This morning the folks over at Baseball Prospectus put their 2025 PECOTA projected standings up. PECOTA is a projection system that has been around for roughly two decades now and has undergone changes and adjustments to it’s formula over the years as new things were learned. While the season is still nearly two months from starting, PECOTA projections do not think that the Cincinnati Reds have much of a chance at making the playoffs.
Cincinnati went out and got a new manager, bringing in Terry Francona. They followed that up by bringing in a new hitting coach, new assistant hitting coach, acquiring Brady Singer for the rotation, Gavin Lux and Austin Hays for the every day lineup, and Taylor Rogers for the bullpen. PECOTA projects them to have a worse record than in 2024, finishing at 74-88, last place in the division, and with the third worst record in the National League.
From their projections, PECOTA has the Reds 17 games worse than the Chicago Cubs, who are the runaway favorites in a division where they are the only team projected to be above the .500 mark. Cincinnati is projected to allow the second most runs in the National League and third most in all of baseball. Some of that is certainly tied to playing half of their games in Great American Ball Park, but it seems that the projection system simply thinks the Reds pitching/defense isn’t good as a whole.
The offense is projected to score the 7th most runs in the National League. Given the ballpark, they are probably suggesting that in neutral terms that the club is a little below-average offensively but is getting a boost for playing in Cincinnati.
While the projected standings are free for anyone to see, if you want to get more detailed breakdowns on the player projections you will need to be a subscriber to Baseball Prospectus. I’m more than happy to support the work they do and get get a subscription from me. I won’t give away all of their stuff behind the paywall because they all deserve the right to be paid for their work. But I will share one projection that had me wondering if I should make an appointment with an optometrist.
Elly De La Cruz was the Cincinnati Reds best player last season. He was an All-Star and depending on where you looked he was either a 5.2 win player (Baseball Reference) or a 6.4 win player (Fangraphs). Well, unless you are more of a believer in WARP instead of WAR (all are basically trying to tell you the same thing – the value of a player above a “replacement player”, which is not a real person but just a general baseline of someone who would be “easily available” from Triple-A to just about any team). WARP is Baseball Prospectus’ version of WAR and last year they only had De La Cruz at 3.5 WARP, significantly lower than the other two places.
The difference seems to be that WARP thinks De La Cruz was a bad defensive player, while the other two believe he had plenty of positive defensive value. The Reds shortstop is projected to be worse at the plate in 2025 according to PECOTA, hitting for a lower average, getting on base less often, and hitting for less power that results in a drop in OPS of 55 points. It also sees him playing less often – but that part shouldn’t really be a surprise given that he played nearly every single game last season and that’s just a rarity. Still, he’s projected as a guy that plays nearly every day – just not quite the same thing as playing 160 games.
As for the entire team projection of 74 wins…. that feels low on it’s own. Projecting them to be neck-and-neck with the Pirates, though, doesn’t. The order of the projection within the division doesn’t feel off, though the win totals may just a bit. If someone were to present an over/under on the win total for the Reds at 74 and I were a gambling man, I would feel comfortable betting on the over. But if someone were to have a bet that the team finished better than 4th place, that’s where I would be uncomfortable putting down some money.
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