As players start to thaw after a long, cold off-season, fans are beginning to eat up any and all projections of their chosen teams. From ESPN, to PECOTA, to the pizza-faced kid blogging in his dorm room, everyone has begun the process of releasing their expectations for players and teams alike.
Some systems are traditionally more accurate than others, though none should be considered gospel. Nobody has a crystal ball that can tell us how MLB players are going to perform in the 2023 season. Some have little more than a gut feeling – I’m looking at you, Billy in dorm room A171.
ZiPS is one of the more respectable systems that recently released their projected figures for the upcoming MLB season. Developed by FanGraph’s Dan Szymborski, this method uses past performance and aging trends for each player to predict their performance.
Here’s how MLB.com describes it:
The system uses statistics from the previous four years for players from ages 24-38, and it weighs more recent seasons heavier. For younger or older players, it uses weighted statistics from only the previous three years. The system also factors velocities, injury data and play-by-play data into its equations.
So how does ZiPS view this year’s crop of starters in the Twins’ outfield? The group is obviously headlined by their All-Star center fielder, but the system feels pretty rosy about the other two starters who are bound to get the lion’s share of playing time.
Byron Buxton
ZiPS 2023: 90 games played, .256/.323/.544 (124 wRC+), 22 HR, 7 SB, 4.1 WAR
After a career year in 2022, ZiPS foresees Buxton putting up just about as much production per game in the upcoming season. The issue is, like many projection systems, they think the star slugger will once again miss considerable time.
It’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility. Buxton has topped 100 games played in only one of his eight MLB seasons (including the pandemic-shortened campaign in 2020). But if this is the year where he manages to avoid lengthy stints on the injured list, expect all of the counting stats in their projection to be quite low. That may mean more time as the designated hitter, which plays into his WAR accumulation.
Buxton is elite as a defender, and he will bump his wins above replacement up with more games in the field, but the Twins will want him in the lineup as much as possible. Regardless of his position, look for Buxton to put up another stellar season if he can avoid the injury bug. That’s going to be the defining factor of his success. Beyond that, he could stand to improve his swing-and-miss tendencies (7th percentile strikeout percentage, 6th percentile whiff percentage).
Max Kepler
ZiPS 2023: 115 games played, .231/.320/.410 (110 wRC+), 16 HR, 4 SB, 2.3 WAR
Many are surprised to see Kepler still on Minnesota’s roster heading into spring training. The speedy outfielder has decent value thanks to his stellar defense and passable bat, and those factors play into his projected 2.3 wins above replacement. Many teams would love to have a defense-forward right fielder with a bat that’s 10% above average, including the Twins. The issue lies in whether there is true confidence that the bat can rebound after two consecutive below-average seasons. Kepler could benefit from limited shifts going forward, but it’s hard to believe that the rule change will grant him an additional 60 points in slugging percentage, as ZiPS projects.
This projection feels on the higher end, but Kepler does possess the tools that many look for in rebound candidates. To truly find improvement, he’ll need to enhance his barrel percentage (47th percentile) and his effectiveness against the breaking ball (.177 batting average, .282 slugging percentage in 2022).
Joey Gallo
ZiPS 2023: 126 games played, .194/.330/.426 (119 wRC+), 25 HR, 4 SB, 2.9 WAR
A surprise off-season addition, Gallo is a prototype for the three true outcomes style of player. His prodigious raw power is well documented, as is his perpetually low batting average. ZiPS seems to agree with this assessment for the hulking slugger, as they suggest a batting line similar to his average over the last four seasons (.196/.332/.445). Since the start of 2019, Gallo has produced two stellar campaigns where he topped 3.2 WAR, and two that left much to be desired where he failed to even reach 2.0 WAR. So which side of the coin will we see in 2023?
Gallo is consistently viewed as a plus fielder, especially in the corner outfield, and he has enough versatility to spell time at first base and occasionally at third, though that is more of an emergency option. That range could keep him in the lineup on a regular basis as long as his contact skills improve. He spent time with the Twins’ hitting coach, David Popkins, this off-season in an effort to do just that. Gallo is always going to have sky-high strikeout numbers, but if he can even marginally improve his contact ability (1st percentile in whiff percentage), then his raw power (94th percentile hard-hit percentage, 98th percentile barrel percentage) should carry him to a season well beyond these projections.
For all three of these projected starters in the Twins’ outfield, there lies a critical caveat. Each needs to stay on the field as much as possible. If they can avoid lengthy stays on the injured list, their plus defense will carry them to standard outputs. If each can raise their offensive numbers above their 50th percentile of expectations, they’ll far exceed these projections. And if they can’t do that, we’ll read all about it in next year’s series of projections.
Even from Billy in room A171.
