PECOTA and the 2023 Milwaukee Brewers: The Big Picture

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. 
 

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.

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. 

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.