As the calendar turns to May, there has been enough baseball played that every team should be, at a minimum, re-evaluating their "Plan A," if they hadn't been already. Are you daydreaming about trades for Mike Trout? Keep dreaming. Until teams become serious sellers later in the summer, most upgrades have to come from within, either using different players or using the existing talent in a different manner.
With our heads firmly in reality, what moves can teams actually make to improve in the short term? For all but a few of the 30 suggested changes (which I'll note), the ZiPS projection system estimates a rest-of-season improvement of at least five net runs, or about half a win.
American League East
While I appreciate the creativity to use a player like Seth Smith at leadoff, Hyun Soo Kim was the team's OBP leader in 2016, projected to be the leader again in 2017, and the team has hit him mostly seventh in the lineup. In addition, I still think the team gave up way too soon on Kim hitting left-handed pitchers; he actually had fairly normal platoon splits for a left-handed batter in Korea. Generic platoon splits for all players predict a specific player's future platoon splits far better than his actual platoon splits until you're talking 2,000 to 3,000 career plate appearances.
Given the competition is Joey Rickard and Craig Gentry, I'd rather the O's do what the Braves did with Ryan Klesko and stop typecasting Kim as a platoon player.
The projections never completely bought into Sandy Leon's 2016, and it's hard to say, at least so far, that the projections have been wrong. Still, ZiPS projects Christian Vazquez as only a little better than Leon the rest of the way. And as poor a start as he has had, none of the Red Sox minor league options look to be a significant upgrade over Steven Wright.
You can't get a five-run move here unless the Red Sox can get David Ortiz to come out of retirement.
As of Monday morning, the team leads the league in runs scored and has allowed the fewest runs, so the Yankees are not a team that's burning to make any large-scale changes. The biggest move, from a projection standpoint, is putting Chris Carter at first rather than Greg Bird. Bird is still the long-term option, but the rest-of-season projection of .221/.304/.415 reflects the reality of a player who missed an entire developmental year because of injury and has done nothing offensively this season. To snag a few extra runs, let Bird get comfortable in Triple-A and then bring him back later this season for the pennant race and as the starter in 2018.
Kevin Kiermaier's strength is his elite glove, not his ability to avoid outs -- ZiPS projects only a .312 on-base percentage from Kiermaier over the rest of the season. While the team isn't deep with OBP players, getting Steven Souza Jr. and Morrison more plate appearances and Kiermaier fewer is enough, in the projections, to eke out another half-win.
What makes the situation for the Jays awkward -- well, other than being in last place and at the bottom of a massive hole -- is that Devon Travis, Jose Bautista and Roberto Osuna are struggling mightily even though you expect them to be just fine long term. Meanwhile, a player you expect to be a problem, like Justin Smoak, is actually one of the team's best players. I think the key decision for the Jays may be when to throw in the towel rather than exploring what big changes they can make.
American League Central
No, I'm not buying that Avisail Garcia is a legitimate .443 BABIP hitter; no player in the last 50 years has retired with a BABIP above .360. But he's not currently a problem in the lineup. Yoan Moncada is at Triple-A and killing it. If the goal is to immediately improve the team, getting Moncada in the lineup over Tyler Saladino would be beneficial. Getting Melky Cabrera out of the lineup would be beneficial as well, but the team's minor league options don't actually project as any better than Cabrera.
Cleveland is an extremely well-run organization, but I think the Indians optioned Tyler Naquin too quickly, and despite Abraham Almonte's strong start, I think the evidence points to Naquin being the superior offensive player. I also don't think Lonnie Chisenhall is likely to have very appealing defensive stats in center field over the long haul. At the very least, I'd rather have the left-handed Naquin on the bench over Brandon Guyer, who doesn't really fit the roster right now.
At 38, the question wasn't if Victor Martinez would fall off a cliff, but when. V-Mart has looked done in the past (2015), but a .218/.281/.276 start has pushed his rest-of-season projection down to an anemic .258/.315/.398. While the team strikes me as too conservative to actually bench him -- and Jim Adduci probably isn't any better -- not hitting Martinez cleanup would be a nice start. Drop him to the bottom of the order until he shows signs of being able to cheat Father Time once more.
Nothing stands out from a projection standpoint, with the Royals' depth in the lineup and pitching staff being sapped the past couple of years, and with interesting options such as Jarrod Dyson now wearing different uniforms. It might not help the Royals this year, but with the team looking about done, I'd almost rather have the team see if minor leaguer Ryan O'Hearn's improvement is for real and trade Eric Hosmer if there's any team that really thinks he's a star. (Sadly for Kansas City, Jim Leyland is not the manager or general manager of any team.)
It's sad to think about, but we've reached the point where Kennys Vargas now projects as a significantly better hitter than Joe Mauer at first base by 50 points of OPS. Even with a disastrous 2016, Jose Berrios is pitching excellently in the minors and ZiPS projects him to be a significant upgrade over Kyle Gibson, though that may be damning with faint praise. The Twins should also hop in a time machine and be more reasonable about their Brian Dozier demands, but we haven't solved that time-travel problem yet.
American League West
The rotation hasn't been a strength for the Astros this year, outside of Dallas Keuchel's bounce-back campaign, but at least Lance McCullers and Charlie Morton have peripheral stats that suggest their high-ish ERAs are likely to come down significantly. Mike Fiers, on the other hand, has been a mess this season, and Chris Devenski, with a 2.16 ERA and 10 strikeouts per nine innings in 125 frames, has ample experience as a starter and is being wasted in the bullpen.
ZiPS projects a 3.60 ERA from Devenski as a starter, which any team would take. And if Joe Musgrove pitches better and the Astros have a problem of too many starting pitchers when Collin McHugh returns, that's a problem that no team in history has been unhappy about.
With a very weak farm system, the Angels have few good options to patch any of their holes. Trout, Andrelton Simmons and the bullpen are the areas that have functioned well, even as the team still manages to hang around the .500 mark. It's not as if the team is actually going to give up on Albert Pujols, either. I'd at least try Simmons at the top of the order. I'm not sure he's actually a .358 OBP guy, but he's at the right age for a peak offensive season.
So you have Khris Davis, leading the AL in home runs and as scary a hitter from a pure power standpoint as anyone in the major leagues right now. But despite 10 home runs, he has only 17 RBIs in the cleanup spot. If you're looking for a reason for change, the largest one is the top three of the A's lineup having on-base percentages of .250, .287 and .283. Rajai Davis and Jaff Decker are both miscast as leadoff hitters.
And more confusingly, if the A's liked Yonder Alonso enough to retain him, why don't they like him enough to put him in the first half of the lineup regularly while he's actually hitting well? Go Jed Lowrie-Alonso-Davis and actually try to take advantage of having the AL's most prolific home run hitter.
The Mariners have gotten very little offense at first base, and even though Danny Valencia is projected to be better than his anemic .181/.259/.306, his rest-of-year .256/.310/.417 line isn't remotely what you want from your first baseman. He still projects at a .760 OPS strictly against left-handed pitchers, and Daniel Vogelbach, hitting .309/.409/.473 for Tacoma, remains the best option against righties. While that's not amazing first-base production, it's better than miscasting Valencia as a full-time starter at first.
It's long past time to drop Nomar Mazara and Mike Napoli in the batting order, especially the latter. Joey Gallo is leading the team in OPS by a sizable margin, and he's still batting mostly seventh and eighth in the lineup. The team has finally stopped using Carlos Gomez as the leadoff hitter -- there's no law that the center fielder has to hit leadoff no matter how unsuited for the position -- but it would be nice to see Shin-Soo Choo, the team's best table setter, more regularly leading off. Delino DeShields projects at only .323 OBP for the rest of the season.
National League East
The most obvious thing to do would be to call up Ozzie Albies, but he's just 20 and still getting the hang of Triple-A pitching. Given that the Braves aren't realistically competing for the playoffs this year, there's no compelling reason to push him into enough service time that he ends up being a super-two player for arbitration. But what the Braves can do is stop hitting Adonis Garcia in the No. 2 spot when he's projected to have the lowest OBP of any Atlanta starter for the rest of the season.
You can understand not using Dansby Swanson there while he's struggling, but getting on base is Nick Markakis' main strength, and the regular No. 3 hitter, Freddie Freeman, has had runners on base in only one-third of his plate appearances (Jace Peterson, for example, is at 50 percent).
One little-known fact is that the spot in the batting order that leads off the fewest innings is the No. 3 spot. Marcell Ozuna is unlikely to maintain his current .357 on-base percentage, but his power should remain, and it's better to have him higher in the order rather than frequently hitting after the underwhelming Justin Bour.
It's getting to the point where the Mets are giving away wins by not calling up their top prospect, Amed Rosario. He's hitting .400 at Triple-A, and the Mets are supposed to be competing. Yet their season is rapidly spiraling out of control. Jose Reyes has been terrible -- he has lost 19 points of OPS in his rest-of-season projections in one month -- and Asdrubal Cabrera has no business playing shortstop defensively. Now possibly without Thor, the Mets need another way to catch lightning in a bottle.
The team has done a poor job using its better relief pitchers in higher-leverage situations, with a very small spread between the best and worst relievers in leverage index. For leverage index when entering a game, you don't see a Phillies player until No. 53 (Hector Neris). Just getting Neris and Joaquin Benoit, the best projected reliever on the team, into more higher-leverage situations at the rate that other teams manage to do gets an estimated six additional runs this season.
This is a team that's actually using the talent it has fairly effectively, given that its holes don't match up well with minor league talent that could play in the majors right now and that the lineup choices are well-optimized. ZiPS suggests that eventually playing a returning Stephen Drew at shortstop and playing Trea Turner in center rather than Michael Taylor full time would net a couple extra runs, but that's not really a large enough difference to make a reshuffle practical.
National League Central
Jason Heyward's decent start and Kyle Schwarber's rough one have changed the projections just enough that Heyward's projected rest-of-season OBP almost matches Schwarber's. While Schwarber almost certainly is going to hit for more isolated power this year, Heyward may make more sense hitting leadoff. That being said, it's only a few runs. The best move is to not make one, with practically every experimental move costing the Cubs at least five runs. As "WarGames" told us in the 1980s, sometimes the winning move is not to play. OK, that movie was more about nuclear war, but it still works here.
End the Bronson Arroyo experiment. It was nice to give him one last chance, but for a 40-year-old rotation member to make sense, a team really needs to be in win-now mode, and even then, it's not like Arroyo pitches well. Half of the upper minors projects as a better-this-season starter than Arroyo, not just eventual returnees Anthony DeSclafani and Homer Bailey, but also more marginal pitchers like Sal Romano, Jackson Stephens and journeyman Rob Wooten. I'm not sure what using Arroyo accomplishes for the Reds as an organization.
Tommy Milone was going to go here, but the Brewers already designated him for assignment. And I'm guessing my editor won't let me suggest the "Give Eric Thames a disguise so he can hit twice in the batting order" trick. (Editor's note: Maybe.) So it's not quite as exciting, but Brandon Woodruff already projected as the team's fourth-best starting pitcher coming into the season, and with him being solid for Colorado Springs -- a nasty environment for any pitcher -- that projection has only improved as Wily Peralta has gotten worse. Peralta has regressed as a pitcher and may flourish in the bullpen. Yes, Peralta's 4-1, but that's more because of the Brewers' offense than his pitching.
With Starling Marte's suspension, the Pirates took the path of least resistance in center field, restoring Andrew McCutchen to his old position. Problem is, he has been 16 runs below average per season over 2014-16, according to Baseball Info Solutions, and 11 runs below average per year by Ultimate Zone Rating. And as the truism says, he's not getting any younger. If Gregory Polanco is not five runs below average in center field, that's a significant upgrade.
How about they never, ever, play Matt Adams in the outfield again? ZiPS projecting Adams full time as minus-15 runs per year as a corner outfielder actually looks optimistic compared to his very-small-sample-size minus-50 runs rate he has put up by UZR. (His BIS numbers are even worse.) While he's not quite that bad, the Cards' defense is weak already, and this just makes that problem an even bigger one. If you must get Adams' bat in the lineup, I'd rather play Jedd Gyorko in the outfield and shift Matt Carpenter back to third.
National League West
When your team is lousy or you're a 15th-century military leader, closer/longbowman Fernando Rodney is at least interesting. Maybe he pitches well enough that you can trade him through another team's ill-advised move (hello, Marlins!) or win the Battle of Agincourt. But Bad Rodney showing up isn't that exciting when your team is still relevant in the standings. Rodney has been so terrible in high-leverage situations that his win probability added is already at minus-1.5 wins. ZiPS projects a 4.30 ERA for him the rest of the way -- hardly a tantalizing number that justifies an important role while Arizona is playing relevant games.
ZiPS projected Jeff Hoffman as the team's fifth-best starter coming into the season, and he's now into his second season of surviving admirably in Albuquerque, one of the most hitter-friendly park/league combinations around. Of the pitchers ahead of him, Chad Bettis is fighting cancer, Jon Gray has a toe injury and Tyler Anderson has problems with the long ball. The Rockies are playing meaningful games and Hoffman is likely a significant upgrade over German Marquez, Antonio Senzatela or even Kyle Freeland (though they're not going to replace Freeland while his ERA is as low as it is).
Logan Forsythe could return from the DL soon. That's good, because Chase Utley is hitting like a pitcher this season, and small sample size or not, that's a pretty big red flag for a player as ancient as Utley. While he's one of the most underappreciated players of his era and one who is going to get totally cheated in the Hall of Fame vote in six years or so, he's just a sad reflection now of the player he once was. ZiPS projects Chris Taylor to hit .255/.311/.378 the rest of the season compared to Utley's .227/.293/.357 projection. Just give Taylor the job until Forsythe returns from the DL and fill in with Enrique Hernandez when you have to.
Coming into the season, ZiPS actually projected Dinelson Lamet as the team's best in-house starter, though that said more about the state of the Padres' rotation than any optimistic projection for Lamet. Now, we can argue whether the Padres should even care about improving the rest of the season -- getting that top draft pick may be the most valuable thing -- but if they do, Lamet has been rocking the PCL (0.45 ERA) with 12.6 strikeouts per nine innings in four starts, and I can't help but think he's still an upgrade over, well, anyone they have.
Can I choose "ban players from using dirt bikes"? No? The Giants are off to a lousy start, but they're also using their talent quite well. The last thing I would suggest, Christian Arroyo to third and Eduardo Nunez to the outfield, appears to be exactly what San Francisco is doing. Short of using Jae-Gyun Hwang as a role player, which doesn't move the needle a ton, they're losing nearly optimally, as sad as that sounds.