You didn't naïvely think that baseball actually ever ended, did you? We don't huddle around hot stoves anymore in the winter, but baseball never stops and teams are already in the thick of it, strategizing for the 2018 season. Even the Houston Astros' front office, which is still cleaning off the dried residue of bubbly fermented grapes, isn't completely thinking about 2017.
As is my tradition, I run a "State of the Franchise" projection for all of Major League Baseball at the start of the offseason. This does not mean that these are the official 2018 projections that you'll see in March, but they are where each team stands with only the players currently under contract. That means no Jake Arrieta for the Chicago Cubs, no Yu Darvish for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and no Eric Hosmer for the Kansas City Royals.
For players with an options or opt-outs, ZiPS projects based on the likelihood that exercising an option or opting out of a contract would be a better idea than not doing so. So ZiPS assumes a >99.9 percent chance that Madison Bumgarner returns to the San Francisco Giants and a less than 0.1 percent chance that J.J. Hardy does (under the option at least) to the Baltimore Orioles.
These numbers do factor in regressions toward the mean (as the projections do) and as these are mean projections, you'll see a smaller spread between best and worst team than you eventually will in 2018's final standings. After all, these are mean projections for each team, and some teams will be fortunate, some teams less so.
The Boston Red Sox may have held off the New York Yankees to win the American League East, but even with a full season of David Price, ZiPS projects that as of right now, it's New York that has the better roster.
New York of course had a gigantic payroll in 2017 as it typically does, but what people haven't completely noticed about this team is that it got far more of its wins from inexpensive, young talent than the good Yankees teams typically do. The last time the team won a World Series, it got 9.7 WAR (17 percent) from players making less than a million bucks. In 2017, that number was 25.9 WAR (49 percent).
While both the Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays project to have more positive 2018 seasons, don't consider these early projections as sunny optimism. The long-term arrow is still pointing downward and this is more a dead cat bounce than anything.
These projections should serve as a reminder that the Cleveland Indians right now have the best roster in the AL Central, but that they're not invincible. The team's pleasant surprises in 2017 greatly outnumbered their disappointments. (Hello, Jason Kipnis!)
The Minnesota Twins were one of the more positive stories of the season, but there's still a great deal of work to be done on the franchise, with the holes in the starting rotation the most concerning. They have minor-league options developing, but they're not there yet.
ZiPS projects the Royals to bottom out, which is no surprise given how much of the team's core talent is hitting the open market. Some players may come back, but K.C. is headed toward a rebuilding phase just as much as the Detroit Tigers are. Whether they truly realize it or think that it's a simple retool is an article for another day.
The Chicago White Sox should continue to improve but like the 2014 Cubs or 2014 Astros, it's just not time yet.
The Los Angeles Angels got some wins back this morning with the announcement of Justin Upton not opting out of his contract thanks to a renegotiated deal (by about five wins, the Angels' cupboard would be empty without Upton). Still, the Astros enter the 2017 as the easy favorites and the smart money will be on that win projection being higher than this when 2018 actually starts. That's at least my bet.
The Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners are two teams that have a lot of work to do this offseason. Texas no longer has Yu Darvish, gone months ago, and bounceback seasons by Rougned Odor and Cole Hamels may be canceled out by regression/aging by players such as Adrian Beltre (I know, I know, but he's going to be 39), Elvis Andrus and Andrew Cashner. You didn't really think ZiPS would project Cashner to match a 3.40 after a 4.61 FIP and 4.6 K/9 in 2017, did you?
The deluge for the Washington Nationals is still a year (Bryce Harper, Daniel Murphy, Gio Gonzalez) or two (Anthony Rendon) away, so don't expect much to change in the 2018 standings at the top of the National League East. But after a season in which there was very little drama about who would finish in first, the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies both project to continue to improve. Assuming their young talent continues to develop, the 2019 projections may be highly interesting.
ZiPS doesn't know the Miami Marlins are virtually certain to trade Giancarlo Stanton at some point this offseason or that the loss of Stanton, combined with one of the weakest farm systems in baseball, is going to eventually make a full fire sale the only good option. So enjoy that .500 projection for the moment.
The New York Mets' young pitching rotation gave everyone a real sense of optimism heading into 2017, which ended up becoming a debacle of a season for the New York Mess. Starting pitching should be less of a problem in 2018, but one would be lying if they felt as good about their rotation right now as they did going into this season.
Keeping Jose Quintana helps the Cubs, of course, but Jake Arrieta is a real loss and while the Cubs certainly have the finances and the interest to bring Arrieta back and signing more players this offseason, none of that has actually happened yet. Most of the rest of the core is intact and under contract, but as 2017 demonstrated, even a great team isn't an undefeatable one.
The Cincinnati Reds' minor league talent continues to develop to the extent that ZiPS sees the team as starting to become actually relevant in 2018. I still have questions about whether the team really went all-in on the rebuild as much as they should have and could have acquired more talent, but that's water under the bridge. The team already had a .500-ish offense in 2017 and the rotation would be hard-pressed to not be better by sheer accident.
Yeah, the Dodgers are still pretty good. Yu Darvish is a loss for the team, but remember, they were 74-31 this year before acquiring him from the Rangers. (He could return, of course, but again, that's not signed, sealed or delivered.) The Dodgers won 104 games, but that's never really a team's baseline projection, though they still project as the best team in baseball at this very minute.
The Arizona Diamondbacks had an incredibly positive season, but there are still offensive questions to answer, with J.D. Martinez's departure putting their outfield right back to where it was when summer started. The rotation had four pitchers that at least merited a thought in the Cy Young race and while they should be a very good group in 2018, like the Cubs after 2016, you can't expect that to be quite as good going forward.