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 Toronto Blue Jays.

Batters

None of the projections here will blow your socks off, but on the plus side, very few of them will get your socks wet (and then you’re walking around all day with your feet wet and clammy, and every time you step it makes a little squishing sound, and you think there’s a bit of dirt in there and you’d like to take off your shoes, but that’s why you’re not allowed in Kroger anymore, so you can’t). If social media is any indication, Matt Chapman might be underrated at this point. He was terrible in the second half, but I haven’t found that to be very predictive, and overall, he still gave the Blue Jays about four wins that they now have to replace. Right now, third base, along with left field and designated hitter, looks to be an amalgamation of role players, though I don’t expect that situation to persist through Opening Day, if for no other reason than active rosters aren’t large enough for Toronto to start the season with all three of those unwieldy chimeras.

Bo Bichette is terrific and the Jays ought to extend him soon, lest he take $300 million to go somewhere else in a few years. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is still a bit of an enigma. Indeed, he has turned out to be one of the harder players to project, which I wouldn’t have expected when he was a prospect. His upside is still there, but you can’t get around the fact that he’s had one awesome season, one solid season, and a whole lot of meh. ZiPS still thinks he’ll be solid, but practically nothing between a one- and six-win season would surprise me at this point. The power numbers do suggest he should have hit for more thump in 2023 than he actually did.

Daulton Varsho’s fine, though probably not good enough to silence the second-guessing about the Gabriel Moreno trade. George Springer showed some significant signs of decline in 2023, a trend that is likely to continue as he turned 34 late in the season. ZiPS is optimistic about Davis Schneider being fine at second base, though the computer isn’t exactly banking on another 1.000 OPS (and neither should you).

Pitchers

With a couple obvious places to improve the offense, I would not be surprised to see the Blue Jays take a low-key approach when it comes to the rotation, or even stand pat. Hyun Jin Ryu is a free agent, but the Jays only had him for part of the season anyway, and the four healthy returning starters — Chris Bassitt, Kevin Gausman, José Berríos, and Yusei Kikuchi — all have rather unsurprising projections. They could still trade him this offseason, but it’s probably too early to write off Alek Manoah. 2023 was an unforgettable season for the right-hander, in the sense that it would haunt your dreams no matter what ancient curse or potion you conjured to try to forget it, but the fact remains that he was really good in 2022, even when you adjust for some of the smoke and mirrors around his 2.24 ERA that year. Dependable pitchers are always hard to find and expensive to keep, and pretty much any pitcher who is only a year removed from relevance should have a lot of team interest as long as their arm is physically attached.

Outside of Jordan Romano, I’m not sure I’d call much of the bullpen exciting, but it is relatively deep — ZiPS goes seven or eight relievers until it gets to the below-average guys. Jays relievers were ninth in WAR in 2023 and sixth in FIP, but you rarely saw anyone talk about the solidity of the unit. Now, I suppose some of that is to be expected — from my unscientific survey, about 95% of fans think the primary reason their favorite team isn’t performing better is because the bullpen is the worst one ever put together. But in any case, Toronto’s is a rather stable group that doesn’t need a whole lot of tinkering this winter. Save that cash for Shohei Ohtani! Oh, wait, I’m an Orioles fan, so I’d prefer if the Jays did not do that. If you’re looking for a ZiPS Special in the reliever category, Connor Cooke, a fastball-slider reliever with a changeup-in-progress who struggled a bit in his brief Triple-A run but dominated in Double-A, may be the pick for you.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. The font size of the player names is roughly proportional to their projected 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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