For the 20th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Baltimore Orioles.

Batters

If you’ve looked at the depth chart or glanced down at the projections — if you haven’t, this is a weird article to be reading — you ought to be impressed with just how much offensive talent the O’s have. Of course, some spots are brighter (catcher, third base) than others (first base), but there’s really no gaping hole anywhere in this lineup. This reflects the success the team has had developing offensive prospects in recent years. While practically none of the players picked up in the 2018 selloff have worked out all that well, the Elias-era front office has a great record with minor league hitters. The O’s had our top prospect in 2022 (Adley Rutschman) and 2023 (Gunnar Henderson, though ZiPS had him second to Corbin Carroll), and Jackson Holliday, currently no. 1 on The Board, looks to be the heavy favorite to be the top prospect in 2024. Heck, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that someone like Coby Mayo or Samuel Basallo ends up the top prospect in 2025! The O’s eke out a few more wins than the depth chart here simply because of their depth; players like Mayo, Joey Ortiz, Colton Cowser, and Connor Norby all project to be positive contributors without an obvious place to lock up playing time right now. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that I’d rather have a lineup of all the Orioles who don’t make their team’s 25-man roster out of spring training than all the Washington Nationals who do!

The Ryans O’Hearn and Mountcastle project as the weakest part of the lineup, but offense is in short supply in free agency, and I don’t expect Baltimore to make any changes here. It was always extremely unlikely that the Orioles would return to being one of the league’s payroll heavy hitters, but comments from John Angelos suggest that they’re not even going to be a middle class team, with spending more in line with Tampa Bay or Pittsburgh. If the least valuable parts of your offense project for a wRC+ around 110, you have bigger needs elsewhere. Before anyone calls shenanigans on some of the top comps, Mike Scioscia broke into the majors as a really good hitter before his radiation poisoning and Grady Hatton was a really good hitter when he was young, too. But when your top prospect gets two Hall of Famers in his top three comps, plus a third player who ought to be a Hall of Famer, you shouldn’t be too greedy.

This is one of the best offensive teams in baseball. While that’s never a guarantee of success, it’s a great place to start!

Pitchers

While the O’s have developed a lot of hitters, they haven’t had the same luck with pitchers outside of Grayson Rodriguez. Very few of the large stable of no. 4-ish starter prospects they had a few years ago really developed further, with Kyle Bradish and Dean Kremer being the primary success stories. Suspicions surrounding the pitching are what held Baltimore back in the ZiPS projections last year, and while the computer has come around on a number of pitchers, Bradish most notably, it’s still a rotation that’s begging for one high-end starter in free agency. I’d love to see the O’s go after Shōta Imanaga in any case; he’s gotten a lot less press than Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but he should come cheaper and there’s a lot to like about him. Plus, he’s a fly ball lefty whose weakness is being occasionally gopher ball-prone, and Camden Yards these days is very friendly for that type of pitcher.

Some of the Bradish gain is counteracted by ZiPS’ crush on Kremer being a bit more chaste than last year, but the rotation is at least acceptable so long as they don’t have poor luck with injuries. The team had been pretty lucky until late in the season when Félix Bautista went on the IL, where he’ll stay in 2024 thanks to Tommy John surgery. The bullpen ranked second in team WAR in 2023, but nearly 40% of that total was Bautista. If the O’s stand pat on the overall accomplishments of their 2023 ‘pen, they might regret it.

So how do the O’s look right now? You can add up the depth chart numbers (despite my warnings) and get them right around 90, and the current ZiPS sim has them at around 92 wins, the best record in the division. But that number will be revised as the winter progresses, and if teams like the Jays make any big additions and the O’s don’t, this standing could erode somewhat, despite the depth. It’s tempting to consider Baltimore’s 101 win-total in 2023 to be the team’s “starting point,” but that’s a path to disappointment, as a team exceeding its Pythagorean record and playing well in extra-innings/one-run games isn’t very predictive. Nor is it explained by bullpen quality; the r-squared between ‘pen quality, best reliever quality, and best three-reliever quality and Pythag/extra-innings/one-run game record is under 0.05 historically. And even then, the O’s don’t project to have as good a bullpen next go-around, thanks to the loss of Bautista. And no, projection misses aren’t predictive of future projection misses, even for very young or very old teams (since the projection systems already factor in age).

This is a very good team. The question is whether ownership is willing to invest enough for the Orioles to really find their ceiling.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2024 due to injury, and players who were released in 2023. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Belgian Death Metal Skiffle Band that only plays songs by Franz Schubert, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.33.

Hitters are ranked by 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 that 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.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.

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