Cubs fans know all about Kris Bryant’s shoulder injury in 2018, that limited him to a career low 102 games and contributed to his worst offensive season in the big leagues. Yet, Anthony Rizzo also had a down year for his standards, with an awful start to the season. However, the duo affectionately nicknamed Bryzzo is expected to bounce back from a lackluster season.
MLB.com ranked the top-10 position player duos in baseball for the 2019 season and Bryzzo came in at number six. Here’s how the rankings were determined.
Via MLB.com.
To answer that question, MLB.com looked at each team’s two highest-ranked position players in WAR, according to the Steamer projections. Below are the top 10, but keep in mind that things could change once Manny Machado and Bryce Harper find homes.
And here are the top-10 duos for the 2019 season according to those projections.
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T-1st Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez: projected WAR 12.7
T-1st Mike Trout and Andrelton Simmons: projected WAR 12.7
3rd Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts: projected WAR 11.5
4th Corey Seager and Justin Turner: projected WAR 10.3
5th Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve: projected WAR 10.1
6th Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo: projected WAR 10.0
7th Anthony Rendon and Trea Turner: projected WAR 9.7
8th Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton: projected WAR 9.1
9th Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain: projected WAR 8.9
10th Freddie Freeman and Josh Donaldson: projected WAR 8.4
Bryant’s best season according to FanGraphs was in 2016, when he won National League MVP. He recorded a 7.9 fWAR. Rizzo had a 5.3 fWAR and 5.2 fWAR in 2014 and 2015, respectively for his career highs.
Last year Bryzzo combined for a 5.2 fWAR. So yeah, a big portion of the problems offensively for the Cubs in 2018 was that their two best hitters had a significant drop in production. And according to the projections fans should be expecting a big rebound from both. Obviously that should give the offense a boost as well.
And if Bryant really is back to 100 percent, I think Bryzzo will safely be in the top five of MLB’s best duos by the end of the 2019 season.
