After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Philadelphia Phillies.

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The Phillies struggled at times to score runs in 2019, generally underperforming their preseason expectations. While it’s easy to blame the guy making $300 million, Bryce Harper was far from the only issue and in the big picture, he’s still highly likely to be a run producer for the Phillies. A 125 wRC+ may not be what we expected from Harper back when he was a phenom, but he’s still a star, if not one with the “super” prefix.

There’s little to complain about when it comes to J.T. Realmuto‘s performance. Yes, his offensive production, like Harper’s, was a bit below expectations, but he’s an elite defensive catcher and the Phillies should probably get him signed to an extension sooner rather than later because all bets are off once he hits free agency. I would be shocked if the team signing him next year can secure his services for “just” Yasmani Grandal’s contract. Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Szymborski recently posted the 2020 ZiPS projections for the Seattle Mariners. The system forecasts lefty Marco Gonzales to be the best pitcher on Seattle’s staff. That should come as no surprise considering that Gonzales has been far and away the best arm the Mariners have had to offer lately. According to ZiPS, he’s expected to throw at least 170 innings in 2020 and post a 4.26 ERA (4.12 FIP) with a WAR of 2.6. Despite his strong showings in 2018 and 2019, ZiPS indicates a fair amount of regression for Gonzales this coming season.

After two straight seasons of 3-plus WAR, can we expect a pitcher who throws two fastballs that barely reach 90 mph to maintain that level of performance? Despite his ability to spread his arsenal out, especially when he’s ahead of the hitter, there is a change to Gonzales’ pitch selection that could facilitate another impressive season for the 27-year-old former 19th-overall draft pick.

Gonzales threw five different pitches in 2019: a sinker, cutter, a fading changeup, a sweeping, slurve-ish curveball, and a four-seamer, all with above-average command:

As you can see, Gonzales throws three different fastball variations. His traditional cutter works just fine and by FIP, it was his best pitch in 2019. Its 11:40 spin direction facilitates little sweep but a decent amount of rise. Read the rest of this entry »

Joey Gallo cracked the code in 2019. He recorded his highest major league wRC+ (by far), his highest WAR total (in only half a season!), his highest walk rate, and his highest isolated power. Before fracturing his wrist in July, he looked like a second-tier MVP candidate. It was a clear step forward for a player who was already an above-average major leaguer.

It wasn’t all cotton candy and lollipops. His strikeout rate ticked up, from a yikes-gross-cover-your-eyes 35.9% to a seek-shelter-this-is-not-a-drill 38.4%. Gallo struck out nearly as many times, in under 300 plate appearances, as Michael Brantley has in nearly 1200 PA over the last two years. But despite the eye-popping strikeout rate, the overall package made Gallo one of the most fearsome hitters in baseball.

What did Gallo change to turbo-boost his game? He started swinging less. That’s not all he did, but it’s a lot of it. And for someone like Gallo, that makes a ton of sense. He has what Eric and Kiley call a grooved swing — his swing rides a consistent path, which makes it hard to adjust to pitches away from his preferred target area, and given how much damage he does when he connects, pitchers are doing their utmost to avoid that target area.

To wit: in 2019, 39.9% of the pitches Gallo saw were in the strike zone, a rate that would have been 30th-lowest in baseball if he had enough plate appearances to qualify. In 2018, it was even more severe; his 38.1% zone rate was fifth-lowest in baseball. In 2017, his 36.1% zone rate was the lowest in the majors. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Tabor is well-regarded primarily because of his fastball and his changeup. The latter, which he throws with a Vulcan-like grip, is his best pitch. The former, which gets solid ride but lacks plus velocity, is delivered with above-average command. Last year, the 21-year-old right-hander walked 16 batters, fanned 101, and logged a 2.93 ERA over 95.1 innings with the low-A Kane County Cougars. Bumped up two slots following Monday’s Starling Marte trade, Tabor currently ranks 11th on our Arizona Diamondbacks Top Prospects List.

His slider, a pitch he didn’t throw in games two summers ago, has become an important weapon for the 2017 third-round pick. Tabor credits Carson Cross with spurring its development. The two were together at PowerHouse Sports New Hampshire shortly before Cross took a job in the Milwaukee Brewers organization last February.

At the time, Tabor was a two-pitch pitcher. A third was needed, and to that purpose he was at wit’s end.

“Mentally, I was just so screwed up,” the Westford, Massachusetts native admitted. “I had pretty much convinced myself that I could never throw a good slider. I’d messed around with a lot of things, but it was still loopy and popped out of my hand. In high school, I could just flip that shit over and it was going to buckle knees, but up here they’ll sit on it and hit it 350 feet. I knew that I needed to make it harder, with more of a cutter-ish shape, so I approached Carson.”

Cross had thrown an effective slider at the University of Connecticut and later at the lower levels of the St. Louis Cardinals system. Moreover, he’d recently developed a strong interest in pitch design. He was just the tutor Tabor needed. Read the rest of this entry »

When commissioner Rob Manfred issued his report regarding the Astros’ illegal sign-stealing efforts and handed down one-year bans to both manager A.J. Hinch and president of baseball operations Jeff Luhnow, he also took aim at the culture within the Astros’ analytically-inclined organization, calling it “insular” and “problematic.” In desperate need of rebranding as they move forward, the Astros have taken the first step towards that end by hiring Dusty Baker to succeed Hinch — who, along with Luhnow, was fired by owner Jim Crane almost immediately after the report was released — as manager.

The choice of Baker certainly offers a contrast to the recent past, given the 70-year-old skipper’s old-school reputation, but that’s not to say it’s a bad one. At the helm of a team that will face constant scrutiny and considerable hostility, Baker’s strengths — many of which fall outside the realm of the quantifiable — include the respect he commands in the clubhouse and when dealing with the media, particularly amid controversy, all of which should serve him well. That said, he’s been positioned as an easy fall guy if things don’t go well. After all, the Astros came within one win of a championship last year, and they still have a strong roster despite the departure of free agent Gerrit Cole, so any outcome short of a trip to the World Series will represent a step backwards. The fact that he’s been hired before the team has replaced Luhnow sets up a potential clash down the road, in that the incoming general manager or president of baseball operations might prefer to hire their own manager. The length of Baker’s contract — one year plus a club option — spells that out explicitly.

Baker, who turns 71 on June 15, hasn’t managed since the end of the 2017 season, when he parted ways with the Nationals, who opted not to renew his contract. His departure from Washington was sudden and rather stunning, as he’d led the team to back-to-back NL East titles and seasons of 95 and 97 wins, but each time the Nationals lost five-game Division Series to lower-seeded teams. Baker’s teams went 0-5 in one-run games across those two postseasons, including both Game 5s, during which they surrendered early leads — all of which put his in-game decisions squarely in the crosshairs, fairly or unfairly. In his final game at the helm, for example, he took the fall in part because Max Scherzer — who was about to win his third Cy Young award — allowed four runs in a messy inning of emergency relief. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s probably unfair to say that the St. Louis Cardinals snuck into the postseason last year. After all, they were expected to contend at the outset of the season and subsequently led the division race over each of their final 35 games. With 91 wins, they were a worthy playoff team, and their triumph in the NLDS only reinforced that perception.

But if the Cardinals were more than a smoke and mirrors act, they weren’t always the most convincing contender either. It took them 90 games to finally clear the .500 bar for good and despite playing in the National League’s least talented division, they never separated themselves from their competition. Had Milwaukee swept the 90-loss Rockies in the season’s final weekend, they’d have pipped St. Louis for the Central.

It’s also not clear how well-positioned this team is to compete going forward. There are big holes in the outfield, aging veterans in key positions, and plenty of question marks on both sides of the ball. Frustratingly for Cardinals fans, management made few moves to address those problems this winter. With spring training just a few weeks away, it appears that the Cardinals missed a golden opportunity to solidify their position at the top of a winnable division.

Perhaps the biggest source of trouble going forward is that the club’s best position players are at or nearing the end of their peaks. That became clear early on in 2019: For a team that was supposed to hit its way to the playoffs, the Cardinals wound up with a mediocre offense. The Redbirds posted a 95 wRC+, good for 15th in the circuit, and without a big season from Paul Goldschmidt, Marcell Ozuna, or Matt Carpenter. The big producers actually regressed, and it took breakouts from unexpected sources like Kolten Wong and Tommy Edman to buoy the lineup. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Boston Red Sox.

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Last winter, my job was to temper expectations, noting that while the Red Sox had just won 108 games and the World Series, their baseline expectation was absolutely not 100 wins, and indeed, that they were a team with significant holes and depth issues. Now, it’s the opposite; people’s feelings about the Red Sox have taken a harsher turn than when Hulk Hogan turned on Macho Man Randy Savage in 1996. A lot went wrong in 2019, more than you’d expect in a typical season, and the roster justified more than their lackluster 84-78.

Naturally, there’s a “but” involved. The Red Sox have spent the winter trying to offload Mookie Betts to save money. It should go without saying, but this would be a serious hit to their 2020 hopes. While it might be tempting to compare the loss of Betts to Washington’s loss Bryce Harper — a loss the Nationals survived — Washington was able to essentially replace Harper’s production with Victor Robles and Juan Soto. Mookie Betts is a better player than Harper, and Robles and Soto are better than anyone the Red Sox have. The team could pick up a major league outfielder in a Betts trade, of course, but even an average player would still be a four-win hit from the Betts expectation. Read the rest of this entry »

In the spring of 2015, Kris Bryant was coming off a historic minor league season. Splitting the year between Double- and Triple-A, Bryant hit .325/.438/.661 with 43 homers and a 192 wRC+. He then hit .425/.477/1.175 in spring training. But he didn’t make the Cubs’ Opening Day roster. Mike Olt, who had also spent some time in Triple-A in 2014, hit a good .302/.348/.545 in Iowa before posting an ugly .160/.248/.356 line in half a season with the Cubs; he started at third base ahead of Bryant. Olt was hit on his wrist by a pitch on Saturday, April 11, and didn’t start any games the next week. On April 17, with 171 days left in the season (exactly one day short of the 172 Bryant would need for a full year of service time), Olt hit the Disabled List with a hairline fracture and Bryant made his debut.

Due to the obvious attempt by the Cubs to manipulate his service time, ensuring he would not reach free agency until after the 2021 season, Bryant filed a grievance to recoup that lost day. According to Jeff Passan, Bryant has lost that grievance and will not become a free agent at the end of this season, having instead to wait an additional year. The ruling will be made public in a week, per Passan. While we don’t yet know the arbitrator’s exact reasoning, it’s hard not to see a decision in the Cubs’ favor as much else than a tacit approval of baseball teams keeping otherwise ready players in the minors for a few weeks at the beginning of the season in order to gain another year of team control. Bryant was the ideal player to file a grievance for service time manipulation, given his track record in the minors, his great spring, and lack of decent options ahead of him on the depth chart. If he can’t win, then who can?

The arbitrator may well have warned teams that while there was no real precedent to award Bryant his lost day, future cases might be decided differently; we’ll have to wait for the decision to be made public to know for sure. But even if that’s the case, the practical effect of such a decision is minimal given that the current CBA expires at the end of the 2021 season. The decision is a reminder that while service time manipulation is against the spirit of the CBA, proving such violations is extremely difficult. What’s more, the changes needed to curb the practice will have to be far more explicit in the next CBA. Service time manipulation like Bryant’s aren’t especially common and affect only a handful of players every year. But those it does effect tend to be among the game’s best young players, kept in the minors for reasons that have nothing to so with their ability. And the practice represents part of a larger issue involving the time it takes to get to free agency and the pay players receive before they get there. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

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This depth chart is a little uglier than a few days ago thanks to the trade of Starling Marte to the Arizona Diamondbacks. (For Marte’s projection, I command thee peruse the scrivenings of my colleague Jay Jaffe.)

The departure of Marte shakes up the outfield a bit, leaving the Pirates with no obvious “good” option in left field and possibly ensuring that Bryan Reynolds plays center, where ZiPS is not at all a fan of his defense. And this may not be the last major change we see from the Pirates, who appear to be entering a full-scale rebuild. The team has little star power to actually build around and while they have a number of solid players in the lineup — Josh Bell, Reynolds, and Gregory Polanco are all good — they lack an impact player who seems likely to be part of the next good Pirates team, as the Braves had with Freddie Freeman when they entered their rebuild. Reynolds will probably stick around due to his limited service time, but I’d be mildly surprised to see the other two still on the roster this time next year. Read the rest of this entry »

Making sense of Mookie Betts trade rumors can be a frustrating task. Betts is one of the best players in baseball, perhaps second-best to only Mike Trout. Every single team in baseball should love to have Mookie Betts on their team. A club competing for a playoff spot is even more ideal, or a team whose playoff odds without Betts are just so-so, but that with him head well north of 50%. It would also be helpful if that team had plentiful financial resources and could easily absorb Betts’ expensive (but still a bargain given the production) $27 million salary next season. The Boston Red Sox are basically the perfect for Mookie Betts, but they might trade him anyway.

Back in November, Ben Clemens made the case for the Red Sox keeping Betts, while I recently did a pro/con list for ESPN weighing the merits of trading four different stars, including Betts. Clemens focused on the baseball logic of the move, which revolves around getting worse now by trading Betts but improving in the future with the addition of prospects. Clemens shot through that argument by showing that Boston’s playoff chances over the next four seasons were actually worse by trading Betts for prospects. As a practical matter, Clemens compared a potential Betts deal to Paul Goldschmidt’s trade to the Cardinals a year ago. There are a few differences that we’ll get to later, but let’s first focus on their similarities using a rumored trade package. Read the rest of this entry »