After all the rumors and money and projections, here we are, back at 0-0, with every team having at least some theoretical level of hope for the coming season. Beginning Thursday, actual games will turn these projections to shreds, but this is the best algorithmic projection I have the ability to make for 2024. Just a note that I have not committed an act of decimal cheating; ZiPS does not know that the Padres and Dodgers are 1-1.

The methodology I’m using here isn’t identical to the one we use in our Projected Standings, meaning there naturally will be some important differences in the results. So how does ZiPS calculate the season? Stored within ZiPS are the first- through 99th-percentile projections for each player. I start by making a generalized depth chart, using our Depth Charts as a jumping off point. Since these are my curated projections, I make changes based on my personal feelings about who will receive playing time as filtered through arbitrary whimsy my logic and reasoning. ZiPS then generates a million versions of each team in Monte Carlo fashion (the computational algorithms, that is — no one is dressing up in a tuxedo and playing chemin de fer like James Bond).

After that is done, ZiPS applies another set of algorithms with a generalized distribution of injury risk that changes the baseline PAs/IPs for each player. Of note is that higher-percentile projections already have more playing time than lower-percentile projections before this step. ZiPS then automatically (and proportionally) fills in playing time from the next players on the list to get to a full slate of plate appearances and innings. The model’s had a lot of updates since the pre-spring projections, so probabilities may have moved slightly more than you might have expected from the changes in wins.

The result is a million different rosters for each team and an associated winning percentage for each of those million teams. After applying the new strength of schedule calculations based on the other 29 teams, I end up with the standings for each of the million seasons. This is actually much less complex than it sounds.

The goal of ZiPS is to be less mind-blowingly awful than any other way of predicting the future. The future is tantalizingly close but beyond our ken, and if anyone figures out how to deflect astrophysicist Arthur Eddington’s arrow of time, it’s probably not going to be in service of baseball projections. So we project probabilities, not certainties.

Over the last decade, ZiPS has averaged 19.7 correct teams when looking at Vegas preseason over/under lines. I’m always tinkering with methodology, but most of the low-hanging fruit in predicting how teams will perform has already been harvested. With one major exception, most of ZiPS’ problems now are about accuracy rather than bias. ZiPS’ year-to-year misses for teams are uncorrelated, with an r-squared of one year’s miss to the next of 0.000562. Now, correlations with fewer than 20 points aren’t ideal, but the individual franchise with the highest year-to-year r-squared is the Mariners at 0.03, which isn’t terribly meaningful. If you think that certain franchises have a history of predictive over- or underperformance, you thought wrong, and I’d bet it’s the same for the other notable projection systems.

If you want to check out the pre-spring projections, which talk about the biggest things to happen up to that point, here are the links to the AL and NL projections. Since it has been requested, for these official 2024 projections, I’ve also added 80th and 20th percentile win totals to the standings tables.

Since the last set of projections, the movement here can mostly be attributed to starting pitching. Corbin Burnes provides a huge boost to the Orioles, but some of the benefit of his addition is negated because of less optimistic innings totals for the injured John Means and, more significantly, Kyle Bradish. The injury to Yankees ace Gerrit Cole diminishes their outlook a bit, though they still have the American League’s third highest playoff probability. Lucas Giolito wasn’t expected to pitch the Red Sox to the postseason, but his injury makes a Boston playoff berth even less likely.

People might still be shocked to see the White Sox with a 1.5% chance of making the postseason, but one of the things I’ve learned after doing this for 20 years is that people – even the most sophisticated ones – tend to underrate how often improbable things happen. Luckily, with so many years in the books, I’ve had the ability to do a lot of calibration! In most simulations, the division features a fairly tight race between the Twins and Guardians for the title and the Tigers finishing third. And because the Central is relatively weak, a Royals playoff appearance would be unlikely but not unreasonably so.

The big change here is a slightly more negative distribution of the innings for Astros pitchers, narrowing their lead over the Rangers and Mariners. I appreciate ZiPS’ bringing the M’s just that much closer to the Seattle Mariners .540 meme. The A’s now project to finish a fraction of a win ahead of the White Sox in the AL basement, which is some kind of victory, I guess.

ZiPS does give the Braves a 1% chance at winning 116 games! Atlanta lost a bit in the probabilities because of some changes in the generalized playing time model that fills in the backups. Even if ZiPS sees the playoffs as a bit less certain for this team than it did six weeks ago, the Braves still have the highest projected win total in the majors. The Marlins took a sizable hit after some negative injury news, a pretty big deal for them since the pitching staff is their source of upside. It sure ain’t the hitting!

ZiPS loves Pete Crow-Armstrong and is suspicious of Cody Bellinger matching his 2023 numbers, but bringing him back was still enough to push the Cubs into a near-statistical tie in what was already projected to be a very close race. The Brewers took a hit with the loss of Burnes, and as a result, they slightly boosted the projections for the other four teams in the division.

The NL West contenders fighting with the Dodgers – which means the three other teams that are not the Rockies – all received a boost because, since the pre-spring projections, they each added one of the top starting pitchers available, either in free agency or via trade, this offseason. The Diamondbacks, Giants, and Padres are better after having acquired, respectively, Jordan Montgomery, Blake Snell, and Dylan Cease, but the moves haven’t changed the relative positions of these teams in the projected standings. Even so, these deals — along with San Francisco’s signing of Matt Chapman — have created more scenarios in which the Dodgers can be bested for the divisional title, though they remain the favorites.

One thing you see a lot on social media, especially from sites that repost these projections, is outrage that “the best team will only have X wins.” The Orioles are projected to have the best record in the AL, at 91-71, but that doesn’t mean that ZiPS projects 91 wins to lead the AL. Those 91 wins represent Baltimore’s 50th percentile performance in those million simulations, and it is astronomically unlikely that all 30 teams hit their 50th-percentile projections. On average, you should expect three teams to hit their 90th percentile, six to hit their 80th, nine to hit their 70th, and so on and so forth. But again, it’s rarely going to be that neat. So here’s the percentile matrix for the number of wins it would take to secure each of the six playoff spots.

I’m not a bold predictions kind of guy. Maybe it comes with the territory of writing so much: On average, my views are pretty down the middle because I just have so many views. There’s so much baseball bouncing around in my brain all the time that it tends toward the mean. Or maybe that’s just a cop out, a way to pre-excuse my lack of boldness. Because it’s time for my annual attempt at it. Here are five things I think will occur that hopefully will shock you a little – but not too much, because I’m hoping that at least two or three of these actually will transpire.

1. The Mets Will Lead Baseball in DH WAR
Our projections hate J.D. Martinez, and there’s a reason why: He’s 36 and squarely in the back half of his career. Over the past four years, he’s posted a 120 wRC+, which is great but not otherworldly, and he struck out 31.1% of the time in 2023. This kind of general trajectory is what projections feast on; they recognize early and commonly shared signs of decline and then extrapolate from there.

Doubting those projections wouldn’t really count as a bold claim in my book, though, because Martinez is a very good hitter. Also, the way that projections work means that he’ll exceed those numbers roughly 50% of the time even if they’re a good approximation of his true talent. We need to be much bolder than that. So let’s kick it up a notch and imagine how good Martinez could feasibly be.
Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today, we looked at the teams in the bottom half of the league’s rotations. Now to close out the positional power rankings, we look at the game’s best.

The ever-changing landscape of pitching is present throughout the upper tier of the rotation rankings. With fewer workhorses across the league, rotations are often relying on upwards of eight guys to make a significant impact, as teams now understand that the six-month grind will churn their staff and could leave their April and October iterations looking very different. The margins are tiny, with the top three teams separated by fractions of a win and the next 11 split by a mere 1.6 WAR. Six of the teams ranked 16-30 last year have graduated into the upper class, but a key injury or an overperforming prospect from one of clubs in this year’s bottom tier could be enough to flip things drastically. Read the rest of this entry »

Nolan Schanuel got to the big leagues in a hurry, and he wasted little time proving himself once he arrived. Called up less than six weeks after being drafted 11th overall last summer by the Los Angeles Angels out of Florida Atlantic University, the left-handed swinging first baseman hit safely in each of his first 10 games. Moreover, he reached base in all 29 games he appeared in and finished with a .402 OBP. Indicative of his calling cards — plus plate discipline and quality bat-to-ball skills — he drew 20 walks and fanned just 19 times in 132 plate appearances.

The one knock on his game is he doesn’t hit for much power. Schanuel homered just twice after reaching pro ball — once each in Double-A and the majors — and while that profile isn’t expected to change markedly, he did leave the yard 19 times in his final collegiate season. At 6-foot-4, 220 pounds, he also possesses the frame to become more of a long-ball threat as he further acclimates to big-league pitching. Just 22 years old (as of last month), he has plenty of time left to grow his game.

Schanuel talked hitting at the Angels’ Arizona spring training complex earlier this month.

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David Laurila: It’s not uncommon for modern day players to identify as hitting nerds. In your opinion, what constitutes a hitting nerd?

Nolan Schanuel: “There are so many ways you can put it. I think it’s somebody that studies not only their own swing, but also other people’s swings, seeing what works for them. Growing up, I looked into dozens of swings. Barry Bonds, Ichiro [Suzuki] — seeing what works for them and kind of trying to put it into mine. So, I would say that being a hitting nerd is studying other people and kind of inserting some of what they do into themselves.”

Laurila: You just named two hitters with very different swings. Were you ever trying to emulate either of them?

Schanuel: “I wouldn’t say emulate. I would say that I tried to pick out pieces of what they did really well. I didn’t really know my swing when I was first doing this, so putting things into it kind of made it what it is today.”

Laurila: What did you take from Ichiro? Read the rest of this entry »

It remains a heartbreaking but immutable fact of baseball life that you cannot steal first base.

So over the weekend, Cleveland Guardians outfielder Myles Straw passed through waivers. He’s no longer on the 40-man roster and will start the season in Triple-A, despite having a guaranteed three years and $20.45 million remaining on his contract.

On this, the day (at least idiomatically) of Ezequiel Tovar’s contract extension, Straw serves as a solemn reminder of the dangers of getting too attached to a fast guy with questions about his bat. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, we ranked baseball’s bullpens. Today, we turn our attention to the starters, beginning with the rotations that project in the bottom half of the league.

It’s not every day that you get to quote Tolstoy in an article that primarily consists of short descriptions of fifth starters, but trust me, I have a good reason for doing so. You know which quote I’m going for, presumably. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It’s trite, but it does such a good job of describing major league rotations that I couldn’t resist. I’m sure you’ll love the top 15 rotations when they get released. There’s a shiny ace at the top. He’s accompanied by a fairly good second banana, maybe even someone you could call a borderline number one starter. The guys behind them? They’re a mix of interesting young pitchers and accomplished veterans. If the team is lucky, they might even be a super-rotation, health permitting. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today, Dan Szymborski kicked off our reliever rankings. Now we’ll take a look at the bullpens projected to be baseball’s best.

There are some positions for which a cleaner, wider WAR 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 Yankees and Braves have in right field separates them from the rest of baseball in a substantial way: There’s a projected 4-5 WAR gap between those clubs and the teams projected/ranked as high as sixth in right field. The projected WAR gap between the Phillies’ bullpen and that of the White Sox, ranked all the way down at 30, is only about that much, at 4.5 WAR. Relief pitching is not one of those positions with clear, WAR-driven demarcation from team to team, and bullpens on clubs with better rotations (and starters who eat up innings) are going to be punished for throwing fewer innings than those on teams that frequently deploy long relievers since WAR is a counting stat influenced by playing time. Read the rest of this entry »

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

One of my favorite jokes, which I’ve probably beaten into the ground at this point, is that there are three teams a year whose fans think they have a great bullpen, while those who root for the 27 other clubs are convinced that their team’s bullpen is the worst in baseball history and the primary reason they aren’t going to win the World Series. Read the rest of this entry »

Blaze Alexander is on the bubble to break camp with the Arizona Diamondbacks. His spring showing suggests he deserves the opportunity to do so. In 52 Cactus League plate appearances, the 24-year-old infield prospect has slashed .420/.442/.640 with seven extra-base hits and five stolen bases in as many attempts. Moreover, he’s continued to show promise since being taken in the 11th round of the 2018 draft out of IMG Academy. That he’s mostly flown under the radar while doing so is starting to change.

“I hope that’s the case,” Alexander told me in mid-March. “I mean, I’ve been putting on a pretty good performance this spring, so I definitely think I’m opening some eyes. That said, I obviously need to transfer it over to the regular season.”

The likelihood of his doing so in the big leagues was improved on Friday when the D-Backs released Elvis Andrus, a notable roster move given that the 15-year veteran had been inked to a free agent contract as a potential backup for Geraldo Perdomo. As it now stands, there is a good chance that Alexander — “a viable defensive shortstop with a huge arm… [who] hits for enough power” in the words of Eric Longenhagen — will be filling that role.

Hitting for power isn’t one of Alexander’s aims, nor is it part of his process. While he does possess pop — his ledger includes 30 home runs in 734 plate appearances over the past two minor-league seasons — his M.O. is bullets, not blasts. Read the rest of this entry »

We conclude our rankings of the game’s position players with a deep dive on designated hitters.

Back when the DH rule was introduced in 1973 (has it really been five decades?), the role was often filled by aging and/or physically compromised sluggers who were in the lineup on a regular basis. Boston’s Orlando Cepeda played in 142 games, while Minnesota’s Tony Oliva played in 146 and the California Angels’ Frank Robinson saw action in 147. All were in their mid-to-late 30s, and save for Robinson’s 17 games in left field, all were exclusively designated hitters. The Tigers differed in that they platooned at the position, but it was with an otherwise similar script. Gates Brown and Frank Howard, both at the tail end of their careers, combined to play in just three games with a glove in hand. Read the rest of this entry »