Article: PECOTA and the 2023 Milwaukee Brewers: The Big Picture

[Matthew Trueblood]

On Tuesday, Baseball Prospectus began the rollout of their annual PECOTA preseason projections, and the system is much more kind to the 2023 Milwaukee Brewers than are the ZiPS projections at FanGraphs. Let's dig into the specifics of the PECOTA standings and what they tell us about the Crew.

Image courtesy of © Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK

The first run of PECOTA-projected standings for 2023 make the Milwaukee Brewers co-favorites in the NL Central with the St. Louis Cardinals. The Crew are projected to win 87.6 games by the system, which utilizes thousands of simulations of the season to get average outcomes. The Cardinals are pegged for 87.5 wins, a meaninglessly small step shy of Milwaukee.

Compared to the ZiPS-projected standings posted at the end of last week at FanGraphs, though, this is cause for celebration. That system had the Cardinals some eight games ahead in the divisional race, the projection system equivalent of this:

As I discussed on Monday, ZiPS creator Dan Szymborski chalked that wide gap up to the system liking the Cardinals' depth better than Milwaukee's. Having PECOTA to which to compare it now, though, I'm unconvinced. The real difference seems to lie in the fact that ZiPS is much higher on the Cardinals' positional stars--especially Nolan Arenado and Tommy Edman, and is higher on the Cardinals' projected rotation than is PECOTA. Meanwhile, PECOTA likes the Brewers' key hitters much better than ZiPS does.

Some of that exuberance might strike us as irrational. Christian Yelich is projected for 3.4 WARP, driven both by a better defensive rating under Prospectus's new defensive metric (also discussed in Monday's post) and by his sheer production over the last several years. As Caleb Miller talked about Monday afternoon, Yelich certainly isn't the MVP-caliber slugger we so admired and so much miss, but he's been a solid contributor even over the last couple of seasons. That said, his PECOTA projection feels bullish. The system is wooed not only by his long track record, but the highly sustainable way in which he creates offense. He's too well-rounded to fully crash to being below-average, at least in the short term.

The system also adores new acquisition Jesse Winker, whose projected 127 DRC+ paces the squad. If he lives up to that billing, it would be a disappointment, indeed, if the team didn't play past the first weekend of October. It feels a bit like PECOTA tuned out for 2022 and elected to give Winker a mulligan on his woeful campaign, but that might not be the worst approach.

On the other hand, there are projections here that seem somewhat dour. William Contreras only gets a 96 projected DRC+, which feels anemic compared to the potential he displayed in 2022. Prospectus editor-in-chief Craig Goldstein addressed that disappointing figure on Twitter:

Anyone who read my writeup of the Contreras trade knows I think he'll way outpace that projection. I'll be writing about Contreras later this week, but basically he hits the ball very hard, but on the ground a LOT. So projected HR rates are gonna ding him, etc. https://t.co/6obpCUYf0t

— City Manager Spencer Cronk (@cdgoldstein) February 14, 2023

It's true that Contreras, like his famous older brother, hits too many ground balls, but he made such strides last year in terms of consolidating his skills and finding a viable approach at the plate that it's hard not to dream on continued progress. The system is also down on Brice Turang (projected DRC+: 79), and isn't sold on the stick of Luis Urías (100) continuing to be markedly above-average. 

Those individual projections deserve longer looks on another day, but for now, let's close with one more observation: it looks like something close to "NL Central champs or bust," based on these projections. Though the Cubs only sneak in for about 5 percent of the divisional win probability, leaving the Cardinals and Brewers to split 95 percent, neither team has even 65-percent overall Playoff Odds, according to the report. That's because the Dodgers (97 projected wins), Mets (97), Padres (94), Braves (92), and Phillies (90) leave very little room for a Wild Card entrant from the NL Central. More so than ZiPS, PECOTA seems to expect the NL Central contenders to lose wins to the new schedule. 

Get ready, then, for a long and fierce battle with St. Louis. That sounds a little bit stressful, but it's also the main ingredient in the recipe for a maximally fun summer at Miller Park.

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[Jopal78]

Take PECOTA projections with a pretty big grain of salt. They had Milwaukee projected to win 94 games last year, and in ‘21 they pegged the Brewers for 89 wins. 
 

 

[MVP2110]

21 minutes ago, Jopal78 said:

Take PECOTA projections with a pretty big grain of salt. They had Milwaukee projected to win 94 games last year, and in ‘21 they pegged the Brewers for 89 wins. 
 

 

Projections aren't meant to be exact. They provide a bell curve to show the variation of each team as well which more accurately shows each team's probabilities.

[sveumrules]

87-88 win projection feel about right to me. More goes right than wrong, that’s mid-90’s in wins and a good bet to win the division or a WC.

More goes wrong than right, they’ll likely end up closer to .500 & maybe even sell at the deadline.

Pretty much gonna come down to health of key players, how the various rookies perform and how the bullpen shakes out after Devin.

[Brock Beauchamp]

21 minutes ago, sveumrules said:

87-88 win projection feel about right to me. More goes right than wrong, that’s mid-90’s in wins and a good bet to win the division or a WC.

More goes wrong than right, they’ll likely end up closer to .500 & maybe even sell at the deadline.

Pretty much gonna come down to health of key players, how the various rookies perform and how the bullpen shakes out after Devin.

Yeah, the PECOTA standings feel closer to right and I don't think I'm being a homer about either the Brewers or Twins on this one (if anything, I think PECOTA having the Twins marginally above the Brewers in wins feels a bit wrong).

Placing the Cardinals 7-8 wins above than the Brewers doesn't feel right, which is what ZiPS did. The Cardinals have a bunch of old-ish players that performed well last season and I think they lose at least a couple of wins from the natural aging curve alone. I think the two teams are pretty similar with the Brewers having a bit more volatility to be better or worse than their projections.

[Lathund]

It's even been updated today to have the Brewers winning 88 and the Cardinals 86. I think the old version didn't include Wade Miley for instance. Might've been updates to the projections themselves too. Clay Davenports projections have the Brewers winning 90 and the Cardinals 87 too, and THE BAT X has the Brewers by 85-84, so it's not just PECOTA. Whereas obviously ZiPS goes the other way, by a lot. 

I'd still say the Cardinals are the favorites for the division, but the point is that it's close. They relied so heavily on Arenado and Goldschmidt staying completely healthy and having years waaay beyond their career averages, which is unlikely to happen again given that things like the Statcast metrics didn't even come close to backing up their improved results. They also had Pujols. Contreras is indeed an improvement offensively, but he's also a butcher behind the plate both in terms of framing (Which has a huge impact) and seemingly also in terms of calling pitchers/working with pitchers. His best overall season is 3.3 fWAR, second best 2.6. He's a good player, but defense matters at the position. 

Which brings us to the pitching staff... which wasn't strengthened at all. They have a very old and injury prone rotation. And they lack any kind of depth behind that. They have like two good relievers (One of whom was very very good, but has a really short track record of it). Their K/9 was the lowest in the majors last year, K% was 28th. Yes they have a good defense. But the best teams get 2.5 strikeouts / 9 innings more than the Cardinals, defense alone won't make up for that. And going to Willson Contreras won't improve their K/BB numbers any either. A new pitching coach as well to go with the new primary catcher and the retirement of Yadier Molina, even if he did not play a lot in his last year. 

I don't want to get too down on the Cardinals, they still have a strong team and as I said I still consider them favorites. But they had to have a lot of things go right to finish as far ahead as they did, and I don't see that happening again. 

[wiguy94]

1 hour ago, Lathund said:

It's even been updated today to have the Brewers winning 88 and the Cardinals 86. I think the old version didn't include Wade Miley for instance. Might've been updates to the projections themselves too. Clay Davenports projections have the Brewers winning 90 and the Cardinals 87 too, and THE BAT X has the Brewers by 85-84, so it's not just PECOTA. Whereas obviously ZiPS goes the other way, by a lot. 

I'd still say the Cardinals are the favorites for the division, but the point is that it's close. They relied so heavily on Arenado and Goldschmidt staying completely healthy and having years waaay beyond their career averages, which is unlikely to happen again given that things like the Statcast metrics didn't even come close to backing up their improved results. They also had Pujols. Contreras is indeed an improvement offensively, but he's also a butcher behind the plate both in terms of framing (Which has a huge impact) and seemingly also in terms of calling pitchers/working with pitchers. His best overall season is 3.3 fWAR, second best 2.6. He's a good player, but defense matters at the position. 

Which brings us to the pitching staff... which wasn't strengthened at all. They have a very old and injury prone rotation. And they lack any kind of depth behind that. They have like two good relievers (One of whom was very very good, but has a really short track record of it). Their K/9 was the lowest in the majors last year, K% was 28th. Yes they have a good defense. But the best teams get 2.5 strikeouts / 9 innings more than the Cardinals, defense alone won't make up for that. And going to Willson Contreras won't improve their K/BB numbers any either. A new pitching coach as well to go with the new primary catcher and the retirement of Yadier Molina, even if he did not play a lot in his last year. 

I don't want to get too down on the Cardinals, they still have a strong team and as I said I still consider them favorites. But they had to have a lot of things go right to finish as far ahead as they did, and I don't see that happening again. 

Yeah this is a pretty good summation of how I feel. Cards are favorites but nowhere near the 8 game favorites they are according to ZiPS.