ZiPS Midseason Movers and Shakers: Pitchers

One of the things I try to emphasize when I talk about projections is that they are not numbers written in stone, but rather moving averages. Each plate appearance or inning thrown, while not the needle’s trigger in and of itself, adds to our knowledge of the player and subtly changes his career path. Predicting a player isn’t all that different from predicting a hurricane, but thankfully, players cause far less damage. Except maybe Len Koenecke.

It’s been three months since the start of the season, we have new information about the players. As we approach the midway point of the season, and the fact that I get a few interview questions a week about which players have seen their projections change the most, I thought this would be a good time to do an in-season ZiPS program with a full-fat model that is more likely to work on a daily basis. To keep the list relevant to MLB’s 2026 roster, I narrowed it down to players who either played in the majors this year or are among the 1,232 prospects on the board. So apologies to players like Peyton Alford, who saw his projected ERA+ for 2027 jump from 88 to 110.

I also separated the starters from the relievers, with pitchers expected to start at least a third of their appearances with the starters. Since relievers tend to be more versatile than starting pitchers, I wanted to make sure the latter were represented. After all, accumulating a 10 point ERA+ in 180 innings has more impact on a team than a 15 point ERA+ in 60 relief innings!

I appreciate how willing ZiPS is to abide by the rule that whenever you have a good chart for anything, Shohei Ohtani will be in it somewhere. It eases the pain that he won’t make the 60/60 Club, he didn’t suddenly become a Gold Glove shortstop, and he didn’t show a left-handed throw with a 100-mph fastball this spring to be his relief pitcher and throw every complete game in 2026. His strikeout rate is a little low, so the contact rate is going up a little bit, but the contact rate is high for the next few months. Christopher Sánchez already had one of the best projections of any starting pitcher, but he couldn’t be worse for a big stretch of his season with a long scoreless streak, right? I wonder if the Phillies could have saved $200 million or more when they extended him before the season.

ZiPS apparently isn’t as excited about Julian Garcia as they are about the other pitchers on the roster. However, ZiPS originally thought he’d be a replacement-level pitcher in 2027, while now he thinks he’ll be in the league-average range next year, an impressive bump in itself. The Reds called him up on Monday, so he’ll get a chance to prove that his sudden rise at age 31, just a year into indy ball, is real. Jacob Misiorowski exceeded expectations last year, and this time around, he’s nearly motionless while determining his walk rate. Patrick Corbin surprisingly made the list, but still gets the fifth starter projection.

Didier Fuentes has been a standout in Atlanta since being moved to the bullpen, and I’m surprised he hasn’t gotten more attention given how well the Braves have played this season. River Ryan appears to be healthy this year, and don’t be fooled by his 4.46 ERA which is the highest in the Pacific Coast League; he has a 2.89 FIP, and we can’t blame him for his .369 BABIP. Karson Millbrandt should move very far up the list of ZiPS prospects in 2027, although he still has some commanding issues to work out. Cam Schlittler is so low on this list not because he hasn’t been bad, but because ZiPS wasn’t all that skeptical about him in the first place.

ZiPS calls a timeout on Alek Manoah’s second breath. He only needs 24 1/3 innings to stay at the top here, which goes to show how bad those innings have been. It’s true that pitchers can be weird at times, but they’ll have to show a lot to get back on the 40-man roster anytime soon. Luis Morales has allowed an incredible amount of free passes, to both majors and minors, throughout the endless spring. In fact, he has so much going for him that I wonder if he lost a muscle in his elbow and no one has caught a steal yet.

Garrett Crochet has been bumping more than usual this year, and ZiPS knows about his shoulder injury, so they’re being extra tight with him. It doesn’t take many hurdles through the projection system to dial things back on a pitcher projected with a 140 ERA+. I’m sad to see Kodai Senga and his pitchfork ghost here, and to see Max Scherzer in what could be a ho-hum final. And Tink That’s why he might have to change his name to Tink Finally.

It’s funny to see Mason Miller at the top of this list considering he already had the second ZiPS ERA+ figure in baseball coming into this season, behind only Jhoan Duran. Miller has been so good that despite a 0.79 ERA he actually underperforms his FIP by almost half a run (0.37). He’s become a lower ball hitter than he used to be, so if someone does hit a homer off him this season, he’s going to have to pay a lot of money to get back to the fans.

This has not been a great season for the Orioles, but they have two of the three relievers on this roster. Yaqui Rivera is ranked only 53rd on our list of top prospects this year — on the Orioles’ list, that is, not the league’s Top 100 — because of some command issues. He averaged a few walks, threw a lot of first strikeouts, and dominated in both Double-A and Triple-A. Micah Ashman’s stuff isn’t exactly amazing, but he has better command than Rivera, and a guy who strikes out 15 batters in nine is going to keep getting promoted until he stops doing that.

ZiPS already thought Grant Taylor would be great, but it wasn’t certain given his short career history. Now, however, she has provided another three-month proof that she is truly beautiful. He is the best White Sox reliever, and maybe even the best White Sox pitcher. Meanwhile, Alexander Alberto has been so good in the minors that I wonder if the White Sox regret letting the Rule 5 return to the Rays.

It’s hard to say exactly what’s going on with Bryan Abreu. He was somewhat better after the April disaster, but he was placed on the restricted list a few days ago, so he may have something more important on his mind than baseball.

Not much was expected of Ronan Kopp, but 30 walks in 27 innings in the minors will spoil most of the speculation.

Griffin Jax is the epitome of the Rays’ imagination. He was struggling in April, and with teams doing nothing, their reaction to a struggling guy was to stretch him to get more innings and try him in the rotation. And it’s a lot of work. The team has kept his pitching low, but he’s coming off a three-inning five-inning streak and is playing decently. He’s still a big factor in his projections this year as he’s projected for a 141 ERA+ entering 2026.

Like Jax, Edwin Díaz’s projection was so good entering the season that it didn’t take long to knock it down a few pegs. Hopefully, it’s because the projection system is too pessimistic about his performance before surgery to remove loose bodies from his elbow and not the start of a real decline. I’m a little surprised to see the magnitude of the drop in predictions, but I think the algorithms are a little scared about the sudden loss of speed and the big jump in connection rate, two numbers that make sense for small sample sizes.

Let me know in the comments what you think about the format of this piece. I play with a few different ones when I run this update every year, and I’d really like to know if there’s anything you’d like to see that isn’t currently available. Getting the translation itself integrated into the site is still on my to-do list, and there may be more time for me to get everything set up this off-season…