Pittsburgh Pirates: ZIPS Recap for the 2017 Season

Editorial: FanGraphs released their 2017 Pittsburgh Pirates projections about a month ago. Here is a quick recap on them as Spring Training gets underway.

The ZIPS projections are pretty optimistic about Andrew McCutchen having a bounce back season in 2017.  They have McCutchen projected to hit .276/.370/.844 and are projecting him to lead the team in WAR (4.1).  I would definitely take those stats from Cutch next season.

Fan Graphs is also optimistic about Tyler Glasnow next season.  His projections are a 3.60 ERA and a 3.83 FIP which would certainly be huge for this team.  They also have him striking out 146 batters in 122 innings.  One interesting thing from the projections are Glasnow pitching more innings than both Ivan Nova (119.7) and Jameson Taillon (112.3).  I don’t see that happening next season but we’ll see.

They weren’t so optimistic about Gregory Polanco having a big year.  They are projecting that Gregory hits .259/.322/.742, which would be pretty disappointing in my opinion.  I’m expecting him to have a much better season than they’re projecting him to.

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On the prospect side of these projections they are saying Austin Meadows will be a productive player right away (.267/.316/.749, 2.0 zWAR) and Kevin Newman (.270/.320/.688, 1.7 zWAR) will be more productive than Jordy Mercer (.256/.314/.689, 1.4 zWAR).

Other Notable Projections

Starling Marte: .281/.336/.772.  3.8 zWAR

Jung Ho Kang: .259/.338/.810.  3.2 zWAR

Francisco Cervelli: .269/.362/.717.  2.0 zWAR

Josh Harrison: .286/.320/.730.  2.2 zWAR

Josh Bell:  .270/.347/.773.  1.6 zWAR

David Freese: .270/.330/.725.  1.9 zWAR

John Jaso:  .264/.350/.755.  0.7 zWAR

Adam Frazier: .266/.319/.665.  0.5 zWAR

Gerrit Cole: 3.45 ERA 3.38 FIP 3.1 zWAR

Jameson Taillon: 3.69 ERA 3.77 FIP 1.8 zWAR

Ivan Nova: 3.99 ERA 3.91 FIP 1.5 zWAR

Chad Kuhl: 4.51 ERA 4.56 FIP 0.8 zWAR

Drew Hutchison: 4.50 ERA 4.28 FIP 0.8 zWAR

Steven Brault: 4.18 ERA 4.26 FIP 1.4 zWAR

Tony Watson: 3.03 ERA 3.49 FIP 0.9 zWAR

Felipe Rivero: 3.39 ERA 3.17 FIP 0.6 zWAR

Juan Nicasio: 4.08 era 3.80 FIP 0.7 zWAR

Next: Tony Watson's Salary!

Here at Rum Bunter, we have already broken down each player’s individual ZIPS projections over the last few weeks.  This is simply to give a quick look at the expectations for the Pittsburgh Pirates players as Spring Training gets under way. Based on these projections the Bucs look to have another competitive team entering 2017.