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 Washington Nationals.

Batters

While Washington had a below-average offense in 2024, many of the spots in the lineup are coming on nicely, though not enough yet for ZiPS to believe in a huge run-scoring turnaround. James Wood and Dylan Crews are young and project to be three-win players right now, and CJ Abrams is right there, too. With Abrams, the oldest, still just 24, that’s a trio to build around, and ZiPS sees them all as having significant superstar potential, especially the first two. Luis García Jr. is projected to regress a bit from 2024, but he still should be a solidly above-average player overall. If Andrés Chaparro can play third base, ZiPS likes him well enough, but it doesn’t think he’ll truly provide enough offense to be valuable at first base or designated hitter. The scouting consensus is generally more negative than ZiPS here, which is based on ball location data from the minors.

After these five, things get less exciting quickly. Probably the most interesting in 2025 is Jacob Young. ZiPS is conservative on Young given the volatile nature of defensive statistics, and it was less impressed by him in the minors, but if he’s as good defensively as he was this year, his WAR projection would get comfortably over two wins as well.

Former top prospect Keibert Ruiz’s projection has gone in a negative direction. Last year was a disappointment, and while some of that was undoubtedly due to his losing 20 pounds from influenza in the spring, his struggles were more extreme versions of what went wrong for him in 2022 and 2023. Ruiz is a good contact hitter, but he’s developing in the mold of David Fletcher, a hitter whose contact skills are too competent for his own good. Ruiz swings at a lot of crappy pitches — pitches that nobody should swing at because they are difficult to drive — and puts them in play. Maybe if he were an ultra-speedy type with a low launch angle who could leg out a bunch of junky grounders, that would be fine, but he just dishes out a stew of weak grounders, popups, and flies, leading to a lot of uncompetitive at-bats. He should be healthier this season, so he should add a few mph of exit velocity to his balls in play, but unless his plate discipline improves, his ceiling is going to be limited.

Another concern is that with Wood and Crews now in the majors, ZiPS doesn’t believe the Nationals have any strong hitters coming up next to buttress them. ZiPS thinks little of Brady House – and Steamer likes his bat even less – and doesn’t think Juan Yepez is an impressive short-term solution at first. Except for catcher Drew Millas, every Nationals batter projected to have five or more WAR over the next five seasons is likely to make the Opening Day roster, and Millas’ projection is simply that of a low-upside backup. If the Nats don’t develop hitters, they’re going to have to spend more aggressively to fill the team’s depth in the lineup.

Pitchers

MacKenzie Gore is fine, but ZiPS has a general ambivalence about the rest of the rotation. DJ Herz is the most interesting of the pack. He misses a ton of bats, and his results from his limited time in the majors are promising, but ZiPS is still on the fence about whether he’s really shed some of his walks from the minors. He has some of the darkest downside scenarios of the staff but also the second-best upside after Gore, and a rebuilding team ought to be interested in riskier pitchers. The computer sees Jake Irvin and Mitchell Parker as competent inning-eaters rather than pitchers with big upsides. Cade Cavalli is risky, and once you get past him, ZiPS is decidedly lukewarm everywhere.

ZiPS may be ambivalent about the rotation, but when it comes to the bullpen, it’s far more opinionated, in a bad way. The Nationals are no strangers to having terrible bullpens – they won a World Series with at most three relievers they could trust – and for rebuilding teams, the bullpen tends to be the last thing to come together. ZiPS thinks Derek Law and Robert Garcia are good parts of a competent pen, but the rest of Washington’s relievers are expected to be below replacement level. None of the names even project particularly well, which suggests to me that unless the computer is quite wrong, the team’s next good relief pitchers likely are not currently in the organization, and if they are, they’ll probably be failed starters who convert to the bullpen.

For the first half of 2024, the Nationals stayed on the edge of the exurbs of the NL Wild Card race, close enough to .500 to believe that maybe they could push for a playoff spot if everything broke right for them. However, their 32-47 record from July onward ended that whimsy, and their 71-91 record was a fair representation of where they stood. Short of some major changes, Washington is likely to make some progress and finish with a win total in the mid-to-high 70s. That’d would be a step forward, but it wouldn’t be enough to return to the postseason.

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 following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Before he’d ever thrown a major league pitch, cracked a prospect list, or reached legal adult status, Félix Hernández had a nickname: King Felix. Dubbed as such by U.S.S. Mariner blogger Jason Michael Barker Dave Cameron on July 17, 2003, when he was just a 17-year-old in the Low-A Northwest League, he was already overpowering much older hitters. Still a teen when he reached the majors, he quickly came to represent the hopes and dreams of a franchise that had fallen short of a World Series despite four playoffs appearances from 1995–2001; parted with superstars Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Alex Rodriguez along the way; and capped that run with a record-setting 116 wins but a premature exit in the ALCS.

Though slow to embrace the royal moniker, Hernández grew into it. His dazzling combination of an electrifying, darting sinker, a knee-buckling curve, and a signature hard changeup propelled him to a Cy Young Award, two ERA titles, six All-Star appearances, and a perfect game. From 2009–14, he was the best pitcher in the American League by ERA, FIP, strikeouts, and WAR, parlaying that into a contract commensurate that made him the game’s highest-paid pitcher. Unfortunately, a heavy workload — more innings than any pitcher 23 or younger since Dwight Gooden two decades earlier — sapped the sizzle from his fastball, with injuries and a cavalier approach to conditioning taking their toll as well. The Mariners struggled to surround him with a quality roster, and changed managers and pitching coaches every couple of years. The team didn’t reach the playoffs once during Hernández’s career, finishing above .500 just five times, with a pair of second-place showings in the AL West as good as it got. Read the rest of this entry »

When addressing his team’s acquisition of Garrett Crochet at the Winter Meetings, Craig Breslow said that the 25-year-old southpaw’s relationship with the Red Sox’ analytics group will be important, so that he “can continue to understand how he can get the best out of his stuff.” I subsequently asked Boston’s Chief Baseball Officer if, based on their pre-trade homework, they have identified any specific adjustments Crochet might want to make, or if they plan to mostly just let him keep doing what he does.

“I think the answer is probably both,” replied Breslow. “Right? We want to lean into what he does particularly well, and he does a lot of things really, really well. You look at the strikeouts, and especially the strikeouts relative to the walks; that’s a pretty good underpinning for a really successful starting pitcher. Once we have a chance to get to know him, have conversations with him, we’ll lean on [pitching coach Andrew Bailey] and the rest of the group. But it’s probably not fair to talk about what adjustments we might make before we’ve had a chance to have that conversation with him.”

Crochet is looking forward to the conversation. He expects it to take place in the coming week, and he’ll go into it with thoughts he’s been formulating since last summer. When I talked to Crochet in late August, he spoke of usage percentages and how he’d begun tinkering with a sinker. I reminded him of that earlier exchange when he met with the Boston media over Zoom on Friday, then proceeded to ask about his forthcoming discussions with the Red Sox pitching department. Read the rest of this entry »

When Juan Soto signed with the Mets this week, there were four parties who should’ve been celebrating: First, the Mets, who nabbed the biggest on-base threat since Barry Bonds, and in the process got to blow raspberries at their old money neighbors. Second, Soto himself, who was already grotesquely wealthy but is now due the kind of lucre that will allow him to oppress multitudes if he so chooses. Third, Scott Boras, who in addition to being paid a handsome commission proved that he still had his mojo after a mortifying 2023-24 offseason.

The fourth winner: Kyle Tucker. The “next-best thing” to a 26-year-old free agent with a .421 career OBP, to someone who is projected by ZiPS to accumulate more than 100 WAR, is… well there’s no such animal. But Tucker is as close as you’ll get these days. If Soto is worth $51 million a year, what is Tucker worth? I don’t know. Neither do the Houston Astros, but they’re clearly not interested in finding out.

On Friday, Houston traded the presumptive top free agent in next year’s class to the Chicago Cubs in exchange for Isaac Paredes, Hayden Wesneski, and third base prospect Cam Smith. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a ritual as old as time. The Brewers develop an intriguing young player into an All-Star, and a fun one at that. Next, that player approaches free agency – that’s how time works. The Brewers then trade that player to a contending team, getting back a few players with multiple years of team control. Finally, the Brewers develop those players into stars, spin the wheel again, and the band plays on. Today’s edition: Milwaukee traded Devin Williams to the Yankees in exchange for Nestor Cortes and infield prospect Caleb Durbin, as Jeff Passan first reported.

Williams is the rare pitcher who isn’t even as famous as his best pitch. His screwball/changeup hybrid is nicknamed The Airbender, and it’s been making major leaguers look like overmatched kids for years. On the back of that pitch and a plus fastball, he’s compiled a career ERA of 1.83 over five-plus seasons of dominance. His 39.4% career strikeout rate reads like a typo. He rose to prominence during the 2020 season, and he’s been the second-best reliever in baseball since then, trailing only Emmanuel Clase.

It doesn’t matter what you call the pitch; Williams’ results speak for themselves. “Changeup-first dominant closer” only sounds fluky until you look at the raw data. He misses more bats than Josh Hader. He might even be better than his run-prevention numbers would suggest, because the runs he gives up come in bunches. In 2023, for example, he gave up 10 earned runs all year, and four were in a single game. The upshot: He’s first among relievers in win probability added by a ton, because a truly outrageous number of his games end in scoreless innings. He’s not Mariano Rivera, but he might be the closest thing in today’s game: an automatic ninth inning.
Read the rest of this entry »

The White Sox finished the 2024 season with my fourth-ranked farm system, and now they’ve added four good prospects via their trade with the Red Sox centered around lefty starter Garrett Crochet, who is under contract for two more seasons. You can read about Crochet and the Red Sox here. Coming back to Chicago in exchange are soon-to-be 23-year-old catcher Kyle Teel, 2024 first-round pick Braden Montgomery, 22-year-old developmental righty Wikelman Gonzalez, and data darling 23-year-old infielder Chase Meidroth. Two of those players (Teel and Meidroth) have a good chance to debut in 2025.

I thought this deal was much better than what the White Sox got back from San Diego last March for two years of Dylan Cease. A blockbuster rule of thumb: Get back at least one high-probability everyday hitter. Teel fits the bill. He’s a well-rounded player who is a virtual lock to remain at catcher and who will probably hit for enough power to be the White Sox primary catcher a few years from now. Montgomery is a switch-hitter with immense lefty bat speed, and he may also turn into an everyday, power-hitting right fielder down the line. Meidroth (elite contact, no power) and Gonzalez (three good-looking pitches that don’t play due to poor control) each have a plus characteristic or two that should facilitate an eventual big league role, and both have a puncher’s chance to be more than that. While it’s painful to part with a talent like Crochet (who was a bold, injured draft pick in 2020), a four-for-one swap in which each prospect they acquired has a special skill and potentially meaningful upside gives the White Sox a great combination of depth and ceiling in this transaction. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

The fourth and final multi-candidate pairing of this series is by far the heaviest, covering two candidates who have both been connected to multiple incidents of domestic violence. 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 New York Yankees.

Batters

The Yankees’ big problem on offense is an obvious one: Juan Soto is no longer in the lineup. Their position players are projected for 23.3 WAR, about 10 fewer wins from their 2024 total. Much of that is due to Soto’s absence, but ZiPS is also projecting Aaron Judge’s production to dip by three or four wins. That’s not a knock on Judge; remember, he put up 11.2 WAR last season, and no projection system worth anything would expect him not to regress in 2025.

Judge’s projection is still a dynamite one, but unfortunately for the Yankees, he stands alone in stardom in the lineup. There are a lot of good projections here. The Austin Wells/Jose Trevino catching tandem and shortstop Anthony Volpe are projected to eclipse 3.0 WAR. ZiPS expects Jazz Chisholm Jr. to be their second-best position player, and outfielders Jasson Domínguez and Trent Grisham to have solid campaigns. The problem is this group isn’t that exciting. Except for Judge, of course. The Yankees had the no. 2 offense in baseball (117 wRC+) in 2024, but unless they make some significant upgrades between now and Opening Day, expect them to take a step back at the plate.

ZiPS sees DH and first base as the two biggest problems in this lineup. The projections are tremendously unexcited about a Ben Rice/DJ LeMahieu timeshare at first. Giancarlo Stanton had a terrific postseason – and ZiPS factors in that production – but he was still only a .233/.298/.475 hitter in the regular season. Moreover, considering he turned 35 last month, he’s more likely to decline than improve moving forward. Barring injury, Stanton is going to be the Yankees’ regular DH in 2025, but the team could (read: should) add a first baseman over the next few months.

On the plus side, ZiPS thinks New York’s patchwork of second base options should adequately replace free agent Gleyber Torres if he signs elswhere.

The last concern ZiPS has is the organization’s minor league depth, especially on offense. The projections for Spencer Jones are much worse than the scouting consensus.

Pitchers

The Yankees overpaid this week when they agreed to sign Max Fried to the largest contract ever for a lefty pitcher, but that doesn’t mean it was a bad deal. On the contrary, because there is a lot of injury risk in this rotation, it was crucial for the Yankees to add a top-of-the-rotation starter, and ZiPS projects Fried to be their best pitcher this season by WAR. Some of Gerrit Cole’s projected dip is due to his missing a chunk of time in 2024 with an elbow injury, but that’s far from the only source of concern here. Now 34, Cole is allowing more contact these days, a trend that started in his 2023 Cy Young season, not this past year. ZiPS also projects Luis Gil to regress toward the mean, and it sees Carlos Rodón as an injury risk. Don’t get me wrong, the Yankees have a good starting rotation, especially if their pitchers stay healthy, but this group is a step or two below the top-shelf units of the Phillies and Dodgers.

ZiPS is more optimistic than Steamer is about New York’s bullpen. You won’t actually find relievers with projected ERAs above four until you get very deep in the pen, where you’ll see names like JT Brubaker and Yerry De Los Santos. While an extra relief arm or two would be welcome, I don’t think boosting the bullpen ought to be the team’s biggest priority.

All told, the Yankees are projected to finish with a win total in the high-80s or low-90s. That’s not ideal, of course, but that’s about where the Orioles sit right now as well, and nobody else in the division has a better projection. It’ll be interesting to see what the Yankees do the next few months.

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.