Earlier this week, we discussed the principle bone of contention between Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball regarding MLB’s proposed contraction plan. MLB wishes to, among other things, transfer more control and money away from minor league baseball and eliminate short-season baseball. While they have tried to make their case that the measure is not a cost-saving one, that case isn’t particularly persuasive, as discussed in Part I of this series.

But while contraction is a cost-saving measure, that doesn’t mean major league teams don’t have a more efficient way of producing good major league players than in the current system, and that argument deserves to be assessed on its own merits. David Laurila recently talked to some MLB executives who explained some of their thoughts on the potential changes, and in a piece at FiveThirtyEight, Travis Sawchik laid out the potential benefits of fewer minor league teams while including keeping the level of competition higher, preventing teams from preying on players with little chance of reaching the majors and putting players closer to spring training sites where the quality of facilities is better and the coaching is more concentrated. (It’s worth noting that MLB hasn’t actually done a very good job of making that argument.)

The following is from an MLB response to MiLB detailing MLB’s objectives in contracting the minor leagues:

We have provided MiLB our Clubs’ reasoning for the elimination of short-season baseball numerous times, and “creative solutions” to retain baseball in every community, but MiLB’s public messaging has consistently been that MLB desires to restructure short-season baseball for “cost savings objectives.” While we recognize that such messaging may play well publicly, it is absolutely not true. MLB has three objectives that affect short-season baseball, none of which is premised on cost savings. First, as we have previously explained, our Clubs believe that the First Year Player Draft has too many rounds (40 compared with 7 for the NFL and NHL), with hundreds of players drafted each year that have an extremely low chance of making the Major Leagues (only 18% of all drafted players reach the Major Leagues for at least one day; 8% accumulate 3 years of service; and those figures fall to 5% and l%, respectively, for players drafted after the 25th round). Players who choose not to attend college because they are selected in the draft, or leave college after their junior year, often do not complete their education after being released.

Second, MLB desires to move the draft later into the summer, preferably after the completion of the College World Series, so MLB Clubs do not draft players in the middle of the NCAA playoffs.

Third, under current player development philosophy, many Clubs prefer to rest recently drafted players as much as possible since they just completed a full season of high school or college baseball and utilize their Spring Training complex to orient them into professional baseball.

Whether MiLB agrees with these objectives or not, these are decisions that MLB, in consultation with the Players Association, has the right to make to develop elite baseball players into Major League players. Our player development objectives impact short-season baseball in two distinct ways. First, with the draft moved to early July, MLB Clubs would not have players to send to short-season teams until late July or early August, making the operation of a short-season league unfeasible. Second, with the number of rounds of the draft reduced, MLB Clubs will not sign a sufficient number of players to staff short-season teams.

First, MLB doesn’t actually address the cost-savings criticism in their objectives. MLB wants to shorten the draft, and the explanation they provide is that only one in 20 players after the 25th round makes it to the majors, with players forgoing an education to chase a 5% shot at playing in the big leagues. (We could dispute whether a 5% shot at the majors is actually that bad given the potential payoff.) However, the player demographics in those rounds don’t really support MLB’s “education” contention. Half of the players drafted in the latter rounds are either college seniors or from a junior college. Many of the high schoolers or college juniors taken in the draft’s latter rounds don’t end up signing contracts and return to school, and those that do often receive six-figure bonuses, indicating that clubs actually have quite a bit of confidence in these players’ abilities.

This is certainly an effort to streamline the minors and make them more efficient by removing those players who have the least chance at a successful pro career, but efficiencies is just a buzzword for cost-savings when the players MLB teams are concerned about spend most of their time at the spring training complex and almost no time in short-season leagues before moving up to full-season A-ball. MLB wants to codify what teams are already doing in practice, and eliminate what they see as wasteful spending. The lack of a real chance at the majors also conflicts with their own statement in the next paragraph where they discuss developing “elite baseball players.” MLB isn’t being altruistic toward the players with little shot at the majors. They simply don’t want to spend their own resources on developing players who probably won’t see the big leagues.

Additionally, reducing the number of rounds in the draft would make the second and third points moot. It doesn’t matter when the draft is or what teams prefer to do with drafted players in the summer if they’ve already decided they don’t want to have enough players to field short-season teams in the first place. It’s also worth noting, despite their mootness, that the second and third points actually directly conflict with each other. Leaving players to their own training programs, the influence of non-MLB coaches, and more pre-draft showcases for an additional month after the vast majority of potential draftees have finished their seasons runs counter to the goal of resting draftees and neglects a potentially important developmental period for newly drafted baseball players as they embark on a pro career. MLB’s concerns about playing conditions and access to good clubhouses as well as training and nutrition programs ring hollow when they reveal they have no regard for these players’ futures in baseball because they don’t think they have one.

There might be an argument that MLB should stop preying on these players’ unrealistic dreams, but that also comes up short when one considers that MLB has acted as the predator by using its lobbying money to get laws passed that deny minor leaguers a living wage or fair pay for all their work.

Eliminating short-season baseball also somehow makes the Save America’s Pastime Act even worse than when it was passed as part of a massive spending bill in 2018. When the legislation was originally proposed, it came on the heels of a still-pending lawsuit to provide minor leaguers with overtime pay. From MiLB’s press release on the law suit:

This suit threatens baseball’s decades-old player development system with an unprecedented cost increase, which would jeopardize the skills-enhancement role of the minor leagues and the existence of Minor League Baseball itself. As a result of this lawsuit filed on behalf of thousands of current and former players, many cities would be in jeopardy of losing their Minor League Baseball teams, resulting in the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs nationwide, shuttering tax-payer funded ballparks and creating a void in affordable family-friendly entertainment.

The law, which had the full support of MiLB at the time, doesn’t appear to have stopped MLB from putting cities in jeopardy of losing their teams, nor has it protected jobs. When the bill was passed, Rob Manfred claimed that it was a good thing, as it would result in a raise for some players. But even if we were to believe that assertion, under MLB’s proposal, most of the players who would “benefit” from the legislation might have their teams taken away entirely. When politicians decry MLB’s proposal (and perhaps attempt to pass legislation to prevent it), there will be some voices who wish politics would stay out of baseball. But it was MLB who asked politicians to help them; it was MLB who invited politics into its sport. It’s only reasonable for those same politicians to remain involved when they feel they’ve been lied to.

Ultimately, removing the short-season leagues wouldn’t change much regarding how MLB handles elite prospects. Those leagues are filled with good players who probably won’t make the majors, playing mostly extraneous baseball, and it only costs MLB teams $400,000 per year to pay those players. The real question is whether such a league should exist. While MLB touts an alternative indy league that would receive some MLB assistance, when these leagues only draw 75,000 fans per season and charge $7 per ticket, spending nearly $400,000 on players isn’t feasible; most teams would simply die. If the short-season leagues are to remain viable, major league teams need to foot the bill for player costs and provide those players.

There’s a business argument to be made based on the fact that the value teams recoup in developing one average baseball player from these ranks probably pays for about 10 years worth of team salaries. To say that paying these players bonuses under $10,000 each and then spending less on an entire team than a minimum-salaried player makes it nearly impossible for major league clubs to “lose” money on these leagues when big leaguers are the lifeblood a $10 billion per year industry. There’s also the argument that providing access to cheap, in-person baseball for current and potential fans is an important part of keeping and creating new customers.

But there’s also the issue of a one-size-fits-all approach to developing players. While talent identification is likely better than it used to be, identifying players who will improve and succeed if given the opportunity and training remains an imperfect science, and one at which major league organizations are not equally adept. The Astros believe their system shuttering farm teams and keeping players closer to their spring training facility is the best way for them to develop prospects, but clearly not all teams build and succeed in the same way. Ten franchises, including teams with great development records like the Rays, Yankees, and Cardinals, have multiple short-season teams, and many other clubs have multiple complex-league teams in Arizona and Florida. With a proliferation of technology better able to identify a player’s strengths and weaknesses, and help with tweaks to pitches and swings, there should be more diamond in the rough stories made possible by a larger pool of talent. Limiting those opportunities over what amounts to a fifth-rounder’s signing bonus or the salaries for a few September call-ups doesn’t seem worth wrecking the current system.

Of course, as you may have guessed from this installment and the last, isn’t just those costs that’s driving MLB’s push for a weakened farm system. We’ve reached the end of the second part and have yet to address the real power consolidation that MLB is shooting for. We’ll do so next time.

When publishing prospect lists — in particular, the top 100 — I am frequently asked who, among the players excluded from this year’s version, might have the best chance of appearing on next year’s version. Whose stock am I buying? This post represents my best attempt to answer all of those questions at once.

This is the third year of this exercise, and last year Kiley and I instituted some rules. First, none of the players you see below will have ever been a 50 FV or better in any of our write-ups or rankings. So while I think Corbin Martin will return from Tommy John and become a 50 FV again later next year, I’m not allowed to include him here (although I just sorta did). The second rule is that I am forbidden from using players who have ever been on this list before, which means no Gilberto Celestino (on the list two years ago) or Lenny Torres (who was on last year’s) even though they might soon be 50s. McDaniel and I were right about 18 of the 63 players we picked the first year, about a 29% hit rate, and we were right about 16 of the 55 players on last year’s list, which is also 29%. Two years still isn’t long enough to know whether that’s good or not, but it does appear as though a baseline is being established.

At the end of the piece, I have a list of potential high-leverage relievers who might debut this year, because readers seem to dig that category. These are not part of the 50+ FV forecasting; it’s just a way to point an arrow at guys I like who might have real big league impact in a smaller role very soon.

I’ve separated the players into groups or “types” to make the list a little more digestible and to give you some idea of the demographics I think pop-up guys come from, which could help you identify some of your own with The Board (with The Board, through The Board, in The Board). For players whose orgs I’ve already covered this offseason, there is a link to the applicable team list where you can find a full scouting report on that player. I touch briefly on the rest of the names in this post. If you want to peek at the previous lists, here is Year 1, and here is Year 2.

Teenage Pitchers
Blake Walston, LHP, Arizona Diamondbacks (full report)
Daniel Espino, RHP, Cleveland Indians
Matthew Allan, RHP, New York Mets (full report)
Ronny Henriquez, RHP, Texas Rangers
William Holmes, RHP, Los Angeles Angels
Jairo Solis, RHP, Houston Astros (full report)

You probably know about Espino, who has been famous since his heater was touching 99 when he was a high school underclassman. He was brought along slowly last year; he didn’t get underway until July and only threw a couple innings at a time until mid-August, when the Indians gave him about 70 pitches worth of leash. He was 97-97, touching 98, and both breaking balls are plus. The arm action is long, but I’m way in on the stuff. Henriquez has one of the fastest arms in the minors. He’s only 5-foot-10 but sits in the mid-90s and his split is good. I’m confident he’ll locate the slurve well enough that it, too, is effective. Holmes is a two-way prospect whose light seemed to be switching on late in the year. He’ll touch 96 and show you an above-average change and breaking ball.

Vertical Movement on the Fastball
Joey Wentz, LHP, Detroit Tigers (full report)
Joey Cantillo, LHP, San Diego Padres
Michael Baumann, RHP, Baltimore Orioles (full report)
Angel Macuare, RHP, Houston Astros (full report)
Austin Cox, LHP, Kansas City Royals

This concept is explained further in this piece, which also features a report on Cantillo. Cox has a low-90s fastball, an above-average curveball, and an average changeup. He has better control, especially to his glove side, than a lot of funky, vertical slot guys.

Players My Sources Like
Braden Shewmake, SS, Atlanta Braves (full report)
Adam Hall, SS, Baltimore Orioles (full report)
Taylor Walls, SS, Tampa Bay Rays
Hunter Brown, RHP, Houston Astros (full report)
Ji-Hwan Bae, SS, Pittsburgh Pirates
Jake Cronenworth, SS, San Diego Padres
Braxton Garrett, LHP, Miami Marlins (full report)

Walls has terrific control of the strike zone. Not only does he lay off pitches out of the zone but he rarely swings and misses at pitches in the zone, and he’s going to play up the middle. Bae is fairly similar. He doesn’t have power right now but he’s very, very fast. Cronenworth might be the best 26th man in baseball. He can play all over the place, he can pitch, he has average power, and he’s also tough to beat in the zone.

Strike-Throwing No. 4 Types
George Kirby, RHP, Seattle Mariners
Thad Ward, RHP, Boston Red Sox (full report)
Cody Bolton, RHP, Pittsburgh Pirates
Daulton Jefferies, RHP, Oakland Athletics
Zack Thompson, LHP, St. Louis Cardinals (full report)

Kirby is a high-ratio strike thrower who is now in an org that is suddenly very good at developing pitchers. Bolton has a really nasty slider and a sinker that touches 97. He threw nearly 60% of his fastballs in the zone last year. Jefferies has an impact changeup and plus command, he’s just never been healthy for very long. Thompson’s fastball lacks spin but his changeup and breaking stuff are great, and the Cardinals push college arms to the upper levels quickly, so he might see Double-A next year.

Dudes with Big Juice
Luis Toribio, 3B, San Francisco Giants (full report)
Andy Pages, RF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Peyton Burdick, RF, Miami Marlins (full report)
Canaan Smith, LF, New York Yankees
Jerar Encarnacion, RF, Miami Marlins (full report)
Michael Busch, 2B, Los Angeles Dodgers

These are players with big raw power. It’s unclear whether Pages will be traded to the Angels or not, but his report is here. Smith runs deep counts and he can run, too. If he lifts the ball more often he’ll really break out. Some teams considered Busch in the top 10 of last year’s draft (at a discount) and a lot of his placement here depends on his ability to play a passable, shift-aided second base, which he was not doing in the Arizona Fall League.

What They Look Like
Luis Matos, CF, San Francisco Giants (full report)
Junior Sanquintin, SS, Cleveland Indians
Reggie Preciado, SS, San Diego Padres
Robert Puason, SS, Oakland Athletics
Greg Jones, SS, Tampa Bay Rays
Maikol Escotto, SS, New York Yankees
Ryder Green, OF, New York Yankees
Erick Peña, CF, Kansas City Royals
Alexander Ramirez, RF, Los Angeles Angels

This is the group purely for tools and body-based scouting. Sanquintin, Preciado, and Puason are all switch-hitting shortstops with big frames, the same as Ronny Mauricio was at the same age. Greg Jones is the oldest player on this list but also the fastest. Escotto, Green, and Peña are all more mature. Escotto and Green are more physical with present power, and Peña might be the most polished player from his July 2 class. Ramirez has a huge, projectable frame and already has considerable power.

Catchers
Francisco Alvarez, New York Mets (full report)
Cal Raleigh, Seattle Mariners
Alejandro Kirk, Toronto Blue Jays
Mario Feliciano, Milwaukee Brewers
Diego Cartaya, Los Angeles Dodgers
Ryan Jeffers, Minnesota Twins (full report)
Gabriel Moreno, Toronto Blue Jays
Rafael Marchan, Philadelphia Phillies

I didn’t feel comfortable sticking Alvarez on the 100 just yet. He’d have been several more levels away from the bigs than anyone else on the list, and the rate of teenage catcher attrition is really scary. I thought pricing in the risk properly meant keeping him off. Kirk, Raleigh, and Jeffers are all bigger guys who don’t always cut the defensive mustard for scouts, though some of them have good framing metrics (Jeffers, Raleigh). Feliciano has the best current contact quality of this group but strikes out a lot. Cartaya has the biggest ceiling here. He’s built like Salvador Perez, which scares some scouts because it’s hard to stay behind the plate at that size, but if he can, the game management and arm strength might make him an impact defender. That’s pretty extreme variance. Moreno and Marchan are athletic, contact-oriented hitters.

High-Leverage Relievers
Enoli Paredes, RHP, Houston Astros (full report)
Cristian Javier, RHP, Houston Astros (full report)
Bryan Mata, RHP, Boston Red Sox (full report)
Junior Fernandez, RHP, St. Louis Cardinals (full report)
Hector Yan, LHP, Los Angeles Angels
Peter Fairbanks, RHP, Tampa Bay Rays
Alex Vesia, LHP, Miami Marlins (full report)
Ashton Goudeau, RHP, Colorado Rockies (full report)

Yan is a lefty version of Freddy Peralta. He creates tough angle on hitters and lives off his fastball. Fairbanks’ stuff is a lot like Nick Anderson’s, but his control has made him tougher to roster.

Quinn Priester is a talented young right-hander with a lot to learn. Drafted 18th overall last summer by the Pittsburgh Pirates, he’s a 19-year-old Illinois native who came to pro ball with scant schooling on the baseball front. Unlike most high-profile preps, Priester didn’t have a pitching coach growing up.

He fared well in his inaugural efforts versus professional hitters. The 6-foot-3, 195-pound hurler got his feet wet with 36.2 innings split between the Gulf Coast League and short-season West Virginia, logging a 3.19 ERA while averaging over a strikeout per frame. Not that the numbers matter. What does is his potential. Our Pirates prospects list isn’t yet out, but you can expect to see Priester toward the top.

Priester talked about his repertoire, and the early stages of his development, at the tail end of the 2019 season.

———

David Laurila: What do you consider your best pitch?

Quinn Priester: “I’d say my curveball and my two-seam sinker. Those are the two pitches that stand out the most.”

Laurila: Let’s talk about your curveball. When you did you first begin throwing one?

Priester: “I was actually really young; probably too young, to be honest. When I was 11, we had a coach who didn’t allow us to throw curveballs, but he did tell us, ‘Hey, when you do throw a curveball, this is how you put as little stress on your arm as possible.’ We were taught one grip, and how to throw it that one way.

“Even though I had to keep it my back pocket, I started having a lot of fun with it. And I loved to throw it, so I’d always work on it. Then, when I was about 12 or 13, I was able to start using it [in games]. From that point on, I was able to get decent movement on it.”

Laurila: How were you taught to throw a curveball?

Priester: “Originally, we were taught to throw it like a football. The way I think about it now is that it was more slider-y. Something that really stuck with me was a coach saying, ‘What’s the opposite of a fastball? What’s the opposite spin of a fastball?’ I was 14 years old, and I didn’t know. He told me, ‘It’s a curveball. A fastball is supposed to spin perfectly backwards, and a curveball is supposed to spin perfectly forward.’ I thought about that and was like, ‘Wow.’ I had a traditional grip with it, and my mindset became to pull the seams parallel, to get 12-6 action on it.”

Laurila: Is it the same grip now?

Priester: “The grip I was first taught is the grip I’m using now, but in the middle of that, one our coaches was like, ‘I want you to do it this way.’ Being young, I was going to do what the coach wanted, so I actually started gripping the very top of the horseshoe. You get the bottom of that horseshoe, the U part of it, and I rested my fingers in there. I ended up doing that for a year or two. Then I ended up switching back, because it was more comfortable and I felt I could control it better.”

Laurila: Was the action any different with the other grip?

Priester: “The action I had with the horseshoe grip was a little slurvier. Something I remembered hearing is that a slurvy action might have more of a tendency to match the bat path, compared to a straight vertical pitch. On a 12-6, you kind of have to swing at a select spot in order to make contact, whereas on a slurve you can go through your normal bat path and might just hit it, because the pitch is matching that path.”

Laurila: I assume you hear the term “tunneling” fairly often.

Priester: “Absolutely. I heard it for the first time maybe two years ago and didn’t fully understand it. I thought I did. I was seeing Pitching Ninja, and all that stuff, but then having it fully explained to me this year — how you can pitch off it, how you can pitch into a tunnel — gave me a better understanding. I obviously have a lot of work to do to become more consistent and work that into my sequences.”

Laurila: Ideally, your curveball isn’t popping out of your hand…

Priester: “For sure, and the hitters will tell you how a good pitch is. There are times where I’ll throw it, and right away it will be, ‘Shoot, that wasn’t a good one.’ You go from there and adjust; you try to get that pitch to stop flipping over that front finger. If you pay attention, you’ll see how a hitter takes the pitch. Was it a panic take, or was he spitting on it because he recognized it as a ball out of the hand?”

Laurila: Is it always the same curveball, or do you vary the shape?

Priester: “Sometimes when I’m throwing to a lefty I’ll try to backdoor the pitch, which will make it a little slurvier. I’ll start it in the right-handed batter’s box and bring it into the zone. And sometimes, when I overthrow, it gets kind of slider-y because I got out of my mechanics. But really, when I’m consistent it’s the 12-6 that I mentioned. It’s mostly a good ground-ball pitch, but with two strikes sometimes I’ll try to really rip it to get that swing and miss.”

Laurila: How would you describe your sinker?

Priester: “It’s a very traditional two-seam grip. I predominantly put pressure on my pointer finger, my index finger, just as I’m forcing that pitch. Movement-wise, there’s arm-side run, and sink. And I throw a four-seam, as well. My glove-side fastball is a four-seam, and it will have natural run because of my arm slot. The two-seam is more away to lefties and in to righties.”

Laurila: Elevated fastballs, especially high-spin elevated fastballs, have become increasingly common. Is that part of your repertoire?

Priester: “A high fastball can be a really effective pitch, and I have used it to my advantage, but being able to get more true spin on my four-seam, to give it that riding life up in the zone, is something I maybe need to do better in the future — especially with the way the game is going. I actually have a ton of things in the back of my mind that I should work on. I’ll see what the Pirates say as we move forward. This being my first year, we haven’t really made any changes yet.”

Laurila: Are there pitchers that you model your game after”

Priester: “I really like watching Walker Buehler — he’s electric and truly fun to watch — but I don’t model myself after any one pitcher. The way I look at it, I’m my own person and need to get better based on my own skill set. That said, I have been told that I’m similar to Rick Porcello. We have somewhat similar repertoires, although he has a slider and a changeup. The [changeup] I have is still a work in progress. I need to make it a lot more consistent. Sometimes it has more depth, and sometimes it has more run. There were also times this year, especially early on, that I threw it 88 [mph]. Sometimes I got it down to 84.”

Laurila: What is your fastball velocity?

Priester: “My four-seam is 94-95, and my two-seam will drop to 92-93. My changeup sometimes being 88-89… I know there are guys who throw that power changeup, like Zack Greinke. I think he had a game where he threw a changeup with more velocity than his two-seam. But I probably want to take a little more off of my mine. Right now it’s a two-seam circle, and I can maybe tweak the grip around a little bit.”

Laurila: Any final thoughts?

Priester: “Only that I’ve learned so much this year in pro ball. I’d never had a pitching coach before. I’m also out here around guys who live and breathe pitching, which is really fun. That, and what I’ve already been able to implement into my game, makes me really excited about the future.”

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 Toronto Blue Jays.

Batters

If you planned a Bond villain-esque scheme to abduct the sons of famous baseball players and put them to work in your baseball mines, it would make for a pretty good plot, and a hell of a lineup. Toronto’s storyline is still incomplete, however, as the next phase of the plan involved collecting a bunch of castoffs and tossing them into the batting order.

Perhaps this is a touch on the mean side. Whatever else you can say about the Jays, it’s unlikely they have a floor anywhere near as low as some of the other teams — like the Marlins or Royals — likely to land in the 70s for wins. The outfield has a lot of guys to juggle, as players like Dalton Pompey and Anthony Alford never developed into the types that carve out permanent roles. ZiPS remains skeptical of Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s offense, and while the computer has him ticking up near an OPS+ of 100, that isn’t all that exciting when you’re talking about a corner outfielder instead of a middle infielder. The Jays don’t really have a center fielder in this group — at least among those likely to start — which raises some concerns about what their defense will look like.

But when we get to Toronto’s fortunate sons, things look a lot better. ZiPS isn’t terribly concerned that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. didn’t catapult to instant stardom like some other recent phenoms; it’s easy to forget that Vladito is playing in the majors when most prospects are getting used to High- or Double-A pitching. Bo Bichette’s done enough now that his rest-of-career win projection hasactually passed Guerrero’s by the thinnest of hairs. Vlad could steal that back, but the fact that Bichette has shown improvement while the former still has to take his step forward has a real effect on the probabilities. Cavan Biggio is a clear step back of these two, but ZiPS is betting on him being average for a long time, light years ahead of where it had him last year.

Pitchers

Hyun-Jin Ryu was the team’s big offseason addition, and ZiPS is confident he’s a reasonable No. 1 starter for the Jays, though it’s not as confident that he’ll again threaten to lead the league in ERA. Tanner Roark is a plug-and-play average pitcher, and ZiPS gives a strong projection to Shun Yamaguchi. Toronto will happily take an ERA+ of 100 from Matt Shoemaker, but his 13 game projection is a reflection of how risky it is to count on his health. With one big exception, who I’ll talk about later, none of the likely No. 5 starter candidates project to have much upside, but I’ve seen far worse groups contending for a final rotation spot.

When it comes to the bullpen, the projections are brilliantly lackluster. Ken Giles looked a lot like the pitcher he was with the Phillies last year. With only the Rays left to go in the projections, Giles’ projected ERA+ ranks ninth among relievers and eighth once you eliminate Felipe Vázquez. The problem isn’t Giles, but the rest of the bullpen, with all but one pitcher projected to be worse than league average.

That exception is a blast from the past, former Cubs prospect Rafael Dolis. He went to the NPB a few years back and his signing is one of the more interesting low-profile additions of this offseason. Dolis still throws hard, but his command is much better than it was years ago and he’s learned a hard splitter that induces a ton of groundballs. He only allowed six homers in four years in Japan, and ZiPS is confident he’ll succeed in his second major league chance.

Prospects

ZiPS has a very aggressive projection for big Alejandro Kirk, though his status at the top of the catcher heap is more a reflection on how bearish the computer is about Reese McGuire and Danny Jansen. Kirk’s a big dude, in definite large adult son territory. What makes Kirk interesting is his combination of power and plate discipline, and without being a Peter O’Brien-esque disaster defensively. I’d like to see him stick behind the plate as long as possible as he’s less interesting as a first base prospect, though he could still carve out a career like Daniel Vogelbach’s.

But one player ZiPS is really excited about is Nate Pearson, recently ranked eighth by Eric Longenhagen on the 2020 Top 100. Recovered from his broken forearm in 2018, Pearson and his century fastball fared very well in Double-A despite a real lack of professional experience. He made the Futures Game in July and pitched in Triple-A in August, and I’d love to see him in the mix for the fifth spot in March. Pearson still doesn’t have a lot of innings on his arm, so they’ll probably stretch him out in Triple-A, which isn’t quite as much fun. One can make the argument that it’s for the best because if the projections for the bullpen are accurate, as the Jays may not have the depth there to use Pearson in a Julio Urías swingman role in 2020.

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. Also, I’ve added Shun Yamaguchi, who is not yet in our system, into the depth chart.

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.

“It feels like there’s still no closure and everything has been thrown into question — past outcomes are being second-guessed and even future games will be cast in doubt. There can be no redemption arc after an institutionalized scandal like this until there’s some accountability.” — Sean Doolittle, Nationals reliever

Sean Doolittle speaks for all of us. Four weeks after Commissioner Rob Manfred issued his report on the Astros’ illegal sign-stealing efforts and suspended both president of baseball operations Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch for the 2020 season, new revelations about the scheme continue to emerge, some of which challenge his findings or call his judgment into question. So long as such information keeps coming to light, Major League Baseball can’t make this scandal — or the justifiable outrage from players within the game and fans outside of it — go away. Not even a leaked report about a cockamamie 14-team playoff format will deflect attention from Houston’s various schemes.

Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal‘s Jared Diamond reported on an effort by the Astros’ baseball operations department to decode opponents’ signs and relay that information to hitters in real time, one that preceded the trash can banging scheme and that general manager Jeff Luhnow had awareness of, though it went unmentioned in the commissioner’s report. Later that day, MLB Network aired an exclusive interview with A.J. Hinch, one in which the Astros’ former manager expressed regret over his own role in failing to stop his players from participating in the sign-stealing scheme but gave a carefully parsed answer when it came to the possible use of wearable buzzers. On Monday, pitcher Mike Bolsinger, who retired just one of eight Astros hitters he faced in his final major league appearance on August 4, 2017, filed a civil lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, “accusing the Astros of unfair business practices, negligence and intentional interference with contractual and economic relations,” according to USA Today’s Nancy Armour.

But wait, there’s more! On Tuesday, the Washington Post’s Barry Svrluga and Dave Sheinin reported on the “open secret” regarding suspicions about the Astros’ attempts to cheat during the 2016-19 window, and the counterespionage efforts against them, including those in the 2019 postseason (that article is the source of the Doolittle quote above). Within that article was an estimate from a rival executive that 10 to 12 teams complained to MLB about the Astros’ “cheating their asses off for three or four years,” one of whom was reportedly the Athletics, before pitcher-turned-whistleblower Mike Fiers went public with his allegations, the action that finally set off Manfred’s investigation.

Also on Tuesday, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, Evan Drelich, and Marc Carig detailed the role of Carlos Beltrán, the only player besides Fiers who was mentioned individually within the Commissioner’s report. On Wednesday, Diamond reported additional details about Beltrán’s role as well the more minor role of Alex Bregman within the chain of events, and additional communications within the Astros’ front office. And on Thursday, current Astros players and owner Jim Crane finally met with the media at the team’s West Palm Beach spring training home.

The bangs simply keep coming.

Say, anybody want to talk about the race for that fourth Wild Card spot?

Of the various reports, the first Journal one is perhaps the most explosive given the amount of previously undisclosed information it contains, information that was obtained from a letter Manfred sent to Luhnow on January 2 that outlined the findings of the investigation, along with additional interviews of several people familiar with the investigation. Most notably, that article challenges the extent to which the team’s efforts were “player-driven,” to use the term from Manfred’s report, which was issued on January 13 (PDF here). Diamond’s second article sheds a bit more light on the genesis of the effort. It’s worth integrating the information from both articles, as well as that of The Athletic, together so as to paint as clear a picture as possible.

“The interplay between players and executives was inherent to the sign-stealing program from the start,” wrote Diamond on Wednesday. At some unspecified point in 2016, Bregman, then a rookie, “mentioned to video room staffers at one point that other teams were better at stealing signs when runners were on second base than the Astros… Bregman wasn’t telling the Astros to cheat, but rather suggesting that they could find a way to decode signs legally.”

That conversation led Derek Vioga, then a baseball operations intern and now the Astros’ senior manager for team operations, to create “Codebreaker,” an Excel-based application programmed with an algorithm to decode opposing catchers’ signs. An employee viewing the game would log the catcher’s signs in a spreadsheet as well as the type of pitch thrown. By itself, there was nothing against the rules about this; it was a permissible tool for advance scouting. On September 22, 2016, Vioga showed Luhnow a PowerPoint presentation featuring Codebreaker. Luhnow later told investigators that he recalled the presentation and asked questions about how it worked. “He said that he was under the impression that it would be used to legally decipher signs from previous game footage for runners on second base to disseminate, rather than live in games,” wrote Diamond.

Vioga told investigators that he presumed Luhnow knew it would be used in games because that was “where the value would be,” according to the letter. That would have crossed the line; the use of electronic equipment to steal signs during games was broadly prohibited under MLB rules, but that prohibition was not strictly enforced at the time. Vioga added that he didn’t recall whether he explicitly told Luhnow that Codebreaker would be used in games — but ultimately, it was.

This is how the Astros began their efforts. While the impetus came from Bregman, Codebreaker was a front office-driven scheme, not the player-driven one that Manfred reported. It wasn’t until June 2017 that Beltrán and other players suggested improvements to the system, at which point bench coach Alex Cora secured a video monitor showing the center field feed to be placed in the tunnel near the dugout. After decoding the sign from that monitor, “a player would bang a nearby trash can with a bat to communicate the upcoming pitch type to the batter,” according to Manfred’s report.

Luhnow continued to be informed about Codebreaker via Tom Koch-Weser, the team’s director of advance information. He discussed Codebreaker with Luhnow after the 2016 season, and told investigators that Luhnow would “giggle” at the title, appeared “excited” about the program, and even entered the video room during road games and asked, “You guys Codebreaking?” Another Astros employee, Matt Hogan (then the team’s coordinator of advance information, now their manager of pro scouting analysis) told investigators there was no effort to hide the use of Codebreaker in front of Luhnow. According to Diamond, Luhnow denied both Koch-Weser’s accounts and that he saw evidence of sign-stealing in those visits.

Koch-Weser sent two emails to Luhnow in 2017 referring to “the system” and “our dark arts, sign-stealing department.” In the first, sent on May 24, 2017, he highlighted the roles of Beltrán — apparently before the banging scheme was put into place — and Cora, while also mentioning Alex Cintrón, then the team’s Spanish translator, advance scout, and assistant coach:

“I don’t want to electronically correspond too much about ‘the system’ but Cora/Cintrón/Beltrán have been driving a culture initiated by Bregman/Vigoa last year and I think it’s working… I have no proof that it has worked, but we get real good dope on pitchers tipping and being lazy. That information, if it’s not already, will eventually yield major results in our favor once players get used to the implementation.”

Koch-Weser’s wariness of correspondence suggests that at the very least, he knew the Astros were engaging in questionable practices. Luhnow told investigators that he opened the emails from Koch-Weser but did not read to the end of them due to their length, something that can’t be proven one way or the other but that certainly tests one’s credulity, particularly given that the GM did respond to both emails. “How much of this stuff do you think [Hinch] is aware of?” he wrote on May 24. In an August 26, 2017 email, Koch-Wiser wrote that the sign-stealing department “has been less productive in the second half as the league has become aware of our reputation and now most clubs change their signs a dozen times per game.” Luhnow again replied, albeit two weeks later, writing, “Tom, this type of write up is very helpful,” before bemoaning the team’s recent performance.

The first email’s mention of Cintrón, now the team’s hitting coach, is notable, for his name had not previously appeared in this specific context. According to Diamond, he “was believed to be involved in transmitting information from the video room to the dugout” during the 2017 season. Last October, the Yankees voiced suspicions about Cintrón’s alleged whistling to batters during the 2019 ALCS against the Astros, a potential violation of the rules, as teams are prohibited from signaling to hitters from the dugout through whistling or other means. MLB investigated the allegations but could not substantiate them, as neither an MLB official in the camera well next to the Astros’ dugout nor the umpires heard the whistling.

Diamond reported that the Astros continued to use Codebreaker to steal signs “into 2018 — not just at home, but also on the road,” and that Koch-Weser and other Astros video room staffers told investigators that they weren’t aware of the banging scheme until the now-famous September 21, 2017 game in which White Sox pitcher Danny Farquhar noticed the noise. For a time, then, the two systems ran in parallel.

The Athletic reported that the Astros’ use of the trash can banging arose out of Beltrán and Cora’s dissatisfaction with Codebreaker’s efficiency:

What happened was Cora and Beltrán decided that this video room stuff Koch-Weser was doing (with Codebreaker) was just not working, inefficient, too slow,” a person with direct knowledge of the investigation said. “They just had some lower-level guy put up this monitor and did it themselves.”

“But it was two different things,” that person continued. “The real kind of crime here was they didn’t stop (in September) and the banging on the trash can was over the top compared to what happened before.”

Indeed, in Manfred’s letter to Luhnow, he wrote, “Most or all Astros players were active participants in the Banging Scheme by the conclusion of the 2017 World Series… The Banging Scheme was so prevalent that witnesses regularly describe that everyone in and around the Astros dugout was presumptively aware of it.”

Luhnow maintained during the investigation that he had no knowledge that the Astros’ efforts broke the rules. In his letter, Manfred expressed disbelief, writing, “there is more than sufficient evidence to support a conclusion that you knew — and overwhelming evidence that you should have known — that the Astros maintained a sign-stealing program that violated MLB’s rules.”

That was enough for the commissioner to suspend Luhnow, holding him accountable for his team’s violations as per his September 15, 2017 memo. Yet his report makes no specific mention of Codebreaker or the front office origins, which are significant in that they planted the seeds of the Astros’ corruption; instead he begins his timeline with, “At the beginning of the 2017 season, employees in the Astros’ video replay review room began using the live game feed from the center field camera to attempt to decode and transmit opposing teams’ sign sequences…” and then moves on to Cora calling the replay room for the signs, and the use of texting and smart watches before Beltrán’s intervention and the banging scheme’s deployment.

Furthermore, Manfred wrote in his conclusion, “The Astros’ methods in 2017 and 2018 to decode and communicate to the batter an opposing Club’s signs were not an initiative that was planned or directed by the Club’s top baseball operations officials,” again making no attempt to explain where the unnamed employees got the idea to decode signs, though as Diamond’s reporting suggests, he did have that information. Even if the efforts of Cora, Beltrán, and teammates were more effective than Codebreaker, the failure to acknowledge the front office’s role seems like a rather glaring omission, one that chips away at the credibility of the entire report.

Though Luhnow (and Hinch) were duly penalized with suspensions, and in short order fired by Astros owner Jim Crane, why was the rest of the team’s front office, aside from assistant GM Brandon Taubman — who was suspended for his conduct towards female reporters during the Astros’ ALCS clinching celebration — spared further scrutiny? Shouldn’t Vioga and Koch-Wiser, both of whom remain part of the team’s baseball operations department, be disciplined as well? “I will defer to the Astros whether the conduct of these more junior employees merits discipline or other remedial action,” wrote Manfred in his report. Both he and Crane need to answer questions as to those employees’ continued involvement with the team; Crane indicated during Thursday’s press conference that he and new general manager James Click would be reviewing the baseball operations department.

In the report, Manfred indicated that he did not find any evidence that the banging scheme continued into 2018, but that the replay room’s efforts to decode signs continued — which jibes with Diamond’s report of Codebreaker’s continued use. The closest Diamond’s first article comes to explaining the omission of the front office’s role in the report is that given the conflicting statements of Luhnow and Koch-Wiser with regards to the latter’s continued usage of the terms “dark arts” and “codebreaking” — in the context of making his case for a raise and in delivering a budget spreadsheet for the advance scouting department — “MLB couldn’t decipher whose account was truthful.” More:

[W]hile the league collected evidence that showed Luhnow was aware of Codebreaker’s existence and capabilities, it couldn’t prove that he knew how it was used. In response to Manfred’s letter, Luhnow presented investigators with a binder with more than 170 pages that cast at least some doubt on the contents of the initial letter, according to multiple familiar with the matter.”

What was in the binder? Who was counting pages? It’s not clear, and it didn’t save Luhnow from suspension, though the conflicting accounts might have shielded him from an even longer punishment. As this new information flows into public view, it hasn’t shielded either the executive or the commissioner from additional ire.

While the Journal‘s first report deflects some of the blame away from Beltrán and the players, both the second one and The Athletic’s story more fully detail Beltrán’s involvement. A veteran who had assembled a resumé worthy of Cooperstown over the course of his 20 major league seasons, Beltrán had an unrivaled stature within the Astros’ clubhouse and a store of knowledge accumulated from his travels around the league. In the August 26 email, Koch-Weser referred to his central role in the banging scheme while noting that the 40-year-old DH didn’t seem to be benefiting much. “Beltrán, who is the godfather of the whole program, ironically just swings at everything after taking a strike and probably does the worst with the info,” he wrote.

Per Rosenthal and Drelich’s January 7 report regarding the Red Sox’s illegal sign-stealing efforts, on which Manfred has yet to report, as early as early as 2015, Beltran’s second year with the Yankees, the team reportedly began using the video replay room to decode signs. Multiple sources told The Athletic that when Beltran came to the Astros in 2017, he told them that their sign-stealing methods were “behind the times.”

Once the banging scheme was deployed, some teammates expressed discomfort. Not only did Beltrán ignore the requests to stop, but even Hinch was apparently afraid to challenge him. Catcher Brian McCann, who was previously Beltrán’s teammate during his 2014-16 Bronx tenure, and widely respected as a clubhouse leader himself, was one player who confronted Beltrán, who according to one of the six unnamed 2017 Astros interviewed for the report, “disregarded it and steamrolled everybody.”

That player added: “Where do you go if you’re a young, impressionable player with the Astros and this guy says, ‘We’re doing this?’ What do you do?” said Joe Musgrove, then a rookie with the team. “I was in my first year, man. Along with Bregman and a lot of those guys, and in your first year in the big leagues you’re around guys like Beltrán and McCann, some big names. And I’m not going to be the pitcher to walk up and tell ‘em to knock it off.”

(On Thursday, after the team’s press conference in West Palm Beach, Carlos Correa pushed back on the notion that Beltrán was intimidating, more on which below.)

Not everybody remembers dissent. “No one ever said anything about how they didn’t agree with the system,” one anonymous player said. “They loved hitting with the system.”

In Diamond’s second report, he quoted Koch-Weser as noting that utilityman Marwin Gonzalez “does the best job with getting this info.” In the work of Astros fan Tony Adams, who logged the available video and audio of 58 of the team’s 2017 home games — over 8,200 pitches and over 1,100 bangs — Gonzalez led the team with bangs in 147 of his plate appearances, edging George Springer (139) and Beltrán himself (138).

For what it’s worth, on Tuesday, Gonzalez, who now plays for the Twins, became the first Astros position player to formally apologize for his role in the scheme, saying “I’m remorseful for everything that happened in 2017, for everything that we did as a group, and for the players that were affected directly by us doing this.” He confirmed that he participated in MLB’s investigation, and added, “I wish I could take it back and do it a different way, but there’s nothing we can do.” On Thursday, Bregman and José Altuve addressed the media at the team’s spring training base and offered their own apologies, which lasted a combined 90 seconds and sounded perfunctory at best; neither took questions from reporters, though they and other team members did meet with the media afterwards. Crane was even less convincing during his longer Q-and-A, while new manager Dusty Baker, who wasn’t even part of the organization until last month, was the only one of the four who sounded sincere — and yet he had nothing to apologize for.

As for dissent… while Hinch conveyed his disapproval of the banging scheme by twice destroying video monitors used to steal signs, he didn’t confront Beltrán or any other players, fearing that he would lose credibility in the clubhouse. In his interview with MLB Network’s Tom Verducci — his first public comment since the report was issued and he was fired, aside from a written statement — Hinch apologized and took responsibility for what “happened on my watch,” and expressed regret at not going far enough to stop the scheme. “I didn’t initiate or didn’t endorse it, but I was the manager, and I think there’s a responsibility when you’re in a position to end it,” he said.

“My mindset at that point was to demonstrate that I didn’t like it,” Hinch said of his times taking bats to the monitor. “In hindsight, I should have had a meeting, addressed it face-forward, and really ended it… I tolerated too much… It’s complicated when you’re talking about a team and all the inner workings of a team. But I just feel like I could have done more, looking back, especially the leader I feel like I am in 2019, versus where I was in 2017.”

Later in the interview, Verducci asked Hinch about the charge that players were using wearable buzzers to receive signals — allegations that lit up social media with conspiracy theories just days after Manfred’s report. Said Hinch, “We got investigated for three months. The commissioner’s office did as thorough of an investigation as anyone could imagine was possible. I knew you mentioned about the emails and the texts and the messages [examined during the investigation] and I believe it.”

That’s not as direct a “no” as some would like. Manfred told Verducci, “I will tell you this: we found no Band-Aid buzzer issues. There’s a lot of paranoia out there.” That paranoia seems less unreasonable as we come to understand the report’s omissions and shortcomings. Hinch later clarified his answer, saying in a statement, “To be clear, I have never seen any such device used in baseball. I am not aware of any such device existing or being utilized with the Astros, the players, or any other team.”

While Hinch sounded sincere in his regrets, his interview is also the beginning of his attempt to rehabilitate his image and work towards a future job in baseball. He wants to manage again: “I love managing. I love players. I love the competition. What I’ve learned about myself over the last few years of doing it is that player-manager relationship, that coach-manager relationship, the front office; I love being in that center hubcap of that wheel that makes it all go around.”

On the one hand, it’s fair to question Hinch’s leadership qualities if at that point — then in his third season with the Astros and fifth as a major league manager overall — he felt he couldn’t stand up to Beltrán, a newcomer to the team, as well as the scheme’s other participants. At the same time, it’s also worth wondering about The Athletic’s portrayal of a big, bad Beltrán running amok, with the assistance of Cora, particularly given the extent to which he had previously been lauded as a teammate and mentor — even by Hinch. Did his zeal for the championship that had previously eluded him corrupt him? Or is he just a convenient scapegoat given that he’s no longer with the team? It’s tough to square these portrayals with everything we thought we knew about his career up to the point that the Mets hired him to manage.

Correa, for his part, challenged the impression of Beltrán as an intimidator, and was unequivocal about the team’s shared responsibility for what happened:

We didn’t feel scared of Beltrán, we didn’t feel intimidated. He was the nicest guy that we’ve ever had, he was the best teammate we’ve ever had. Beltrán was a leader of the clubhouse but we all had a say in everything that we were doing. Whatever he said, and whatever we were doing, we had the chance to stop it as a team. Everybody. Everybody had a chance to say something, and we didn’t, so whoever the anonymous source is that’s saying that we felt intimidated or that we were too young to say something, that’s just straight up bullshit. Beltran intimidated nobody… Beltran is an unbelievable gentleman… I don’t see a person that’s your mentor and that’s there for you when your’e struggling as an intimidating person.

VIDEO: Amazing candor from Carlos Correa, calling ‘BS’ any anonymous report that Carlos Beltrán intimidated young players and that they were not allowed to speak up. pic.twitter.com/BWXzsbQvIa

— Marly Rivera (@MarlyRiveraESPN) February 13, 2020

There’s little question that Beltrán lied to reporters about his role in the scheme — the driving force behind his resignation before managing a single game — but as I noted just before he resigned, and as this flood of recent news illustrates, it’s going to take a lot more time before our impressions of what transpired within the Astros’ clubhouse and on the field are settled. Keeping up with the story, or stories, is no small task; as Doolittle said, we still don’t have closure. While Luhnow, Hinch, Cora, and Beltrán have been held accountable to a degree with the loss of their jobs, not everybody believes that they’ve been punished enough, and there’s still widespread dissatisfaction over Manfred’s inability to discipline the players involved, because their punishment would have to be collectively bargained.

Manfred traded immunity for information, but now that we know that the information he conveyed to the public wasn’t complete — and that the high volume of complaints lodged against the team prior to Fiers’ whistleblowing didn’t prompt vigorous investigation sooner — there’s a great deal of frustration over the commissioner’s own lack of accountability. Given his involvement in such disparate and unpopular plans as the aforementioned expanded playoff format, the institution of the three-batter rule, and the effort to reorganize and contract the minor leagues, fans aren’t exactly confident in the product they’re being presented with. As we await the arrival of Manfred’s report on the Red Sox’s actions, and continued reporting on how it all went down in Houston, it’s unlikely that view is going to change anytime soon.

The Mariners are bringing former top prospect Taijuan Walker back to the Northwest. Yesterday afternoon, the right-hander signed a one-year contract worth a base salary of $2 million, with incentives that could push the deal up to $3 million. As with Kendall Graveman earlier this winter, the Mariners have done well to round out their thin rotation with a low-cost option that could plausibly produce a significant return on their investment.

Unlike with Graveman, there’s plenty of sentimental value here, too. For most of the early part of the decade, Walker was the player Mariners fans salivated to see. Prior to Seattle’s current crop of farmhands, Walker led the vanguard of exciting Mariners prospects, the jewel in a class that also included Danny Hultzen, Brandon Maurer, and James Paxton. Stories of Walker’s athleticism and skill spread quickly as he blitzed through Seattle’s system — my personal favorite is the time he wrote “Tai was here” on a piece of athletic tape and then showed off his NBA-esque vertical by jumping and sticking the tape too high for anybody else to reach — and many pinned their hopes of a Mariners resurgence on his powerful shoulders.

But just when Walker looked ready to make his mark in Seattle, he suffered a few incremental setbacks. He needed the better part of two years of seasoning at the upper minors before reaching the big leagues for good in 2015, and then ran into plenty of bumps that first season. His secondaries backed up between Double-A and the show, and big league hitters routed his pin-straight fastball and sloppy secondaries over the first two months of the year — a period during which a promising Mariners club imploded in part because of Walker’s 7.33 ERA in his first nine starts.

He righted the ship at midseason though, tweaking his slider and throwing far more strikes. Over his last 20 starts, he averaged six innings per outing, struck out nearly a batter per inning, walked only 17 hitters, and notched a tidy 3.66 ERA. He started 2016 even better, throwing smoke and missing bats like never before. In four starts that April, he fanned 25 hitters in as many innings while allowing just three walks, one homer, and four earned runs. For all the world, it looked like he was actualizing.

A funny thing happened on the way to Cooperstown. For the next five months, Walker was dogged by nagging injuries, inconsistency, and occasional bouts of immaturity that exacerbated each of the first two problems. A promising season spun off the rails in the dog days of summer, and while he finished strong, the Mariners had seen enough: He was dealt to Arizona in a blockbuster deal that winter with Ketel Marte in exchange for Mitch Haniger and Jean Segura.

With the Snakes in 2017, Walker put together his finest professional season. Leaning on a newly sharpened curve, Tai took the ball 28 times and posted a 3.49 ERA and a 4.04 FIP, both of which were career bests. He also struck out more hitters while turning into something of a groundball pitcher — a useful profile for a hurler working in the desert during the most pronounced (at the time) rabbit ball season yet. A 2.5 WAR pitcher, Walker may not have hit the immense ceiling forecast for him as a teenager, but it appeared that he had settled in as a solid mid-rotation arm on a good team.

As often happens in life, circumstances change when we feel most settled. Three starts into the 2018 campaign, Walker felt discomfort in his elbow, pain that turned out to be a partial tear in his UCL, which required Tommy John surgery. Early April is a tough time to get that procedure, as it can knock a pitcher out for not only that season but also the following year. That essentially happened to Walker, who missed almost all of the past two years, returning to throw a solitary inning in Game 162 last season. He missed a few bats and threw about as hard as he typically has, and it was a feel-good moment… right until it wasn’t, when Arizona subsequently chose to non-tender him anyway.

As Patrick Dubuque covered over at Baseball Prospectus, Walker was a casualty of the harsh economic reality awaiting arbitration-eligible players with muddled near-term futures. Had the Diamondbacks retained his services, he’d have been in line for a salary of approximately $5 million. That’s a bargain for a mid-rotation starter, but apparently a little too steep for Arizona’s blood, particularly given their rotation depth.

Instead, Walker returns to Seattle, still relatively young (he’s 27) and again with everything to prove. This is a good match of player and team. The Mariners are not going to be competitive. Every projection system on the planet has them buried in last place in the West, and they have one of the shallowest rotations in baseball. ZiPS projects that just five Mariners pitchers will accrue 1 WAR this year, and two of them may not even make the team out of spring training. If Walker’s healthy enough to pitch, he’ll make the team. Any volume he provides is gravy.

As to what we and the Mariners should expect, it’s hard enough to project a player’s performance in the best of times, and doing so for a guy who has barely pitched for two years makes the challenge even harder. ZiPS has always been game for this kind of speculation though, and when the system looks at Walker, it sees a capable, if mediocre starter:

That line seems like a good hedge between the performance level Walker established in Arizona and the risks associated with any pitcher returning from a lengthy spell on the sidelines. It takes about a year for pitchers to get their command back after surgery, and that’s reflected in the high walk rate and low innings projections. While there’s room for more if Walker shows up to spring training fresh, healthy (the early reports are good), and well-rested, he may be rusty out of the gate and probably won’t be pushed hard even if he makes the Opening Day rotation.

Of course, it’s almost spring, the time of year when baseball fans can and should dream about something better than a backend starter. For better or worse, Seattle fans will remember Walker as a talented flamethrower oozing with potential. For those with lingering memories of his tantalizing gifts, the above projections may look like a disappointing or banal statistical observation, a distraction from a potentially compelling narrative where the homegrown prospect returns to make good.

Or maybe it just adds to this particular player’s hero journey. To this point, Walker hasn’t had the career he envisioned. He’s been inconsistent, hurt, and now cast aside by his former employer. In Seattle, Walker can rewrite the script, and at a time he’s young enough to really make the most of that chance. It’s a fantastic opportunity, one that provides Mariners fans with a spark of excitement in a year that otherwise looks pretty gloomy.

The Arizona Diamondbacks have a potential future ace in 24-year-old righty Zac Gallen. Making his debut for the Miami Marlins in June 2019, Gallen finished the season with a 1.6 WAR, and armed with a filthy changeup, became one of the more exciting young pitchers to appear in the major leagues last year.

This spring, Gallen will battle for the fifth spot in the Diamondbacks rotation. If he isn’t able to secure a starting role, Arizona may have him begin the season in Triple-A. Gallen could claim that rotation spot with an assist from an adjustment to one pitch, which in turn will tighten up his entire arsenal and help him become one of the tougher pitchers to face in baseball.

Though the sample is limited, Gallen did well during his first 15 big league starts. Through 80 innings pitched, Gallen produced an ERA of 2.81 (3.61 FIP), struck out 96 hitters, and posted a 2.96 K/BB ratio. Gallen also demonstrated good command last year, though his 10.8% walk rate indicated he may have struggled a bit with his control.

Gallen attacked hitters with a four-seam fastball, a knuckle curveball, a changeup, and two types of cutters: a sweeping (or hybrid) cutter and a backspinning cutter. Eric Longenhagen put a 50 FV on Gallen’s overall arsenal, with special consideration given to his changeup (55 FV).

Gallen’s four-seam fastball is thrown with a 12:40 spin direction and around 96% spin efficiency. The lift generated by that high spin efficiency ranked Gallen 31st overall (min 80 IP) in fastball rise and its minimal axis tilt created a decent amount of run. Gallen was consistent with his four-seam usage regardless of where he was in the count and held hitters to a .301 wOBA despite missing bats with it less than he did with his other three pitches. Gallen was a little erratic with its location and left the fastball in the middle zone more than he should have; his spin rate to velocity ratio (25 Bauer Units) suggests the pitch should be kept up in the zone where he was far more successful.

Gallen’s classic knuckle curveball had equal parts sweep (9.1 inches of horizontal movement) and depth (-10.1 inches of vertical movement) under a 7:10 spin direction with 67% spin efficiency. He was a little unlucky with it at times, as evidenced by his .275 wOBA versus his .242 xwOBA. Gallen’s curveball pairs well with his fastball so long as the four-seamer is elevated. When the curve and fastball are used in tandem, the two pitches approach a spin mirror (165-degree axis contrast) but the additional tilt on the curveball breaks it up, going beyond the ideal 170-190 degree contrast.

Gallen’s best pitch last season was his changeup, which produced a 1.69 FIP and a .210 wOBA. Featured more against lefties due to its ability to move out of the reach of their bats, the pitch had a 40.7% whiff per swing rate with a 24.6% K-BB%. The pitch can be described as a fading changeup given the heavy sidespin component coupled with decent depth. Gallen’s changeup sits almost two hours off his four-seamer in terms of spin direction, which is ideal considering that style of changeup works best off a fastball when there’s at least a one hour spread between them. Gallen located his changeup in the zone only 28% of the time last year and induced hitters to chase on over 45% of those put out of the strike zone.

Here’s a look at all three pitches thrown to their ideal locations based upon their design:

That brings us to Gallen’s cutter. His cutter was something of an enigma given that he threw two variants with a spin direction contrast of about 70 minutes between them. Gallen liked to use his cutter more against righties, though it did appear indiscriminately to either handed hitter when he was ahead in the count.

From his debut with the Marlins in June through the end of July, Gallen threw more of a sweeping, hybrid-type cutter that could very easily be categorized as a slider (its nomenclature varies from site to site). Thrown under an average spin direction of 9:40 with heavy gyro spin, its shape created about 7-8 inches of cut with minimal lift. The pitch was then altered after being traded to the Diamondbacks; Gallen adjusted the pitch’s average spin direction to around 10:50 and created more of a back-spinning cutter that doubled its lift but lost very little of its cutting action due to the minor adjustment to its gyro orientation.

The spin comparison on each is demonstrated below using the Driveline EDGE tool:

For a more in-depth perspective on both, here’s an overlay showing the difference between his early (left) and late-season (right) cutters:

Now that we’ve covered the design of both pitches, let’s take a look at how effective each version was last season.

With the exception of a 3% bump in whiffs per swing, Gallen had much better results using the June/July hybrid cutter.

So we see that Gallen’s early cutter was the better pitch, but there are other reasons why it should be deployed in 2020. For one, its design is an ideal fit for his arsenal; Gallen kept the style of his three other pitches essentially the same, which provides a good foundation to base this recommendation on.

The 9:40 spin direction, taking gyro orientation into consideration as well, plays off the spin direction of Gallen’s four-seamer by around 90 degrees. Considering Gallen approaches ideal spin mirroring with his four-seamer and curveball, the hybrid cutter fits in with that pair very nicely. In a vacuum, the three pitches create almost perfect symmetry:

What’s more, the hybrid cutter works well off the changeup, as both of them split in opposite directions with a negligible difference in lift:

Gallen is just 24 years old and there’s a lot of room for growth in his pitching development. Gallen’s coaches note his work ethic as well as the poise he demonstrated in 2019 as signs that he’s headed for a strong season in 2020.

Despite the fact we are looking at a small sample, the hybrid cutter fits Gallen’s arsenal much better than the back-spinner variant. In addition to how it rounds out an effective repertoir, hitters had a harder time dealing with the pitch. Furthermore, Gallen is ahead of the game with how tight his release points are on each pitch, an advantage some pitchers aren’t afforded. Having that additional layer of deception can only improve Gallen’s chances of being a mainstay in the Diamondbacks’ 2020 rotation. With his arsenal tightened up by adjusting his cutter, Gallen could surprise many and end up finishing as one of the better starting pitchers this year.

While Yasiel Puig remains unsigned, a couple of other free agent outfielders came off the board on Wednesday via one-year deals at rock-bottom prices that belie their potential productivity even in part-time roles. Cameron Maybin returned to the Tigers, with whom he debuted in 2007, via a $1.5 million deal that includes an additional $1.3 million in incentives, while Jarrod Dyson agreed to a $2 million contract with the Pirates.

The well-traveled Maybin, who turns 33 on April 4, has played for eight different major league teams and has already passed through the hands of the Tigers twice. They made him the No. 10 pick out of an Asheville, North Carolina high school in 2005, and brought him to the majors in 2007, but dealt him to the Marlins that December in the Miguel Cabrera blockbuster. After three years with the Marlins, four with the Padres, and one with the Braves, he sparkled in a return to the Tigers for the 2016 season (.315/.383/.418) but was nonetheless dealt to the Angels that November and continued on his merry way. After splitting the 2018 campaign between the Marlins (again) and Mariners, he went to spring training last year with the Giants but was cut in late March after being arrested on a DUI charge. He landed with the Indians and opened the season with the team’s Triple-A Columbus affiliate before being sold to the Yankees for all of $25,000 on April 25, a time when Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, Aaron Hicks, and Clint Frazier were all sidelined by injuries.

Maybin came up big for the Yankees even as every outfielder on the roster (himself included) hit the injured list at one point or another. He hit .285/.364/.494 in 269 plate appearances, setting career highs in slugging percentage, home runs (11), and wRC+ (127). His 1.6 WAR was his highest mark since the aforementioned 2016 season and ranked fourth among Yankees outfielders behind Judge, Brett Gardner, and Mike Tauchman. Of his 63 starts, he made 35 in left field, two in center, and 25 in right, and finished with zero DRA and -0.2 UZR. Well-regarded by teammates, he was known for giving hugs after home runs, something that kept him busy given that he was present for the lion’s share of their franchise-record 290 dingers.

As The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler detailed in mid-August, Maybin’s offensive improvement owes to his joining the launch angle revolution. Though the Astros (with whom he spent August, September, and October with in 2017) were the first team to encourage him to think about hitting the ball in the air, it took further discussions with players such as J.D. Martinez (with whom Maybin played in 2016) and Mitch Haniger (his teammate in Seattle) before Maybin came around. Via Adler:

Specifically, Haniger said he and Maybin talked about keeping the barrel of the bat through the zone and how to increase power “without exposing more swing and miss.” That balance was something that had caused Maybin hesitance in his curiosity about the evolution of hitters like Martinez and Haniger. A whiff once made him “feel some type of way,” a natural expectation for a hitter with his profile. Through his conversations with Haniger over August and September, Maybin finally came around to the idea of modifying his swing and his approach.

Convinced, Maybin called Craig Wallenbrock, the private hitting instructor who helped Martinez become one of the game’s top power hitters, and spent the winter of 2018-19 reworking his swing so as to drive the ball and elevate it with more consistency while worrying less about swinging and missing. Even with a career-high 26.8% strikeout rate, the results were night and day:

While a carbon copy repeat of that performance seems unlikely, it’s fair to suggest that with his new approach, Maybin is more than capable of surpassing his Steamer projection (.248/.330/.382, 89 wRC+, 0.4 WAR in 328 PA), which outdoes that of right fielder Victor Reyes (.273/.308/.400, 84 wRC+) if not that of left fielder Christin Stewart (.245/.327/.434). While the righty-swinging Maybin would seem to be a natural fit for a platoon with the lefty-swinging Stewart (who hit a dreadful .233/.305/.388 for an 80 wRC+ with -1.2 WAR), Maybin has shown a sizable reverse platoon split throughout his career; he owns a 98 wRC+ against righties compared to an 84 mark against lefties, and within the small sample sizes of last year was a 143 wRC+ in 181 plate appearances versus righties and a 96 mark in 88 PA versus lefties.

Maybin may well be on the move come July 31, and the same could be true for the 35-year-old Dyson, who on the offensive side is a less successful version of the speedy, slappy groundballer Maybin used to be. In 2019 with the Diamondbacks, Dyson set career highs for playing time (452 PA) and homers (seven) but hit just .230/.313/.320 for a 69 wRC+. For as meager as that line was, it was nonetheless a drastic improvement on his .189/.282/.257 (48 wRC+) showing in 2018.

Dyson’s limited value is entirely wrapped up in his baserunning and his defense. He was 30-for-34 (88%) in stolen bases last year, with a total that ranked third, and by our baserunning metric, his 8.9 runs above average trailed only the Orioles’ Jonathan Villar. His career success rate of 85% is tops among active players with at least 100 attempts. Via Statcast, his sprint speed places him in the 83rd percentile, down from the 92nd percentile in 2018, albeit in more playing time.

Defensively, Dyson remains an above-average center fielder; in 646.2 innings in the middle pasture last year via 61 starts and 42 appearances off the bench, he was 2.6 runs above average according to UZR and 5 above average via DRS. He owns a career UZR/150 of 10.9 in center, with a similarly prorated DRS of 18, and he’s above-average in the corners as well; in 879 total innings, he posted a 7.9 UZR and 13 DRS. With the team’s recent trade of Starling Marte to the Diamondbacks, the two clubs have effectively swapped center fielders this offseason, though it’s worth noting that the Diamondbacks used Ketel Marte there more frequently than Dyson (89 starts and 687.2 innings).

Dyson’s arrival allows the Pirates to keep Bryan Reynolds in left field and Gregory Polanco in right. Light-hitting Guillermo Heredia, the fourth outfielder, could be a potential platoon partner, as the righty-swinging 29-year-old owns a career 103 wRC+ in 487 PA against lefties but just a 69 wRC+ in 533 PA against righties. The lefty-swinging Dyson owns just a 65 wRC+ in 447 PA against lefties and an 83 wRC+ in 2,170 PA against righties. If that sounds like an unspectacular fit, well, meet your 2020 Pirates.

Dyson, for his part, was realistic about the current job market:

Jarrod Dyson on why he signed with the Pirates: "Ain’t too much out there right now. You would love to explore, but at the same time, you have to take what you can, take the good with the bad and roll with it. Make the most of it."

— Jason Mackey (@JMackeyPG) February 13, 2020

Both Maybin and Dyson have their limitations, admittedly. Even so, the late date of their signings and the meager salaries they’ll receive relative to the value they’re likely to deliver speaks to the squeeze put on veteran free agents in their mid-30s. The good news for both is that if they play well in the first half of the season, they’ll likely wind up with contenders down the stretch.

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about why the Astros sign-stealing scandal won’t go away, and the reception to the team’s first attempts to apologize. Then they preview the 2020 Angels (28:13) with The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya, and the 2020 Cardinals (1:03:49) with MLB.com’s Will Leitch. Lastly (1:37:15), Ben talks to FanGraphs’ Craig Edwards about Boston’s Mookie Betts Competitive Balance Tax myth, MLB’s reported 14-team playoff format idea, and the new three-batter-minimum rule (plus a postscript about the Mets’ new big-leaguers-only clubhouse).

Audio intro: Queen, "Scandal"
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Audio interstitial 2: The Association, "Standing Still"
Audio interstitial 3: The Delgados, "Ballad of Accounting"
Audio outro: Isotopes, "Poison in the Clubhouse"

Link to story on Astros apologies
Link to The Athletic story on 2017 Astros clubhouse
Link to latest WSJ story on the Astros’ sign stealing
Link to Washington Post story on sign-stealing suspicions
Link to Bauer’s story on sign stealing
Link to Craig on Boston’s savings
Link to Zach Kram on Boston’s savings
Link to Rob Arthur on payroll flexibility
Link to story about MLB’s proposed playoff format
Link to Ben Clemens on the playoff format
Link to Cliff Corcoran on the three-batter minimum
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The Astros cheated. That’s not in dispute. The search for just how much the banging scheme helped the team, however, is ongoing. Rob Arthur got the party started. Tony Adams chronicled the bangs. Here at FanGraphs, Jake Mailhot examined how much the Astros benefited, which players were helped most, and even how the banging scheme performed in clutch situations. In a recent press conference, owner Jim Crane downplayed the benefit, saying “It’s hard to determine how it impacted the game, if it impacted the game, and that’s where we’re going to leave it.” It’s a rich literature, and not just because it’s fun to write “banging scheme” — but I didn’t want to leave it there.

I thought I’d take a different tack. All of these studies are based on reality, and reality has one huge problem: it’s so maddeningly imprecise. You can’t know if we captured all the right bangs. You can’t know if the system changed, or if it had details or mechanisms we didn’t quite understand or know about. And even when everything is captured right, those sample sizes, those damn sample sizes, are never quite what you need to feel confident in their results.

If we simply ignore what actually happened and create our own world, we can skip all that grubby, confusing reality. Imagine, if you will, a player who makes perfectly average swing decisions and achieves perfectly average results on those decisions.

Let’s further stipulate, while we’re far off into imaginary land, that pitchers attack our perfectly average batter in a perfectly average way. For each count, they’ll throw a league average number of fastballs, and those fastballs will be in the strike zone at — you guessed it — a league average rate. The same is true for all other pitches — with cut fastballs included in “all other pitches” in this analysis.

For example, here’s what a 3-2 count looks like for our generic batter:

Since we know the rate at which each event happens as well as the wOBA value of each result, we can work out the expected wOBA for a 3-2 count: .366. You might notice, if you were inclined to dig, that actual wOBA in 3-2 counts in 2019 was .377. The reason for this discrepancy is another thing I’m assuming: I’m using an automatic strike zone. Every taken pitch in the zone is a called strike, and every taken pitch outside of the zone is a ball.

On 3-2 counts, this isn’t true in real life. Nearly 20% of pitches taken in the strike zone were called balls by the umpire, while only 5% of pitches outside the zone were called strikes. But to make the math easier, we’re using the exact rulebook definition, as defined by the Gameday strike zone.

Now that we know the 3-2 outcomes, we can work out the 3-1 outcomes, because any strike on 3-1 results in a 3-2 count, and we already know the wOBA value of a 3-2 count. Working backwards in this way, I found the value of every count. From 0-0, our hypothetical average batter produces a .322 wOBA, slightly higher than the actual average major league line but close.

Next, let’s start banging. Our imaginary cameraman in the stands sends his imaginary feed to the dugout hallway, where imaginary staffers bang on an imaginary trashcan. Our batter is now simply taking every pitch that isn’t a fastball. 3-2, for example, looks like this:

But something’s gone wrong. The wOBA of a batter who automatically takes everything but fastballs and behaves normally on fastballs is only .309. This batter knows what’s coming, and he’s doing worse!

Why is that? It comes down to behavior. Just because you know a pitch isn’t a fastball doesn’t mean that taking is optimal. In two strike counts, our hypothetical batter is far too passive. You don’t get extra credit for spitting on a curveball if it’s over the plate. So let’s revise our sketch. Now he’ll treat fastballs normally, and also treat non-fastballs in the strike zone normally. Is this a stretch? Maybe. But for the sake of argument, let’s say that after hearing a bang, our batter can work out that a given pitch is going to bend into the strike zone. Now 3-2 looks like this:

This type of sign-stealing is phenomenally more valuable. Our hitter, who as you’ll remember has average results on contact and whiffs just like any mere mortal when he swings, now has a .372 wOBA. That’s like turning Adam Frazier into José Altuve.

Where does the added value come from? There’s a small boost to production on contact (because putting a pitch outside of the strike zone into play is generally a bad result), but it’s mostly strikeouts and walks. In a 3-2 count, an average batter strikes out roughly 27.5 % of the time. Our bang-enabled batter checks in at a delicious 20.2%. After 2-2 counts, an average batter strikes out 38% of the time. Golden boy checks in at 28.6%. He strikes out roughly as often, from a 2-2 count, as the average batter does on 3-2!

The walks are the same story — 44.6% walks out of a 3-2 count is better than Joey Votto has done for his career, and our guy doesn’t even have a good eye! In fact, taking breaking balls outside of the strike zone automatically produces a strikeout rate of 14.8% with an otherwise average player. That’s an extreme case, sure — but it shows how valuable knowing what’s coming can be.

My simulated sign-stealing diverges from reality in many ways. Most notably, the “never swings at breaking balls out of the zone but always swings at breaking balls in the zone” rule would never work in practice. Many of those pitches are only inches apart, and knowing a pitch isn’t a fastball isn’t the same as knowing exactly where it will cross the plate.

Even if the benefit is only half as pronounced as this model, though, it’s still a huge edge in a sport where everyone is looking for tiny edges. And though my swing decision rule gives the batter too much credit, my estimates for production on contact might be too conservative. After all, an average hitter might deliver better-than-average results when hitting a fastball that he knows is coming. Some percentage of the production on contact in every bucket is the result of hitters who were fooled but still put the ball in play, which wouldn’t happen if the batter knows what’s coming. That’s difficult to model, but it’s clearly worth something.

What was most instructive to me about this exercise is where the value comes from. The wOBA edge in 3-2 counts is real, but it’s less than 50 points. After 2-0, it’s even smaller than that. Lots of value is hidden in the first two pitches of a plate appearance. On the first pitch, the perfectly-informed batter goes down 0-1 45% of the time, as opposed to 48% for a regular batter. How about 0-1? A regular batter goes from 0-1 to 0-2 42% of the time. Sign-stealing lowers that to 34%. The average batter, after being ahead 1-0, gets to 2-0 37% of the time. In our hypothetical, that climbs to 42%. It’s not just that our bang beneficiary does better in every count; he also gets to the better counts more often.

The point is, the value of stealing signs doesn’t have to be obvious. It’s not about crushed home runs in surprising fastball counts or even really about loud contact. It’s merely an accumulation of small edges, the Votto-ization of average batters. Being a little ahead in every count stacks up to produce a huge effect.

Knowing this, it’s easier to understand why looking for the edge the Astros got has been so challenging. It’s mostly in not swinging and counts not achieved, and as we saw from the hypothetical player who only swung at fastballs, incorrectly laying off a pitch in the strike zone is pretty harmful. It doesn’t take many crossed signals, bangs that keep batters from swinging at fastballs, to do some damage to the bottom line.

I don’t mean to say that there was no benefit to the scheme, or that unless they were perfectly accurate it didn’t provide a competitive advantage. In fact, the potential gains are large. But without knowing the full extent of the system, or whether any alternative or additional methods were used, I’m not surprised that we have trouble isolating the benefit in the data.

Someday, we’ll know more about the exact particulars of the Dark Arts scheme. Until more evidence comes out, though, I hope it’s helpful to see the theoretical benefit of sign-stealing, to give an idea of the theoretical advantage to be gained, and to see why baseball has come down so strongly against it.

This article has been updated to correct a typo in the first table.

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 Tampa Bay Rays.

Batters

One of the things that amazes me about the Rays is how easily they seem to be able to find solidly average talent. Give Tampa’s front office a list of minor league free agents and guarantee that those they talk to will sign with them, and I bet they end up with a bushel of 1.5 WAR players. Heck, send them into a dollar store and they’ll probably find a second baseman who can hit .270/.330/.380 and some off-brand Doritos.

Just one player, Austin Meadows, is projected to be worth at least three wins, so the team’s lineup will tend to max out at “good” rather than competing with the Yankees, A’s, or Twins; they just don’t have enough high-upside talent (right now at least, someone is coming). But it also makes them an incredibly safe lineup, one of the few groups that could survive an obscene number of injuries.

Imagine if Mike Zunino, Ji-Man Choi, Brandon Lowe, Willy Adames, Yandy Díaz, Meadows, Kevin Kiermaier, Hunter Renfroe, and Yoshitomo Tsutsugu all walked off the field in protest, like the Tigers Ty Cobb game a century ago. Even losing nine players, ZiPS only has the Rays losing seven wins and still finishing with 84 wins. And that’s an ungenerous projection as it assumes the Rays would have to make all their replacements from within the system and wouldn’t be allowed to do things like acquire Trey Mancini, or pick up some more waiver-wire outfielders.

Getting back to this timeline, Meadows has the highest projection and the greatest upside as well; he’s a polished hitter who could easily get 100 more plate appearances than the projection if he’s healthy and ought to better his defensive numbers.

ZiPS also has friends in Lowe places, and thinks that the Nate Lowe should largely supplant Ji-Man Choi or José Martínez as a full-timer very quickly. I’m very curious where Hunter Renfroe’s defensive metrics go this year. His UZR and DRS spiked quite suddenly last season, and given the volatility of these numbers, digging deeper into his defensive improvement is on my to-do list. And the projection might even be underselling Renfroe’s defense; Jeff Zimmerman wrote a piece on players playing through injuries rather than going in the injured list and Renfroe had the largest difference between his healthy OPS and OPS while injured. Playing through injuries is one of those things that’s really hard for ZiPS to capture.

Pitchers

The Charlie Morton/Blake Snell/Tyler Glasnow trio is a solid one, and it’s amazing that the team won 96 games with the latter two barely throwing enough innings to qualify for the ERA title combined. The Yankees were the team that received most public coverage of their injuries, but the Rays lost a lot of playing time from some of their best players as well. Some luck with the health here gives the rotation even higher upside than their 2019 performance.

It doesn’t look like the Rays are going to a traditional rotation any time soon, but they almost have the personnel to do so. ZiPS was as a big fan of Brendan McKay‘s 2019 and if Tampa just stuck him in the rotation, the computer thinks he’ll be among the best fourth starters in baseball. Trevor Richards is just fine as a conventional fifth starter and ZiPS is hopeful that Brent Honeywell’s healthy enough to give us some rare right-handed screwballs.

Most contending teams don’t trade their saves leader two months before the season starts, but then, the Rays aren’t most teams, and Emilio Pagán is with the Padres now. ZiPS still has the Yankees bullpen as the better one, but the Rays are incredibly deep and could probably lop off their top projected reliever (Nick Anderson) and still have an elite relief corps.

Prospects

I’m not going to spoil ZiPS’ exact ranking for Wander Franco, which will be revealed in the ZiPS Top 100 Prospects post on Monday, but I guess it’s not much of a surprise to say that Franco ranks very highly, edging out another very highly touted prospect by a single run in career projection. ZiPS thinks Wander would be almost average right now, but it’s not a hypothesis that the Rays are likely to test in April. Let’s just say his mean projection is that of a regular All-Star in his prime, and ZiPS projects quick, aggressive growth.

I already mentioned Brendan McKay above, but ZiPS is bullish on his future as a pitcher. As a hitter? Not so much, and we may be at the point where it just makes sense for McKay to whole-ass one thing. Ronaldo Hernandez isn’t quite as close as McKay or Franco, but ZiPS sees him growing into a yearly two-win catcher. Vidal Brujan gets a long-term projection at a similar level as Hernandez’s. The risk is higher, but ZiPS sees Xavier Edwards in the same group as Brujan and Hernandez as a prospect. There will be a lot of Rays in the ZiPS Top 100.

And there’s the usual fringe prospectage for ZiPS to enjoy. Michael Brosseau has enough skills to at least be a role player in the majors and ZiPS thinks Josh Fleming will be an adequate back-end starter. The system retains its love for Colin Poche and has found a new love in Tyler Zombro’s slider and control.

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. Also, I’ve added Yoshitomo Tsutsugo, who is not yet in our system, into the depth chart, and reshuffled a bit, so the depth charts are not an exact match.

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