Now that the Red Sox have actually traded Mookie Betts (and his salary) and David Price (and half of his salary), Boston has followed through on its intentions to significantly reduce payroll. Much has been made of the Red Sox’s desire to stay under the competitive balance tax threshold. In September, team owner John Henry said this:

“This year we need to be under the CBT [competitive balance tax] and that was something we’ve known for more than a year now,” he said. “If you don’t reset, there are penalties, so we’ve known for some time now we needed to reset as other clubs have done.”

Then, in January, Henry said this:

I think every team probably wants to reset at least once every three years.

Henry’s full remarks from January also include an assertion that competitiveness is more important than getting under the tax threshold, although the team’s eventual trade of Mookie Betts strongly undercuts that argument. According to our calculations on the RosterResource Red Sox payroll page, Boston’s payroll for the competitive balance tax is roughly $199 million, nearly $10 million under the first $208 million competitive balance tax threshold. If the Red Sox stay at that level this season, they will spend $56 million less on payroll and competitive balance taxes in 2020 compared to their 2019 outlay.

It’s worth exploring how much the Red Sox are set to save if they get under the tax threshold this season and the form those savings would actually take. At the Boston Globe, Alex Speier outlined a scenario whereby the Red Sox could get under the tax amount this year, and determined the team’s potential savings through 2022. The piece did a good job of delineating the different types of savings the Red Sox could expect to enjoy, as I expect there are some misconceptions about what the penalties actually amount to. While Speier looked through 2022, that year will be the first year of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement so it is difficult to know what, if any, savings will be present then. Let’s examine each of those penalties (and their effect on the team) in turn.

The Competitive Balance Tax

This is where I suspect most people assume the biggest savings are. Teams can reset the tax amount to lower levels, then go over the tax amount and reap the savings. In Speier’s example, the Red Sox go back up to a $243.5 million payroll in 2021. The taxes saved are right around $10 million next year. If you want to include the tax savings for 2020 compared to a $243.5 million payroll, we can add another $20 million in savings, though that’s generous given that the Sox could have non-tendered Jackie Bradley Jr., kept Betts and Price, and shot for 90 wins while paying just $7.5 million in taxes.

But assuming that the Red Sox would go back up to a $243.5 million payroll in 2021 might not be best, though, either. Even with assumed arbitration raises for 2021, the Red Sox commitments look to be a little under $180 million. In order to get payroll back up to $243.5 million, the Red Sox would need to spend about $65 million in new money next winter. Given that the departing Mookie Betts is the only great free agent available next offseason, it would likely take three sizable signings to get up that level. The last two teams to famously reset did not make that kind of splash.

In 2018, both the Yankees and Dodgers were able to reset their tax amounts. In 2019, the Yankees increased payroll, but only to $234 million, which meant a tax bill of $6 million instead of $14 million. The Dodgers didn’t even go back over the threshold in 2019, so resetting in 2018 got them no tax savings at all. Both clubs probably got some of that A’s money, but likely not more than $10 million per club. Even this season, with the Yankees set to go $50 million over the tax amount, their savings compared to having not reset comes to just $10 million. The tax savings aren’t nothing, and you might be able to afford Jordan Lyles with that money, but they really only amount to $5 million to $10 million per year unless a team is going to up payroll beyond $275 million.

Draft Picks

To be clear, teams that go over the tax thresholds, no matter by how much, do not lose any draft picks. If a team goes over the tax threshold by more than $40 million, their top draft spot drops by 10 spots (the top six picks in the draft are exempt from this rule). Keep in mind, this penalty is triggered by going $40 million over the cap amount regardless of whether a team was under the tax threshold in previous seasons; resetting their tax amount has no effect. In any event, the penalty is only worth about $3 million. It’s true that the draft pick compensation the team would receive for players who depart in free agency with a qualifying offer attached would be lessened, and moving from the end of second round to the end of the fourth round is worth roughly $1.5 million. But the team would have to retain Betts to even suffer that loss, so it doesn’t really apply here. And if they were over the competitive balance tax threshold, signing a player who had received a qualifying offer would result in the extra loss of a fifth round pick ($2.5 million in value) and $500,000 more in international pool money ($2 million in value). But again, that loss is more theoretical as it requires the Red Sox to go sign a free agent with a qualifying offer.

A’s Revenue Sharing Money

Last January, I wrote about a quirk in the current CBA that takes part of Oakland’s revenue sharing money and gives it back to teams like the Yankees, with reductions in the amount a team is set to receive if that team goes over the competitive balance tax threshold in at least two consecutive years. The Oakland A’s reside in a large market and large-market teams are typically prohibited from getting revenue sharing money. Any revenue sharing money that large-market teams would receive gets redistributed to the teams paying into revenue sharing. The A’s had an exception to that rule because of their poor stadium situation, but the amount they could receive declined over the last few years and will hit zero in 2020.

The amount Oakland was set to forfeit last year was 75% of their revenue sharing cut, which was expected to be around $40 million. It’s possible their increase in attendance and their playoff run made that amount a little bit less, but if we assume that the $40 million figure is correct, then $30 million would go back to teams paying into the revenue sharing pool. If we assume around $500 million changes hands between the high and low revenue clubs (with Oakland slightly over the average amount), and the Red Sox pay 15% of the revenue sharing pool, then last year, the Red Sox would have received $4.5 million of their $75 million payment back. Because the club was over the tax amount two years in a row, they would have only ended up with $3.375 million, forfeiting $1.125 million. If the team went over the tax amount in 2020, they would forfeit half of their share of Oakland’s money (now the full $40 million) and thus would get just $3 million of the $6 million. In 2021, they would receive $1.5 million of the $6 million they would otherwise be entitled to.

In this scenario, Boston getting under the tax threshold in 2020 would net them just $7.5 million extra over the next two seasons (this is where I differ the most from Speier’s calculations). If we wanted to push the Red Sox’s rebate higher, keep in mind that means that revenues move significantly higher, too. If the Red Sox paid 20% of revenue sharing money instead of 15%, their penalty for 2020 and 2021 for going over the tax amount would increase to $10 million, but it would also mean the club’s revenues are roughly $100 million higher over those two years, combined with their existing average revenue, which is some $200 million higher than the average club’s (without accounting for their 80% stake in NESN).

(Here it’s worth noting that competitive balance tax penalties like the ones the Red Sox have been paying aren’t some small-market windfall. The first $13 million is divided equally among all teams to defray player benefit costs, with 50% of the remaining amount going toward the same and the rest split among all non-tax paying teams. Even including the player benefits portion, teams ended up with a little under $1 million each last season.)

The Real Savings

Even in the above scenario where we assume the Red Sox immediately take payroll beyond $240 million again, the savings beyond this season are minimal. The Oakland revenue sharing money in 2020 and 2021, plus the 2021 tax savings, amounts to just $20 million in the above scenario. The real savings (or rather, the increased profits if we’re being accurate), come from simply reducing payroll. The Red Sox appear to be reducing their payroll below prior expectations by about $40 million in 2020; combined with the tax savings, that means $60 million less spent on payroll for the Red Sox this season with only $20 million in savings elsewhere. The real benefit isn’t resetting the penalties to reduce future costs; it’s in reducing current costs.

Before last season, Forbes estimated the Red Sox’s profits at $84 million. They did win the World Series, so perhaps that figure is $30 million or so above a normal year, though the Red Sox also drew more fans in 2019 than they did in 2018, which likely mitigated the lack of a playoff run somewhat. In any event, it seems reasonable to believe that the Red Sox were quite profitable last season. They will likely be more profitable this year despite actively making themselves worse. The narrative teams like to point to every three years about the benefits of resetting their competitive balance tax penalties undersells where the real savings come from. Teams are just grabbing a bunch of cash today, and using future savings as an excuse for that windfall.

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Washington Nationals.

Batters

At this point, Juan Soto getting an MVP-region projection should probably have been expected. Soto didn’t quite meet his 2019 projection — yes, the OPS was close, but offense went up league-wide — but he was still a superstar, and with the departures of Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon in consecutive winters, he’s now undoubtedly the centerpiece of the offense. Mike Trout’s finally gotten old enough that Soto, along with Ronald Acuña Jr., has passed him in rest-of-career projections. Soto’s so terrific that he even managed to play in the majors five days before his debut. Okay, okay, it was a suspended game, but I like to imagine he caused a Star Trek-esque time paradox.

Losing Rendon hurts and while the Nats have made a real effort to try to bridge at least some of the gap with secondary talent, it’s just too tall an order to fully replace that level of production. Replacing Harper was a breeze, but only because the team had developed Soto, which they can’t do every year. (If they did, I’d call for team president Mike Rizzo to be placed on trial for witchcraft.)

Trea Turner, Victor Robles, and Adam Eaton complete the offensive core. The rest of the lineup is more of the cobbled-together variety, with Starlin Castro, Eric Thames, and Asdrúbal Cabrera brought in to be average-adjacent, the last until Carter Kieboom takes over at third base. To platoon with Thames, the team re-signed Ryan Zimmerman, though his position could best be described as beloved mascot, given that Howie Kendrick would be a better platoon partner and the Nats are going to thin when it comes to infielders who can reliably backup at shortstop. I said reliably, Cabrera-stans, if there is such a thing.

Pitchers

ZiPS still gives a very slight edge to Max Scherzer over Stephen Strasburg, but whoever you prefer, the Nats have two legitimate ace pitchers, with another in Patrick Corbin who’s not far behind. Having that top three will do a lot to paper over depth issues in the rotation, a malady from which the Nats suffer. ZiPS is spooked by the 20% strikeout drop from Aníbal Sánchez given his age and the uptake in walks, and like Steamer, sees him as barely above replacement level. The projections are still on the suspicious side when it comes to Joe Ross, who did show increased velocity in a respectable late-season stint in the rotation, but has missed a lot of time due to injury. ZiPS doesn’t like Austin Voth any better.

There are exactly three relievers who ZiPS likes: Sean Doolittle, Will Harris, and Wander Suero. Acquired from the Twins in a minor trade last month, Ryne Harper gets a roughly league-average projection. ZiPS is quite worried about Daniel Hudson, seeing a lot of danger signs balanced against his improved velocity; his swinging strike percentage dropped, the contact against him improved, and ZiPS thinks he was fairly lucky in the homers allowed. Like the rotation, it feels like the bullpen could have used another arm, and with $10 million still remaining before the team hits the first luxury tax threshold, the Nats could still theoretically make a couple of low-key signings.

Prospects

Thankfully, Carter Kieboom is still technically a prospect, or else there wouldn’t be that much projectionally interesting about the top-thin Nats farm system. ZiPS doesn’t see Kieboom becoming a major superstar on order of Francisco Lindor. Instead, it sees him as “merely” hitting .260/.350/.450 a year for a long time and being perfectly capable of playing shortstop. As his position, Kieboom ranks fifth in rest-of-career WAR, when looking at the 26 teams for which I have released ZiPS so far, though of those remaining, I believe only Wander Franco will push him down in that pecking order. On merit, he should take over from Cabrera fairly quickly, ideally at the start of the season.

ZiPS likes Luis García enough to project him to stay at shortstop and eventually hit .260/.320/.420 a year, peaking as a 15-18 home run hitter, though he also with the misfortune of being the third-best shortstop on the Nationals. He’s still very young, so there’s a lot more give, both in terms of upside and downside, than there is with players who have already reached the high minors. The only other Nationals prospect with a 40 FV in the high minors, Wil Crowe, doesn’t interest ZiPS at all; he’s going to be 26 before the end of the 2020 season and he’s walked too many guys for a pitcher with a K/9 under seven.

There’s no more optimism from ZiPS when we talk fringe prospects. Steven Fuentes and Mario Sanchez rank highly in projected WAR, but that’s mainly an expression of ZiPS really only liking six or seven pitchers in the entire organization. Both could be useful fifth starter/swingman types, but ZiPS sees their ceilings as fairly low.

As for the rest, there’s probably a shot that Raudy Read is Stephen Vogt for a few years. Yadiel Hernandez is compelling in a limited sort of way. Hernandez, who signed after defecting from Cuba in 2016, didn’t do much to mash his way onto prospect lists, and as he was already nearing 30 when he signed, he didn’t have a lot of time. Only in 2019, with the offensive explosion in Triple-A, did he finally really hit enough to turn heads, posting a .323/.406/.604 line for Fresno. Again, that’s the Pacific Coast League in a rabbit ball year, so you have to take those numbers with a large grain of salt. But it’s enough to make him interesting and when we’re talking fringe prospects and role players, I’m a huge fan of interesting.

One pedantic note for 2020: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth charts playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2020 due to injury, and players who were released in 2019. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in June to form a ska-cowpunk Luxembourgian bubblegum pop-death metal band, he’s still listed here intentionally.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article.

Last week, Rockies owner Dick Monfort made headlines by predicting a rock-solid 94 wins for his franchise this season. It seemed wildly optimistic; the team won 71 games in 2019 and didn’t make any major changes this offseason. We project them to be one of the worst four teams in the National League, not one of the best four.

But Monfort used interpolation, as he was quick to point out. And we can’t simply ignore something with math behind it. So I’m taking out a special, purpose-built Rockies model to investigate the team: M.O.n.F.O.R.T., or the Model for Official non-Fake Obvious Rockies Truths.

First things first, let’s establish a baseline. On our Depth Charts page, you can see FanGraphs’ projected winning percentage for each 2020 club against neutral opponents. This only uses Steamer projections at the moment, but it will soon fold in ZiPS. The Rockies are projected for a .462 winning percentage.

That sounds bad, but it doesn’t consider their opponents. The Rockies play the AL Central in interleague play, which helps. And they play the Marlins seven times, but the Cardinals and Cubs only six. Do these small schedule quirks help them? Nope! In aggregate, we expect Rockies opponents to have a .501 winning percentage. What you see is what you get, in essence; we have the Rockies down for around 74.5 wins. With that baseline in mind, let’s start using M.O.n.F.O.R.T.’s findings to boost the Rockies.

Daniel Murphy Rekindles the Flame
Something you should know about my model is that every player’s closest comparable is Babe Ruth. But I asked it for a second comparable for Daniel Murphy, and it spit out “Daniel Murphy, but when he was good.” So there you have it — Murphy is going to defy age and start hitting again. As recently as 2017, he was putting up a .322/.384/.543 line. Imagine adjusting that up for altitude, and you can see some upside.

What’s changed since then? Mostly the power. Murphy compiled a piddling .174 ISO in 2019, looking more like the slap-hitting Murphy of old than the peak, world-striding version. At 34, there could still be magic left in that bat. Let’s give him his 2017 self back; a 126 ISO+, a 135 wRC+, and 24.5 runs above average over 593 plate appearances.

Now we don’t want to go too wild and project him back to defensive competence at second base, so let’s keep 2019’s poor defensive value; over 560 plate appearances, that makes him a 3 WAR player rather than a 0.4 WAR player, so add 2.5 wins to the totals. 77 wins and counting.

Kyle Freeland Bounces Back
Another player, another Babe Ruth comp, though this one is as a pitcher. Giving Kyle Freeland credit for his microscopic 2018 ERA (2.85 in Coors!) isn’t in the cards, but maybe he could go back to limiting damage on contact a little bit better? In 2018, he allowed a .338 xwOBA on contact, closely in line with his .328 wOBA versus the same. In 2019, those numbers ballooned to .408 and .429, respectively. At first glance, it doesn’t look fake; he allowed a 31.6% hard hit rate in 2018 and a 40.8% hard hit rate in 2019.

At second glance, it still doesn’t look fake: opposing batters barreled up 5% of the batted balls he allowed in 2018, and then 8.8% in 2019. That sounds bad! But M.O.n.F.O.R.T. sees a silver lining — a lot of the problem was Freeland’s four-seamer, which dipped lower in the zone than he’d like — with 1% more fastballs in the bottom two-thirds of the zone than in 2018. Meanwhile, his sinker strayed upwards, and that’s a rough combination. If he straightens those two out, his hard contact rate will dip, and that’s another 1.5 WAR. 78.5 wins, headed to 94.

Nolan Arenado Goes Full Mike Schmidt
Nolan Arenado’s comp in my model is “Babe Ruth, but, like, with better defense.” But let’s compare him to a third baseman instead. Schmidt found increasing power as his career went on, though he already had good pop from the start.

Arenado is no Aaron Judge — he’s not clobbering the ball to the outer limits of the universe every time he makes contact. But what if he could? What we’re going to need is a big spike in hard hit rate. Ten batters raised their hard hit rate by 10% or more last year, and their wRC+ went up by a weighted average of 17 points. Let’s just arbitrarily add that to Arenado’s projected line — that’s an extra 1.5 wins worth of offense from him, and a new best season yet.

But we’re not done yet. Let’s also say it’s his best defensive season ever, worth another half a win against the projections. That’s 7 WAR Arenado — now we’re up to 80.5 wins.

Garrett Hampson, I guess?
At first glance, Garrett Hampson’s no good, very bad 2019 wasn’t much of an outlier. As a speed-and-singles type, he might be the kind of player Coors doesn’t help. Altitude turns some fly balls into home runs, and the parks turns plenty of balls that would be outs into extra bases by virtue of its enormous outfield. But Hampson’s hard-hit rate was in the bottom 10% of players with at least 300 plate appearances, and his exit velocity on fly balls was even worse.

But there’s a path forward for this type of hitter, and it’s not even that hard to imagine. I cited Hampson’s power limitations, but his speed can turn grounders into singles and singles into doubles. He just has to hit the ball, which is easier said than done. A 26.9% strikeout rate simply won’t work without more walks and dingers, particularly in Colorado.

In September, Hampson seemed to turn a corner with his plate discipline. He struck out just 18.9% of the time, a huge improvement on his prior rate. And he did it with a simple plan: come out swinging. We tend to associate swinging less with better strikeout and walk numbers, and Hampson sports an impressive batting eye — his 23% chase rate is outstanding. But it comes with a low swing rate overall, and pitchers aren’t afraid of him.

The only players who swung less than Hampson did while seeing a higher rate of pitches in the strike zone were Logan Forsythe, David Fletcher, and Jonathan Lucroy. That’s a rough cohort, particularly if you consider the fact that Fletcher is an absolute freak of nature whose contact skills are unmatched.

Hampson swung more in September, however — his zone swing rate went up by 5% (percentage points) even as pitchers continued challenging him. Conveniently, he started hitting the ball with more authority at the same time, as evidenced by these 20-ball average exit velocities on balls he hit in the air:

So yeah — let’s say Hampson holds onto his September form. That’s around a 3.5 WAR pace for the season, depending on what you think of his defense. That’s around three wins of improvement from our current projections. Now we’re up to 83.5 wins.

It’s Gonna Happen, Happen Sometime
These player improvements aren’t really moving the needle. We’ve already made four players a lot better, and only gotten nine wins of improvement out of it. Let’s break out the big guns — and by that, I mean luck.

You see, teams over- and under-perform their true talent all the time. A quick calculation of binomial variance will show you that a team’s standard deviation in wins, for a given true talent, is around 6.5. Sprinkle some good luck dust on the Rockies — they’re going to realize their +1 standard deviation result, getting lucky relative to their talent.

How they do this is up to you. Did some players have lucky seasons? Did they spike some one-run games? Whatever you want. Am I double-counting with the above improvements? No! Because we’re assuming those are true talent levels that we’ve incorrectly calculated. Don’t think too hard about it, please. We can’t let the argument fall apart. Now we’re at 90 wins, within hailing distance of that 94 goal.

The Last Mile
With players and variance eliminated, there’s only one thing to do: have the Dodgers all eat a bad pre-game spread and get food poisoning. On May 25, the Rockies start a four-game set in Los Angeles. Starting June 4, the Dodgers visit Colorado for another four games.

If the entire Dodgers starting lineup has the same bad oysters just before the start of the series, they might not play at all over those four games. Between the ensuing lineup chaos and the rigors of travel, many starters might miss the series in Denver as well. Right now, we project the Rockies to win roughly three of those eight games. Let’s give them seven of the eight instead, playing against Los Angeles’ junior varsity squad. That’s another four wins in the bag. 94 on the dot!

Okay, fine. That last assumption wasn’t particularly sporting, and it wasn’t in the spirit of finding gems in the rough. But the rest could actually happen! The Rockies aren’t hopeless; they aren’t doomed. They have a low projection, but they have some interesting players to go with it. It’s unreasonable to expect everyone’s outcomes to move in the same direction, M.O.n.F.O.R.T. notwithstanding. But while I find a 94 win prediction too optimistic, even with the benefit of interpolation, there’s hope for Rockies fans, and that’s something you can say about precious few of the bottom-feeding teams in baseball these days.

I firmly believe that every baseball fan over 15 years of age — old enough to remember 2012 with some clarity — has a story about the day they fell in love with Hunter Pence, who signed a major-league deal with the Giants last week. Mine was the day, sometime in the late fall of 2012, that I watched his San Francisco teammates demonstrate, through the very best impressions they could muster, that they loved him too. From that day forward, I was a fan of every bug-eyed, gangly, corkscrewed swing. I watched with delight as Pence helped bring a third title to San Francisco in 2014 (his second), then in dismay as he faded to a 60 wRC+, -0.8 WAR nadir in 2018 that spelled the end of his first Giants run. In reporting on his 2019 deal with the Rangers, I wrote that:

I’m never optimistic about players’ ability to re-tool their games after 35 — this is increasingly a young man’s sport, and there’s precious little margin to get it right — but in Pence’s case I hope I am wrong, and that Pence makes the roster and contributes for Texas this year. Hunter Pence is not like many we’ve seen before in this game, and we need more like him.

I was wrong. Pence rode a revamped swing (discussed here by Devan Fink) to a .297/.358/.552 line across 316 plate appearances for the Rangers in 2019. Pence’s 128 wRC+ was the fourth-highest of his 13-year career and his best since 2013’s 135 mark. Pence’s improvement was driven not by an increase in contact rate (his 70.3% mark was unchanged from 2018) but by a marked elevation of his launch angle (to 10.1 degrees, after sitting at 5.7 last year), which led to a substantial increase in his fly ball rate (35.6%; second-highest in his career, again after 2013) and an even more dramatic increase in his HR/FB rate (to 23.1%, more than triple last year’s mark and by three points the best of his career).

Now, it’s true that it’s a lot easier to reinvent yourself as a fly ball hitter in Arlington than it is to sustain that particular form of improvement in capacious Oracle Park, as Pence will have to do in 2020. But his 2019 improvements mean that it’s possible and even reasonable to interpret this reunion as more than just a nostalgia play for a Giants team in transition. San Francisco currently projects to start Alex Dickerson, Steven Duggar, and Mike Yastrzemski left to right across the outfield, and only one of those three (Duggar, who finished with -0.5 WAR in 2019) is under the age of 29. It’s hard to argue that Pence isn’t a better bet than whoever the worst of those three ends up being, just on performance alone. Throw in the nostalgia angle in what’s likely to be a dispiriting season, and Pence makes a lot of sense.

And if he doesn’t? The Giants signed another star of yesteryear, 29-year-old Billy Hamilton, just in case. Hamilton, unlike Pence, has never hit well enough to take advantage of his much-superior speed, and split time between Kansas City and Atlanta last year in putting up a highly-forgettable 50 wRC+. In San Francisco, Hamilton will get a look for a backup outfield role during spring training, particularly vis-à-vis Duggar, the other left-handed center field option on the Giants’ roster. I tend to think the structure of San Francisco’s deal with Hamilton (minor league, with an invite to spring training) accurately reflects his chances of winning that competition outright (he really can’t hit).

In a year in which even Aramis Garcia’s recent injury will likely fail to hasten Joey Bart’s arrival in San Francisco, these are the kinds of deals Giants fans will have to get excited about as they prepare for a season without Madison Bumgarner or Bruce Bochy for the first time since 2006, and without much chance of a run at the division, either. At least they have Hunter Pence, and, perhaps, Billy Hamilton.

Over the weekend, the presumptive second-best team in the AL East sent a key contributor from a recent playoff run to sunny California. In exchange, they received a package including a major league outfielder and a minor league catcher. That’s right — Emilio Pagán is headed to San Diego. As Josh Tolentino first reported, the Rays traded Pagán to the Padres in exchange for Manuel Margot and catching prospect Logan Driscoll.

At first glance, this trade seems pretty straightforward. Pagán was the most valuable pitcher in one of the best bullpens in baseball last year. His fastball/slider combination overwhelmed batters to the tune of a 36% strikeout rate and only a 4.9% walk rate. With Nick Anderson, Diego Castillo, José Alvarado, and a host of others ready to pick up the slack, however, he was surplus, and as noted last week, the Rays lacked a right-handed platoon partner to play center alongside Kevin Kiermaier.

Enter Margot, or exit Margot from San Diego’s perspective. Over three seasons as the team’s regular center fielder, he provided spectacular defense and forgettable offense. Per Statcast’s OAA, he’s been the eighth-best defensive outfielder in baseball since the beginning of 2017. His batting line of .248/.301/.394, on the other hand, works out to an 85 wRC+, a cool 207th among qualifying players. The whole package came out to 4.1 WAR over those years, and while that’s a valuable contribution, it’s a fourth outfielder’s line overall, even with the shiny defense.

A backup outfielder for a closer? And both of them pre-arb? We’re going to need to see the last player in this deal to make better sense of it. Per Eric Longenhagen, Driscoll is still something of an enigma. He’s a plus athlete for catcher, and Eric likes the athleticism and physicality most in his profile. That said, he’s extremely raw for a college player. He was often late against good velocity, potentially a symptom of having faced only mediocre pitching in his college career (he went to George Mason, which plays in the Altantic 10).

It’s fair to say that the middling vibe scouts got from watching Driscoll in professional ball this year is still only speculative. Catchers often wear down before the end of the season in the minors, particularly when they’ve been playing since February (!) in the college season. That said, Eric’s looks at Driscoll weren’t overly flattering. He’s still a 35+ FV prospect in our rankings, and he’ll come in near the bottom of the Rays list.

That’s not to say that there isn’t potential there — his athleticism really is a cut above for a catcher, and even in his worn-down state, he did an excellent job making contact. But this isn’t a premium piece, more a throw-in who might have some traits the Rays value. Take a gander at some game footage, again courtesy of Eric:

With the players outlined, let’s talk about what each team gets out of the deal. From Tampa Bay’s side, this trade seems to make plenty of sense. If you assume that Randy Arozarena is starting in the minors, they’re in a pickle; they have an embarrassment of righty-hitting corner outfield types and no one to cover center. Kiermaier projects as essentially a league-average hitter against right-handed pitching. After accounting for his defense, that’s a valuable player. On the other hand, he projects like 2019 Yolmer Sánchez’s overall line against lefties, and if you don’t know what 2019 Yolmer Sanchez was like, his .252/.318/.321 line should clear up any doubt.

Arozarena could have covered that hole, but scouts don’t see him as a premium glove in center. Additionally, the Rays have typically held players with his eligibility situation in the minors for enough of the season to avoid a full year of service time. Margot provides Kiermaier-level defense, and he projects as a league-average bat against lefties. Over 600 perfectly platooned plate appearances, that works out to something like a 3.5 WAR player, far outstripping what either could do on their own.

For that upgrade, as well as a lottery ticket in Driscoll, the Rays paid a high price. Pagán was an anchor in their bullpen last year. He threw the most innings, compiled the lowest ERA other than mythical strikeout monster Nick Anderson, and recorded the most saves. The bullpen is almost comically deep — even without Pagán, we project them for nine relievers with 30 innings pitched and an ERA better than league average — but c’mon, he threw 70 innings with a 2.31 ERA and 3.30 FIP. That has to be a big loss, right?

Well, yeah, it is. But I’m not sure that he’ll replicate his success in 2020, and I can understand the Rays’ skepticism. For one thing, there are the popups. He generated 11 infield fly balls in 2019, good for 16.4% of the fly balls he allowed. That skill doesn’t appear to persist, however, and that’s unfortunate for Pagán, an extreme fly ball pitcher. Let’s put it this way: in 2019, he had the lowest xwOBA allowed of any pitcher. In other words, if you look at the angle and speed of the batted balls he allowed and add in the strikeouts and walks, he gave up the lowest expected-value results.

But if you don’t think the popups will repeat, it’s not quite as impressive a feat. Pagán allowed the 19th-lowest xwOBA on contact of any pitcher in the majors, but those popups were a huge part of it. If you look instead at the percentage of his batted balls that were barreled up (in essence, likely to go for extra bases), he finished in the middle of the pack, in the 64th percentile (higher being better for the pitcher) among all major league pitchers. The popouts, which we think are random, were the key contributor to his excellent overall expected numbers.

It’s also fair to be skeptical about the strikeouts and walks. His 31.1 K-BB% was the seventh-best among all relievers last year. Strikeouts and walks are much stickier than those ever-treacherous popups. And yet, I’m not completely sold. Two measly years ago, he was a surplus reliever on the A’s. He struck out 24.1% of the batters he faced, walked 7.3%, and was roughly replacement level overall.

What changed on the Rays? First, he added velocity to his fastball, going from 93.8 mph on average to 95.5. He threw his slider more often, though not overwhelmingly so. And he also put a little more mustard on the slider (some outlets call it a cutter), throwing it 87-88 mph, as compared to 85 the previous year.

The extra velocity kicked his swinging strike rate into overdrive. Batters swung much more often at the slider, both in and out of the zone. And while the pitch didn’t get better at missing bats, it was already acceptable in that department, so more swings meant more whiffs and more strikeouts.

His fastball didn’t generate more swings, but it did generate worse swings. Batters came up empty on 35% of their hacks against it, the sixth-best rate in baseball. That fastball drove everything; he used it to get ahead of batters, used it to get back into counts when behind, and even threw it 60% of the time with two strikes to get a strikeout. Rather than throw a changeup, a pitch he’d previously used against lefties, he merely leaned into the fastball even more, throwing it a full 75% of the time against them.

But while the fastball was excellent, it’s still speculative to call it one of the best pitches in baseball. From a pure stuff standpoint, it’s a good-but-mixed bag. It resembles Roberto Osuna’s fastball, and that’s great. But it’s also a doppelganger of the fastballs of Chad Sobotka, John Brebbia, and Wilmer Font. Brebbia has been a nice pitcher in the majors, but that’s decidedly worse company overall.

The overall package, of course, still plays. Hard, rising fastballs are in vogue for a reason, and Pagán fits that trope exactly. Steamer, which cares about pitch velocity but moreso about past performance, thinks he’ll be good again this year, to the tune of a 3.51 ERA. That’s good for the 30th-best among all relievers, although behind three Rays relievers — their bullpen is pretty good!

Of course, what matters to the Padres is where he’ll slot into their bullpen, and there he projects as the third-best reliever behind Kirby Yates and Drew Pomeranz. He’ll be a useful piece, and a valuable bookend to Pomeranz, as they can split setup duties based on the handedness of the opposition. As a completely useless aside, they both bat opposite-handed, so they could actually form an incredibly bad hitting platoon as well!

The Padres got a valuable reliever. He’ll absorb some of the innings that might have been thrown by the back of the pen — Trey Wingenter, David Bednar, and Javy Guerra aren’t the kind of names you’re dying to give innings to, and now San Diego won’t have to. We now project the Padres as tied with the Yankees for the best in baseball, a scant 0.1 WAR ahead of the Rays.

But giving up Margot isn’t free. The Rays have created a valuable platoon, but the Padres blew one up. Franchy Cordero is now the team’s everyday center fielder, and while he’s a perpetual breakout candidate due to his loud tools, he also sports a career 38.8% strikeout rate. Trent Grisham, the only other player on the team who looks like a true center fielder, is also left-handed. That means that when Cordero sits, the team will rotate Grisham into center and play Wil Myers in right. It works out to a Cordero/Myers platoon with more steps.

That’s not the end of the world. Myers is an acceptable hitter despite not reaching the peak we projected for him as a prospect, and if he gets a lot of his reps with a platoon advantage, his game will play up. If the team thinks Grisham can handle center, Margot was blocking one of Grisham or Myers against left-handed pitching. Their 2020 outfield production shouldn’t take much of a hit with this trade.

What the Padres are really giving up is upside. The Margot who we’ve seen for the last three seasons isn’t a superstar. The tools are there, though, and it wouldn’t be a shock to see him finally put it together. Margot with a better bat looks a lot like Lorenzo Cain or peak Kiermaier, and while that’s not the most likely case by any stretch of the imagination, it’s not out of the question.

The Padres made the type of trade that contenders make. They sacrificed upside and cost control (Margot is earning $2.5 million this year in arbitration, and glove-first outfielders haven’t traditionally fared well in the process) for the here and now of a better bullpen. Pagán might not be good in a few years — relievers are notoriously volatile — but he’s good right now. Margot might be great in a few years, but he’s expendable right now. The Padres are likely to be better this year, after making this trade, than they were beforehand, and they didn’t pay an onerous price for the upgrade.

The Rays made the kind of trade that the Rays make. They picked an asset they considered overvalued, a reliever coming off of a career year (though with great underlying numbers), and sent him out before he got expensive. They’re probably just as good this year after making this trade, assuming they were going to goof around with Arozarena’s service time either way. They have a Kiermaier replacement, albeit opposite-handed, for the future. If Margot breaks out, great. But even if not, his skills are stable — he’s unlikely to stop being so dang fast anytime soon, and as long as they can platoon him, his bat won’t be a huge liability.

I understand where both teams are coming from on this trade. But for me, the Rays side makes more sense. They’ve made upgrades for the future without sacrificing the present. They got a catching prospect who increases their chances of developing in-house talent. And if things go really well with Margot, they’ve even added payroll flexibility, as a fully actualized Margot would allow them to trade Kiermaier, whose $10 million salary is a bargain overall and also the second-highest outlay on the entire Tampa Bay team.

The Padres are acting like a contender, but I’d like to see them take a little more risk. Margot is a volatile player, with huge error bars on his true talent level. The cost of the one-ish extra wins Pagán will add this year is the chance to play Cordero and Margot and hope one of them develops into a star. There are other ways they can win this trade, of course: Pagán could remain great for years to come while Margot flames out and Driscoll never makes it. For a team looking up at the Dodgers and even likely the Diamondbacks, however, I’d like to see a bit more risk-taking and a bit less incremental addition. The Padres desperately need breakout stars to buoy them to the next level of contention. With this trade, however, they’re acting more like a finished product. It might not sting them, but I’m not in love with the theory behind it.

This article has been updated to correct Manuel Margot’s arbitration status.

Please note, this posting contains three positions.

Quality Assurance Engineer

Position Overview:
The New York Yankees organization is accepting applications for a Quality Assurance Engineer as part of their Baseball Systems department. Applicant should have experience working in QA/Testing roles, have strong understanding of different testing types (Functional Testing, Regression Testing, Compatibility Testing), have experience with automating testing frameworks, and knowledge of industry best practices around DevOps and Test Automation.

Roles/Responsibilities:

• Develop and maintain automated test suites, libraries and utilities using various automated testing platforms.
• Be involved in all stages of the software development lifecycle to frame testing and validation plans, as well as understand functionality, coverage, and risks.
• Work closely with developers to create test cases, test product functionality, and investigate product failures.
• Perform final validation of customer requirements against finished products.
• Investigate potential data quality issues, determine root causes, and work with data engineers to address them.
• Design internal and external-facing reports to communicate system health.
• Maintain issue logs and manage bug reports.
• Develop and enforce quality assurance standards throughout product teams.

Qualifications and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field
• 2+ years of experience in software testing, quality assurance, or DevOps roles.
• Knowledge and experience with the following technology frameworks:
• ASP.NET/C# using MVC and WebAPI
• JavaScript MV* frameworks (Angular, React, VueJS)
• SQL (T-SQL preferred)
• Use of automated testing tools such as Microsoft Test Manager (MTM), Coded UI, Selenium, Jasmine, Karma.
• Familiarity with Microsoft Azure DevOps/TFS, Jenkins, Git and/or other similar DevOps tools.
• Strong knowledge and experience testing API/Web services
• Knowledge of the software development lifecycle (definition of requirements, design, development, testing, implementation, verification), Agile, and industry best practices.
• Excellent communication and problem-solving skills – must be able to breakdown a complex task and put together an execution strategy with little guidance.
• An understanding of typical baseball data structures, basic and advanced baseball metrics.

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application, which can be found here.

Full-time telecommuting available under the right circumstances.

Product Manager

Position Overview:
The New York Yankees organization is accepting applications for a Product Manager as part of their Baseball Systems department. The Product Manager will work alongside product owners, development staff, and the Baseball Systems Director to translate baseball staff requests and needs into application solutions. The Product Manager will own responsibility for meeting with departmental staff to understand requirements, write user stories, work with developers to refine solutions to maximize development efficiency, write acceptance criteria, support the agile team through development and testing, demo the application to stakeholders, and serve as a liaison back to the baseball staff.

Roles/Responsibilities:

• Meet with departments to capture requirements for projects; organize the details of deliverables; identify, analyze and close gaps in requirements
• Craft user stories and acceptance criteria for developers
• Lead project meetings, capture and communicate minutes/action items, send out regular status updates and other necessary information
• Responsible for the overall user experience of applications; identify deficiencies and work with design and development staff to implement improvements
• Work with UI/UX designers to ensure design elements are aligned with user needs.
• Work with baseball staff to ensure feature alignment across departments.
• Manage user requests/feature backlog and assist in prioritizing requests.

Qualifications and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field
• 4+ years of hands-on experience as a product manager or product owner in an Agile environment
• Ability to translate and articulate business needs into software requirements/user stories.
• Skills in writing customer-centric documentation (epics/user stories/use cases/features/requirements) for the product backlog.
• Knowledge of the software development lifecycle (definition of requirements, design, development, testing, implementation, verification), Agile, and industry best practices.
• Excellent communication and problem-solving skills – must be able to breakdown a complex task and put together an execution strategy with little guidance.
• An understanding of how sports teams operate, typical needs of coaching, scouting, front office staff a plus.

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application, which can be found here.

Full-time telecommuting available under the right circumstances.

DevOps Engineer

Position Overview:
The New York Yankees organization is accepting applications for a DevOps Engineer as part of their Baseball Systems department. The DevOps Engineer’s primary responsibility is to build and maintain continuous integration/delivery pipelines to enable frequent high-quality releases to various environments in an automated fashion. The DevOps Engineer will work with team members to maintain software releases and source code, including all source code that is or will be implemented in a production environment, develop scripts that install, configure, or monitor any applications in production environments, and maintain application configuration information.

Roles/Responsibilities:

• Maintain product environments (Dev, Test, QA, Prod)
• Manage deployment lifecycle across environments
• Develop tools for automating CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps
• Establish policies and procedures for release management applicable to all projects
• Troubleshoot build/deploy issues and work with development team to resolve
• Work with baseball data analysts to deploy data analytics models
• Establish and implement DevOps best practices
• Identify automation opportunities to streamline development workflow
• Manage distributions of builds to mobile and remote platforms
• Develop technical documentation, architecture diagrams, and other development artifacts

Qualifications and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field
• 3+ years of experience in DevOps, testing, or software engineering roles.
• Must have prior experience developing automated pipelines using Azure DevOps/TFS, Jenkins, Bamboo, or other CI/CD platforms
• Experience with automated testing tools such as Microsoft Test Manager (MTM), Coded UI, Selenium, Jasmine, Karma
• Experience with the following technology frameworks:
• ASP.NET/C# using MVC and WebAPI
• JavaScript MV* frameworks (Angular, React, VueJS)
• SQL (T-SQL preferred)
• Objective-C / Swift
• Excellent communication and problem-solving skills – must be able to breakdown a complex task and put together an execution strategy with little guidance.
• An understanding of typical baseball data structures, basic and advanced baseball metrics, and knowledge of current baseball research areas a plus.

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application, which can be found here.

Full-time telecommuting available under the right circumstances.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the New York Yankees.

Baseball Operations Video Editor

Position Overview:
The New York Yankees Organization is accepting applications for a Baseball Operations Video Editor. The Video Editor will be responsible for the day to day creating, editing and delivering of high quality video to the greater Baseball Operations department within the organization. The Video Editor will use computer editing software programs, video switching devices, digital video effects programs and other tools to piece together video components.

Roles/Responsibilities:

• Operate computer editing systems and equipment used for video media and effects for the creation of Baseball Operations videos
• Establish a clear understanding of the storyline and purpose of the video’s creation
• Improve video and sound quality of files/clips using various video software
• Edit videos for Baseball Operations to include preselected music, interviews, sound clips and other important aspects of the project
• Discover and implement new editing technologies and industry’s best practices to maximize efficiency
• Collaborate on video projects with various members of different departments (Major League Coaching Staff, Player Development, Pro Scouting, etc.) within the organization
• Organize workload, manage priorities, meet deadlines and work well within a fast paced, multi-tasking environment, especially within the baseball season
• Quality check videos and deliverables to ensure all assets meet standards, appropriate specs and are ready for upload and archive
• Troubleshoot and identify technical issues as they arise
• Maintain, archive, and expand digital library of video clips for future use

Qualifications and Experience:

• Background and education in videography or equivalent
• 3+ years of relevant work experience
• Hands on experience with Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, XOS Sports Pro, Right View Pro, Microsoft Office
• Creative experience in filmmaking and videography preferred
• Experience editing videos based on creative objectives with minimal direction
• Exposure to sports and athletic language, specifically that of baseball is preferred
• Excellent communication, written, and problem-solving/troubleshooting skills
• Creative and artistic skills
• Ability to multitask and work toward several milestones on various projects simultaneously
• Baseball knowledge is required, and baseball experience is a plus

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application, which can be found here.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the New York Yankees.

Editor’s Note: Sources have indicated to FanGraphs that Fernando Romero has been awarded an additional option year. This post originally stated that Romero was out of options, and has been updated.

The need to define a scope, to create a boundary of coverage, creates a hole in prospect writing. Most public-facing prospect publications, FanGraphs included, analyze and rank players who are still rookie-eligible because, contrary to what you might think after seeing the length of my lists, you just have to stop somewhere, if only for the sake of your own sanity. Because of this, every year there are players who fall through the cracks between the boundaries of prospect coverage and big league analysis. These are often players who came up, played enough to exhaust their rookie eligibility, and then got hurt and had a long-term rehab in the minors. Some are victims of the clogged major league rosters ahead of them; others are weird corner cases like Adalberto Mondesi.

Regardless, prospect writers are arguably in the best position to comment on these players because they fall under the minor league umbrella, but simply adding them to prospect lists would open a can of worms — what do you do with other young big leaguers? So every year, I examine a subset of the players caught in this limbo to give curious readers an update on where once-heralded prospects stand now.

Dustin Fowler, CF, Oakland Athletics

Fowler was squeezed out of a very crowded, platoon-heavy Oakland outfield and spent all of 2019 at Triple-A Las Vegas. He hit .277/.333/.477 with 25 homers there, by far the most homers he’s hit in a season. A lot of that was Vegas and the PCL. It’s not that Fowler doesn’t hit the ball hard. He does: his average exit velo was 91 mph. But he remains a free-swinger with a relatively flat bat path, so he often offers at pitches he can’t do much with. I had a 50 FV on Fowler at peak and I still like him, but now as more of a .310 wOBA type who plays average defense in center field. That’s a 45 FV type of player, someone who fits in a platoon. Oakland has a lot of those types right now, so Fowler is a roster equilibrium change of scenery candidate this summer. He has one option year left, and it makes sense for Oakland to send him to a rebuilding club that considers him a rosterable upgrade.

Fernando Romero, RHP, Minnesota Twins

Repurposed in the bullpen, Romero is now a two-pitch sinker/slider reliever. His heater gained two ticks in the shorter outings and he’s now averaging 96-97 and touching 99 with his two-seamer, and his hard, upper-80s slider is very tough on righties because of his slot. He has late-inning stuff but the command might prohibit that sort of role. Romero doesn’t repeat his delivery very well, his release point really wanders, and Rocco Baldelli watched him walk a lot of hitters last September. If Romero is going to stick in the majors this year, he’ll have to pitch himself into the late-inning role that even those who rightly considered him a reliever while he was a prospect (raises hand) thought was likely.

Luis Torrens, C, San Diego Padres

Torrens exceeded rookie eligibility back in 2017 when, as a young 21-year-old, he languished away on the Padres bench all summer so the club could meet the Rule 5 retention requirements and keep him in the system long-term. It might pay off. Now 23, Torrens spent 2019 at Double-A Amarillo where he hit .300/.370/.500 with more homers (15) than he had clubbed in his entire career to that point.

Those numbers are a good bit above what I think Torrens would do with an everyday big league job — based on where I’d have the hit tool graded, he’s closer to a .240/.310/.410 sort of hitter — but they’re more caricature than total mirage. His average exit velo last year was 89 mph, above the big league average, but it was undercut a bit by Torrens’ middling plate coverage (when I saw him late in September, he wasn’t totally closing his front side and was vulnerable to pitches away from him) and propensity for groundball contact.

He has improved defensively, though. The Padres’ trade of Austin Allen cleared some of their 40-man catching logjam, and Francisco Mejía (defense, approach) and Austin Hedges (offense) have issues that present Torrens with an opportunity to compete for a job this spring. I have him projected as a backup, a 40 FV player.

When the Padres made/traded for three Rule 5 selections in 2016, Rule 5 picks cost $50,000 (they now cost $100,000 a piece). With those picks they added infielder Allen Córdoba (who hasn’t worked out), oft-injured right-hander Miguel Diaz (who has huge stuff but can’t stay healthy, and is back with the club on a minor league deal, so the results are still tbd), and Torrens. If even one of those players pans out, even in a lesser bench role, it justifies the cost of their selection.

Christian Arroyo, INF, Cleveland Indians

Another former 50 FV prospect who has been unable to get a big league foothold, Arroyo was acquired as an injured buy-low candidate last summer, another of the many Rays deals motivated, at least in part, by their crowded 40-man situation. Arroyo is very much Cleveland’s kind of player, a contact-oriented infielder akin to many of their prospects (Jose Fermin ,Tyler Freeman, Brayan Rocchio, etc.) and big leaguers.

I still buy Arroyo’s hit tool. He’s short to the ball, he can move the barrel around the zone, and he tracks pitches well. Like Fowler, Arroyo has a proactive approach that limits his OBP and power output, which wouldn’t be nuts anyway because he has 45-grade raw power. At age 24, with several injuries on his resume and a thicker lower half, I have Arroyo evaluated as a shift-aided 2B/3B, and he doesn’t have the power or on base ability to profile as a regular with that kind of defensive role. As platoon-heavy as Cleveland’s outfield situation is, their infield is almost the opposite, and it’s full of switch-hitters, so Arroyo, who’s out of options, is more of a plug-and-play reserve in the event of a César Hernández or José Ramírez injury. That’s a 40 FV role player.

Carson Fulmer, RHP, Chicago White Sox

You could argue Fulmer doesn’t belong on here anymore because he spent part of last season in the big leagues, but some of the changes the White Sox have made to other pitchers, specifically Lucas Giolito, should give us late-blooming hope regarding Fulmer.

That’s not to say Fulmer hasn’t already been changed. Both the shape of his pitches’ movement and his release point have been tweaked over the last several years, though based on how Fulmer described some of those changes to David Laurila, his grasp of how his stuff works and why changes were necessary may not be great, though that could be an issue of articulation and not comprehension.

Fulmer’s fastball velo just hasn’t been what it was at peak (he averaged 93 mph last year but was 93-96 at Vanderbilt) and is below what the average big league reliever works with now (93.7), plus it plays down because Fulmer doesn’t have good control. He still has above-average raw spin on his heater and breaking balls, but he’s worked more down and to his arm side with the fastball, which helps his changeup play but makes his curveball easier to see out of his hand. I think he’d benefit from using both a backspinning four-seamer that he can shoot at the top of the zone to set up the breaking stuff and a two-seamer that would live where his fastball does right now to set up the change.

Jharel Cotton, RHP, Chicago Cubs

Cotton’s peak FV as a prospect (55) was overzealous on my part; it came at a time when I didn’t yet fully understand how fastballs play. His pre-Tommy John heater was up to 96, he had a four-pitch mix including one of the best changeups in the minors, and I thought he’d be an above-average big league starter, but his fastball’s natural cut wasn’t conducive to missing bats and he was crushed in the majors.

Back from surgery last year, Cotton’s repertoire was pared down. His cutter and two-seam variant were taken away, and his changeup usage went up, while his curveball remained a get-me-over pitch. His velo was also down (89-93, touch 94), and it’s tough to envision him being more than a changeup-heavy relief piece now.

Andrew Stevenson, LF, Washington Nationals

I still like Stevenson’s bat-to-ball skills, speed, and high-effort style of play enough to consider him a big league bench outfielder. I also think he can really only play left field, despite his speed, due to a lack of arm strength. As a lefty bench bat and pinch runner — maybe as a late-inning defensive replacement in left field for Juan Soto, though Michael A. Taylor would just be better at that — he’s rosterable.

Francis Martes, RHP, Houston Astros

Martes had Tommy John late in 2018 and was busted for PEDs early in 2019. He was back pitching in games late last summer, and his fastball and slider had both backed up. He was sitting 90-93 with a worse slider than he had before he broke down, his changeup was shelved, and a pretty average curveball was added to his mix. This is still a volatile situation because even if you thought Martes would be a reliever while he was a prospect, he still had huge stuff. But for now he’s not someone I expect to make a 2020 impact.

Magneuris Sierra, CF, Miami Marlins

I was way too high on Sierra when he was a prospect. He can absolutely fly, and I thought he’d be a Gold Glove-caliber center field defender who made an above-average rate of contact, perhaps enough that he’d slash and dash his way into a leadoff role. Miami tried to hit the reset button by demoting him to Double-A for the start of 2019, and he hit well there for a month and a half before coming back to Earth at Triple-A throughout the rest of the summer. The underlying contact data here is bad, the exit velos are toward the bottom of the scale, and Sierra’s poor defensive instincts subvert his speed, making him an only average defender because of it. He looks like an org guy now.

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Oakland Athletics.

Batters

The projected highs for the A’s lineup are very high. Matt Chapman has firmly established himself in the top tier of third baseman, and he’s not even reliant on having a +15 glove to be a star. He’s in his prime now and ZiPS gives him a nice chunk of time — five years — until his projection dips below four wins. Now would be a good time to make Chapman a multi-millionaire several times over and extend him a couple years into free agency, practically guaranteeing he spends his best years in Oakland.

ZiPS is all-in on Marcus Semien, forecasting shockingly little regression from the .285/.369/.522, 33 HR, 7.6 WAR line that earned him the bronze medal in the AL MVP race. There’s some regression, especially in the home runs, but there was no BABIP flukiness helping to fuel his big year; ZiPS actually thought he was mildly unlucky there! Signing Chapman to an extension would ease some of the blow in not signing Semien, who is a year away from free agency; the team has little leverage there.

Rounding out the infield stars — the second base chimera is not one, even if it is projected to be boringly adequate in whatever configuration it ends up in — is Matt Olson. ZiPS projects Olson, along with Ramón Laureano and his robo-Barfield arm, both be a borderline star. The rest of the lineup, in classic A’s fashion, is fashioned out of leftover parts, but they’ve done a good enough job filling out the roster that none of the holes are devastating. ZiPS sadly does not see a meatier rebound year for Khris Davis and my hopes that the system would continue to project a .247 average for him were dashed.

Pitchers

The shock isn’t so much that the A’s won 97 games in 2020, but that they won 97 games and finished fourth in the AL in ERA despite a rotation they had to throw together on the fly. The A’s would have much rather have seen Sean Manaea, A.J. Puk, and Jesus Luzardo on the top of the rotation at this point, but Puk missed 2018 due to Tommy John surgery, Manaea had shoulder surgery at the end of that same season, and then last spring, Luzardo was shut down with a rotator cuff strain. Frankie Montas surprised as an ace early on, but his season ended early as well after an 80-game suspension for testing positive for Ostarine.

Full seasons from Luzardo, Manaea, and Montas, and eventually working Puk in, would be a major plus compared to desperate stints of Aaron Brooks and Marco Estrada. The WAR totals for the pitching only look low because ZiPS has learned not to be too optimistic about pitcher health, especially for guys with an injury history. The only projection that I would qualify as a disappointment — at least of the main contributors — is that of Mike Fiers. ZiPS believes in Fiers enough to think he’ll outperform his FIP by nearly a half-run, the main problem being that, much like Julio Teheran, ZiPS is projecting a FIP above five.

The bullpen projects as more consistently deep than as one with a few frightening names at the front. Hendriks is projected to continue to be a major plus, but the rest of relief corps is full of solid B+ pitchers. That may sound negative, but it’s not; Jake Diekman, Yusmeiro Petit, Joakim Soria, Lou Trivino, and one of my favorite quiet pickups, Donnie Hart, make this group a consistent one, if one lacking in star power. In other words, it’s a typical, quality A’s bullpen.

Prospects

There are definitely some pitching projections to be excited about here. Puk’s fastball hit the high-90s in the majors and the A’s resisted any impulse to rush back their former first-rounder. The error bars on Puk are large, but ZiPS sees a high chance for him to be a legitimate front-rotation candidate. Yet another Tommy John survivor, Daulton Jefferies showed enough in Double-A that ZiPS sees him in the middle of a future A’s rotation as well.

Grant Holmes saw his projection improve year-over-year for the first time since the Dodger trade, and there’s finally some decent James Kaprielian data out there to project from. ZiPS is less excited about Sheldon Neuse, seeing him as having less upside than Franklin Barreto, who surely deserves a chance to sink or swim at this point. Neuse probably ought to be in the minors full-time rather than stealing occasional at-bats in the infield. The projections also indicate a surprisingly adequate Sean Murphy/Austin Allen combination behind the plate.

I really wish that Nick Allen could hit just a little bit better than he has. Allen’s defense was raved about by scouts and zDEF’s probability-based minor league estimation agreed with that assessment, ranking him as the best defensive shortstop in the minors per 150 games in 2019. Despite projections that peak at just over a .600 OPS in the majors, Allen’s projected defense is enough to give him into the one-win range, making him a useful role player. If his bat improves just a bit, he has a legitimate chance at a Brendan Ryan-type career.

One pedantic note for 2020: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth charts playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.