After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Texas Rangers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Batters
In 2017, six of the Rangers’ position players surpassed the two-win threshold. Only one of that group (Carlos Gomez, specifically) appears likely to play elsewhere next season. In light of that lone departure, one might expect something on the order of five players to record two or more wins in 2018. Dan Szymborski’s computer, however, clearly operates by a different sort of calculus.

Indeed, a brief examination of the tables below reveals that only Adrian Beltre (430 PA, 2.7 zWAR) is forecast by ZiPS to record two-plus wins next year. As for the other four returnees, all are projected to endure some manner of regression: worse numbers on contact for Elvis Andrus (656, 1.9) and Robinson Chirinos (270, 1.3); more strikeouts and fewer extras bases for Joey Gallo (507, 1.7); and what appears to be fewer runs from defense and probably baserunning for Delino DeShields (471, 0.4).

This isn’t the end of the bad news, either: all told, four positions on the rough depth chart below — catcher, second base, center field, and designated hitter — are accompanied by a rounded WAR figure of 0 or 1. A very dreary sort of binary code, is how one might characterize that.

One, desperate for an optimistic note, can find it in Willie Calhoun’s projection (586, 1.9). Part of the return for Yu Darvish, Calhoun lacks a defensive home. What he doesn’t lack, however, is a promising offensive profile. ZiPS calls for markedly above-average contact and power numbers, represented by his 13.1% strikeout rate and .220 isolated-slugging figure, respectively.

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Coming into the offseason, the Rangers needed to add pitching. Just pitching, regular pitching, any kind of pitching. They looked thin in the rotation and they looked thin in the bullpen, and that makes things both complicated and entirely simple. Complicated, in that the Rangers needed plenty of help. Simple, in that there’s a lot of potential help out there. Already, the Rangers have added Doug Fister. Fister will help. The deal looks good.

The Rangers are one of the seven finalists for Shohei Ohtani. Obviously, landing him would be a dream. The team was also interested in Miles Mikolas, but he’s decided to sign with the Cardinals. Matt Bush is attempting a conversion from the bullpen to the rotation. And now, according to reports, the Rangers are signing Mike Minor to a multi-year deal. Minor entered the market as one of the most in-demand available relievers. The Rangers could use him as a reliever — but, apparently, Plan A is to convert him, too. Minor will get a chance to start, and the Rangers might end up with a six-man rotation.

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Over the last decade, the Giants have been one of the most successful franchises in the game, winning 831 regular season games and, of course, three World Series titles. Along the way, there have been plenty of important weeks, most notably in October, when Madison Bumgarner and friends stepped up and played their best baseball at the most important time of the year. But while the Giants’ recent past has been full of big moments, this week might be the one that determines the Giants future for the next decade.

Obviously, the team’s pursuit of Giancarlo Stanton has dominated news about the team so far this off-season, and Stanton would certainly make the team significantly better. But as Jeff Sullivan noted recently, the Giants aren’t really in a position to just trade for Stanton and think that solves their problems. I’m going to steal a graph from his post, showing the current projected standings in the NL based on the Steamer projections.

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It’s been two and a half years since the first time I ran this project. A lot can change in two and a half years. Two and a half years ago, some of the best position players in baseball were Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Paul Goldschmidt, and — no, let me try this again. Two and a half years ago, some of the best pitchers in baseball were Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, Clayton Kershaw, and…okay, look, Ubaldo Jimenez had a sub-3 ERA. All right? Is that enough? Ubaldo Jimenez had a sub-3 ERA, and we didn’t yet know anything about the coming league-wide home-run spike. Two and a half years is a long time. Specifically, it’s about two and a half years.

This is a polling project, for which I need your participation. All of you are baseball fans, or else you’ve gotten woefully lost on the internet. The majority of you presumably cheer the most for one or two teams in particular. What I’m looking for: your basic, general opinion of a given team’s front office. I’d prefer you vote only in those polls corresponding to the teams you like. Just like with hopefully all of my polling projects, this should be easy. I mean, knowing the absolute correct answer is hard, if not impossible, but we all already know there are certain undiscoverable truths. It’s still satisfying to figure out perceptions.

Where this gets a little complicated is in how I’d like for you to think about this. I want the focus on the front office, in isolation. Which means, do your best to forget about ownership. Try, if at all possible, to separate the front office from outside influences. Not all front offices have worked with similar budgets, so, imagine each front office were given an average payroll with average resources. Do you think your team’s front office would do a good job of converting that into success? Do you wake up dreading the overnight headlines in case your team’s front office stayed up late making trades? I know I’m asking for the impossible here, but with matters like this, I think it’s almost always better to crowdsource. You’re the people who are most closely tuned in. I don’t know as much about every individual team as you, collectively, do.

When the results are in, I’ll post an analysis, probably later this week. Everybody has their front-office opinions, but it’s only through a project like this we can see how those opinions compare across the whole major-league landscape. I should say, if you’re a fan of the Braves, um, well, I don’t really know. I don’t care anymore about the old front office, so just select what you’re comfortable selecting, based on what you’ve read or previously observed. Or don’t vote. I can’t make you vote. I can’t make any of you vote. But I sure hope you will! Thank you in advance.

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