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 Philadelphia Phillies. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / Miami / St. Louis / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
The advantage, for a club, of embracing mediocrity is that it permits them to allocate plate appearances and innings to players who possess both clear strengths and obvious weaknesses. Odubel Herrera (609 PA, 3.6 zWAR) is perhaps the purest expression of this strategy and its benefits in all of baseball. Acquired by the Phillies in the Rule 5 draft and promptly handed a starting role at a position he’d basically never played, Herrera has produced roughly four wins each of the last two seasons. Szymborski’s computer suggests something approximating a third consecutive four-win campaign is probable. He’s an unambiguous success story.

Beyond Herrera, there isn’t much in the way of present impact talent. Maikel Franco (581, 2.6) is the only other likely starter to receive a projection better than two wins. Of some interest perhaps is the forecast for Cesar Hernandez (541, 1.7). The author of a four-win season in 2016, he’s forecast for only about half that in 2017. This isn’t surprising, necessarily: a not insignificant portion of Hernandez’s value last season was the product of a .363 BABIP and +13.9 UZR. ZiPS calls for a .340 BABIP and -1 fielding mark, instead.

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Even on a deal as short as the one to which the Phillies and Michael Saunders agreed this week — he’ll reportedly get $9 million for one year and the club will have the option to re-up him at something like $11 to 14 million — two relevant questions emerge immediately. One: is Saunders healthy enough to believe in? And two: will the power he exhibited last year reappear in 2017?

Well, is he? And will it?

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On Tuesday, we looked at the best pitches in baseball last year when judged by whiffs and grounders. One thing we learned in that exercise: they were all thrown by relievers. Makes sense. They get a lot of advantages when it comes to short stints and leveraged situations. Let’s not hold it against them because the rest of the reliever’s life is very difficult. On the other hand, let’s also celebrate the starting pitchers separately, because many of them have pitches that are excellent despite the fact that they have to throw more often, to batters of both hands.

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Earlier today, the Boston Red Sox traded starting pitcher Clay Buchholz to the Phillies in exchange for minor-league infielder Josh Tobias. In so doing, both teams have more or less crystallized their plans for their 2017 starting rotations.

For the Red Sox, this is about nailing down just who will be on the 2017 pitching staff. In his remarks to reporters, Red Sox head honcho Dave Dombrowski made specific mention that he feels the team is done wheeling and dealing for the 2017 squad, save some depth moves. In other words, those who are on the roster right now are the players with which the team expects to move forward. So, who are they? Let’s take a look:

Definite Starting Pitchers:

• Chris Sale
• David Price
• Rick Porcello
• Eduardo Rodriguez

Likely Starting Pitchers:

• Drew Pomeranz
• Steven Wright

As you can see, the rotation picture is now a lot more clear. Before Buchholz was traded, you had to wonder what his role would be. He pitched begrudgingly in relief last season, but his clear preference was to be in the rotation. But with six qualified starters ahead of him on the depth chart, that didn’t seem to be a likely scenario. And if it weren’t, how much fuss would Buchholz kick up? We’ll never have to find out now that he has been dealt.

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The Phillies have acquired long-time Red Sox starter Clay Buchholz in exchange for minor-league second baseman Josh Tobias. Here’s how Tobias grades out by my KATOH system. (KATOH denotes WAR forecast for the first six years of a player’s major-league career. KATOH+ uses a similar methodology with consideration also for Baseball America’s rankings.)

The Phillies snagged Tobias in the 10th round in 2015, and he’s performed admirably in the minor leagues. He increased his prospect stock by hitting .321/.362/.475 in short-season A-ball to close out his draft year. He had similar success in Low-A last year, but saw his performance crater following a late-season promotion to High-A. He hit a weak .254/.324/.357 at the latter level with a concerning 21% strikeout rate.

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We can all agree that WAR does a pretty good job of sorting, right? Like, even if you can quibble with the numbers, it paints a pretty good general picture. Good players tend to have better WARs than worse players. Great, okay. Over the past couple seasons, 130 different players have batted at least 1,000 times. Recognize right away there’s selection bias here — it’s mostly just decent players, and better players, who would play that much. The sample is already skewed somewhat toward quality, toward talent. Within that pool, by WAR, Odubel Herrera ranks 38th. He’s statistical neighbors with Daniel Murphy, Dexter Fowler, Dustin Pedroia, and Kole Calhoun. Herrera turns 25 in a couple of weeks, and as a Rule 5 grab, he’s been fantastic.

It makes all the sense in the world that the Phillies would want to get Herrera locked up. And from Herrera’s side, of course he’d want guaranteed money. Two winters ago his old team left him unprotected. There’s vulnerability there, vulnerability no one wants to feel again and again. Herrera now has an extension, which isn’t strange. But it’s another extension that leaves a young player looking like he sold himself short.

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There’s a genre of baseball discussion known as the “fun fact.” You might also call it “trivia.” A player is the first to accomplish a particular feat in 40 years; another is the only one to reach a notable career mark in a particular season. The genre doesn’t demand rigorous analysis; it’s merely a collection of interesting tidbits which may or may not be relevant in more thorough discussions. Some fun facts are amazing and others are forced to the point of farce.

There’s another genre of baseball discussion we’ll call “can he keep doing this thing?” analysis. This is very familiar to the loyal FanGraphs reader. We do this kind of thing all the time. We notice a player trying something new and try to determine if it’s meaningful. This article will subject Cesar Hernandez’s 2016 season to both sorts of discussion.

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In valuing relievers, you really have the same two questions that you have with other players — how good were they last year, and how good have they been consistently — but the consistency seems to be even more important. The samples are small and the position ages poorly, so the ability to show production from the pen year-in and year-out is valued highly. Unless you’re Joaquin Benoit, apparently. In that case, you just keep making teams look smart for signing you to smaller deals, because you keep putting up great numbers every year.

The Phillies, who just signed Benoit for one year and seven million dollars, should be happy with their acquisition on both fronts, but particularly when it comes to consistency and track record.

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The season’s most lopsided game was a Clayton Kershaw start. That shouldn’t surprise you — the Dodgers were good, and Clayton Kershaw was great, and the Dodgers with Clayton Kershaw were fantastic. As a matter of fact, five of the season’s 10 most lopsided games were Clayton Kershaw starts. His opponents in those games: Bud Norris, Jered Weaver, Brandon Finnegan, Chad Bettis, and Tom Koehler. Four of those games, the Dodgers won. They lost the Kershaw/Koehler game. It was nearly the season’s biggest upset.

For every game all year long, we publish pregame win probabilities. At first, they’re based on general team projections, and the starting pitchers. Then they update to account for the actual starting lineups. Every calculation includes a home-field-advantage boost of four percentage points. This year, there were 58 games in which the favorite was given at least a 70% chance of winning. Our math predicted 42 wins. In reality, there were 43 wins. The odds work pretty well, provided you don’t take them too seriously. They’re wonderful estimates.

On April 26, Koehler and the Marlins went into Los Angeles and beat Kershaw and the Dodgers. Before the game, the Dodgers’ chances of winning were 74.3%. On July 22, Zach Eflin and the Phillies went into Pittsburgh and beat Gerrit Cole and the Pirates. Before the game, the Pirates’ chances of winning were 74.4%. There is no meaningful difference between these numbers. The calculation error is far greater than one-tenth of one percentage point. But, a difference is a difference. A leader is a leader. I have no choice but to designate that game on July 22 as the biggest upset of 2016.

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Around this time in 2015, right-hander Jeremy Hellickson had just completed a three-year stretch during which he recorded a cumulative ERA near five and experienced some injury troubles to boot. Following his one and only season in Arizona, he was traded to Philadelphia for a young righty who wasn’t even among the Phillies’ top-25 prospects at the time. There wasn’t a great deal of reason for optimism.

A year later, circumstances are considerably different. Following a three-win season, Hellickson received a qualifying offer from the Phillies — and now the 2017 edition of Hellickson will earn $17.2 million. The results were pretty different, in others words. But what about the process? Are these the same Hellicksons?

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