ZiPS Midseason Movers and Shakers: Pitchers

One of the most frequent questions I receive about ZiPS is folks wondering how the long-term projections for X hitter or Y pitcher have changed compared to what they were preseason. Since we’re right around the midpoint of the season, this is a good time to review just how the first half of the 2024 season has shifted expectations for individual players. The methodology I’m using is simple: comparing the current 2025-2029 WAR projections versus the 2025-2029 WAR projections as predicted at the start of the season. I’ve only included good prospects and players who are currently relevant to the majors (or injured) so we don’t get a bunch of random Double-A pitchers who are slightly more or less below replacement level than they used to be gumming things up. I’m also not including the pitchers who’d be on the list because of season-ending injuries; a list of 15 pitchers who have worse long-term outlooks because they’re out for the season with Tommy John surgery or thoracic outlet syndrome isn’t particularly interesting.

Since I’m such a cheerful and upbeat fellow, let’s start with the gainers. I’m also including each player’s updated top three comps, because comps are fun, even if the individual players listed don’t really mean a lot to the projection. At the very least, it contextualizes expectations in a non-WAR manner:

Garrett Crochet is one of the biggest names likely to move this month, and he’s at the top of the most improved list. Some of this is simply more projected innings as a result of his conversion to the rotation – an unusually canny White Sox gamble – but more of it is due to simply dispelling concerns. Crochet had forearm tightness as early as the 2020 playoffs and then missed 2022 and most of 2023 due to Tommy John surgery. His brief return to the Pale Hose last year was solid only if you stop looking at his stats after your eyes hit the decent ERA. But he’s been legitimately excellent as a full-time starter this year. In a lot of ways, his success runs a parallel to another similar gamble the White Sox made a little more than a decade ago, when they moved Chris Sale to the rotation. As was the case with Sale, many predicted disaster for Crochet. His next team likely will monitor his innings because, well, all teams protects their starting pitchers these days. Between Crochet and Sale, maybe the White Sox have found an unusual market efficiency: pitchers with last names from the JOANN Fabrics word cloud. This projection includes Crochet’s dominant start against the Rockies on Sunday. Two scoreless outings that lasted just five innings are Crochet’s only non-quality starts since April.

The Tigers may be in the midst of a disappointing season, but that’s definitely not Tarik Skubal’s fault. Skubal is less likely to be moved at the deadline than Crochet, simply because I expect Detroit still hopes to contend while he’s cost controlled. Skubal’s repertoire fascinates me. While it’s fairly typical for pitchers to throw a lot fewer offspeed pitches with the platoon advantage, he also largely sheds his four-seamer as well. Instead, he throws sinker all over the zone as he transforms into a hard-throwing southpaw relief bully against lefties. Facing righties, he uses the whole kitchen sink, using the sinker then to threaten batters with broken fingers or hands. Skubal’s a legitimate Cy Young contender, and the further we get away from the flexor tendon surgery that kept him out from August of 2022 until last July, the less we should worry about his health mucking things up. Skubal’s teammate Jack Flaherty just missed the top 15 here, because even as he struggled in recent years, ZiPS hadn’t totally given up on the former Cardinal.

Tanner Houck is the best result of Boston’s apparent initiative to proselytize the virtues of split-fingered fastballs. He is probably never going to be a starter who whiffs 12 batters per nine, but he does the other fundamentals well; he throws a lot of first-pitch strikes, avoids walks, and induces enough grounders to keep the ball in the park. He’s certainly a candidate to sign an extension with Boston. Like Skubal, Houck has a teammate who just missed this list, Kutter Crawford.

I’m still not sure how Reynaldo López is doing it, as he’s basically a fastball-slider pitcher with only occasional cameos from his curve and changeup. I was skeptical coming into the season, but taking a bit off his slider has worked wonders; he’s added several inches of drop to the pitch from the past. It’s hard to overestimate his value to the Braves this year. With Spencer Strider out for the season, a failure of López in his return to starting likely would have had some fairly serious repercussions to the rotation. ZiPS is still hedging a bit on his starter/relief status, but it doesn’t make a big difference in the projections.

I wrote about Cristopher Sánchez last week, so you can get more on him at the link. His teammate Ranger Suárez has nearly put himself into the same tier as Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola, and if the season ended today, I’d likely pick Suárez if I were a Cy Young voter. (We don’t find out the voting assignments for a couple more months.) Like Houck, Suárez is a fundamentally sound pitcher, and his plate discipline stats largely support his being one of the lowest walk pitchers in baseball. Suárez, who is scheduled to reach free agency after next season, has earned a lot on his next contract because of this year’s performance.

Amusingly, Michael King was talked about like he was a bust as a starter with the Padres back in April, but he’s been solid since then, with a FIP under 3.00 over the last two months. He’s had to take the velocity down a notch in his longer starts, but his arsenal has survived the conversion to the rotation. Meanwhile, 120 or so miles up the coast, who would have thought that Tyler Glasnow would be the healthy rock in a top team’s rotation? So far so good for the Dodgers’ big pickup from the Rays, and ZiPS is more confident in his ability to stay on the mound moving forward.

Jordan Hicks has shed some velocity and strikeouts in his move to the rotation, but a good no. 2 starter is simply more valuable than a hard-throwing, but erratic, reliever. Chris Sale looks as good as he did a decade ago, and Seth Lugo is showing that his slop-throwing success in 2023 wasn’t a fluke. Corbin Burnes has been even better than ZiPS projected, and Paul Skenes has adjusted to the majors as quickly as the most optimistic predictions. Cole Ragans is rapidly making his case for being a legitimate ace for the Royals, and they’d be smart to lock him up as soon as possible. Some people may be surprised that Shota Imanaga is this low on the list, but remember, ZiPS was already over the moon for him coming into the season, seeing him as only slightly inferior to Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

On the negative side, DL Hall was one of those polarizing pitchers in ZiPS with a wide array of potential outcomes, similar to Tanner Scott and Michael Kopech. Even so, I can’t remember ZiPS going this south on a pitcher after only a few starts, but it makes sense when you consider that Hall’s upside has disappeared due to his mediocre velocity and unimpressive strikeout rate, leaving only the projection system’s greatest fear regarding Hall: way too many walks. The good news for the Brewers is most of their other gambles have paid off this season, and Joey Ortiz — the other half of Milwaukee’s return in the Corbin Burnes trade — has been so good that the Brewers don’t even need Hall to work out for the swap to have been worth it. It would still be nice, though.

The pitcher Wilmer Flores quietly moved onto the Tigers’ prospect list over the last few years, and raised some eyebrows this spring with velocity that had suddenly jumped into the high 90s. Moved to the bullpen in Triple-A this year because the Tigers have a deep rotation, Flores had control problems to start the season before he landed on the IL with a sprained shoulder in mid May. He might have serious bounceback potential; there’s a chance that at least some of his struggles could be attributed to his falling into the dugout on a foul ball back in March that left him with a shoulder contusion. Though if that’s the case, it’s concerning that he was allowed to pitch for six weeks with the injury.

Alexis Díaz has struggled with command issues this season, and it’s surprising that the Reds have more or less carried on with business as usual for their closer. He’s never been Bob Tewksbury, but walking six batters per nine innings is too many for any pitcher in any role, and it becomes an even larger problem given that he’s allowing a lot more contact than he did in either 2022 or 2023. I’m not sure about the root cause of these woes, but whatever it is, it has made Díaz a riskier proposition.

I thought Jordan Montgomery was a nice little signing for Arizona, but so far, he hasn’t come close to expectations. While he didn’t enter the season as a Cy Young candidate, he also didn’t have an array of red flags. I’m also not convinced that signing so late in the winter can still be used as a viable justification. After all, arguably his two best starts this season were his first two, and if anything, he’s pitching worse now than at any point this year. Montgomery never had velocity or strikeouts to spare, so his decline here is extremely worrying.

ZiPS had long been the biggest believer in Triston McKenzie, but he’s been an utter disaster this year in his return from back/shoulder and elbow injuries that kept him off the field for most of 2023. So disastrous, in fact, that the Guardians optioned him to the minors right as I was running Jordan Montgomery’s projection. If you’re going to survive as a fly ball pitcher throwing 91 mph, your control has to be impeccable. And, well, that hasn’t been the case. Hopefully they’ll get him back on track at Triple-A. ZiPS may still be too optimistic.

Two Phillies prospects, Mick Abel and Griff McGarry, both make the list, and Andrew Painter, who is likely out until 2025, would have been the organization’s third member here if I’d included pitchers with serious injuries. That’s obviously a concern for Philadelphia, but the emergence of Sánchez has cushioned the blow considerably (and McGarry had long since been downgraded as a prospect anyway). Joe Musgrove, who has been quite hittable this year, is here only because the bone spur that currently is bedeviling his elbow is not expected to keep him out for the remainder of the season. I thought Blake Snell was a terrific deal for the Giants, but he’s been erratic this season and serves as a reminder that what BABIP giveth, BABIP taketh away.

Jacob Misiorowski would have been higher on this list of decliners a month ago, but his early season walk problems seem to have waned, though ZiPS still doesn’t think he’s going to succeed in the minors as quickly as it thought back in March. The Mike Soroka comeback isn’t looking too good right now, and his ceiling’s coming down quicker than a booby-trapped roof in a treasure hunt movie. Domingo Germán and Daulton Jefferies both have been beat up by Triple-A hitters this year, with Jefferies also experiencing that across multiple stints in the majors. Joe Boyle and his high-90s fastball earned him a spot in Oakland’s rotation, but command worse than Maxime Weygand netted him a trip back to the minors, where things haven’t gone much better.