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 Baltimore Orioles. 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
A few years ago, I experimented idly with a toy stat called Reckless Power (RECK, for short), calculated by dividing isolated slugging (SLG – AVG) by what’s sometimes called isolated patience (OBP – AVG). It identifies players whose power on contact far exceeds their selectivity. To get a sense of the scale, here’s a collection of the top 10 batters by RECK from 2016:

League average is about 2.5. A score of 5.0 or higher typically earns a player a spot among the league’s top 10. Baltimore, one finds, placed two batters in the top 10 this past season. Another, Mark Trumbo, was 16th of 146 qualifiers. The Orioles, as a club, produced the highest RECK score in the majors, at 3.0.

The projections from Dan Szymborski’s computer suggest that Baltimore is likely to compete for that distinction again in 2017. Adam Jones (635 PA, .267/.304/.450, 5.0 RECK) and Jonathan Schoop (530, .264/.297.453, 5.8) are both forecast, essentially, to produce top-10 figures. Manny Machado (646, .289/.349/.511, 3.7) and Mark Trumbo (557, .251/.307/.491, 4.3) would both finish above the 75th percentile given their respective numbers.

In terms of wins and losses, this isn’t particularly illuminating. What it does illustrate, though, is how the Orioles have gone about scoring runs — and how they’ll score runs in 2017. By virtue largely of power on contact, is how.

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Imagine how Jason Heyward would feel if the Cubs didn’t win the World Series. On one side of the coin, any non-championship season falls short because of countless different reasons, and on the other side of the coin, Heyward still has to care the most about his own performance. But for as bad as he was, at least the title took the edge off. He remained an outstanding defender. And the team around him literally won everything you could win. Bad, though. Jason Heyward’s hitting was bad. Maybe worse than you thought. Maybe exactly as bad as you thought.

Here are three numbers:

• BA: .255
• OBP: .306
• SLG: .336

Pretty bad performance from Jason Heyward, you’d say. You’d be right! But you’d also be wrong, because those three numbers were posted by Jose Iglesias. Heyward’s hitting was even worse. He wasn’t supposed to become an outfield version of the no-hit shortstoppy whiz.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan begin by bantering about tentative plans for an Effectively Wild event this summer. Then, prompted by Baltimore’s Mark Trumbo signing, they pit the perplexing Orioles against every other organization in a series of head-to-head matchups.

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Mark Trumbo has himself the first multi-year deal of his career! He’ll be re-joining the Baltimore Orioles on a three-year deal for “under $40 million,” as Ken Rosenthal is reporting.

The slugger has to be happy about that, even if the number is a little lower than he might have expected after hitting 47 home runs last year. In July, at the All-Star Game, he was already being asked about this possible deal, and he agreed that it would be nice: “Moving your whole life year to year is not as ideal as maybe people think it is. You’d like to establish yourself and contribute to a singular team for an extended period of time if possible.”

Now he can! Will he be as good as he was this past year?

He led the league in home runs, yes, but he also set career highs in hard-hit rate, pull rate, and fly-ball rate while playing some of his better outfield defense, despite possessing an athletic skill set more suited for first base. In July, he admitted that the outfield was sometimes “daunting” but that he had to “resort to competing” as he always had.

The result was a season that made him a great fit for the Orioles on a returning deal. “If you can bring a little bit of versatility to your team, you’re that much more valuable,” he said back then. But mostly, he was signed for his bat, and all those extra hard fly balls he showed this year.

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The Brewers appear to have unearthed a gem in Keon Broxton, whose admirers are growing in number, the bandwagon led by FanGraphs’ own Jeff Sullivan.

If the projections are right, the Brewers found more sneaky value in their 2017 first baseman, Eric Thames, who spent the last few years launching home runs in South Korea.

And on Thursday, the Brewers reached a one-year, $5.35 million million deal with Neftali Feliz as first reported by Jon Heyman.

On the surface, Feliz was solid last season, and produced value for the Pirates on a one-year deal. After three seasons marred by injury and inconsistency with the Rangers and Tigers, Feliz struck out 28% of the batters he faced in 2016, posted a 19-point difference between his strikeout and walk rates (K-BB%), and recorded his hardest average fastball velocity (96.1 mph) since 2011.

While a .240 BABIP kept his ERA at a reasonable 3.52, that’s also probably a function of his approach: Feliz’s fly-ball tendencies have helped him to a .241 BABIP for his career.

He looks like another Ray Searage special.

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While fully acknowledging the honor bestowed upon Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, and Ivan Rodriguez yesterday evening by the voters, it’s also never too early to begin looking ahead to next year’s Hall of Fame ballot. The three who gained election this time around were certainly deserving — and will receive due recognition this summer in Cooperstown. That said, there were a lot of players worthy of the Hall who failed to earn the requisite 75% for entry — and those players will be joined by even more great players seeking induction on the next ballot.

During the eight-year period from 2006 to 2013, the writers selected just 10 players for enshrinement. Over the last four years, however, 12 players have been elected, suggesting that the voters have changed their standards a bit to compensate for a stingier time.

Unfortunately, the increase has done little to clear the backlog of worthy players. Consider: of the 12 players inducted over the last four years, eight of them were elected on their first ballot. So, while it’s nice to know that certain deserving players have been given due recognition, there actually hasn’t been as much activity as one might suspect to benefit the other players worthy of Cooperstown. The last four years have seen Mark McGwire, Jack Morris, Alan Trammell, and now Lee Smith age off the ballot, but the numbers of players who’ve exited from the ballot doesn’t compensate for the appearance of new qualified candidates.

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Sometimes baseball makes things easy. According to the Baseball Prospectus PITCHf/x leaderboards, there have been almost 1,500 individual fastball types thrown at least 500 times by different pitchers since we were first able to track these things in 2008. Which has been the most unhittable fastball, determined by whiffs per swing? Well, Aroldis Chapman’s four-seamer, obviously. It’s been the most unhittable fastball, in large part because it’s also been the fastest fastball. Chapman throws harder than anyone’s ever been able to throw in the major leagues, at least that we know of. When batters have swung at his fastballs, they’ve missed more than 36% of the time.

Sometimes baseball makes things hard. After Chapman’s fastball, who comes in second? I’ll give you a hint: It’s not Craig Kimbrel. I’ll give you another hint: It’s not, I don’t know, Sean Doolittle. Pick a pitcher! It’s not that pitcher. Unless you already know the pitcher, in which case, I can only assume that you cheated. The second-most unhittable fastball has been thrown by Nick Vincent.

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Cincinnati has agreed to trade Dan Straily to Miami for three prospects, according to multiple reports, in a deal that indicates the intentions of both clubs — the Reds’ to continue their rebuild, the Marlins’ to compete in a top-heavy NL East.

Claimed off waivers by the Reds last spring, Straily is precisely the kind of arm a club like Cincinnati should be flipping for profit. After joining the Reds, the 28-year-old right-hander proceeded to go 14-8 with a 3.78 ERA. His FIP (4.88) and xFIP (5.02), however, suggest he outperformed his true skill level. That’s now the concern of the Marlins, though, who inherit Straily and his four remaining years of club control.

Chris Mitchell’s KATOH system isn’t too high on the prospects involved. The Marlins didn’t place a single prospect on Baseball America’s midseason top-100 list in 2016, so it’s not a particularly deep system. But Castillo rated as the Marlins’ No. 2 prospect, according to the Baseball America top-10 list published earlier this offseason.

Castillo’s an interesting arm. Now 24, he’s hit 100 mph in the past and will sit in the upper 90s. He posted a 2.07 ERA and 16-point strikeout- and walk-rate differential (K-BB%) in 117 innings at High-A Jupiter this past season. Eric Longenhagen scouted Castillo when he was traded by the Marlins last deadline for Andrew Cashner. (When part of that deal, Colin Rea, proved to be injured, Castillo was sent back to Miami.) Also headed to the Reds are Austin Brice, ranked ninth in the Miami organization by MLB.com, and Isaiah White, a third-rounder in 2015, ranked 16th on the Marlins’ top-20 list.

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Dan Straily is on his way to becoming a Marlin. According to reports, the Reds have agreed to deal the soft-tossing, veteran righty for a trio of prospects. We’ll have more on the trade in a bit. For the moment, here’s what my KATOH system has to say about the players who are newly employed by the Cincinnati Reds organization. KATOH denotes WAR forecast for first six years of player’s major-league career. KATOH+ uses similar a methodology with consideration also for Baseball America’s rankings.

*****

Austin Brice, RHP (Profile)

KATOH: 0.9 WAR
KATOH+: 0.9 WAR

After an underwhelming tenure as a starter in the minors, Brice had success in the bullpen last year. Following a move to the pen in June, he posted a 2.10 ERA and 2.90 FIP between Double-A and Triple-A, earning him a September call-up. Brice’s recent minor-league numbers suggest he’ll have a future in the show, even if it’s a short-lived one. KATOH gives him a 50% chance of pitching in the majors again. But as a soon-to-be 25-year-old relief prospect without much track record, he isn’t likely to make a big impact. KATOH considered Brice to be the 10th-best prospect in the Marlins’ system, which says more about the Marlins’ system than it does about Brice.

To put some faces to Brice’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps for the hard-throwing righty. I calculated a weighted Mahalanobis distance between Brice’s performance this year and every Double- and Triple-A season since 1991 in which a pitcher recorded at least 350 batters faced. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. A lower “Mah Dist” reading indicates a closer comp.

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