Phillies

ESPN Projection has Phillies Winning Fewer Games in 2023

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Dec 28th, 2022 · 2:08 PM EST

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We’ve talked in recent weeks about the ESPN Football Power Index and mentioned Aaron Schatz and his DYAR statistic. The dorks with calculators have really been “on one,” as the kids say.

Looks like it’s the same deal for baseball, with this Bradford Doolittle projection ranking the Phillies 12th in total wins for 2023:

Projected wins: 85.2
Playoff odds: 50%
Title odds: 2% (up 0.9%)
Aggression rank: 5
Improvement rank: 5

Dave Dombrowski has been at this for a long time. His team last season was flawed, but it was also bolstered by a foundation of big-name veteran talent, and once the Phillies squeezed into baseball’s newest playoff slot, it all came together. Still, while the Phillies were literally two wins from a title in 2022, the roster was not a finished product, and Dombrowski has been characteristically aggressive about adding to it. Trea Turner is a great player who would have a major impact on any team he plays for, and that team is going to be the Phillies for a long, long time. Even better, as a high-average, super-athletic player, Turner adds major doses of skill sets this club badly needed to be better balanced.

Okay, so a few thoughts here, but for the sake of context, the Mets are ranked first, with 102.8 projected wins. The Padres are second with 99.9 and Yankees third with 99.4. The rest of the top 12 is then Braves, Rays, Astros, Cardinals, Jays, Dodgers, Guardians, and Brewers.

In the same way the DYAR metric favored Jared Goff and Geno Smith, if your projection has the Brewers winning more games than the Phillies, then it’s probably fugazi. Doolittle notes that he ran 10,000 simulations of the 2023 schedule and incorporated “tweaks to playing time forecasts on my depth charts,” so I’d assume the Bryce Harper injury is factored into the equation here. He’s not going to be with the Phils to begin the season, which is certainly notable.

The other thing worth taking into account is that the NL East is much better than the NL Central. Even though the schedule has been redone this year to reduce the amount of divisional games, the Cards and Brewers still get to beat up on the Pirates, Reds, and Cubs, while the Phillies are dealing with the Braves, Mets, and a Marlins team that always seems to be a pain in the ass.

Dunno though. It’s just goofy to think that an 87-win team that went to the World Series and added Trea Turner is projected to actually win fewer games this year. The dorks with calculators may end up being right, but on the surface this feels goofy. Anthony touched on it during Tuesday’s Crossing Broadcast: