Projections show the Astros are the favorites in 2024. And that the Rangers' young depth make them dangerous.

The ZiPS projections favor the Astros because of their larger number of stars and having the best pitcher. But the Rangers could exceed their projections thanks to their rookies and prospect depth.

The big 2024 question in the AL West is which of the two teams that squared off in last year’s ALCS is better. The Astros and Rangers were of course tied in the regular season standings in 2023 and after the first six games of the ALCS.¹

The ultimate answer will be determined on the field in 2024, but one way to get a handle on how things will go is by looking at pre-season projections. Today, I’ll look at the ZiPS projection system, developed by Dan Szymborski and posted annually at Fangraphs.

Like all projection systems, ZiPS uses a player’s recent performance over a wide variety of variables to estimate how that player will perform in the future. Szymborski then writes an article on each team and their projections. Most delightfully, and important for the rest of the article, each article comes with its own “ballpark graphic,” which lists the fWAR each team is projected get from each position.

You can see the Astros and Rangers graphics below.

The graphic provides a side-by-side comparison of the two teams and their relative strengths and weaknesses heading into the 2024 season. And it shows something that one can also find in another set of projections—the Depth Chart projections also featured on Fangraphs—the Astros have a better team than the Rangers entering the 2024 season and thus, are the favorites to win the American League West.

But further digging into the ZiPS projections shows something else—the Rangers have a higher level of variance—that is, they lots of scenarios where they out-perform their projections. If both teams hit their projections, then the Astros will win the AL West. But it’s more possible for the Rangers to out-perform their projections than the Astros and thus, win the AL West.

Offensive Projections

The ballpark graphics help you see position-by-position the comparison between the two teams, but they are limited in helping you see the whole picture. For example, the Rangers have an advantage at shortstop because Corey Seager is a better player than Jeremy Pena, but the Astros have a similar advantage at third base because of Alex Bregman’s superiority to Josh Jung.

Who has the overall advantage?

To help answer that question, the chart below shows the projected fWAR for each team for each position on the diamond. I sorted the charts by highest projected WAR by position. The chart shows a clear and strong advantage for the Astros. ZiPS projects the Astros to have 4.0 fWAR at five different positions (3B, DH, RF, LF, 2B); the Rangers only exceed that number at two positions (SS, 2B).

The chart shows what has been true for the Astros throughout their Golden Era—they have great depth in high quality players, even in comparison to another top team in baseball. The Astros have four star level players in their lineup—Bregman, Alvarez, Kyle Tucker, and Jose Altuve. The Rangers only have two.

Overall, the Astros generate 6.0 more projected fWAR among its position players than the Rangers. And this is surprising based on the 2023 season. In 2023, the Rangers had a better offense than than the Astros, scoring 0.34 more runs per game with the third best OPS in the majors.

Pitching Projections

I created a similar chart for the team’s rotation for the players who made the ballpark graphics shown above. I also included the combined bullpen fWAR for both teams.

Together, they show the Astros have a clear advantage on the bump. The source of that advantage primarily comes from Framber Valdez, who is projected to be the best pitcher on either team by a fair bit in 2022. In fact, once you get past Valdez, you see similar rotations for both teams.

Justin Verlander and Nathan Eovaldi are both aging veterans projected for 2.7 fWAR in 2023. The Rangers combination of Jonathan Gray and Dane Dunning are projected for 4.0 fWAR, just like the Astros combination of Cristian Javier and Hunter Brown. And after that, both teams have a set of swingman types who could go back and forth between the rotation and the bullpen (JP France & Jose Urquidy for the Astros; Andrew Heaney and Chad Bradford for the Rangers). Both teams also have a pitcher sidelined by arm surgery projected to return midseason and produce 1.5 Wins above Replacement (Lance McCullers for the Astros; Max Scherzer for the Rangers).

The other big difference in the two teams is in the bullpen. The Astros are projected for 0.6 more fWAR than the Rangers, thanks in large part by having two dominant bullpen arms in Ryan Pressly and Bryan Abreu. Note that the graphics were created before the signings of Josh Hader (Astros) and David Robertson (Rangers), so the gap has widened.

Variance Favors the Rangers

Overall, the ballpark graphic shows the Astros have a clear advantage entering the 2024 season.

Their offense has a larger number of star level players than do the Rangers. The Rangers had the superior offense in the 2023 season, but the projections think that they will suffer a great deal of regression to the mean in 2024 (e.g. Adolis Garcia had a .354 weighted On Base Average in 2023; ZiPS projects him for a .334 wOBA in 2024).

And the Astros have an advantage on the mound thanks primarily to having the only Cy Young Award candidate on the two teams in Valdez and a superior bullpen. So it’s easy to say the Astros are the favorite.

But, and as the podcast my 11-year old likes to listen to always say, “and this is a big but”…the Rangers have greater variance in their projections, in part driven by the team’s prospects.

It likely won’t surprise you to learn that Corey Seager has the highest projected wOBA among Rangers for 2024. But the person who is second might surprise you. It’s Wyatt Langford. It’s no shame if you don’t know who Langford is, because he has never played a game in the majors. He was an All-America at Florida in 2023 efore getting drafted fourth overall in the 2023 MLB Draft by the Rangers. And he was great in the minor leagues last season, leading to the projection that he’ll be the second best hitter on a team that had the AL’s best offense last season.

The ballpark graphic bases its WAR numbers on the playing time estimates used in the Depth Charts projection developed at Fangraphs. That projects Langford to get 406 Plate Appearances in 2024. But if Langford is the Rangers second best hitter, there’s no way he gets that few assuming health. He’ll be in their Opening Day lineup.

Also joining him in the Opening Day lineup will be Evan Carter. You’re more likely to know Carter, as he made his major league debut in September, slashed .306/.413/.645 in 75 regular season plate appearances and .300/.417/.500 in 72 postseason plate appearances. He’s projected for something more modest in 2024—.259/.358/.412. But if Carter hits more like he did in 2023, then it’s helpful to the Rangers.

Let’s go back to talking about players you probably have not heard of. Justin Foscue is an middle infield prospect for the Rangers, and well, it’s hard to be more blocked than being an middle infield prospect on a team that spend a billion dollars on its middle infield. But as depth, Foscue is quite valuable. ZiPS projects him to be an above average major league hitter at .247/.333/.419. If Seager, Marcus Semien, or Josh Jung go down with an injury, it will obviously hurt the Rangers. But the presence of Foscue means that it will not hurt as much as you imagine.

ZiPS shows the Rangers with great depth on offense, with 13 players projected to have a league average OPS or better. This includes players you are familiar with from their 2023 team (Seager, Semien, Adolis Garcia, etc), the prospects we have covered and some others who are less heralded in the Rangers system, such as Blaine Crim and Sandro Fabian.

ZiPS projects only 8 Astros batters to have an OPS above league average and one of those—Michael Brantley—retired.

The battle in the AL West this season is between an Astros team with a broader and deeper array of star level players and a Ranger team with a deeper array of high quality players. The Astros contingent is likely to be much more reliable—they have more veterans who have performed at a similar level across many years. And while the Rangers have players like that too, they have a better set of prospects who could make big contributions to their 2024 team, raising the level of that team.

There are, thus, in my opinion, more reasons to favor the Astros to win the AL West in 2024. But there are plenty of reasons for us Astros fans to fear the Rangers and their capabilities this season.

1. It’s just a shame they never played a game after that. ;-)