The 2020 ZiPS Projections are Live!
The ZiPS projections for the 2020 season are now live for your perusal and condemnation. The 2021 and 2022 projections are also up, or at least imminent by the time you read this.
The same caveats from the team projections apply. There is a lot more detail at this link which will hopefully address many of your questions on why the projections exist and what they attempt to do.
ZiPS is not a playing time projector, by design. While the ZiPS projections are rejiggered in many contexts to conform with the depth chart playing time, the computer itself doesn’t have any insight into specific roster decisions as that’s not something computer projections have much to offer there. On a generalized level, ZiPS can — and does — know that older players get injured and that play below a specific threshold will typically result in lost playing time, but there are a lot of things it doesn’t know and can’t know. How will the Cincinnati Reds shuffle their outfield? How much rope does Jurickson Profar have if he again has a shockingly low BABIP in a year the Padres hope to become contenders? How threatening is Wilmer Flores to Mauricio Dubón’s playing time?
ZiPS — and any of the projection systems housed here — ought to have great utility in assisting how these questions should be answered in general, but as to how these questions will be actually answered by their teams, it’s not really helpful.
I’ve designed ZiPS to explicitly project performance that we know will never actually happen. Just to pick a random name, Bobby Dalbec has a projection of .219/.300/.404 and 0.6 WAR in 524 plate appearances. I know, you know, everyone knows that he won’t get 524 plate appearances. But I find answering the question as to how good Dalbec is as a player and what he would contribute in the majors is a far more interesting result than a .000/.000/.000, 0.0 WAR projection. The latter tells you nothing about Dalbec.
One other key thing to remember when looking at projections is to remember that these are mean projections. ZiPS only gives three hitters a .300 BA projection. That doesn’t mean ZiPS only thinks that three hitters will hit .300, because everyone’s not going to be at their mean projection. On average, ZiPS projects there will be 24 qualifying .300 hitters in 2020!
Here’s how ZiPS sees the top 25 projected hitters in batting average.
| Player | BA | BA>.350 | BA>.325 | BA>.300 | BA>.275 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Luis Arraez | .309 | 3.9% | 23.9% | 63.4% | 92.2% |
| José Altuve | .305 | 3.6% | 20.3% | 55.9% | 87.8% |
| Christian Yelich | .302 | 3.6% | 20.2% | 54.6% | 86.4% |
| Freddie Freeman | .299 | 2.4% | 15.5% | 47.9% | 82.8% |
| Nolan Arenado | .298 | 1.6% | 12.9% | 45.5% | 83.1% |
| Charlie Blackmon | .298 | 1.1% | 11.4% | 45.5% | 84.3% |
| Yonathan Daza | .296 | 0.8% | 9.2% | 41.5% | 82.0% |
| Daniel Murphy | .296 | 1.5% | 11.6% | 41.3% | 77.6% |
| Juan Soto | .295 | 1.9% | 12.5% | 40.9% | 77.6% |
| Mookie Betts | .294 | 0.9% | 9.8% | 40.0% | 78.8% |
| Mike Trout | .294 | 2.4% | 13.2% | 39.9% | 74.6% |
| Jeff McNeil | .293 | 0.8% | 8.8% | 38.1% | 77.9% |
| Ketel Marte | .293 | 0.7% | 8.2% | 37.5% | 77.9% |
| Howie Kendrick | .291 | 2.2% | 12.1% | 37.3% | 70.6% |
| DJ LeMahieu | .293 | 0.7% | 8.4% | 37.0% | 76.6% |
| Rafael Devers | .292 | 0.6% | 7.8% | 36.5% | 76.8% |
| Cody Bellinger | .293 | 0.8% | 8.6% | 35.6% | 74.4% |
| Ozzie Albies | .293 | 0.4% | 6.5% | 34.8% | 77.8% |
| Michael Brantley | .292 | 0.5% | 7.1% | 34.8% | 75.6% |
| Jean Segura | .291 | 0.5% | 7.1% | 34.1% | 74.9% |
| J.D. Martinez | .292 | 0.7% | 7.6% | 33.2% | 72.3% |
| Francisco Lindor | .289 | 0.4% | 6.0% | 32.3% | 73.6% |
| Starlin Castro | .290 | 0.4% | 5.9% | 31.9% | 74.2% |
| Yordan Alvarez | .287 | 0.5% | 6.2% | 29.3% | 67.3% |
| Alex Bregman | .288 | 0.5% | 6.0% | 29.2% | 67.7% |
In coming weeks, there will be more ZiPS tidbits, such as the Soto/Acuña vs. Trout career projections for which I’ve been asked about quite a lot! But for now, enjoy the numbers.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
This is great! Have these been rolled onto the Depth Charts projection page(s) yet? And when can we expect them to be on the player pages?
They are and they are
And were last night.
See the various shifts in ranking like dodgers ahead of Astros in depth charts war now
Do Bregman’s numbers include any trash-can adjustment for 2020?
Take the under on Altuve’s numbers too…
ZiPS does not project any Astros in the top 50 in HBP. I find its faith in pitchers’ willingness to follow the commissioner’s edict endearing, if a bit naive.
But in all seriousness, thanks for putting this together and for all the work that goes into it. It’s an invaluable resource.
It’s stunning how much batting averages have fallen as K’s go through the roof and equally stunning how little we talk about it.
And when people note BA, they frequently act like it’s a post-1992 thing when it’s in fact very recent; league batting average got as high as .271 in the late-90s.
Some fun tidbits from the ZiPs 2022 page:
Ozzie Albies: 5.4 wins
Bo Bichette and Vlad Guerrero Jr: 4.7 wins, each
Gavin Luz: 4.2 wins
Jo Adell: 4 wins
Luis Robert: 3.5 wins
Luis Arraez: 3.4 wins
Luis Urias: 3.0 wins
Keston Hiura: 3.0 wins
Carter Kieboom: 2.8 wins
Isaac Paredes: 2.7 wins
Trent Grisham: 2.5 wins
Abraham Toro: 2.5 wins
Alec Bohm: 2.3 wins
Ty France: 2.1 wins (!)
Jarred Kelenic: 1.7 wins
Cristian Pache: 1.5 wins
Nico Hoerner: 1.4 wins
Where’s Jasson Dominguez, haha?
Frozen in time, like an insect encased in amber.
Can someone explain Juan Soto’s defense to me? He seems to be getting a very positive bump, also it doesnt match when you click on his player profile?
He has high marks in Statcast OAA (+6).
Man that Giolito projection to me seems kind of crazy. There are only 19 qualified seasons with a 12+ K/9 and he’s projected to top that mark in each of the next three seasons. I know he’s young and was amazing last year, but boy would I take the under.
You really cannot compare today’s strikeout numbers to the past
12 K/9 in 2019 is great, but it is equivalent to “only” 8.6 K/9 in 2005.
ZiPS is essentially saying Giolito is going to be a top 5 strikeout pitcher, but not necessarily a historically great one.
Tim Tebow: Not at All a Publicity Stunt
That ZiPS only projects Tatis Jr. to play 95 or so games each of the next three seasons is interesting.
Also rather bearish on Rendon but Dan has written about that before.
At this point, ZiPS wants to see it before projecting it when it comes to playing time. A later version of ZiPS has a new playing time projection model that regresses players towards “mostly healthy” in a different way, but I’m not satisfied enough to graduate it yet.
Are all of the ZiPs hanging around your house like all of the Iron Man Marks hanging around Stark Industries?
A 21 year old is projected to have the second best bat in the league.
All the projections are in agreement on this for the most part
Why dont the projections on player pages match the projections that have been rolling out in the team by team articles?
Being at the far end of the performance spectrum, has Mike Trout outperformed his ZiPS projection every year? (2017 possibly being the only exception.) Is there anyone in the Majors who has played for more than, say, 6 years?
No, because remember, you can’t eliminate the injury years because the projections are explicitly including a chance of injury.
If memory serves, I was over 2014, 2017. Not sure about 2019 (I’m on my phone)
Merciful touch by ZiPS, having Pujols out of baseball after 2020, even though his contract runs through 2021. I’d hate to see 164-year-old Roger Connor pass him on the career WAR list.
Brian Daubach walked so Bobby Dalbac could maybe score a run or two for the Sox.
Look out for Barby Darbark, coming to the Fenway cold corner in 2040!
Man, ZIPS hates Mariners prospects. Not just Evan White, but Rodriguez, Lewis, Long, et al. The only prospect ZIPS seems to really like is Cal Raleigh.
Check in next year on Rodriguez and Kelenic…they perform next year they’ll be way higher.
They are currently young and don’t have a long track record yet.
This could be a function of my spot checking versus something more systematic – however:
I’ve noticed that a number of pitchers (particularly starting pitchers) have higher projected WAR here than in the team by team previews – with lower projected WAR for a number of position players.
Is it indicative of a broader phenomenon and, if so, is there a reason for this?
Thanks!
There’s usually a WAR discrepancy because ZiPS WAR isn’t the exact same methodology as FG WAR and it’s quite difficult aligning park factors/lg factors among all the projections systems; FG standings need them all on the same level.
There shoujldn’t be many changes in individual lines, a few here and there, but 99.9% of changes of individual lines would be team changes. Do you have an example?
Here’s the first three pitchers and hitters from the sample that I looked at:
Kevin Gausman 2.1 -> 3.0
Josh Lindblom 1.6 -> 1.9
Griffin Jax 1.0 -> 1.4
Jonathan Villar 2.7 -> 2.4
Shogo Akiyama 1.9 -> 1.6
Wilmer Flores 1.2 -> 0.7
Taking 15 from each pool, I found:
Hitters: 1 increased, 2 the same, 12 declined
Starting Pitchers: 11 increased, 2 the same, 2 declined
(Relievers and swingman also has this pattern, but maybe less dramatically)
Edit: Flores was perhaps a suboptimal inclusion, given that that used info from an article posted after the Giants ZiPS one.
Oh, WARs will definitely change a bit due to the difference in methodology/league/park factors. I was concerned more about the individual ones, that aren’t calculated by FG.
Also note, ZiPS WAR isn’t FIP based. Since I’m already regressing ERAs *towards* FIP relative to team, I can then base it off the ERA/RA rather than the FIP. ZiPS believes that Gausman’s shown enough that he should be a bit worse than his FIP, but a FIP WAR is going to like him better.
Individual ones not calculated by FG? Not sure I’m privy to any sets beyond the team articles (presumably from you) and the set profiled here (presumably from FG). I’d guessed that the shift toward pitchers (if real) resulted from some accordant difference in methodology (if just park factors, that should cancel out within the hitter and pitcher cohorts) and had wondered what they were…
(Fwiw (maybe little?), I found the values from the team articles more credible, in terms of where I think the replacement level might actually land.)
Thanks!
Thanks for the FIP note, which I had suspected. I imagined that that was part of what I saw, but the lack of countervailing pitcher entries plus what I saw with hitters implied that more was going on.
(Also, though I didn’t say this explicitly before, I included players that have never made the majors – like Jax – or Luis Castro (0 to -0.6) and so on…)
Again, thanks for your responses and more broadly for all your work here…
Two major thumbs up!!
Let’s get this one out of the way for everybody:
Ahem.
“You hate my favorite player.”
There, now nobody else has to post it.
Funny how Bryce Harper has fallen back into the pack a bit.
shift has really hurt him
That Yonathan Daza thing isn’t a glitch? ZIPs really buys into his high average in half a season at AAA?
Chris Archer is listed on the Rays. In fact, if you open his profile, it shows that he’s on the Rays.
This is great, thank you. To best use these projections, I need to tie them to Scoresheet ID, which means I need to tie them to MLB ID. Can someone please send me a link to a MLB_ID | FanGraphs_ID concordance table?