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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Los Angeles Angels. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / San Diego / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
Most everyone has become comfortable with the fact that Mike Trout (680 PA, 9.0 zWAR) is the world’s best living ballplayer. Merely because one has grown accustomed to his excellence, however, doesn’t preclude one from wanting to have that greatness illustrated periodically. Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections facilitate an opportunity to do that. ZiPS, like other projection systems, is inherently conservative. Despite that, Trout is forecast for nine wins. For reference, consider that, since 2011, a player has reached the nine-win threshold on just six occasions. (On four of those occasions, of course, the player in question was Trout himself.) By definition, a nine-win season is an outlier. Nevertheless, Szymborski’s computer has suggested that as the median outcome for Trout in 2017.

Beyond Trout, unfortunately, there’s little reason for enthusiasm here. Kole Calhoun (620, 3.0) and Andrelton Simmons (574, 3.4) offer some promise. Of the remaining six positions on the club’s offensive depth chart, though, five of them are expected to produce only about a win.

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The White Sox are blowing it up, having traded Chris Sale and Adam Eaton in blockbuster deals on back-to-back days at the Winter Meetings. They are almost certainly not done, with other attractive veterans like David Robertson and Todd Frazier as trade chips, either this winter or before the summer trade deadline. But for teams looking for make a bigger splash, the White Sox have one more big trade to make, as they haven’t yet moved Jose Quintana, one of the game’s best pitchers, and a guy who is signed for four more years at bargain prices.

And for a while now, whenever anyone asked where I thought Quintana would end up, I would name the Houston Astros as the best fit. The Astros already have a very good team, but they’re a step below the best teams in baseball, and adding a frontline pitcher like Quintana seems like a way for a team with a strong young core to solidify their status as contenders both this year and for the future. Quintana’s modest salary would not prevent them from keeping any of their young stars in Houston, and since he’s around for the next four years, they could justify giving up some of the valuable young talent for which they might not have room.

The Astros have the means to get Quintana, and as a contender who could use an upgrade to keep up with Boston and the big boys in the National League, it’s not that hard to make a case for why they should push hard to land Chicago’s other ace. But the more I looked at the Astros roster, the more I began to wonder whether Houston really needs Quintana after all.

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Somewhere around two years and $6 million a year: those appear to be the terms for a certain kind of match this offseason. A match between budget-conscious teams seeking to acquire meaningful (if flawed) talent and players willing to forgo a bigger one-year deal in order to gain an extra year of security. Matt Joyce, Steve Pearce, Wilson Ramos, Sean Rodriguez, even Junichi Tazawa — they’ve all given us brief glimpses into above-average work, and longer looks at less exciting work.

In a way, Daniel Hudson fits right into this collection of players: according to Jeff Passan, he received a two-year, $11 million deal from the Pirates. If he’s their closer for the next two years, that will be a bargain; he could also return hardly anything. In either case, discussing the deal in such simple terms is selling his story way, way too short.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Kansas City Royals farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on thes 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)

55 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Recorded 30 strikeouts in 22 big-league innings.

Scouting Report
Strahm saw a 148% uptick in innings as a sophomore at Neosho CC in 2012 and pitched complete games in 11 of his 14 starts (though many of them were not a full nine innings). Strahm dominated and his stuff ticked up as the year went along. (All told, Strahm added almost 15 mph to his fastball between his senior year of high school and his sophomore year of JUCO.) Nevertheless, he lasted until the 21st round of June’s draft. He began experiencing discomfort in his elbow during the 2012 offseason and was misdiagnosed with a stress reaction when in fact he needed Tommy John, which he ultimately received in the summer of 2013. He missed all of 2014 recovering.

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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Boston Red Sox. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / San Diego / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
The presence of Mike Trout in the American League renders Mookie Betts‘ (710 PA, 5.9 zWAR) odds of ever winning an MVP award in that same league lower than if Mike Trout were not present in it. This is what’s known in the life as “baleful reality.” That said, Trout’s mere existence doesn’t alter some inalienable facts regarding Betts as a player. Like, for example, how he’s projected to record a 20-20 season in 2017. Or like, for another example, how he’s projected to save 13 runs in right field.

According to ZiPS, Betts is the strongest of Boston’s field players. As for the weakest, this appears to be whatever’s happening at first base. The club recently signed Mitch Moreland (427, 0.5) to a one-year, $5.5 million deal — presumably with the intention of deploying him at first against right-handed pitching. Moreland’s forecast calls for him to hit roughly 10% worse than a league-average batter, though — which isn’t ideal at all for a club that otherwise possesses the requisite talent to win the division.

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On Friday, shortly before it was reported that the low-arm-angle righty would be signing with the Marlins, Dave Cameron wrote that Brad Ziegler is a Freak. Not only does Miami’s new bullpen piece induce worm-killers with an 84-mph fastball, he gets hitters to swing at a high number of changeups below the zone.

Ziegler doesn’t consider himself totally unique, but he does recognize what sets him apart.

“I don’t think I’m much different than other submariners,” Ziegler told me in September. “My sinker and slider are pretty similar to (Darren) O’Day’s. I’d say the movement is pretty standard from where I throw them. But I am different in that I have a changeup — a lot of submariners don’t have one.”

Ziegler throws “a standard circle change” from his down-under slot. It’s a pitch he’s worked diligently to perfect — primarily as a weapon against lefties — and gripping and ripping isn’t an option. Precision is essential. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re an avid FanGraphs reader, you might remember a piece I wrote January in which I wondered whether Vladimir Guerrero had the credentials of a Hall of Famer. The verdict? He does. As an inductee, he wouldn’t have the most impressive resume in the Hall, but he’d belong — and, according to the first 44 ballots collected by Ryan Thibodaux by way of his BBHOF Tracker, it appears as though the voters agree:

At 74%, Guerrero is right on the threshold for induction (which requires a candidate is named on 75% of ballots). That means that even if he isn’t selected this year Guerrero will almost certainly gain entry to the Hall next year. Which is great. Guerrero was a fantastic player. He’s deserving.

Larry Walker was also a great player, though. In most important ways, he was a superior one. And he’s received enough votes on previous Hall of Fame ballots to return for a seventh year. Like the previous six years, however, Walker is unlikely to be enshrined in Cooperstown this year — if the early polling holds steady, that is. In light of Guerrero’s seeming popularity, that’s strange. By most reasonable accounts, Walker has a better case. If you vote for Guerrero, you have to vote for Walker.

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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Tampa Bay Rays. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / San Diego / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
Due to their limited resources, the Rays have been compelled to search for value in places where it isn’t readily apparent. These financial constraints, for example, led pretty directly to the phenomenon known as Ben Zobrist, Improbable Superstar. The ascent of Kevin Kiermaier (502 PA, 4.2 zWAR) is almost equally improbable as Zobrist’s, though. Selected in the 31st round of the 2010 draft out of Parkland College, Kiermaier has now averaged more than four wins per season over his first three major-league campaigns. Much of that value, of course, is a product of Kiermaier’s defensive acumen. ZiPS calls for more of the same in that regard, projecting Kiermaier to save 17 more runs than the average center fielder.

With the exception of Evan Longoria (658, 3.9), unfortunately, the club doesn’t currently employ any field players who profile as anything much better than average — and the short-term prognosis for newly acquired Wilson Ramos (465, 2.5), one of only four batters who receives a forecast for more than two wins, is uncertain in light of the season-ending injury he suffered at the end of 2016.

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No offense to Welington Castillo, but the hottest topic in Orioles land right now is whether the team should trade Zach Britton. Clubs, unsurprisingly, have shown interest in a possible deal. Scour the web and you’ll find polemics both for and against one. I’m here to argue the latter case.

The Case For Trading Britton

The case for trading Britton isn’t hard to make. He’ll make $11.4 million next year, as projected by MLB Trade Rumors. That’s a lot of scratch for an ostensibly mid-market club to pay someone to pitch 70 innings.

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When MLB and the Player’s Association agreed to the terms of a new CBA, the most substantial changes came in the rules governing the acquisition of players from other countries. The replacement of the bonus pools with a hard cap on bonus allocations was the big story, but, pretty quickly, people realized that a smaller change — raising the age of players exempt from the bonus pool system from 23 to 25 — could have a major impact on one of the world’s best players.

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