Analytics Project Phillies In For Another Wild Ride

The Philadelphia Phillies should be in position to give their fans another run into October.

The Philadelphia Phillies kept Aaron Nola in free agency and have made a wave of lower-level moves to bolster roster depth and fortify their chances of making another run at the World Series.

Baseball Prospectus likes their chances, but as they have the past two seasons, the Phillies will probably have to do it the hard way.

The site recently released its latest PECOTA projected standings for 2024. The site runs thousands of simulations to come up with the standings along with a range of victories for the season.

PECOTA stands for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm, which is Baseball Prospectus’ proprietary system that projects player and team performance.

Last year, the Phillies won 90 games, claimed the top NL Wild Card berth and got all the way to the NL Championship Series before losing a 3-2 lead to the Arizona Diamondbacks and falling in seven games in the series.

Right now, BP doesn’t believe the Phillies will equal last year’s win total — but it believes the Phillies will make the playoffs.

BP projects the Phillies will win 85.0 games, which would put them 15 games back of the Atlanta Braves but it would allow them to make the Wild Card playoffs. But the Phillies wouldn’t be the top Wild Card seed. That would go to Arizona, which is projected for 85.3 wins.

The Phillies are projected to have a 56.6% chance of making the playoffs, with most of that (52.1%) weighted toward the Wild Card playoffs. From there, the Phillies have a 30.3% chance of reaching the divisional playoffs and just a 1.7% chance of reaching the World Series.

Phillies pitchers and catchers are preparing to make their way to Clearwater, Fla., next week to being spring training.