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 Oakland Athletics.

Batters

The A’s are the most depressing team in baseball, hands down. They actually have some competition if we’re talking about the worst team in baseball, but neither the Colorado Rockies nor the Chicago White Sox feel quite as miserable as the A’s. How often does a player take the opportunity to go all-out on the team’s owner when they announce their retirement?

Unlike other teams in full tank mode, the A’s don’t even have a bevy of young players to watch. Zack Gelof looks like a legitimate player, and Brent Rooker’s power plays well if you keep him firmly planted at DH, but I’m struggling to find any highlights otherwise. Shea Langeliers is running out of time to make progress in his plate discipline or patch the hole in his swing, and as exciting as Esteury Ruiz can be, he’s still an extremely flawed player overall. I guess that Darell Hernaiz gets a nice enough projection, but we’ve gone from anticipating the A’s salary-dumping their stars to watching a roster that really doesn’t have many players who other teams would want.

In our 2023 updated farm system rankings, the A’s ranked 28th, and ZiPS isn’t finding a lot that would gainsay that estimation. Only a single position players projects as being worth 10 WAR over the next five years (Gelof). If you fast forward to 2027, only three A’s hitters project at 1.5 WAR (Gelof, Hernaiz, and Nick Allen). The most you can say about the farm is that it’s rich in role players, with ZiPS being relatively nice to some fringe guys like Jonah Bride and Max Schuemann. But if/when the A’s get to Las Vegas, the city will be home to one of the worst teams in baseball.

Pitchers

Things are brighter when we move to the pitching staff. The A’s seem determined to pitch Mason Miller out of the bullpen in 2024, where he projects just fine, though ZiPS still thinks that he could be one of the better starters in the league fairly quickly. ZiPS also gives Mitch Spence a surprisingly strong projection, and is more optimistic than Steamer is about JP Sears. The computer also rewards Ken Waldichuk for the progress he made in the second half last year, though due to a non-Tommy John procedure on his UCL, his spring training status isn’t known yet. On the flip side, ZiPS doesn’t see much upside remaining in Paul Blackburn or Luis Medina, and thinks both Joe Boyle and Osvaldo Bido will struggle if they get the innings we currently have them slated for on our depth chart. One thing that lousy A’s teams have been able to do in the past is crank out acceptable-ish fourth and fifth starters like they have an 1890’s widget factory. That really fell apart in a disastrous 2023 season, but ZiPS is still optimistic they can at least return to their prior form.

The bullpen projects as surprisingly adequate, not that there will be many leads to hold. Miller should be fine, and Lucas Erceg and Dany Jiménez have some kind of upside. Trevor Gott will be fine in the middle of the depth chart, and ZiPS is interested in Michael Kelly and Vinny Nittoli, though both would probably be in the minors if the season started today.

What does it all add up to? The silver lining here is that the A’s weren’t really quite as bad as they played early in 2023. None of the positions or individual pitchers on the depth chart graphic actually project with a sub-replacement level WAR, so the floor is higher than many think; they’re unlikely to make another run at the 2003 Tigers or the 1962 Mets. But there’s just not much in the way of upside here. They could win more than 70 games, but they’d basically have to draw their flush on the river for five or six consecutive hands. Right now, ZiPS has the A’s somewhere between 60-68 wins — the system is appalled at the depth that isn’t on the depth chart, especially among the hitters. That’s better than the 50 wins they finished with last year, but that’s about as sunny as I can be about this franchise right now.

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.

Here are how the ZiPS percentiles worked out in 2023 for pitchers and hitters in in 2023. Percentiles are based on the projected PA or TBF.

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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