For the 21st 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 penultimate team is the St. Louis Cardinals.

Batters

The 2024 St. Louis Cardinals experienced a bit of a bounce back from the team’s worst season in decades, but in a year where it took 89 wins to grab the final NL Wild Card spot, the Red Birds were still well short of being able to squeeze back into the playoffs. While things were sunnier than they were the year before, the Cardinals were outscored on the season, and neither of the stars in the lineup, Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado, returned to their 2023 form. It doesn’t appear as if the Cards feel like they’re on the precipice of an October return, as they’ve largely spent the offseason trying to trade Arenado.

Might Arenado actually be underrated at this point? While his offensive production has come down quite a bit from its peak, his 149 wRC+ in 2022 was likely always a late-era outlier, and a 102 wRC+ is hardly lousy for a third baseman. He’s no longer a star without a resurgence at the plate, but he was at least a good player in 2024, amassing 3.1 WAR thanks to very good defense at the hot corner. I think the perception of Arenado’s 2024 might be a lot worse than his season actually was. When I posted the depth chart graphic on social media, it led to a couple of conversations about ZiPS projecting a comeback season, even though the 2.9 WAR it forecasts is below his 2024 number!

With two glaring exceptions, ZiPS mostly thinks that the Cards are adequate to good around the diamond. Masyn Winn projects as the lineup’s second-best player, and though ZiPS isn’t crazy about Thomas Saggese, it likes Brendan Donovan enough to end up with a good second base WAR number, assuming the latter gets the plate appearances projected on our Depth Charts. The system projects that Willson Contreras will be good enough offensively that he could be a reasonable first baseman, and though it pulls back considerably on Iván Herrera’s rookie offense, the tandem of him and Pedro Pagés also looks solid.

Where ZiPS is unhappy is in the non-Lars Nootbaar portions of the outfield. In center field, Victor Scott II’s defense isn’t enough to completely cancel out a bleak offensive projection, and the computer doesn’t see Michael Siani as providing much of a shove. Scott’s a weird one to project in that he actually hit pretty decently in Double-A in 2023, but he was absolutely horrific in the minors last year, putting up a 59 wRC+. Note that that’s not the translation, but his actual number. Scott hit somewhat better in July after changing his stance, putting up a .711 OPS for the Triple-A Memphis Redbirds, but that hint of production disappeared in the majors and he earned a demotion in mid-September.

As for the other exception, Jordan Walker, ZiPS actually thinks he improved his defense somewhat in 2024, to the point that he’s not a pure designated hitter, just a fairly lousy right fielder who could play if he hits. But that’s kind of the problem. Walker now has about 500 PA of not hitting Triple-A pitchers. If Scott had a 93 wRC+ at Triple-A, it would be cause for optimism, but it’s completely inadequate for someone who is supposed to be valued entirely for his bat. Walker isn’t old, and you can squint and still kind of see his upside, but the odds are against him being a real contributor in 2025.

Pitchers

I’m not sure why ZiPS is suddenly reminded of a couple of knuckleballers, Phil Niekro and Tom Candiotti, when it looks at Sonny Gray, but removing them from the large cohort doesn’t change Gray’s projection, which makes him the favorite to represent the Cardinals at the All-Star Game this summer. It’s hard to tell how seriously the team really considered trading Gray, but he does have some pretty decent value with two years left on his contract. Of course, that assumes that his forearm tendinitis isn’t something darker, but really, you could say that about every pitcher who has ever existed.

He projects as having lower long-term upside than either Quinn Mathews or Tink Hence, but ZiPS is increasingly a fan of Michael McGreevy, who has good control and keeps the ball down, which has value in front of what ZiPS projects to be an above-average infield. Both Mathews and Hence project as legitimate starters right now, with ZiPS a little more confident about the former for 2025. ZiPS isn’t expecting quite as good a year from Erick Fedde, but it remains comfortable with the back of St. Louis’ rotation, both in terms of its non-horrendous quality and its reasonable depth.

It might be a stretch to say that ZiPS sees the Cardinals bullpen as “Ryan Helsley and some other guys,” but their hard-throwing closer is the only reliever who the computer can summon any excitement about. Helsley lost a couple of strikeouts per game coming back from his 2023 injuries, but ZiPS isn’t worried about that, as his velocity is intact and his contact rate is consistent with that of a whiffier pitcher. Ryan Fernandez, JoJo Romero, and John King all project as a bit above average, and the computer would put Matthew Liberatore in that group as well. ZiPS is rather meh on the low-leverage portion of the bullpen, and while the Cardinals could certainly add an arm or two there, this doesn’t appear to be a team that intends to make so much as a ripple in free agency.

Unlike most seasons, ZiPS does’t see the Cardinals as being in the same tier as the Brewers and Cubs. St. Louis has better projections than the Pirates and Reds, at least for now, but even then, only barely. It has been an incredibly quiet offseason in St. Louis outside of the constant Arenado rumors, with the team doing just about nothing, and we’re now only a few weeks from the opening of spring training. The team’s biggest signing this winter? Ryan Vilade. Even throwing in the towel would be more interesting, and probably more helpful than cosplaying as the heat death of the universe.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2025 due to injury, and players who were released in 2024. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Ukulele Dixieland Jazz band that only covers songs by The Smiths, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.11.

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. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on BlueSky.

The Tampa Bay Rays have a reputation of getting the best out of previously undervalued pitchers, and Garrett Cleavinger is a prime example. Acquired from the Los Angeles Dodgers in August 2022 in exchange for German Tapia, the 30-year-old southpaw was subsequently limited to 12 games in 2023 due to a knee injury, but a breakout was right around the corner. Cleavinger made a career-high 68 appearances last year, logging a 3.75 ERA and a 26.7 strikeout rate over 60 relief innings. His ledger included seven wins and six saves.

A high-octane heater was one of his best weapons; at 96.3 mph, Cleavinger’s four-seamer ranked in the 84th percentile for velocity. With that in mind, I asked the Lawrence, Kansas native if he identifies as a power pitcher.

“It’s a part of my game,” Cleavinger told me at the close of the 2024 campaign. “I’m definitely not a pinpoint command guy like some pitchers are — I wish I was a little bit better in that aspect — but power stuff coming out of the pen does kind of fit the description for me.”

Possessor of a varied arsenal is another accurate description. The erstwhile University of Oregon closer now features five-pitches, only one of which he threw less than 10 percent of the time. Per Baseball Savant, the breakdown was: cutter 26.3%, four-seamer 24.8%, slider 22.0%, sweeper 17.4%, and two-seamer 9.5%. Two of those were recent additions. Read the rest of this entry »

I began last week’s Matrix Reloaded with a note about the slow pace of the offseason in January, and that was still the case when the column was published at 3:35 p.m. ET. So, of course, less than three hours after that went live, Roki Sasaki announced on Instagram that he’d signed with the Dodgers. His signing kicked the market into gear, making these past seven days far more eventful than what we’d experienced in recent weeks.

For my neurotic Offseason Matrices work, that means a lot fewer blank cells and a lot more maroon cells, indicating a lack of fit due to a positional logjam. The game of musical chairs continues and free agents remain available to sign, but many of the teams that might’ve been interested earlier in the offseason have since filled their openings. That doesn’t necessarily mean that all of these players will sign for less than what they were expected to when the offseason began — though, as Ben Clemens demonstrated earlier this week, many of them will — but it does mean their options are limited. Without further ado, let’s get to the transactions that happened and what we can glean about the ones that may still be to come. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers won 100 games in 2023. Then they signed the top two free agents in that year’s class: Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a pair of unicorns the likes of which aren’t available every offseason. In 2024, the Dodgers had the best record in baseball. Then they won the World Series, and along the way made the last two rounds of the playoffs look pretty easy. Ohtani won the NL MVP award.

And then they signed a bunch of new players and brought back a few more! Blake Snell! Roki Sasaki! Tanner Scott! Hyeseong Kim! Michael Conforto! Kirby Yates, probably! Teoscar Hernández! Blake Treinen! Kotaro Matsushima! (OK, Matsushima is a rugby player — I included him to see if you’re paying attention.)

MLB needs a salary cap, say two thirds of the 36,000 respondents to a much-circulated poll on MLB Trade Rumors. More jarring are the results to question no. 2: Almost exactly half of some 27,000 respondents would be willing to lose the entire 2027 season if it meant MLB instituted a salary cap. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in early October, Termarr Johnson self-assuredly told MLB Pipeline’s Jim Callis that he is continuing to work on being “the best hitter in the world.” The 20-year-old Pittsburgh Pirates prospect didn’t put it quite that way when I spoke to him days later, but he did exude determination and confidence when addressing his craft. That’s understandable. Drafted fourth overall in 2022 out of Atlanta’s Mays High School, Johnson remains a high-ceiling hitter, albeit one whose developmental path hasn’t been as smooth as many had anticipated.

His 2024 season included both stumbles and strides. The 5-foot-7, 190-pound middle infielder logged a solid 121 wRC+ between High-A Greensboro (487 plate appearances) and Double-A Altoona (57), but as our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen wrote last summer, Johnson’s “underlying contact data is pretty concerning.” Moreover, while his 15 home runs were indicative of plus power potential, the accompanying .386 slugging percentage was a bit underwhelming. Johnson’s left-handed stroke is unquestionably capable of causing damage, but further fine-tuning is needed before that can happen at the big league level.

Johnson discussed his approach to hitting shortly after the start of the Arizona Fall League season.

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David Laurila: You’re still just 20 years old. Do you feel that you’ve settled into your identity as a hitter?

Termarr Johnson: “For sure. I feel like I have a pretty good swing, and I hit the ball hard pretty often, so I’m just trying to keep a good approach and bring the pitcher to me. I feel like that puts me in the best position possible. And to be honest with you, I’m a different hitter every at-bat. I’m a different hitter based on… like, every pitcher is different. Every pitch is different. Every situation is different. I’ll be a different hitter if there’s a runner on base and I’m trying to get him in, late in the game, or I’ll be a different hitter when I’m leading off the game.”

Laurila: That’s basically approach. What about mechanically? Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I published my findings about the relationship between when free agents sign and the size of their contracts. As a quick refresher, in recent years, the last 20% or so of free agents to sign have been settling for contracts meaningfully lower than pre-offseason expectations. But that finding raises more questions, some of which I hope to answer today.

First, there’s an obvious question: Did the free agents who got those late, discounted deals perform worse than expected during the following season? In other words, did their low-dollar-value deals foreshadow lower-than-projected production? To examine this, I took the upcoming season’s projections for the players ranked on my Top 50 Free Agents list in each of the past three years, 150 players in all, to come up with a projected WAR for each segment of players. I then compared it to how they actually did in the ensuing year. There is indeed a drop-off for those who signed late:

First things first: Every group underperformed its projections. That comes down to playing time. Our projections use Depth Charts playing time, which approximates the most likely distribution of playing time across a given roster without accounting for the likelihood of injuries. Just as an example, non-catcher batters were projected for an average of more than 600 plate appearances in this dataset, and they came in closer to the mid-500s in practice. So don’t pay too much attention to the absolute numbers; the relative differences are what to look at here.

The last 10 free agents to sign saw huge shortfalls in production relative to expectations. One reason: They played less. The average hitter in this group of 150 free agents batted 70 times less than projected. Hitters signed among the last 10 free agents in their class batted 100 times less than projected. Likewise, the average pitcher in the group came up 25 innings shy of projections, but pitchers among the last 10 players signed came up 40 innings short.
Read the rest of this entry »

For the 21st 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 Houston Astros.

Batters

The 2024 season started terribly for the Astros, with a 12-24 record in the early going and most of their projected rotation on the IL. The hole the team dug was deep enough that even with them playing solid ball after early May, the Astros didn’t get above .500 for good until the end of June. Still, nobody in the AL West managed to take advantage of Houston’s weak start. The Astros built a comfortable lead throughout August, and though the Mariners never fell hopelessly behind in the race, they never made Houston really sweat either. Read the rest of this entry »

The other day, I was poking around on the Minnesota Twins’ RosterResource page. Mostly because the Twins have been quiet this offseason, I wanted to make sure they were still there and that I hadn’t missed another round of contraction rumors.

It’s fine, guys, I checked and the Twins are not going out of business anytime soon.

The other thing I noticed is that Minnesota had only two hitters who qualified for the batting title last season, which is not a lot. The Rangers and Brewers (which I would not have guessed) had seven each. And with Carlos Santana bound for his fifth go-around with Cleveland (it’s only his third but I know you were about to look), Willi Castro stands alone in Minnesota. The Marlins and Rays are the only other teams that are set to return only a single qualified hitter from 2024. Read the rest of this entry »

On August 18 in Colorado, Ha-Seong Kim led off first base, then dived back to beat a pickoff attempt. He tore the labrum in his right shoulder, and that was the last time we saw him play in 2024. After a failed rehab attempt, Kim underwent surgery in October, and he won’t be ready to play again until sometime between April and June. Just as uncertain: Where exactly Kim will be suiting up when he returns. There’s no doubt about his skill. Over the past four years, Kim has spent time at second, short, and third, and neither DRS nor FRV has ever rated him as below average at any of those spots. He needed a year to adjust on offense after arriving from the KBO in 2021, but over the past three seasons, he’s run a 106 wRC+. That ranks 13th among shortstops, and over the same period, his 10.5 WAR ranks 11th.

Kim entered free agency after both he and the Padres declined their ends of a mutual option, and he came in at ninth on our Top 50 Free Agents. According to the projections, he’ll command a four- or five-year deal with an AAV in the neighborhood of $19 million. However, the shoulder injury could cost him as much as half of the 2025 season, and it makes for a tough needle to thread. He’s got to sign with a team that needs a solid infielder, but not badly enough to need one right away. Moreover, a shoulder injury is especially scary for Kim, whose arm strength is an important part of his overall value and who already possesses below-average power at the plate. For that reason, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Kim get a pillow contract: Ben Clemens proposed two years with an opt-out. Back in November, Mark Feinsand reported that Kim had generated “lots of interest,” and wrote about the possibility that he’d be among the first free agents off the board. However, it’s now late January, and if you cruise through our Depth Charts, you’ll notice that there just don’t seem to be many good landing spots for Kim. Let us begin our litanies. Read the rest of this entry »