The 2024 ZiPS Projection Decliners: Hitters

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 — 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.

On Tuesday, I took a look at the hitters with the biggest increases in projected 2024 WAR, so naturally, today, we’re focusing on the hitters with the largest decreases 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. I’ve also started with the players who were actually projected to be better than replacement level in 2024 at the start of the season.

1. MJ Melendez, Kansas City Royals
2024 WAR: 1.7 preseason, -0.3 midseason (-2.00)
2024 wOBA: .334 preseason, .322 preseason (-.011)

This season has been a nearly unmitigated disaster for Melendez, and, honestly, the Royals as a franchise. Melendez has regressed across the board at the plate, outside of still hitting the ball fairly hard, but his bursts of decent power aren’t enough to support a contact rate down in Javier Báez territory. What’s even worse is that amidst an awful season for both player and team, the Royals aren’t even using him in a way where they’ll develop or learn anything about him. It’s become clear that he’s lousy defender in the outfield, but they’ve only given him seven starts as a catcher. While this would be justified if they were in contention, they were one of the first teams to have 2023 be, for all intents and purposes, over.

With Melendez’s offense in greater doubt, it’s increasingly looking like his only real shot at contributing is if he can catch, so if he’s not catching in the majors, he should be doing so in the minors. There’s no purpose to just sticking him at DH or in right field at this point; it’s a bit like going to a college that offers a major in crashing on your cousin’s couch.

2. George Springer, Toronto Blue Jays
2024 WAR: 4.2 preseason, 2.8 midseason (-1.40)
2024 wOBA: .357 preseason, .334 midseason (-.023)

Springer has been far from awful this season, and he’s still on track to finish the season with somewhere in the neighborhood of three WAR. But his offense has dropped off a bit, and he’s old enough that ZiPS is simply forecasting far fewer scenarios in which he gets back to his late Houston peak. You can make the argument that it isn’t that the computer is being too mean now, but that it was a little too nice at the start of the season.

3. Aaron Judge, New York Yankees
2024 WAR: 7.2 preseason, 5.8 midseason (-1.36)
2024 wOBA: .402 preseason, .396 midseason (-.006)

Most of this one comes down to the fact that ZiPS is projecting much less playing time for Judge in future seasons. There’s a slight drop in his offensive projection, but not enough that it’s driving the projection, and his 5.8 WAR is still the third-best projection among position players, behind just two National League corner outfielders (you guess!). This should not be something that induces any kind of worry. And let’s be honest: the Yankees have an awful lot of other things to worry about right now.

4. Kolten Wong, Seattle Mariners
2024 WAR: 2.4 preseason, 1.1 midseason (-1.34)
2024 wOBA: .313 preseason, .292 midseason (-.021)

I was actually surprised that Wong isn’t (even) higher on this list given that he’s hit like a pitcher for half a season. One of the reasons ZiPS exists and is useful is that it’s not subject to recency bias, one of the most significant biases in evaluating player or teams. But it’s hard not to be unrepentantly negative when watching Wong struggle this year. While he’s never been a real power guy, he’s just so rarely making good contact that it feels like one of those late-stage Ozzie Guillen seasons during which you’d wonder if you actually want him making contact. A free agent after the season, Wong will likely end up in a spring fight for a starting job somewhere.

5. DJ LeMahieu, New York Yankees
2024 WAR: 3.7 preseason, 2.4 midseason (-1.31)
2024 wOBA: .325 preseason, .305 midseason (-.020)

LeMahieu’s 2019 and ’20 performances weren’t likely to come again, but the Yankees would have been content to get his ’21–22 output with a gentle slope of decline. That don’t appear to be getting that; his contact skills are showing serious signs of fade, and he’s not the plus-plus defender he once was. I guess the relative good news is that this projection is trimmed down largely due to the evaporation of his chances to get back to his brief star-level peak; he still projects as a league-average player going forward. And as noted above, the Yankees have bigger problems to worry about.

6. Yasmani Grandal, Chicago White Sox
2024 WAR: 2.7 preseason, 1.4 midseason (-1.31)
2024 wOBA: .331 preseason, .311 midseason (-.020)

Is that actually Yasmani Grandal? I can’t remember the last time a player’s plate discipline blinked out of existence more quickly than his has. His walk rate this year is less than a third of what it was in the ancient days of… uh… two years ago, and he’s almost twice as likely to swing at a bad pitch as he was at his peak. I can understand and have talked to no end about the risk of players becoming too passive at the plate, but it’s not like his aggression is across the board; his increase in swinging at good pitches has been much smaller. Long gone are the days where his defense was a real plus, so that’s not going to bail him out.

7. Tim Anderson, Chicago White Sox
2024 WAR: 2.0 preseason, 0.7 midseason (-1.26)
2024 wOBA: .325 preseason, .289 midseason (-.037)

Anderson has been less gung-ho in his pitch selection than in years past, but it’s nothing that has paid off in a meaningful way. His defense is fading, he’s driving literally almost anything into the ground, and having clearly lost a couple of steps on the base paths and now in his 30s, the days in which he maintains a crazy-high BABIP may be behind us. If he were having his typical season, he’d probably be one of the most coveted players at the trade deadline, but as surprising as this would be to say a couple of years ago, I don’t even think his 2024 option for $14 million is going to be picked up (nor should it).

8. Jake Cronenworth, San Diego Padres
2024 WAR: 4.5 preseason, 3.2 midseason (-1.26)
2024 wOBA: .331 preseason, .319 midseason (-.011)

The decline in Cronenworth’s offense has been less dramatic than other players on this list, so ZiPS is still projecting him to get back to 2022’s level of offensive production. But the fact that’s he’s proving to be a mediocre defender at first base — most infielders that move to first fare way better than at their previous positions — puts a real damper on his outlook; the odds that he will be a top-tier first baseman have been much reduced. Given San Diego’s roster construction, the best option for the team may be trying to land a real first baseman and using Cronenworth more as a super-utility Ben Zobrist-type of player. His contract extension was probably a premature one, from the team’s point of view.

9. Robert Hassell III, Washington Nationals
2024 WAR: 0.9 preseason, -0.3 midseason (-1.26)
2024 wOBA: .273 preseason, .265 midseason (-.008)

Hassell wasn’t the biggest prospect the Nationals landed in the Juan Soto trade, but he was a former first-rounder; the expectation was that he’d join James Wood to make up two-thirds of the outfield someday. He posted a solid .299/.379/.467 line down in High-A before the trade last summer, but he struggled after a promotion to Double-A, then broke a bone in his wrist playing in the Arizona Fall League. His offense has not returned this season; he’s hit .217/.331/.308 combined at High-A and Double-A, which ZiPS translates as an abysmal .199/.277/.285 triple-slash. Hassell is still very young, but he’s a far riskier prospect than he was a year ago, and the Nats may need an abundance of patience.

10. Kris Bryant, Colorado Rockies
2024 WAR: 1.9 preseason, 0.7 midseason (-1.24)
2024 wOBA: .330 preseason, .313 midseason (-.024)

Back when Bryant signed, ZiPS thought the Rockies overpaid by something in the neighborhood of $100 million — and that was with a projection of five total WAR over his first two seasons. Right now, he stands at 0.2 WAR in Colorado after an injury-filled year-and-a-half; maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but he’s absolutely not going to put up a 4.8 WAR-second half. He fits in with the historical pattern of Rockies free-agent signings, in that they’ve always seemed to have the idea that when you sign a player to X years, you’re somehow getting their previous X number of seasons, not their upcoming ones. Bryant was a bad gamble that fortune has been especially unkind to.