined to fail.

So I’ll take this introduction as an opportunity to encourage you to not take the order of these rankings too seriously. Less than one-tenth of a win separates some of these teams. There is perhaps just one truly terrible bullpen in the mix; every other team essentially has a mix of proven shutdown guys, solid middle-inning depth, and intriguing wild cards. With that said: To the rankings! Read the rest of this entry »

For some teams, designated hitter is a position, to be filled by a specific type of player with specific attributes, just like shortstop or center field. For others, it’s Purgatory, a way station for forgotten men who don’t hit well enough to hold down a regular lineup spot or don’t field well enough to play anywhere else. It should be very obvious from the tables below which teams fall into each of the two categories. Read the rest of this entry »

Want to hear something crazy? Aaron Judge is switching back to right field after an 11.2-WAR campaign, but this year’s top right field projection is still nearly half a win below last year’s. There is obviously some logic behind this: Last year, Ronald Acuña Jr. was younger than Judge and was coming off his own monstrous 2023 campaign. He also plays for a team with a penchant for driving its starters until the wheels fall of, so we had him projected for nearly every single plate appearance. But still, with Judge in right field again, we should probably expect bigger things. The Yankees’ right field projection trails only one other position player spot, Kansas City’s (and Bobby Witt Jr.’s) shortstop projection, and it trails by just one-tenth of a win. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year’s edition of the center field Positional Power Rankings marked a changing of the guard. With Julio Rodríguez and the Mariners taking over the top spot, it was the first time since 2013 that the Mike Trout-led Angels did not lead the pack. The times have continued a-changin’, as Trout is no longer a center fielder and the assortment of ex-prospects the Angels are running out in his stead have sunk to 27th. Meanwhile, Aaron Judge is no longer pushing the Yankees to the second spot, as the combination of Juan Soto’s crosstown move and Giancarlo Stanton’s elbow woes has freed the two-time MVP to return to right field, with occasional time at DH. Read the rest of this entry »

Left fielders have traditionally been boppers, with the likes of Adam Dunn and Manny Ramirez — to name just two — populating the position over the past few decades. There have been Carl Crawford and Brett Gardner types as well, but by and large, big-time power guys have ruled the roost in the port-side corner. That hasn’t been the case of late. Last year, Yordan Alvarez and Teoscar Hernández were the only left fielders to top the 30 homer mark. Which isn’t to say the Crawfords and Gardeners have completely taken over. It’s more that the inhabitants of left field feature a mix of styles, with some possessing more multi-faceted skill sets than others. Read the rest of this entry »

Since one of the original driving forces behind sabermetrics was to shine a light on the game’s underappreciated players, to give them their own place in the annals, I’ve always had an attachment to third basemen. Throughout baseball’s history, the hot corner has been one of the “tinker of all, master of none” positions. The best third basemen often don’t put up the gaudy Triple Crown stats of first basemen and corner outfielders, and only a few generate the sort of attention for their fielding that the top shortstops or center fielders do. Sabermetrics generally, and measures like WAR specifically, have helped to remedy some of this. Ron Santo and Dick Allen have both now gained entry to the Hall of Fame — though, sadly, both were elected after passing away — and Scott Rolen had a far quicker path to Cooperstown than I ever expected when he retired. Read the rest of this entry »