Categories: Phillies Nuggets with Tim Kelly

ZiPS projections have the Phillies missing out on the playoffs

Alec Bohm is entering his fourth MLB season. (Cheryl Pursell)

Dan Szymborski of FanGraphs has released his annual ZiPS standings projections, with teams scheduled to have pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training this week.

The good news for Philadelphia sports fans is that the Phillies will snap the trend of the city’s teams losing in their respective championships. But a year after a magical run to the World Series, ZiPS believes that the Phillies will miss the playoffs entirely.

Before we get to the exact projections, here’s a brief synopsis from Szymborski on how ZiPS works:

“So how does ZiPS calculate the season? Stored within ZiPS are the first through 99th-percentile projections for each player. I start by making a generalized depth chart, using our Depth Charts as a jumping off point. Since these are my curated projections, I make changes based on my personal feelings about who will receive playing time as filtered through ~~arbitrary whimsy~~ my logic and reasoning. ZiPS then generates a million versions of each team in Monte Carlo fashion — the computational algorithms, that is (no one is dressing up in a tuxedo and playing baccarat like James Bond).

“After that is done, ZiPS applies another set of algorithms with a generalized distribution of injury risk that changes the baseline PAs/IPs for each player. Of note is that higher-percentile projections already have more playing time than lower-percentile projections before this step. ZiPS then automatically “fills in” playing time from the next players on the list (proportionally) to get to a full slate of plate appearances and innings.

“The result is a million different rosters for each team and an associated winning percentage for each of those million teams. After applying the new strength of schedule calculations based on the other 29 teams, I end up with the standings for each of the million seasons. This is actually much less complex than it sounds.”

With all of that acknowledged, ZiPS projection currently has the Phillies finishing at 85-77, two games worse than the 87-75 mark that they ended 2022 at.

The 85-77 record puts them nine games back of both the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets, who are both projected to finish at 94-68. Last season, both clubs finished with 101 wins, with the Braves winning the National League East and the Mets taking the senior circuit’s top Wild Card spot.

This time around, the Phillies aren’t projected to be in the playoffs to spoil things for the Braves, who they eliminated in four games in the NLDS this past season. With 85 wins, the Phillies would be the first team out of the playoffs in the NL. The Braves, St. Louis Cardinals and San Diego Padres would be the three division winners, with the Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants all grabbing Wild Card berths.

There’s no getting around how competitive the top of the NL East will be, but it was that a season ago and the Phillies still made the playoffs despite starting the season 21-29. With the balanced schedule in place for the 2023 season, teams will now play 52 games against divisional opponents, as opposed to 76 previously. Sure, that means the Phillies will have six less games against the Washington Nationals than they did a year ago. But it also limits the amount of contests against the Braves and Mets, and even the Miami Marlins, who should improve from the 69-93 record they posted in 2022. Additionally, the Phillies will see some of the other lowly teams in the league, such as the Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals, that they didn’t face a year ago.

Bryce Harper will miss the start of the season as he recovers from the Tommy John surgery that he underwent in November, but the two-time NL MVP only played in 99 games a year ago, and the Phillies didn’t have Trea Turner’s bat in the lineup to lean on then.

The Phillies may very well finish in third place in the NL East in 2022, but they could theoretically win 90 games and still do that. Is there a scenario where Rob Thomson’s squad falls victim to a World Series hangover and misses the playoffs entirely? Sure. Would that be a smart thing to bet on? Probably not.