For the 20th 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 New York Yankees.

Batters

If I’ve learned anything from two decades of projection work (and people getting mad at that projection work), it’s that fans are way too optimistic about teams when everything goes great and way too pessimistic after things have gone awry.
The 2022 Yankees were a good example of this. After a first half in which they went 58-23, good for a .716 winning percentage and a Pythagorean win percentage that nearly matched, ZiPS only projected the team to go 45-36 the rest of the way. “Knave!” they shouted at me on Twitter. “Vagabond! Miscreant!” OK, maybe they didn’t use those words exactly, but there was bewilderment and more than a touch of anger that I would disrespect the Bronx Bombers so. In the end, the Yankees actually were four wins worse than that projection in the second half.

And just like things are never as amazing as they seem when everything goes your way, the reverse is true, with the Yankees again being a good example. They had their worst season since 1992 in 2023, and based on how they’ve been talked about over the last six months or so, you’d think they were a glorified Triple-A team. But the Yankees weren’t that bad — they went 82-80 in a division without a true doormat team to beat up on. That record was all of seven wins below their preseason projection, a miss that barely merits raising an eyebrow, and certainly doesn’t justify floating Brian Cashman out to sea (or bunting more). Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a biased observer. I watch the offseason hoping something will happen, and not just because I’m rooting for one particular team to get better. My job is to write about baseball, and it’s a lot easier to write about things changing than things staying the same. “This just in: Yankees roster same as yesterday” is not a story that I’d be very excited to write, and it’s also probably not a story that many people would be excited to read. Change is imperative for content, especially in the offseason.

With that intro in mind, I have a bone to pick with the Baltimore Orioles – a bone that, coincidentally enough, Meg and Other Ben discussed on today’s Effectively Wild. The Orioles won the AL East last year and finished with 101 wins, second-most in baseball. They seemingly ran out of gas in the playoffs; they didn’t hit or pitch particularly well in their ALDS loss to the Rangers. They followed that up by doing – well, a whole lot of nothing. It’s not just that they’re making my job harder. They’re making their own job harder, and doing so while the clock is ticking on their young, cost-controlled team core.

The AL East is always a competitive division, and it’s gone exactly according to type so far this winter. The Yankees went out and got a star – Juan Soto, not Alex Verdugo, if you’re keeping score at home. The Rays traded six nickels, two dimes, and two pennies for a quarter, three dimes, and a nickel. The Blue Jays shored up their infield depth, though they still need to find a replacement for Matt Chapman. (The current leader in the clubhouse for that position? Matt Chapman.) The Red Sox – well, the Red Sox are certainly making moves, even if I can’t quite figure out the end goal. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2021, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. put on a remarkable show, hitting .311/.401/.601 with 48 home runs. He finished second in MVP voting to Shohei Ohtani — perhaps the only drawback to having Ohtani in the league is he’s going to end up dwarfing about a decade of other great performances on the historical record — with a season that looks even better in context.

In the past 100 years, only 10 AL or NL players have posted full seasons with a .300/.400/.600 slash line at age 22 or younger. And this is not one of those things hitters tend to achieve before flaming out. Of those 10 players, five — Ted Williams, Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott, Joe DiMaggio, and Eddie Mathews — are not only Hall of Famers but inner-circle Hall of Famers. Albert Pujols will be once he’s eligible. Alex Rodriguez would be if he’d stayed away from Biogenesis and/or not been so weird the entire sport had it out for him. That leaves three active players: Bryce Harper, Juan Soto (in the COVID-shortened 2020 season), and Vladito.

So that’s five Hall of Famers, three future Hall of Famers, plus one guy who would be in the Hall of Fame if performance were the only consideration. But what of the young Guerrero? Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th 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 Texas Rangers.

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The Rangers led the American League in runs scored in 2023, and most of the players who contributed to that success are set to return to the lineup in 2024. Sure, Corey Seager might not repeat his monster season, but his performance should still land comfortably in star territory, and the Rangers could get a little luckier with his health. Evan Carter isn’t likely to post an OPS around 1.000 again, but that’s balanced by the fact that the team ought to get a lot more than 23 regular season games from him this year. Read the rest of this entry »

The San Francisco Giants have reportedly agreed to a contract with right-handed pitcher Jordan Hicks worth $11 million a year. (Makes sense, Hicks was really good out of the bullpen for St. Louis and Toronto last year, and reliable relief arms are hard to come by in free agency.) The deal will run for four years. (Wow, that’s a long time.) It also contains $2 million a year in workload-based incentives that start at 100 innings per season, because the Giants (hold onto your butts) intend to use Hicks as a starter.

Fascinating! Read the rest of this entry »

Troy Taylor is an under-the-radar pitcher to keep your eye on in the Seattle Mariners system. A 22-year-old right-hander who was taken in the 12th round of the 2022 draft out of the University of California Irvine, Taylor impressed evaluators in the Arizona Fall League with a two-pitch mix that has him well-positioned for a future role as a big-league reliever.

“I’m a big fan of what he can do athletically, as a mover,” said a scout I spoke to. “His stuff is good. He’s a guy who probably ends up in the bullpen with the Mariners, and sooner rather than later.”

He’s already come a long way. Taylor was an infielder at Rancho Cucamonga’s Los Osos High School, and when he did occasionally take the mound — “I closed a couple of times” — all he really did was throw as hard he could. It wasn’t until he got to Cyprus Junior College, and then to UC-Irvine, that he “actually started learning how to pitch.”

Taylor has understandably learned a lot more about the nuances of his craft since signing with Seattle, but he nonetheless remains anything but a technician. Topping out at 98 mph and typically averaging “five and some change,” he still tries to throw his heater as hard as he can. He identifies as a power pitcher.

Adding a third pitch is a goal — the Mariners have him working on a changeup to use against left-handed hitters — but his fastball-slider combination will always be his bread and butter. The former is not only his best pitch, it has unique characteristics. Read the rest of this entry »

Monday is the first day of the new international signing period, so I’ve expanded and updated my evaluations of players from the class. An overview of the rules that govern signing international amateurs can be found on MLB’s glossary here, while more thorough and detailed documentation can be found starting on page 316 of the CBA and page 38 of the Official Professional Baseball Rules Book. Players have until December 15 to sign before this signing period closes.

Scouting reports, tool grades, and projected signing teams and bonuses for just shy of 50 players from the 2024 class can now be viewed over on The Board. Because the International Players tab has an apples and oranges mix of older pros from Asian leagues and soon-to-be first-year players, there is no explicit ranking for this amateur class on The Board. However, I’ve stacked the class with a ranking in the table below, and as usual, that ranking will live on the International Players dropdown of The Board after most of these guys have finished signing in the coming weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th 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 Chicago Cubs.

Batters

Are the Cubs back to their mid-2010s form? That’s a bit of a stretch, but these Cubs showed they have a live pulse, not falling out of playoff contention until the final week of the 2023 season. Cody Bellinger, one of the reasons the offense was so potent (third in the National League in runs scored), turned out to be one of the best pillow-contract signings of all time. Perhaps a little too good, as it was enough for Bellinger to decline his side of a $25 million mutual option for 2024. The Cubs could still sign Bellinger, but even if they do, it’s not a great bet they’ll get the same production as last year. ZiPS is a bit more optimistic than Steamer, but it still projects a returning Bellinger to “give back” some of his contact and a significant chunk of his power. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers mostly don’t throw sweepers to opposite-handed batters. Starters especially don’t throw sweepers to opposite-handed batters. To put a number on it, 227 starters threw 250 or more pitches to opposite-handed hitters in 2023. Only 18 of that group chose sweepers even 10% of the time. Everyone knows the math: It’s the kind of pitch that simply doesn’t work when opponents get a clean look at it.

Want further proof? When pitchers have deigned to throw this suboptimal pitch, they’ve gotten punished for it. Per Baseball Savant, starters threw 4,734 oppo sweepers and accumulated 43.6 runs of negative value relative to average for their troubles. In other words, it’s generally a poor option. It’s not quite “break glass in case of emergency,” but it’s not far off. Starters rely on changeups, splitters, vertical breaking balls, or cutters to get by; anything to avoid throwing sweepers.

Okay, now that I gave you that setup, here’s the deal: It’s not universally true. Two Cy Young contenders and a top prospect have bucked the trend, throwing sweepers with relative abandon and getting away with it. What gives? Let’s look at each in turn. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th 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 Milwaukee Brewers.

Batters

The Brewers won 92 games in 2023, enough to coast to a division title with nine games to spare, though it didn’t really have much to do with their offense. After a respectable 2022 season, the team’s wRC+ dropped to 92, ahead of just six teams (four of which won fewer than 62 games). In a season that saw an upswing in baseball’s offensive environment, the Brewers only slugged .385, their worst showing in 30 years.

That’s not to say there weren’t bright spots, but of the four players who put up a wRC+ of at least 100 in a minimum of 100 plate appearances, two (Carlos Santana and Mark Canha) are no longer on the team. Of the two who still call Milwaukee home, William Contreras is the best bet to maintain his 2023 production, though one-year framing numbers did a lot of heavy lifting. Meanwhile, Christian Yelich had a nice little bounce back, but he’s still a 32-year-old coming off two-and-a-half far less impressive seasons. ZiPS is grumpier than Steamer with respect to Yelich, but even Steamer has him falling short of 3 WAR, and that’s in a scenario where he has nearly perfect health. Read the rest of this entry »