After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the San Francisco Giants. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles NL / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / St. Louis / San Diego / Seattle / Texas / Toronto.

Batters
When preparing the depth-chart graphics such as one finds below, it’s not always possible to fully represent the manner in which every player is likely to be deployed over the course of a season. In case of the Giants, for example, Buster Posey (606 PA, 6.3 zWAR) is a candidate to receive a number of starts at first base. Yet it’s also probably not inaccurate to characterize Brandon Belt (485 PA, 2.5 zWAR) as the team’s starting first baseman. To include Posey’s name at first wouldn’t have been wrong, at all. But it would have also required seconds — or perhaps even an entire minute — of more work. That’s a minute which the author could have utilized to the end of Googling his name on the internet and further crushing himself under the weight of his own vanity.

Posey isn’t merely the best player on the Giants, but also nearly the whole league. Angel Pagan (473 PA, 0.4 zWAR) definitely isn’t the worst player in the league, but he does appear — per Dan Szymborski’s computer, at least — he does appear to represent the club’s worst projected starter. If anyone cares, Jarrett Parker (515 PA, 1.1 zWAR) is also an outfielder and, despite a forecasted strikeout rate of 39.4%, receives a more encouraging prognosis than Pagan.

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Ben and Sam banter about Chris Davis and Target, then answer emails about David Price, Yosemite Tim, requesting trades, true talent, and the most average player.

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There’s been sort of a will-they/won’t-they thing going on with Arizona this offseason. They’re the team that probably makes the most sense for free agent Howie Kendrick. Kendrick is a second baseman, the Diamondbacks could arguably use a second baseman, and the front office there has made it clear they want to win in the season ahead. So, Kendrick would make them better, and I think they realize that, but there are these hurdles. There’s only so much money left to spend, and Dave Stewart has voiced a reluctance to give up another draft pick (currently slotted at No. 39).

Even now, Kendrick still fits. A strong market hasn’t developed, at least not publicly, and Arizona still has that potential infield hole. Though it’s noble to want to keep your draft picks, the 39th pick isn’t worth nearly as much as a higher one, so that shouldn’t be a major stumbling block. Kendrick might therefore end up remaining in the National League West, but he isn’t the only available possibility. In fact, you could argue Ian Desmond fits even better.

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In 2015, there were fewer pitchers (74) qualifying for the AL and NL ERA titles than in any season going back to 1995 (70). In any given season, the number of first-time ERA qualifiers is about a quarter of that population. This last year was no exception, as 18 pitchers qualified for the ERA title for the first time.

What was unique about 2015 was the high quality of those first-time ERA qualifiers. AL first-timers included Carlos Carrasco, Danny Salazar, Taijuan Walker, Collin McHugh, Trevor Bauer and Marco Estrada. Their NL counterparts included Jake Arrieta, Jacob deGrom, Gerrit Cole, Kyle Hendricks, Carlos Martinez and Michael Wacha. There are some heavy hitters on those two lists; you might have to go back to the Class of 1984, which boasted Dwight Gooden, Orel Hershiser, Mark Langston, Mike Moore and Oil Can Boyd among its members, to find a comparable group at the top.

This week and next, I’m going to attempt to reach into the large population of zero-time ERA qualifiers to identify the top breakthrough candidates for 2016 in both leagues. Today, it’s the American League, and the Orioles’ Kevin Gausman.

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This has been a weird off-season. Because the gap between the end of the World Series and the start of the winter meetings was shorter than usual, we ended up with a pretty slow start, as teams ended up waiting until December to really kick the market into gear, and even then, most of the money ended up getting thrown at the available pitchers. The market for hitters dragged out, leaving guys like Chris Davis, Justin Upton, Yoenis Cespedes, and Ian Desmond looking for long-term deals in January. And teams who should be looking to upgrade their rosters have largely sat out free agency, leaving the big spending to teams who aren’t traditionally players at the top of the market.

But maybe the weirdest part of the entire off-season is how rarely we’ve said A.J. Preller’s name. Last winter, the first-year GM dominated the news cycle like Donald Trump is now, making headlines with a frenetic series of moves to revamp his team’s roster and try to put together a contender. In the span of a week, he traded for Matt Kemp, Derek Norris, Wil Myers, and Justin Upton; a few months later, he’d also sign James Shields and trade for Craig Kimbrel. The always-boring Padres were anything but boring.

Of course, the net effect of all those moves was to put the organization in a far worse place than they’d been if they’d taken the boring approach, as the Kemp deal saddled them with a disaster of a contract for a mediocre player, the Myers deal cost them Trea Turner and Joe Ross, the Upton deal thinned out their farm system for a rental, and Kimbrel showed that even an elite closer doesn’t move the needle much on a bad team. The Padres stumbled to a 74-88 record, and without much in the way of prospects or a young core to build around, it became pretty clear that Preller was going to have to start over.

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12:00

vader: it’s time, it’s time!

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The word “move” is used in the context of an offseason to denote any number of varying transaction types. A trade is a move. A free-agent signing is a move. A player being designated for assignment is a move, or claimed off waivers, or sold to Japan. Players coming and going from rosters are the moves of the winter, and they’re the means by which the public tends to evaluate a team’s offseason.

The calculus for the outlook of the upcoming season is constantly changing throughout the offseason as these myriad moves transpire. When a team signs a star free-agent pitcher, we know that that team is several wins better than they were the day before. When a rebuilding club trades away its slugger in the final year of his contract for prospects, we understand that they’ve dropped a couple wins for the upcoming season.

But there’s another sort of move that happens during the offseason that’s more subtle, and it, too, changes the calculus of the upcoming season, though it often seems to be overlooked. We spend so much time and effort analyzing who “won or lost” the offseason that it’s easy to forget how much change should be expected from a team’s returning players. The Rangers didn’t go out and sign Yu Darvish this offseason, but he is expected to be a valuable addition to this year’s roster, an extra four or so wins added without any kind of traditional offseason move. Without doing anything, the Rangers rotation looks significantly better than it did at the end of last year.

Six years ago, Dave Cameron wrote a short post on this site titled 2009 Is Not a Constant. I recommend you read it, and sub in “2015” for “2009” when applicable, but here’s a relevant passage anyway:

We all know about career years and how you have to expect regression after a player does something way outside the ordinary, but regression doesn’t just serve to bring players back to earth after a big year.

Regression “fixes” a lot of problem spots from the prior year, even if the team doesn’t make a serious effort to change out players. The Royals got a .253 wOBA out of their shortstops a year ago. I don’t care how bad you think Yuniesky Betancourt is, you have to expect that number to be higher this year. They didn’t do anything to improve their shortstop position this winter, but the level of production they got from the position in 2009 is not their expected level of production for 2010.

…

You cannot just look at a team’s prior year won loss record – or even their pythagorean record – make some adjustments for the off-season transactions, and presume that’s a good enough estimator of true talent for the 2010 team.

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There’s no hiding from it — baseballs in the major leagues are being pitched faster than ever before, on average. I mean, we don’t have all that much of a record, but the trend is blatantly obvious over the past 10 or 15 years, and it stands to reason it extends ever back. A few years ago, this was a really interesting observation. Now, it’s something everyone already knows. Pitchers throw harder than they used to. That’s a given. Seemingly every bullpen now has an arm or three who would’ve been a certified flamethrower a decade ago.

Why is this happening? It’s important to try to understand the reasons. There are a lot of ideas out there, many of them valid. There’s a belief that, in general, teams are increasingly obsessed with velocity. And bullpens are being used more aggressively, with relievers throwing harder than starters. Newer training techniques are getting more out of young pitchers, so pitchers also just arrive throwing harder. You’ve got teenagers throwing harder, and teams looking for powerful arms and promising bodies — as a consequence, between 2002 – 2004, rookie starters threw their fastballs a hair under 90. The last three years, that average has gone up to 92. Why the increased velocity? “Youth” is a common response.

It’s definitely a big part of the answer. It’s not all of it. I think there’s something else happening, and it can allow us to link a number of this offseason’s free agents.

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After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the St. Louis Cardinals. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles NL / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego / Seattle / Texas / Toronto.

Batters
No club outperformed its Base Runs record by a greater amount in 2015 than St. Louis. The numbers suggest that, at a fundamental level, the Cardinals played like an 89-win team. In reality, they won 100 games. This is neither good or bad in itself. It’s just, if the club below seems more likely to record 89 victories than 100 of them, then that’s not actually a sign of decline, but rather equilibrium.

The depth-chart graphic below lacks some of the nuance that Mike Matheny et al. are likely to employ in terms of fielding a team on a day-to-day basis. For example, Matt Adams (357 PA, 0.9 zWAR) appears quite likely to share starts at first base with Brandon Moss (492 PA, 1.2 zWAR), while the newly acquired Jedd Gyorko (522 PA, 1.6 zWAR) is a candidate to work in a platoon with second baseman Kolten Wong (571 PA, 2.4 zWAR).

The appearance of Matt Carpenter (628 PA, 3.8 zWAR) atop the Cards’ batter projections facilitates the opportunity not only to appreciate his career, but also to remember his No. 1 comparable, Corey Koskie. Despite exceeding his rookie limits as a 26-year-old, Koskie averaged 4.1 WAR per 600 plate appearances over the course of a career that was ultimately ended by concussion-related problems. Provided Jim Souhan isn’t purposely misleading everyone, it appears as though Koskie has found some manner of peace as a Planet Fitness franchisee and advocate for bringing greater joy to youth sports.

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No team has more conspicuously made us look silly than the Royals. Not in the last few years, for all the reasons you already know. Not many things more visible than consecutive trips to the World Series, and when you look at what the Royals did against what the Royals were expected to do, statistically, it’s natural to wonder what’s up. It’s normal to find comments like this one, left earlier today:

Dave, if the Royals once again reach the post season, or even the world series, is it time to re-calibrate the predictive model? In other words weight some of the production measures differently? 4 years in a row isn’t luck.

For some, “projection” is a dirty word, and for others there’s just a certain skepticism. The Royals are the “face” of this feeling, if that makes any sense, because after all, they’re the defending champs, and they were projected to not be very good. There’s absolutely no question the Royals have exceeded statistical expectations the last few years. What might surprise you is another team has done that even more.

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