A lot has been made of the Tampa Bay Rays off-season. And with just over a month to go until pitchers and catchers report to camp, a lingering question begs to be answered: After a lackluster 2014 in the box, what does the 2015 season hold for the Rays? With the help of Steamer (by way of FanGraphs), we’ll attempt to answer that question by looking at the Rays’ projected offensive numbers.
First, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Despite the cellar rankings across the board, Tampa Bay moved a good number of players who had been previously depended upon. In fact, the Rays currently boast only six position players who appeared on the 2014 Opening Day roster — David DeJesus, Desmond Jennings, Brandon Guyer, Evan Longoria, James Loney, and Logan Forsythe. Rumors are also swirling, the Rays might be trying to part ways DeJesus. Let’s quickly review the roster moves which dominated the last few months.
In November Jeremy Hellickson was dealt to Arizona, while Cesar Ramos was traded to Anaheim, and Joel Peralta found a new home with the Dodgers. Then in December both Wil Myers and Ryan Hanigan were part of a three team trade with the Padres and Nationals, Sean Rodriguez was DFA’d and subsequently traded to Pittsburgh, Matt Joyce joined Ramos on the West Coast, and Cole Figueroa, Jerry Sands and Jose Molina were designated for assignment and ultimately released. Finally, Ben Zobrist and Yunel Escobar were traded to Oakland, in what could be described as a contentious deal.
Tampa Bay received 16 players (both big league ready and prospects) in return: Justin Williams, Andrew Velazquez, Jose Dominguez, Greg Harris, Mark Sappington, Jake Bauers, Burch Smith, Rene Rivera, Steven Souza, Travis Ott, Buddy Borden, Kevin Jepsen, John Jaso, Daniel Robertson, Boog Powell, and Ernesto Frieri. Lest we forget that Tampa Bay also hired a new manager, and shifted the coaching staff.
It goes without saying, Matt Silverman has been very busy. All told, the team cut payroll by about $10M and escaped $12.5M of future commitments. One still wonders, though, is the team is any better?
If perception is everything, the 2014 Rays were perceived as a team with a fizzling offense. While they could get runners on, they couldn’t convert them into runs. The overall statistics — and rankings — speak to that. Tampa Bay ranked below the American League average in runs scored (R), runs batted in (RBI), home runs (HR), batting average (BA), slugging (SLG), and on base percentage plus SLG (OPS). In fact, the only category the Rays outperformed league average was OBP. What’s more, the team was in the bottom third in baseball in RBI, homers, SLG, and OPS. That, as our design guru Adam would put it, is “no bueno.”
Things have got to get better, right? In an ideal world, taking into consideration all of the off-season roster changes, the Rays are projected to be a better team in 2015. Let’s delve into those projections.
Utilizing a couple of readily available projection sites, namely Steamer (by way of FanGraphs), and MILB.com for the rookies who may appear on the Opening Day roster (Steven Souza, Nick Franklin, Tim Beckham, Curt Casali, and Hak-Ju Lee), I found something intriguing. While the Rays aren’t projected to be an offensive juggernaut in 2015, if the projections bear true — both offensive and pitching — the Rays could be a 90+ win team in 2015.
Here’s how I did the math. First, I took into consideration the players who should make the Opening Day roster:
- Evan Longoria
- Souza
- John Jaso
- James Loney
- Desmond Jennings
- Brandon Guyer
- Asdrubal Cabrera
- David DeJesus (assuming he is not traded)
- Franklin, Kevin Kiermaier
- Logan Forsythe
- Rene Rivera
- Casali
- Beckham
- Lee
Next I tallied the totals, and compared them to the offensive totals of the previous season (see the table below). While Steamer didn’t offer complete projections for Souza, Franklin, Casali, Beckham and Lee, I pilfered MILB.com‘s projections and attempted to fill in some gaps. It shouldn’t be assumed that Souza, Franklin, Beckham or Lee will have 600 major league at-bats. However, it would reasonable to assume they would have more at-bats than Steamer projected.
As it relates to BA, OBP, SLG, OPS, wOBA, wRC+ and WAR, the numbers didn’t differentiate too much from each projection site. The big difference came in at-bats and plate appearances, hits, and runs batted in. From there I low-balled things, in that each additional HR hit by an asterisked player would count as a solo shot only. Why? It’s next to impossible to predict the situation in which he may hit a projected homer. Each homer would count for one run and one RBI. Because of it, the Rays projected total number of runs jumps from 666 to 675, and runs batted in from 608 to 617 — 63 more runs, and 31 more runs batted in than in 2014.
Furthermore, excepting the decreases in the total number of projected hits and at-bats, 2015 should find a more productive Rays in the categories that count.
It should be noted, Kansas City scored 651 runs last season and went to the World Series. Two other playoff contenders — St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants — fell within the Goldie Locks zone of 619 runs scored, and the number of runs the Rays are projected to score in forthcoming season. One thing held in common, all have an above average to excellent pitching staff. If Tampa Bay’s pitching staff is solid once again, and if the Rays can drive in more than 619 runs (the total St. Louis scored last season) it would not be a stretch to imagine them postseason bound.
Then again, projecting an upcoming season is not an exact science. Neil Paine (538 blog) put things in perspective,
…But they can never be perfect. There’s a statistical limit to how accurate any projection about a team can be in the long run. Years ago, sabermetrician Tom Tango researched the amount of talent and luck that go into team winning percentages and found that chance explains one-third of the difference between two teams’ records. That makes it hard to predict how many times a team will win over a season. The smallest possible root-mean-square error (a mathematical way of testing a prediction’s accuracy) for any projection system over an extended period of time is 6.4 wins. In a single season, forecasters can — and do — beat an RMSE of 6.4. But whenever that happens, it’s due to luck. The amount of random variance that goes into team records makes the 6.4 barrier literally impossible to beat over a large number of seasons. Over time, no forecaster’s system can ever do better.
The same could be said for individualized player projections. The random variance Paine spoke of could bolster the numbers, or — in the case of the 2014 Rays — end the season on a sour note. What is glaringly obvious, the players who are projected to be the big run producers — Longo, Souza, Jennings and Cabrera — need to be. Gone is any buffer Joyce, Rodriguez, Myers and Zobrist may have provided. Adding to the challenge, a new manager whose style the team has to feel out before it can be expected to play relevant baseball in September and October. A friend of mine put it best the other night, calling the Rays an 81 game winner in 2015. Yet he also opined, if the team can put together some magic…capture some lightning in a bottle, those 81 wins could be 90-plus.
We’ll be publishing a piece on the pitching projections shortly. I will also either update this piece, or put together an accompanying piece when ZiPS and OLIVER release their projections