Fangraphs has released their 2025 projections and while they are looking better for the Cincinnati Reds than the ones released by Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA system earlier in the week, the end results are similar. Fangraphs has the Reds tied for last place with the Pittsburgh Pirates, six games back of their projected division winner – the Chicago Cubs.
Cincinnati is projected to finish 78-84. With the Cubs only being six games better than that, Fangraphs is projecting a fairly tight division where a little bit of luck, good health results, and maybe a breakout could vault any team to the top of the division. That is unlike the PECOTA projections that had the Reds 17 games behind the Cubs in their projection, and the Brewers in 2nd place a full 10 games behind Chicago.
While we are getting close to the start of spring training, things can change between now and the start of the season. Some teams are going to deal with injuries that aren’t known right now and depending on the severity, that’s going to change the projection. Some teams are going to acquire players and maybe the players are actually good enough to make a difference in the standings instead of adding a 7th guy out of your bullpen or a solid bench player – who while are useful, aren’t the types of guys that are going to turn your record around to the tune of 3-4 wins.
Fangraphs has the Reds finishing with four more wins than Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA system did. The difference between the two seems to be how each projections the pitching staff. Fangraphs has the offense scoring 740 runs on the season, while PECOTA has them scoring 736 runs. That’s nearly identical offensive projections as a team. But Fangraphs has the pitching staff giving up 773 runs, while PECOTA has them at 810. Over the course of a season, a 10-run swing in the positive or negative range is worth about one team win.
The Fangraphs projections have the Reds scoring the 10th most runs in Major League Baseball. That’s unadjusted for the ballparks everyone plays in, but feels like once adjusted it’s probably about league average. One of the things that was noticed with the PECOTA projections was that Cincinnati’s pitching staff was projected to allow the 3rd most runs in baseball in 2025. The projections from Fangraphs isn’t much different – the Reds are projected to allow the 4th most runs in baseball according to their numbers. It’s just that the overall number of runs happens to be a bit lower here. These numbers, too, are unadjusted for the ballparks, so Cincinnati’s pitching staff is likely better than “26th”, but both systems think it’s a below-average pitching staff.
When you dive into what Fangraphs projections are showing, though, it’s the bullpen that is a problem and not the rotation. While the rotation doesn’t have anyone that stands out as well above-average (even Hunter Greene) in their numbers, the depth of solid-to-good starters does well enough to have Cincinnati’s rotation as the 12th most valuable. The bullpen, though, projects as the 27th best – though it should be noted that 27th is significantly more valuable than the three teams below it. The drop off after the Reds is quite large and the difference between the Reds at 27 and the White Sox at 30 is the same difference between the Royals at 14 and the Reds.
You can check out the link above and do a deeper dive on the depth charts by position if you’d like to. Later this week I will be back to talk more about some of those and how the Reds stack up and where they look like they could be right or wrong.
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