The ZiPS Projections Midpoint Roundup of Triumph and Shame: The American League

MLB passed the halfway mark of the 2021 season over the long holiday weekend, providing a convenient spot to take a break, look back over the preseason projections, and hopefully not cringe too much about how the predictions are shaking out. Since this is the big midseason update, I used the full-fat ZiPS model for individual players in addition to the normal depth chart reconfiguring, with all the high-fructose algorithms rather than the leaner one used for daily updates.

Let’s start with the American League standings.

I was making a “do not panic” argument on behalf of the Yankees back when they were 5–10 and some people were digging for their doomsday preparedness kits, and while it might not be time to find where you left those water purification tablets, the situation is bleaker now than it was three months ago. Not that the team is actually worse; New York has been on an 88-win pace in the games since that reference point. But an 88-win pace isn’t nearly enough to get out of an early-season hole in a division where there are three other teams with more than detectable pulses. Even projected to play solid baseball the rest of the season, the Yankees have gone from the favorite to the projected fourth-place team.

ZiPS still has some skepticism about the Red Sox, but a lot of that is a rotation depth issue. In the simulations where the rotation basically remains healthy, they have enough room to hold off the Rays, and the Jays and Yankees don’t get even close. In the simulations where the rotation doesn’t, they fade quickly. You can say that for pretty much every team — very few of them have a whole extra staff of starting pitchers hanging around — but in the projections, it’s a larger factor for Boston than for other teams.

The Rays aren’t as strong as they were last year; any team is going to take a hit after losing Blake Snell. But they’re good enough to compete, though it’s likely that the winner of the AL East this year will be well off Tampa’s 108-win pace from last year.

Toronto appears to be working on the supposition that getting back George Springer is a de facto pennant drive pickup, and while that’s right, offense isn’t really the team’s problem. Surprisingly, neither is the starting rotation. Instead, there’s a huge dropoff in bullpen talent after the first couple of options (Jordan Romano and Tim Mayza), largely because of a rash of injuries. Our depth charts projected the Jays with the fourth-worst bullpen over the rest of the season, and ZiPS isn’t much more optimistic, ranking them 25th overall.

As for the Orioles … well, we didn’t have their preseason playoff probabilities at 0.0% because we hated Old Bay (I’m from Towson, and I put that stuff on everything). Even a Cedric Mullins breakout wasn’t going to power this team to playoff relevance. The O’s are in a long rebuild, and I’d argue they were one of the teams most hurt by the lack of a minor league season, given that they’re still in the sorting-out phase of development. Hercules only cleaned the Augean stables in a single day; he didn’t turn it into a crab house.

Losing Eloy Jiménez before the season and Luis Robert early in it were massive blows to the White Sox, but they’ve also received some good fortune, as none of the other teams in the division have put much pressure on them. I’m as sad as anyone that the celebration of Yermínalia has ended with his fall back to earth and subsequent demotion to the minors, but he did provide some fun early-season heroics when Chicago had lost two very talented young players. As my colleague Ben Clemens wrote last month, the White Sox still need to find a Nick Madrigal replacement, but winning the division doesn’t seem like a difficult challenge.

Cleveland was only two games out in late June — well ahead of where I expected the team to be at this point in the season, as losing basically the entire rotation in the span of a few weeks was a huge hit — and has been lucky to lose only two additional games in the standings during a seven-game skid that’s still active. Zach Plesac is scheduled to return on Thursday, which is something, at least. Even with a healthy rotation, it would be hard to make up ground against the White Sox with half the lineup very predictably struggling.

I wrote a month ago that the Twins were running out of time to compete in 2021. That time has just about run out, and in the interim, Minnesota has done just about nothing to improve its chances at a shocking comeback, unless you’re a huge fan of Sean Gilmartin. Last month’s 3.7% projected chance of making the playoff has fallen below one percent, so the Twins are down to a new choice: retool for next season or waste this one.

It’s hard to rag on the Royals given that they actually tried to make things interesting in the offseason, but they’re now far enough behind the pack that they’re one of four teams with playoff probabilities that round to zero, at least by ZiPS. Suggesting they trade Salvador Perez or Whit Merrifield is just beating a dead horse at this moment, but they should at least explore trading Danny Duffy and Carlos Santana.

The Tigers are showing an impressive pulse this season, but they’re also in a weak division and have a run differential suggesting a record three games worse than their current 39–46. Playoffs are an extreme longshot, but we’re starting to see the outline of what could be a decent rotation in 2022. I think a lot of teams would be very happy to have a Casey Mize/Spencer Turnbull/Tarik Skubal/Matthew Boyd top four next season, with Matt Manning hopefully making a better second impression in the majors.

Houston was only projected to 88 wins this year because of questions about the rotation, but at 10th in WAR and boasting a 3.32 ERA despite their personnel losses in recent years, the starters been an impressive group. There were fewer questions about the offense, and Carlos Correa‘s revival and Yordan Alvarez’s health have more than made up for the offseason loss of Springer.

As usual, Oakland’s successfully MacGyver’ed its way to a solid pitching staff despite Jesús Luzardo’s struggles. The A’s are close enough to the Astros to remain threatening, but shortstop, right field, and designated hitter are messes without obvious (or good) in-house options to remedy that situation. It’s unfortunate that they didn’t even extend a qualifying offer to Marcus Semien, instead deciding to go with the puzzling Elvis Andrus option. The good news is that the win threshold for a wild-card spot looks like it will be lower than usual in the AL.

Fourth place was hardly the plan, but it’s still a bit of a victory for the Angels that they were able to do it with Mike Trout missing half the season so far. He ought to return in the near future, and the team’s .500 record is far from a hopeless one. One of the other elements for Angel success — Shohei Ohtani healthy and rocking the dual role — has been more than met, with Ohtani a serious MVP contender (he’d have my vote right now). ZiPS is optimistic about the rotation pitching much better in the second half of the season; I’m less optimistic about the Angels addressing their holes.

ZiPS continues to be meaner to the Mariners than I am; I wonder if Evan White tried to erase it or something. I expect J.P. Crawford’s solid year to continue; I didn’t select him to my preseason breakout list by random. But the Mariners remain a team in need of another bat, as Ty France and Mitch Haniger can only cover half of 1B/LF/RF/DH in any given game. I still expect Jarred Kelenic to solve one of these problems very soon, as it’s too easy to panic about a month of a player’s season, and he’s destroying Triple-A pitchers. Jake Bauers, however, won’t.

Adolis García is a fun story, but ZiPS still expects his batting average and on-base percentage to come down because of his plate discipline issues. Joey Gallo’s been terrific, but given that the rest of the offense is non-existent outside of him, García, and Nate Lowe, he’s probably more useful to Texas in the form of a trade (which I don’t expect will actually happen). Dane Dunning is one of my top picks for a second-half breakout, and Kyle Gibson has been shockingly good, but this group is still far too thin to make up for the team’s myriad offensive flaws.

The Red Sox have enough wins in the bag that a .500 record gets them to 92 wins, the 50th-percentile projected win total for the AL’s top wild card and 87th for the second spot. In other words, playing just .500 ball probably gets them to the postseason. Even though the A’s have lost five wins vis-à-vis the Astros since the preseason projections, their playoff probability has actually improved, with no AL East teams looking like juggernauts. Only the Orioles, meanwhile, have seen their shot at the No. 1 pick go up; the league can thank the Diamondbacks and their awful season for that one.

Tomorrow, we’ll dive into the National League standings and rest-of-season projections.