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Oh my, it’s prediction time. Can you feel it? Another season is upon us. Another chance for us to look like huge idiots. Like last season, when none of us pegged Kansas City to make the playoffs, and just five of us pegged the Mets as a playoff team. Being wrong on the internet can be an annual thing, but rarely do we crystallize just how wrong we are in one single location. Yes, it’s good to be back.

This year, there are a couple of no-doubt teams, according to everyone who voted. Chicago and Houston enter the season as our two locks to make the postseason. Considering that, as recently as 2013, these teams won 66 and 51 games, respectively, this seems pretty remarkable. We can save the tanking discussion for another day, but no matter your name for it, these franchises have really built themselves up into something. Houston has had an especially sharp transformation. Last season, they got zero votes for the postseason, and this year they got every single vote.

The Astros and Cubs aren’t the only teams in which we’re big believers, of course, but let’s get right to looking at the actual predictions.

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EVALUATING THE PROSPECTS 2016 Angels Astros Athletics Blue Jays Braves Brewers Cardinals Cubs Diamondbacks Dodgers Giants Indians Mariners Marlins Mets Nationals Orioles Padres Phillies Pirates Rangers Rays Red Sox Reds Rockies Royals Tigers Twins White Sox Yankees

The Cardinals certainly have tons of mid-level depth. If history continues to repeat itself, that means at least two above-average position players and a high-upside pitcher or two will pop up from the low minors this year, replenishing the lack of “impact” players at the high levels. They continue to target hitters with upside in the hit-tool department, trusting them to develop power or complement it with defensive or base-running value. On the pitching side, it’s like a broken record for a lot of the newer pitchers in the low levels: (Pitcher Name) came in throwing in the high-80s, and now comfortably sits in the low- to mid-90s with more physical projection left to realize.

No one will be excited by the prospects coming up through this system, but you’d be mistaken if you underestimate the player development model they have created in recent years. I had trouble putting a lot of the prospects I like in this system into the 50+ group for various reasons, but the Cardinals have one of the highest numbers of players just outside that line that could step forward this year with the right adjustments.

There are a number of players whom I rank lower than most in this organization, but in all honesty, there’s so much clustering in the middle of the list that it’s just semantics arguing over most of them. Feel free, anyway. Darren Seferina is my top pick for the Cardinals’ patented out-of-nowhere starting position player, with excellent hitting ability and base-running potential to go with potential above-average defense at second base. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the boo birds gathering forces in the darkest corners of the internet as you read this.

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Dan Straily needed to see a doctor. He wasn’t running a fever or suffering from strep throat; he had a bum shoulder. The symptoms of his malady were decreased velocity and general ineffectiveness. He initiated some independent research, and upon the recommendation of Houston Astros pitching coach Brent Strom and bullpen coach Craig Bjornson, Straily, 27, picked his practitioner.

After sitting in the waiting room that is Triple-A for much of the 2015 season, Straily paid a visit to Driveline Baseball in Seattle, where he met with Kyle Boddy. Boddy — the subject of a recent post here by Eno Sarris — isn’t an M.D., but you can think of him like a pitching doctor. Straily showed up, rattled off his ailments, and named his desired health benchmarks.

Straily told Boddy he needed to get his fastball back to sitting at 92 mph, with the ability to touch 94. That’s where he was when he first came up as an exciting, 23-year-old pitching prospect with Oakland back in 2012. Lately, his fastball had been sitting 89, and he struggled to touch 92 at all, and his effectiveness plummeted. The reason was the shoulder; he needed to get that healthy. And his breaking ball, he told Boddy, needed sharpening up.

Straily’s average fastball velocity by year

Boddy listened to his patient, and ran the preliminary examinations. That meant a trip to the biomechanics lab to analyze Straily’s delivery, and some tests to measure the movement and spin rate on his pitches. The doc came back with good news.

“I brought everything back and I said, ‘You know, your breaking ball is actually fine. I think that problem will go away if you throw 94 and sit 92,’” Boddy said. “And [Straily] said, ‘Alright, perfect.’ So we were on the same page from the get-go.”

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It’s been a while since we’ve had a new pitch. Zack Greinke wasn’t sure if that new hard change he learned from Felix Hernandez was a completely new pitch, so we may have to wait and see on that one. Before that, you’ll just have to wade into arguments about the cutter, the palmball, and the splitter. Someone invented them, but there is no consensus about who it was, exactly.

So let’s invent a pitch. It’ll be all ours if it catches on. We’ll get to name it. Or we won’t, as will become abundantly clear by the end of this endeavor.

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We’ve reached the end of the actual rankings portion of the Positional Power Rankings, having covered every single position on the field, designated hitter, starting rotations, and now bullpens. Tomorrow, Dave Cameron will wrap it all up. I encourage you to get caught up and ready for the season by reading every single post, starting with Cameron’s introduction. But as your journey has brought you here, please read on for a look at 15 of the best bullpens in the game. Below is a graph showing every bullpen and their projected WAR on the season.

Last season, 375 pitchers recorded at least 10 innings as a reliever last season, an average of of more than 12 per team. As a result, there are a lot of names and projections listed below. Bullpens can change greatly from year to year and even during the season. The Toronto Blue Jays and Texas Rangers remade their bullpens on the fly last season on their way to the playoffs. The Royals have made significant changes since last summer when Wade Davis was not even the closer yet. It helps to have a great reliever at the back end of the pen, but if you want to be ranked first on this list, you need to have three.

#1 Yankees

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Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	LOB%	ERA	FIP	WAR
Andrew Miller	65.0	13.7	3.0	0.8	.309	81.5 %	2.32	2.39	2.3
Dellin Betances	65.0	13.3	3.5	0.7	.301	81.7 %	2.33	2.49	2.0
Aroldis Chapman	55.0	14.3	4.0	0.7	.309	82.3 %	2.35	2.50	1.4
Chasen Shreve	55.0	9.5	3.7	1.1	.303	75.4 %	3.77	3.96	0.3
Branden Pinder	45.0	8.1	3.4	1.3	.301	72.3 %	4.36	4.46	0.0
James Pazos	40.0	8.9	3.9	1.0	.304	72.8 %	3.98	4.02	0.1
Nick Rumbelow	35.0	9.1	3.0	1.2	.306	72.9 %	4.03	3.96	0.0
Bryan Mitchell	30.0	7.3	4.4	1.1	.308	69.6 %	4.82	4.74	-0.1
Kirby Yates	25.0	9.4	3.8	1.4	.305	74.7 %	4.18	4.42	0.0
Nicholas Goody	20.0	9.7	3.7	1.0	.306	73.7 %	3.81	3.82	0.0
Tyler Olson	15.0	6.6	3.1	1.2	.297	71.7 %	4.29	4.54	0.0
Jacob Lindgren	10.0	10.4	4.4	1.1	.305	75.9 %	3.75	3.91	0.0
Johnny Barbato	10.0	8.4	3.8	1.2	.307	72.5 %	4.34	4.44	0.0
Evan Rutckyj	10.0	8.7	4.6	1.0	.296	73.2 %	4.04	4.28	0.0
The Others	19.0	8.2	4.0	1.2	.322	69.5 %	4.73	4.50	0.0
Total	499.0	10.6	3.6	1.0	.305	75.7 %	3.48	3.57	6.0

Within these projections, there are 10 relievers forecast to produce at least 11 strikeouts per nine innings and at least 50 innings pitched. There are five relievers with at least 12 strikeouts per nine innings and at least 50 innings pitched. There are three relievers with at least 13 strikeouts per nine innings and at least 50 innings pitched, and all three are members of the New York Yankees. Andrew Miller, Dellin Betances, and Aroldis Chapman were the only pitchers in Major League Baseball last season to exceed 14 K/9, striking out roughly 40% of all batters who stepped to the plate against them last year. Miller and Betances combined to lead the Yankees bullpen last season, and this season the team added Aroldis Chapman at a discounted price due to a offseason domestic-violence incident which eventually resulted in a 30-game suspension.

Last season’s Yankees bullpen pitched very well, posting the third-highest bullpen WAR, although with 530.2 innings, the pen was forced to carry a relatively large load due to fewer innings from the starting rotation. The fewer innings a bullpen has to pitch, the greater percentage go to the best pitchers. With three of the very best relievers in baseball, a healthier rotation could push the Yankees to the top spot this season.

The Yankees traded away another lefty in Justin Wilson to the Tigers during the winter. Wilson was perhaps a bit underrated, and limits the improvements the Yankees can make over last season’s very good pen. Chasen Shreve is the forgotten lefty in the Yankees pen with the potential to be this season’s Justin Wilson. He can prpoduce strikeouts, but last season, they came with walks and a few too many home runs.  After Shreve, we have a host of replacement-level pitchers the Yankees can cycle in and out as they see fit, but the top three alone vault the Yankees to the top of Power Rankings by a healthy margin.

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We continue the 2016 Positional Power Rankings — finish them, in fact — by looking at the sometimes difficult-to-project bullpens of each of the 30 major-league franchises. Here, in this article, we will examine the bottom half of baseball’s relief-pitching corps, with Craig Edwards handling the better half of the bullpen marriage. If this is your first go around, here’s an introduction to help you out. Now here’s a graphic detailing where each of the bullpens stand:

Some really good teams on that graph. Some not-so-good teams on that graph. We turn our attention to the not-so-good ones, who, even though they may have vastly improved (hey, Rockies!), still find themselves performing the metaphorical mop-up duties of the 2016 bullpen power rankings.

Onto the relievers!

#16 Rockies

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Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	LOB%	ERA	FIP	WAR
Jake McGee	65.0	10.3	2.8	0.9	.310	76.8 %	3.15	3.14	1.5
Jason Motte	65.0	7.3	2.6	1.3	.307	72.5 %	4.33	4.33	0.2
Chad Qualls	55.0	7.5	2.1	0.9	.314	71.5 %	3.78	3.56	0.7
Justin Miller	55.0	8.7	3.2	1.0	.309	72.9 %	3.87	3.85	0.4
Boone Logan	45.0	9.9	3.6	1.0	.319	72.9 %	3.91	3.73	0.3
Miguel Castro	40.0	8.3	3.9	1.0	.315	71.3 %	4.38	4.19	0.1
Chris Rusin	35.0	5.4	2.6	1.2	.316	69.0 %	4.81	4.62	0.0
Jason Gurka	30.0	7.3	3.1	1.0	.312	71.2 %	4.27	4.19	0.0
Christian Bergman	25.0	5.3	2.1	1.5	.312	68.4 %	5.10	4.95	-0.1
Scott Oberg	20.0	7.5	4.0	1.1	.309	71.2 %	4.46	4.51	0.0
Adam Ottavino	15.0	9.5	3.1	0.9	.312	74.3 %	3.51	3.51	0.0
Jeff Hoffman	10.0	6.9	3.3	1.2	.312	71.2 %	4.57	4.57	0.0
Carlos Estevez	10.0	8.2	3.1	1.1	.314	71.8 %	4.13	4.01	0.0
The Others	55.0	8.2	4.0	1.2	.322	69.5 %	4.73	4.50	0.0
Total	525.0	8.1	3.0	1.1	.313	71.9 %	4.13	4.03	3.0

What a difference a year makes! Last March, we had this bullpen projected for 0.5 WAR and 28th place. This year, they’ve made it up to 3.0 and 16th. Team sports represent one of the few arenas in which an entity could make so drastic a transformation in one calendar year, and the process, dear readers, was quite simple: fire most everyone and hire new people! It seems primed to work, at least on paper, and before anything has actually happened. That is confidence.

As with anything that happens in relation to pitching half of a season’s games at Coors Field, however, the outcomes of this bullpen could be quite volatile. With a completely revamped back end of Jake McGee, Jason Motte, and Chad Qualls, the Rockies would appear to have three very solid end-of-game options. But that papers over the fact that only one of these pitchers (Qualls) is a solid ground-ball pitcher, and even he has always had his share of home-run issues (career 13.1% HR/FB rate). Even if the batted-ball outcomes might appear slightly scary on the surface in relation to homer-happy Coors Field, the Rockies should at least have a solid bullpen this coming season, and a vastly improved one from 2015.

None of this mentions the hopeful return of Adam Ottavino, one of the darlings of the first month of the 2015 season. Should he return to full health sometime around the All-Star break (he’s just started a throwing program on his way back from Tommy John surgery), he could provide a serious shot in the arm that could elevate the overall production of this bullpen.

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August has already walked you through the rest. Now let us together take a walk through the best! The best, according to our preseason projections. It sounds better to leave out that last part, though. Always gotta remember to think about marketing. By the way, here’s a reminder of what we’re doing. It should be easy enough to figure out even without that link, but I just wanted to cover all my bases, which is a baseball expression. Here are the starting rotations, ranked:

Below, the Mets get the coveted #1. Not that they don’t deserve it, but as you’ll see, or as you can see in that plot, the Mets and the Dodgers are tied. So maybe that’s kind of a bummer, because it’s more fun to have ties broken, but this does leave the door open to arguments. Nothing quite as healthy for a person as Internet arguments. Especially about statistical projections of the unknowable future.

Mainly, the right thing to do here is think about tiers, and less about specific ranks. The Mets and Dodgers are separated from third place by more than a full win. There’s more than a win between fifth and sixth, and there’s a win between sixth and seventh. Then there’s one win between eighth and 14th. There’s a half-win between ninth and 14th. Many of these teams are close to one another, so don’t fret too much about how this is organized. Really, don’t fret too much at all, about anything. I know I just encouraged you to argue earlier in this introduction, but I’ve had a change of heart. Don’t: do that. Do: read what follows! Let’s talk about the 15 best rotations, as we see them.

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And now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the Positional Power Rankings of starting rotations before they actually get good.

It should be noted that the Diamondbacks’ rotation at 16 really projects no differently than the Rays’ rotation at 15, which Jeff will be writing up in his More Important post on the 15 best starting rotations. Which, in fact, serves as a useful reminder that, when dealing with the 7-10 moving parts of which these rotation depth charts typically consist, the actual ranking of teams matters far less than the grouping of teams. We can be pretty certain that the No. 16-ranked Diamondbacks rotation, projected for about +13 WAR, is better than the No. 30-ranked Braves rotation, projected for just +7 WAR. It gets a little cloudier in the middle, though, and just because the A’s (+11.3 WAR) are three spots ahead of the Tigers (+11.0 WAR), that shouldn’t be taken as any kind of definitive statements of Oakland’s superiority. A guide, is how these rankings should be used.

#16 Diamondbacks

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Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	LOB%	ERA	FIP	WAR
Zack Greinke	212.0	8.3	1.9	0.8	.294	76.8 %	2.91	3.20	4.6
Shelby Miller	183.0	7.5	3.1	1.0	.296	73.7 %	3.84	4.08	1.9
Patrick Corbin	160.0	7.6	2.3	0.9	.303	73.0 %	3.58	3.65	2.5
Rubby de la Rosa	141.0	7.3	3.0	1.1	.302	71.2 %	4.24	4.26	1.2
Robbie Ray	129.0	8.6	3.7	0.9	.306	72.8 %	3.86	3.89	1.7
Archie Bradley	85.0	7.5	4.5	1.0	.303	70.3 %	4.54	4.56	0.4
Zachary Godley	28.0	7.3	3.5	1.0	.301	70.8 %	4.27	4.31	0.2
Tyler Wagner	19.0	6.2	3.4	1.2	.301	70.1 %	4.67	4.75	0.1
Josh Collmenter	9.0	6.0	2.1	1.2	.292	73.3 %	3.94	4.28	0.1
Total	965.0	7.8	2.9	1.0	.300	73.2 %	3.75	3.88	12.7

So, the team that lost Zack Greinke this offseason is tied for first among projected starting rotations. The team that gained Zack Greinke is hanging around the middle of the pack. This tells us a couple useful bits of information, the first being that that Clayton Kershaw fella is quite good. Kershaw alone accounts for the same projected WAR total as Miller, Corbin, de la Rosa, Ray and Bradley combined, and the Dodgers still have other pitchers, too. As for the Diamondbacks‘ position on this power ranking, it gives us an idea as to why, even with Greinke, many are still skeptical of the organization’s position as a legitimate contender in a competitive National League.

One caveat, in the Diamondbacks’ favor: they have one of the largest differences between their projected ERA and FIP. The sixth-largest, in fact. That is to say, if these rankings were sorted in order of RA9-WAR, rather than FIP-WAR, the Diamondbacks would stand to gain more from it than most every other team. Greinke was worth 10 RA9-WAR last year, and would see his projection increase by a full win if we went with the runs-allowed model. Shelby Miller also has the early signs of being a FIP-beater, and his projection would increase by nearly a win with the RA9 model.

So maybe the top half is a bit underrated, but the bigger issue lies within the bottom half. Rubby de la Rosa is now entering year three of “maybe that 95-mph fastball will miss some bats soon!” and this could be his last chance. Nearly all of Archie Bradley’s prospect sheen has worn off, and at this point the Diamondbacks might be happy if he winds up being a serviceable fourth or fifth starter. Zack Godley had a shiny ERA last year, but still has major command issues and was a 25-year-old who started last year in High-A for a reason. The top three can go pitch for pitch with most trios in baseball — Patrick Corbin looked every bit the budding-ace of 2013 after returning from Tommy John — but if any of them suffer prolonged injury, or de la Rosa pitches his way out of the rotation, Arizona could be handing out less-than-ideal starts in the midst of their playoff hunt.

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And so we come to the end of the positional player positional power rankings (say that three times fast). If you’re not familiar with this series, please read the introduction. Designated hitters are actually a little bit more in vogue this year than last year. At this time last year, I was bemoaning the downfall of the DH. This year, it could be back with a vengeance.

OK, perhaps vengeance isn’t the right word. After all, not a lot of teams actually have good designated-hitter situations. The National League teams, who don’t appear in this PPR but do show up on the DH depth chart, pop in first at sixth place overall. This is a little tough for them to do. For starters, NL teams don’t usually use a DH, so their standing there is part-DH, part pinch-hitter, and to reflect this lighter usage At the time of the piece, only six players were projected to garner 400 or more plate appearances as a DH: Billy Butler, Nelson Cruz, Edwin Encarnacion, Kendrys Morales, Mitch Moreland and David Ortiz. This year, that list has expanded to 13, as every AL team except for the Athletics and White Sox suddenly have full-time DHs. That’s nice to see, even if it won’t last with a couple of teams.
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