The NL East isn’t finished with personnel changes. The Nats and Marlins have new managers and the Marlins have a new GM. The Mets have lost several people from their front office and a few key post-season stars are gone. Repeating success in consecutive years is easier said than done.
The Marlins have a solid line-up anchored by Giancarlo Stanton and Dee Gordon, and needed to fix their starting rotation. Yesterday they added Wei Yin-Chen as their #2 pitcher behind José Fernandez.
The Mets appear to have moved slightly backwards losing Cespedes and Daniel Murphy and replacing them with Alejandro De Aza and Neil Walker.
The Nationals have lost a few players that didn’t have much impact in 2015 and let’s see how this roster and WAR looks transitioning to 2016:
- Jordan Zimmermann to Tanner Roark
- Ian Desmond to Trea Turner
- Denard Span/Michael A. Taylor to Ben Revere
- Yunel Escobar to Daniel Murphy
- Drew Storen to Shawn Kelley
- Doug Fister to Joe Ross
- Casey Janssen to Trevor Gott
- Craig Stammen to Yusmeiro Petit
- Aaron Barrett/Matt Grace to Oliver Perez
http://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=24
The one name not mentioned is: Anthony Rendon is replacing Anthony Rendon
In the 2014 MVP voting, Rendon finished 5th and won the Silver Slugger. Rendon went from a 6.5 WAR in 2014 to a 0.9 WAR in 2015 and couldn’t stay healthy.
If all replacement players stay at the same WAR level as the player they replaced from 2015 to 2016, just the change in Rendon getting back to 2014 form in 2016 is worth +5.6 Wins. That takes the Nats from 83 wins to 89 wins and very close to the Fangraphs projection.
Screengrab from Fangraphs.com projections:
https://twitter.com/jareddiamond/status/686942771375124480
We created this chart from FanGraphs data we compiled from different data points using combined WAR from 2015 to 2016.
