With the Super Bowl in the rearview mirror, baseball season will soon be in full swing. In less than seven weeks, the Milwaukee Brewers will begin their season aiming to reach the playoffs for the fifth time in six seasons. Baseball Prospectus released its PECOTA win projections for all 30 MLB teams, and it has high hopes for the Brewers in 2023.
Milwaukee Brewers projected to improve win total from the 2022 season
According to PECOTA, the Milwaukee Brewers or St. Louis Cardinals win the NL Central in over 95% of simulations. The Brewers have a slight edge over their bitter rival. PECOTA projects Milwaukee to win 87.6 games and St. Louis to win 87.5 games. With the Brewers also winning a Wild Card spot in 15.9% of simulations, Milwaukee reaches the postseason in 64% of simulations.
87.6 wins would be a slight improvement for the Brewers. Milwaukee finished with an 86-76 record in 2022. It was the first time the Brewers missed the playoffs since 2018. Milwaukee finished two games behind the Philadelphia Phillies for the last National League Wild Card and seven games behind the Cardinals for the Division title in 2022.
PECOTA was quite bullish on the Brewers in 2022. It gave Milwaukee a projected win total of 93. On the other hand, it underestimated the Cardinals in 2022. PECOTA gave St. Louis a projection of only 81 wins last season. The Cardinals, in fact, finished 2022 with 93 wins and a division title – not the Brewers.
PECOTA projections explained
PECOTA stands for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm. It is a projection metric created by Baseball Reference. The algorithm projects the performance of individual players. PECOTA aggregates the projections of players on teams’ rosters to create team projections.
According to Baseball Reference, “PECOTA is a system that takes a player’s past performance and tries to project the most likely outcome for the following season. It looks at all of the numbers, and all the numbers that make up the numbers, to see which players are more likely to repeat their success and which ones benefited from good fortune.”
Read More: Milwaukee Brewers Release 2023 Promotional Schedule
For more Wisconsin Sports:
You can follow Kedrick Stumbris (@kedrickstumbris) and Wisconsin Sports Heroics (@WiSportsHeroics) on Twitter.
