Spencer Strider currently leads all qualified starters in strikeout rate. When I learned that bit of information, my immediate reaction was, “Wow, that tiny little guy’s on track to throw enough innings to qualify for the ERA title, good for him!”

But Strider is way out in front of the field. His K% is 38.9%; Kevin Gausman is second at 32.6%, with a small group of pitchers clustered behind him in the low 30s. Strider isn’t particularly walk-averse — his BB% is 40th-lowest among 67 qualified starters — and yet his K-BB% of 31.4% would be the fifth-best strikeout rate in the league.

I don’t want to say this is happening without anyone batting an eye — here we are, after all, batting our eyes at Strider’s strikeout rate. But we’ve become so inured to this kind of performance, and so quickly, that it’s worth taking a step back to consider the gravity of what he’s doing. Read the rest of this entry »

The full midseason run of the ZiPS projections have been completed, and while the standings updates are always a lot of fun, they tend to move in a similar direction to our FanGraphs standings, so they’re usually not the most shocking. What I find the most interesting are the player projections, and not even the numbers for the rest of the season — the in-season model is simpler, but improvements in the full model are naturally going to be incremental — but the ones that look toward 2024 and beyond.

For today, we’ll start with the hitters with the largest increases in projected 2024 WAR since my original projections and dig a little into what changed for each player. Sometimes it’s performance, sometimes it’s health, sometimes it’s a change in position. Let’s jump straight into the names, since I assume everyone reading this knows that ZiPS isn’t a cheeseburger or a hoodie. Read the rest of this entry »

As is tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the lead-up to the trade deadline to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at the players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above.

For those of you who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2024-2028, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money, if any, the year through which their team has contractual control of them, last year’s rank (if applicable), and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2028 (if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2022 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his technical wizardry. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all of the players who have been ranked up to this point.

One note on the rankings: Particularly at the bottom of the list, there isn’t a lot of room between the players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put them there for a reason, but there isn’t much of a gap between, say, the 39th-ranked player and the 60th. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several of the folks I talked to might prefer a player in the honorable mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. I think the broad strokes are correct, and this is my opinion of the best order, but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the next batch of players.

I’ll be honest up front: This is one where my initial evaluation differed from the crowd, and I think the crowd is right. I had Brown right on the fringe of the top 50, but everyone really loves his fastball shape, and that’s a big tiebreaker in pitching evaluation these days. It doesn’t hurt that his slider consistently tops 90 mph, and he even has a huge 12-6 curveball to complete the package. Some pitchers need to maximize their best pitch to excel; Brown has the luxury of multiple standout options, which broadens his path to success. He could turn into a fastball-slider monster in the Justin Verlander mold (hey, have you guys heard he throws like Verlander?), or emphasize his two breaking balls like Clayton Kershaw.

Obviously, Brown isn’t on that level just yet. He almost certainly won’t ever reach that level. Compare him to Bryce Miller, someone I’d previously grouped him with, though, and you can see what I mean. If Miller’s good, it will be because of his fastball. If that fastball isn’t quite up to snuff, it won’t work. Having two ways to succeed means Brown’s floor is higher than you might think; he’d need to experience multiple points of failure before things went irreparably wrong, and that counts for a lot when we’re talking about this many years of team control.

If Brown is even just an average pitcher – and he’s been much better than that this year – he’s valuable for the sheer length of time he’ll be around. The combination of length and a low chance of failure resonates with me. One last point in his favor? He’s been consistently improving his greatest weakness — command — since reaching the big leagues. I’m not sure what Brown will look like as a finished product, but I feel good about the fact that he’ll be a solid pitcher one way or another.

I put Kirk 39th because “confused shrug” isn’t a valid ranking. He looked like a great hitter who needed to figure out how to play defense last year, but he’s gone ice cold offensively in 2023, and the way it’s happening has to worry the Blue Jays. He’s always hit too many grounders, but the power he got to despite that batted ball mix has vanished. His thump is more gap-to-gap than over-the-wall, so a step down leaves him blooping and grounding his way to a desultory offensive line.

Why not lop him off the list entirely, then? For someone who had a lot of DH risk as a minor leaguer, Kirk has adapted to the rigors of major league catching pretty well. He’s a solid blocker and an average thrower, neither of which looked likely two years ago. He also displays good receiving instincts. Alejandro Kirk, above-average defender? I still don’t quite believe it, but it seems like more of a possibility than I thought it was a year ago.

Meanwhile, I don’t know what weird malaise he’s working through offensively, but he hit so much in the minors and in previous major league seasons that I don’t mind betting on a rebound. He’s now displayed the capability to hit and field a premium position. That’s a rare combo, and he’s under team control for so long still that this is as low as I could put Kirk on the list, awful season and all.

Neto is the player I feel least sure of on this entire list. The reason is likely obvious: He has almost no track record to speak of. He was the Angels’ first pick in the 2022 draft and already has more major league plate appearances than minor league plate appearances. That makes for a lot of uncertainty about whether he’s as good as he’s looked so far this year, and as you can see, ZiPS isn’t quite bought in yet.

Ultimately, though, both scouts and defensive evaluation systems think Neto is a solid shortstop, and that goes a long way towards making me comfortable. He hit well in his minor league stopover, and his underlying statistics look right at home in the majors. He has roughly average raw power, but a good sense of the strike zone makes his in-game output better than you might expect. I think he’ll post average or better walk rates in the long run, though likely with his fair share of strikeouts as well.

That might not sound exciting, but an average bat/average glove shortstop is something like a three-win player annually. Neto won’t hit free agency until after the 2029 season; that’s a lot of production even if he doesn’t turn into a perennial All-Star. I dropped him down a bit just because of the short track record and associated risk of becoming a bust, but multiple people I talked to would have grouped him up with Matt McLain and Anthony Volpe, who (spoiler alert) appear higher on this list.

Ah, last year’s Zach Neto. That’s not a perfect comparison – Peña is older, for one thing – but Peña burst onto the scene last year as a plus fielder who could hit a little. Like I mentioned, a huge chunk of team control for a player who can handle shortstop without embarrassing himself offensively is a combination that will always be in demand. And I think Peña is a lot better than unembarrassing defensively, even if Statcast is down on his 2023 performance so far.

In Peña’s case, “can he hit” is still an open question. He’s tremendously aggressive at the plate, which leads to bad swings and weak contact. He’s been strangely inept against fastballs this year, a trend I don’t think will continue, but he needs to do damage on them to make up for all those flailing swings at breaking balls below the zone.

If you told me that Peña was guaranteed to post an exactly average batting line, this is where I’d place him on the list. In the real world, where nothing is set in stone, the upside case (he posts a 120 wRC+, making him incredible) doesn’t feel particularly likely, but it’s still in play. The downside case (he posts an 80 wRC+, making him uninteresting) is definitely real, and his approach exacerbates its likelihood. He’s a good reminder to pump the brakes just a little when a rookie bursts onto the scene – but he’s also a reminder that good shortstops are valuable even when they’re slumping.

I love a shiny prospect as much as the next analyst. Witt fits that bill; he has game-breaking speed and power at a premium defensive position. He hit 20 bombs and stole 30 bags last year, and he might go 20/40 or even 30/50 this year. He’s a fantasy beast, no doubt – but I’m starting to wonder whether those drool-worthy counting statistics will translate into real-world value.

You’d like to pair Witt’s blazing baserunning skills with a high OBP, but that doesn’t seem likely given his career so far. He swings a lot and makes only average contact, which means he doesn’t walk much but still strikes out fairly often. And his homers come from an aerially-oriented approach, so it’s not like he can easily boost his power by lifting and pulling more frequently.

ZiPS, not to mention a few of the human evaluators I spoke to, thinks I’m too low on Witt and maybe I am. His defense grades out much better this year, and it always made sense that someone with his natural gifts would be a capable shortstop. But he was an absolute butcher in 2022 and I think a responsible estimate of his future defense would wind up somewhere south of average. If he’s an asset in the field, it takes a lot of pressure off of his hit-or-miss offense.

At the end of the day, most of the arguments for putting Witt higher on this list come down to things he hasn’t done yet. The tools are all there. Now we just need to see it for more than a few hot weeks at a time. I think there’s a decent chance of Witt making me look foolish in a year, but after 1,000 plate appearances of average hitting, I need to see a little more.

One concept that got a lot of play, both in my head while I made this list and in my conversations about it as I gathered feedback, is what I like to call the first base dead zone. It works like this: If you’re a true talent 140 wRC+ hitter at first base, you’re a franchise cornerstone. Drop that mark to 120, though, and you’re a role player. Christian Walker, Josh Naylor, Rhys Hoskins, Brandon Drury, Anthony Rizzo — none of those guys really get your blood pumping, do they? They’ve all put up a wRC+ between 120 and 125 combined across 2022 and 2023.

The margin is slim; Freddie Freeman, Matt Olson, and Paul Goldschmidt are stars. That’s why I had Vlad ninth on this list last year, and why he’s been a fixture towards the top since he debuted in the majors. His 2021 season and his status as a once-in-a-decade prospect cast long shadows. If you think he’s basically a toned-down version of 2021, this is too low.

Maybe he is, but he hasn’t showed that world-conquering form recently. Since the start of the 2022 season, he’s barely inside the top 10 for wRC+ among qualified first basemen. He’s not going to be around forever; he’ll hit free agency after the 2025 season. He’s not a huge bargain, either; he’s making $14.5 million in arbitration this year, and that’s only going to go up. He also has nowhere to hide defensively; when he has a down offensive stretch, there’s nothing to cushion it.

His Statcast numbers this year are great. He’s a star. I just don’t believe that teams are lining up to trade for a first baseman whose bat is anything less than generational. There are only two players with similar defensive value to Vladito higher on this list and their bats are clearly superior. I’m not saying he isn’t capable of those heights, but he’s not achieving them at the moment, and this year is a meaningful chunk of his remaining team control.

It’s kind of wild looking at Arozarena’s career batting numbers. He’s been really good in each of the last three years, and that excludes his white-hot 2020 postseason. In 2023, he’s added OBP to the mix, walking more without sacrificing his fastball-destroying aggression. He’s a top-25 hitter in baseball, maybe better than that, and the track record is too long to ignore at this point.

Case in point: compare his ZiPS projections to Guerrero’s. They’re essentially the same, but Arozarena comes with an extra year of team control and his salary will be meaningfully lower. Sure, he’s older, but you’re not signing him for 10 years; a team trading for him would get the tail end of his peak.

That first base dead zone I mentioned earlier? I think ability to play a passable left field keeps him clear of it. For now, at least, his offense does too. I’m sure this will be an unpopular ranking (Arozarena’s place at the bottom of last year’s list is perhaps the most derided trade value inclusion since I’ve worked at FanGraphs), but let me put it this way: No one I talked to thought he was a reach. If you’re thinking this is just another case of the Rays squeezing everything they can out of a limited skill set, you may not have looked at Arozarena’s on-field production enough.

Gilbert is in a different tier, value-wise, than everyone who came before him. I guess that means there are 33 no-doubt ultra-valuable players in baseball this year. The guys ranked 34th to 60th are kind of a crapshoot, and anyone who says they have the perfect order for those players is kidding themselves, me included. Now, though, we’re getting to the good stuff.

Controllable pitching is really valuable. Good controllable pitching? Now we’re cooking with gas. Gilbert is working on his third straight season of a mid-3.00s FIP, and he’s durable to boot. I’m not sure he’ll ever turn into a fire-breathing monster of an ace, but there’s at least a chance of it. He’s throwing a new hard slider and a new splitter this year, and they both look better than his previous set of secondaries. He’s always had great command and a solid fastball; if the whole package gels, look out.

Of course, the whole package doesn’t have to gel for Gilbert to be worth it. He’s going to be around for a long time, for not very much money, and everything in his track record suggests that he’ll be a valuable contributor that whole time. Players like this don’t come along every day, and when they do, teams generally clutch them like pearls.

As DJ Khaled would say, another one. Seattle has a lot of good pitchers who will be around for a while, though Castillo doesn’t come at the same bargain rates as Gilbert. The upside, though? I have little doubt that Castillo will deliver All-Star level value for as long as he’s healthy. He’s remarkably consistent, tracking for 3.5-4.5 WAR in each of the past five years. He’s durable. And he’s not doing it with smoke and mirrors; he has multiple plus secondaries and his fastball misses bats at an outrageous rate.

Will Castillo ever win a Cy Young? I doubt it. Will he finish as a top-30 pitcher in baseball every healthy year of his contract? I think so. When you look at what teams are willing to pay for reliable starters, Castillo’s value stands out even more. He’s making Chris Bassitt money, upscale Taijuan Walker money, slightly-more-than-Jameson Taillon money. He’s miles better than those guys.

I flipped Castillo and Gilbert back and forth while constructing these rankings, and I think that a lot of the arguments in favor of one also accrue to the other. In the end, I put Castillo ahead even though he’ll almost certainly generate fewer WAR per dollar of salary. Surplus value is nice, and I obviously used it as an input, but I just think Castillo is better by enough to justify the higher salary. It’s close (and it’s also academic — Seattle isn’t trading either of them), but if you’re wondering how I decided to order these two, there’s your answer.

One quick note: It’s not a perfect comp, but Castillo got traded last deadline for a big return. He’s more valuable than that now, presumably; his contract compares favorably to pitchers of his skill level and it’ll keep him in the same uniform for quite a while without being long enough to turn into an albatross. Players on this list mostly don’t get traded, but he’s a case where we have real-world evidence of what he’s worth.

A trade value stalwart, Albies signed a ludicrously under-market extension early in his career and has looked like a bargain for the Braves ever since. We’re finally getting towards the end of that contract, and it’s of course been a huge value, just as predicted. No one’s disputing that. The question now is to what degree the tail end will pay off for Atlanta, not whether it will.

Above-average players don’t grow on trees. Albies is a perfect example of an above-average player. He’s been worth 3.4 WAR per 600 plate appearances over the course of his career. Starting in 2020, he’s been worth 3.3 WAR per 600 plate appearances. He can hit a little bit. He can field a little bit. He runs the bases well.

At the end of the day, I feel pretty comfortable about what I’m getting from Albies. He won’t be the best player on a good team, but he’ll be a valuable contributor and save you some money to sign a stud to play alongside him. Stars are awesome — everyone wants stars! — but this next tier down, the guys who are always good and sometimes spike All-Star seasons, is also in high demand, particularly if the price is right.

An optimist might look at Albies’s 2023 statline and say that he’s never put up a higher wRC+ than he has this season. Better times are coming! A pessimist might point out that a 119 wRC+ isn’t an especially great number for a career best, and that he turned in a clunker last year. The truth is that his last two seasons work out to basically his career line. This is just what you’re going to get with Albies, and it’s a pretty nice package on the whole.

Shohei Ohtani is a unicorn. No player in 20th- or 21st-century AL/NL history, not even Babe Ruth in his last two seasons with the Red Sox (1918–19), has been able to sustain regular duty in both a rotation and a lineup over a full season, let alone excel at both endeavors. At this writing, the 29-year-old superstar leads the majors in homers (34), slugging percentage (.665), and wRC+ (179), and he’s got the AL’s second-best strikeout rate (32.2%) and lowest batting average against (.191). He currently ranks among the AL’s top 10 in Baseball Reference’s position player WAR (4.0, fourth) and pitching WAR (2.5, ninth), and just over a full win ahead of Ronald Acuña Jr. for the major league lead in combined WAR. Over the past two and a half seasons, he’s been worth 25.0 WAR, 5.9 more than the top position player, Aaron Judge.

Some day, Hall of Fame voters will have to reckon with Ohtani. If he reaches the kind of career numbers that Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS system forecast for him over the winter — 1,809 hits, 404 homers, 124 OPS+, 158 wins, 2,329 strikeouts, 122 ERA+, and 72.1 WAR — the decision will be a no-brainer. I’m already of the mind that if he gets to his 10th season (2027) and is still doing double duty, he’ll have my vote when he lands on the ballot regardless of what the numbers say, because what he’s doing is so utterly remarkable. WAR and JAWS weren’t really built to handle a case like his, and not only because his ability to save his team a roster spot is probably worth some uncounted fraction of a win per year, too. Read the rest of this entry »

As is tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the lead-up to the trade deadline to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at the players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above.

For those of you who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2024-2028, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money, if any, the year through which their team has contractual control of them, last year’s rank (if applicable), and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2028 (if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2022 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his technical wizardry. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all of the players who have been ranked up to this point.

One note on the rankings: Particularly at the bottom of the list, there isn’t a lot of room between the players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put them there for a reason, but there isn’t much of a gap between, say, the 39th-ranked player and the 60th. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several of the folks I talked to might prefer a player in the honorable mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. I think the broad strokes are correct, and this is my opinion of the best order, but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the first batch of players. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m sorry in advance. That guy you like, your favorite young star on your favorite team? I ranked him too low. I missed something, I’m biased, I just don’t know enough about baseball. Have I even been to a game? Do I understand what it takes to win? That guy’s a stud and I’m treating him like a chump. And have you seen the terrible players I put above him? Shocking!

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, welcome to the 2023 edition of our annual Trade Value Series. Starting today and continuing all week, we’ll release our list, taking player performance, age, and contract into account. Dave Cameron, Kiley McDaniel, Craig Edwards, and Kevin Goldstein have all run this show in years past; this is my second year at the helm.

Luckily for you (and those poor players I’ve disrespected), I didn’t have to do this on my own; I got an absolute ton of help. First, I gathered every possible input I could think of: age, contract status, measures of current production, estimates of future production, Statcast data, pitch-level modeling, Zodiac sign, and positional scarcity. From there, I got feedback from the rest of the FanGraphs staff (special thanks here to Dan Szymborski for his ZiPS assistance and Meg Rowley for being a frequent sounding board as I hemmed and hawed over the list in progress) to form a rough ranking. Then I got some feedback from external sources to further hone in on a final order. The input from all those sources was useful and much appreciated, but make no mistake, this is my list. Read the rest of this entry »

Trevor May is a Miguel Cabrera fan. Moreover, he has some favorite Miggy moments. I learned as much when I caught up to the always-engaging 33-year-old right-hander on the Sunday leading into the All-Star break.

“I got my first jersey from another player in our last series,” said May, who broke into the big leagues with the Minnesota Twins in 2014 and now plays for the Oakland Athletics. “We were in Detroit and I got a Miggy Cabrera jersey signed. I’m not a huge memorabilia guy, but he was my first, ‘Oh wow, I’m in The Show.’ It was like, ‘That’s Miguel Cabrera in the box!’ He’s one of the greatest of this generation.”

Nine years later, both players are nearing the end of the line. Cabrera, whose career has him Cooperstown-bound, is set to retire after this season. May, whose accomplishments have been far more humble, faces an uncertain near-term future. He has a 5.32 ERA in the current campaign, as well as a career-low 17.0% K rate.

May’s post-playing-days future is media-focused, and he’s already begun establishing himself in that realm. The Longview, Washington native has been an active podcaster and streamer — gaming is a noteworthy interest, Pat McAfee a notable influence — and just this past week he was part of MLBNetwork Radio’s All-Star Game coverage. His newly-signed jersey is ticketed for his home studio. As May explained, “the background has been kind of sparse, and I wanted to make sure that baseball has a spot there, along with all the nerdy stuff I’m into, whenever I’m in front of the camera.”

May has pitched in front of ballpark cameras many times, and while that includes more than two dozen appearances against the Detroit Tigers, a few of his Miggy moments likely weren’t captured. Even if they were, they went unnoticed by the vast majority of viewers. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the 2024 regular-season schedule, the baseball relevance of a study about humans’ hunger for useless information, and the storylines they’re most looking forward to following over the remainder of the season, then (35:58) answer emails about a total solar eclipse during a Guardians game, sliding into a base covered in dirt, why baseball broadcasts don’t do a better job of showing baserunners, same-named players playing the same position in the same game, defining a “comeback win,” the meaning of “retiring x in a row,” why pitchers are still listed as switch-hitters, a way to save time with pinch-hitter announcements, making it legal for multiple runners to occupy the same base, and going winless in extra-inning games, plus a Stat Blast (1:21:36) about managerial ejections, a Future Blast (1:51:20) from 2033, and a few follow-ups.

Audio intro: Benny and a Million Shetland Ponies, “Pedantic Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Benny and a Million Shetland Ponies, “Horny Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to 2024 schedule
Link to study about pain and info
Link to The Ringer’s MLB storylines
Link to Rosenthal on buyers/sellers
Link to MLBTR on Ohtani
Link to Minasian on Ohtani
Link to Hal Steinbrenner comments
Link to milk cartons wiki
Link to MLBTR on Mozeliak
Link to EW Episode 1354
Link to list of rival-team streaks
Link to Trent on “Billy runs”
Link to Trent on HUaL
Link to Rob Mains on the ALC
Link to Ben on the eclipse game
Link to EW volcano event
Link to EW eclipse episode
Link to Pickles sprinkler video
Link to Pickles lights-out video
Link to electron repulsion article
Link to Mets “ghost runner” clip
Link to The Bear transcript
Link to Jones vs. Jones game
Link to double-Gonzalez game
Link to first “comeback win” episode
Link to Robertson batting in 2022
Link to Stathead on winless extras teams
Link to winless extras starts
Link to EW emails database
Link to Hyde ejection story
Link to Ryan Nelson on Twitter
Link to ejections data
Link to 1998 Leyland article
Link to 2006 Guillen article
Link to other Guillen article
Link to third Guillen article
Link to 2008 La Russa article
Link to 1973 Mathews article
Link to 1974 Berra article
Link to article on longest games
Link to 1982 Lasorda article
Link to other Lasorda article
Link to ejection reasons 1
Link to ejection reasons 2
Link to Garver ejection article
Link to Rick Wilber’s website
Link to Dahlen/Klem article
Link to Jay on Dahlen
Link to Dahlen SABR bio
Link to MLBTR on Bieber
Link to Judge-sighting story

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We’re now three months past the last ZiPS projected standings, which ran before the season, and as one should expect, reality has caused a whole lot of changes to the prognostications. Most of the times when I run ZiPS standings, I use data from the in-season player projection model, which is simpler based on the fact that a full batch run of the 3,500 or so players projected, even if I split it up among my two most powerful computers, would take a total of about 30 hours to finish. But I always do the whole shebang in the middle of every month, and baseball’s pause for All-Star Week provides me an opportunity to run projected standings with the best possible model I can come up with, and not have it be a couple days out of date.

So that’s what we’re going to do. With one exception, the methodology remains identical to the one described in the final preseason projections.

I’ve spent the last week working on and testing an addition to the ZiPS standings model to factor in the problem that preseason projections have with temporality. Basically, you can project teams based on who they have in the organization at the time of the projection, but you can’t easily do it for players not in the organization who will eventually be. If I knew at the start of 2022 that the Padres would have Juan Soto for most of the summer, it would have had an effect on the preseason projections! Like any model that people continually work on, ZiPS doesn’t have substantial bias in almost all categories: there’s no systematic tendency to overrate or underrate any specific type of team (bias in exercises like this is easier to iron out than inaccuracy). But there’s an exception: ZiPS in the preseason slightly underrates teams that will eventually add value to the major league roster in the form of trade and overrates those do the opposite.

This is something I’ve long wanted to try to deal with in as effective a way as I could. So what I’ve done is gone back and re-projected every team at June 15, July 1, and July 15 since I started ZiPS, then, with the data of players each team added at the major league level, used the playoff projections at that date, the team’s payroll (it does have a factor), the weakness of the team’s worst positions, the time since last playoff appearance, and the team’s farm system ranking (where possible) to make a probabilistic model of increases and decreases in roster strength due to the trade deadline. Overfitting is a concern, so I’ve cross-validated to do my best to ensure that isn’t an issue, and while it’s less than a half-win in final accuracy, any shaving off of error is a helpful thing. So these standings represent some increased chances that teams like the Orioles and Rangers have a slightly stronger roster than what is currently available from August 1 on, and that teams like the A’s and Tigers have weaker ones. The changes in projections are small because this is a noisy, inaccurate thing, but I’ll be tracking in future years both standings with and without this model to see how they fare. Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday, I took the first swing for my annual roundup of active players who may or may not be building their cases for the Hall of Fame. With one exception, all of the ones I examined were in their age-30 seasons or later, but for this installment of shortstops and outfielders, I’ll take a look at some who are still in their 20s and have further to go before they reach Cooperstown.

For this exercise, unless otherwise indicated, I will be referencing bWAR for season and career totals, my JAWS metric, and the ZiPS rest-of-season projections, since one of the goals here is to give an idea of where these players will stand at the end of the season, having banked a full complement of WAR instead of just 80-some games worth. These future candidates are already dealing with suppressed WAR totals from the 60-game 2020 season (which hardly makes them the first to experience such scheduling limitations and career interruptions due to wars and strikes). Unlike last year, I’ll cover pitching in one installment. Note that I am by no means predicting that every player here will make it to Cooperstown or even suggesting that all are worthy; in some cases I’m particularly pessimistic, but these are the names that get tossed around

If you’re just arriving, I’d encourage you to at least read the introduction in Part 1. The important take-home point was my finding that nearly three-quarters of the position players who have reached a 40.0-WAR peak score (best seven seasons, aka WAR7) have eventually been enshrined, and so inevitably a good bit of the focus throughout this exercise has been on the math required to improve those scores. There is and will be far more to those cases, and to appreciating these players’ skills and accomplishments, but for the purposes of space I’ve had to cut to the chase. Here again is the table related to those 40.0-WAR peaks:

At every position, I’ve counted the total number of players with a peak WAR of at least 40.0; the number of Hall of Famers meeting that criterion; and the number of such players who are not yet eligible, either because they’re active, too recently retired to appear on a Hall of Fame ballot, or on the permanently ineligible list, like Pete Rose (whom JAWS classifies as a left fielder) and Shoeless Joe Jackson (right field). For catchers, I used a 32.0-WAR threshold instead of 40.0, as their values are constrained by the limits of playing time and pre-framing measures. Read the rest of this entry »