In which we dig through the ZiPS and Steamer projections to see how the baseball writers view this Orioles team.
Just give us baseball, already! We’re one week out from the first full squad workout, just over two weeks from the first spring training game, and after that, we need to chew through the month of March before the season road opener on March 27 in Toronto.
In the meantime, it’s time to pore over stats and anticipate/obsess over how the narrative arc of this season might go.
I’ve gone over the individual player projections at Fangraphs, which includes ZiPS and Steamer, plus ATC, THE BAT, and several others that, frankly, I’ve never heard of. Here, I’ll use ZiPS and Steamer, two of the most established ones (a brief guide to the differences, BTW). Here they are in chart form, so you can check ‘em out yourself.
Here are a few takeaways (obviously, there are more, but here’s what jumped out at me):
1. Gunnar Henderson will be Most Valuable Oriole for the third year in a row.
No, the pundits didn’t exactly put it like that, but there’s no controversy among them—the projections agree that the Orioles’ shortstop will be the team WAR leader. The predicted value varies, from between 6-7.
Either way, that’s the kind of shortstop you dream of, especially when he’s playing great defense and leading your team in home runs.
Even so, don’t shed too many tears for Adley Rutschman, who had a really difficult second half of ’24 for reasons the public still doesn’t fully understand. Both ZiPS and Steamer see him as the Orioles’ No. 2, with a notable bounceback on defense and a WAR between 4.7-5.0.
Rounding out the Top 5 in projected value are Jordan Westburg (3.6 WAR), Colton Cowser (3.3 WAR) and Jackson Holliday (3.1 WAR) (ZiPS). Steamer puts Cedric Mullins at No. 4, projecting him to have a solid year at the plate (2.7 WAR), but they agree with the other projection on Westburg (3.2 WAR) and Cowser (2.7 WAR). These numbers actually seem a little low to me, in the sense that any of those guys could suddenly have a breakout year, especially Jackson Holliday. May it be so.
2. Some are unkind to the Orioles’ defense.
According to Steamer projections, only a handful of Orioles defenders are plus factors on the diamond. On that list, there’s Gunnar Henderson (5.8 Def score), Adley Rutschman (5.1 Def), Jackson Holliday (1.9 Def), Gary Sánchez (0.3 Def) and Jorge Mateo (0.3 Def).
My off-the-cuff reaction: I’m glad to see a projected bounceback for Adley, whose pop-up time and pitch framing metrics got worse in 2024 (perhaps to do with an unnamed injury).
Otherwise … well.
Jorge Mateo gets ranked the same defensive value as Gary Sánchez, who as a catcher has never exactly been glove-first. Ouch. I don’t know what position the projections have him playing—perhaps it’s the offseason work he’s been doing in the outfield, where he’s never shined. Either way, this feels low for Mateo, and also for someone like Jordan Westburg, who had range and extremely solid hands all last season. Plus there’s Gold Glove finalist Colton Cowser (now playing a smaller LF), and Tyler O’Neill, whom BaseballSavant considers to have an excellent arm. Neither gets a positive score from Steamer. Beats me.
ZiPS, for its part, employs a very different scale where defensive players all get a positive score. But in terms of relative rank, Adley gets projected as the team leader on defense, followed in order by Mateo, Westburg, Cedric Mullins, Holliday, Gunnar, Urías, and Mayo. This list makes some sense to me.
3. The Orioles will make up for the loss of Santander’s power as a collective.
Last year, the Orioles hit 235 home runs as a team, which was second best in the Majors after the Yankees and third most in team history, after 1996 (the year of Brady Anderson’s 50-homer season, when you also had Rafael Palmeiro, Cal Ripken Jr., Chris Hoiles and Robbie Alomar in the lineup) and 2016 (when Mark Trumbo, Chris Davis, Manny Machado, Adam Jones, Jonathan Schoop, Pedro Alvarez and Matt Wieters combined for 215 long balls between them). Ah, nostalgia.
Anyway, 2024 was a historic season, too, as Anthony Santander led the Orioles in home runs, becoming one of only eight switch-hitters in MLB history to hit 40 or more in a season.
What’s the plan, now that Tony and his Taters have gone north of the border? “Depth,” the team front office has said, and it looks like “depth” is what the projections are seeing, too.
Last season, the Orioles had three players above the 20-HR threshold (Santander (44), Henderson (37), and Colton Cowser (24)), followed by six who hit ten or more. ZiPS, for its part, predicts that only two Orioles will hit more than 20 home runs (Henderson and newcomer Tyler O’Neill), but after that, twelve players will hit at least ten, including Cowser, Rutschman, Coby Mayo, Ryan O’Hearn, Heston Kjerstad, Holliday, Ramón Urías, plus newcomers Gary Sánchez and Ramón Laureano. Steamer expects less from the bottom end, but puts more Orioles into the 20-homer category: Cowser, Rutschman, and Ryan Mountcastle and Jordan Westburg in the waiting room, at 19 apiece.
Steamer predicts 227 home runs from this bunch; ZiPS 241. Team Glass-Half-Full gets a boost from the left-field wall getting moved in, too.
It’s nice that, in general, the projections see the Orioles as a very balanced team. Injuries happen, players fall into slumps, folks get traded. We fans tend to agree with this assessment—it’s how the team has been built, and consistency is a blessing. At the same time, baseball is not played on paper, and there’s always the potential for someone to spring off the page and have a breakout season. Come spring, we’ll see who that is.