The Absurdly Preliminary 2023 ZiPS Projected Standings

These 2023 projections are guaranteed to be awful, wrong in many ways ranging from tragic to comic. But despite being absolutely premature and littered with horrible misses, projected standings at this point are actually quite useful, and useful is the best description any kind of predictive model can strive for. Standings at this point are a poor predictor of the 2023 season — and even the eventual 2023 projections themselves — but what they are able to do is give a “state of the union” estimate for each team. These standings represent the best estimates ZiPS can make at this point about where a team sits in the league’s pecking order, based solely on the players currently under contract with the team. It’s hard to get where you want to go if you don’t know where you’re starting.

The methodology I’m using here is the same one I use in the regular season, and as such, it isn’t identical to the one we use in our Projected Standings. So how does ZiPS calculate the upcoming 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 an initial starting 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, which change the baseline PAs/IPs selected for each player. Of note here is that higher-percentile projections already have more playing time baked in 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.

These projected standings do take the strength of schedule into consideration, which will be a bit more uniform now that the league has rebalanced the schedule. These standings reflect everything through yesterday’s Hunter Renfroe trade. We’ll start with the AL East:

You shouldn’t be surprised to see the Yankees crash back to earth here, based on the simple fact that the dude worth 11.4 WAR for them this past season — hint, it’s not Tim Locastro — is currently unsigned. The Yankees may not bring Aaron Judge back, but it would be absolutely shocking if they didn’t do something to replace the wins they would lose with his departure. Now, he’s the big loss, but Jameson Taillon and Matt Carpenter matter, too, though it isn’t likely that Carpenter will match his 2022 performance anyway.

Relative to the Yankees, the big losses for the Rays (Corey Kluber, Kevin Kiermaier) and Jays (pretty much just Ross Stripling) are relatively mild. Not having Xander Bogaerts hurts the Red Sox quite a bit, but ZiPS already liked Boston better than their 2022 record and a few of the guys on the edge of the roster (Ceddanne Rafaela, Enmanuel Valdez) have fairly solid projections. One can see here the strong position the Orioles are in if they chose to be aggressive this offseason; they’ve had enough happy player development surprises that they can legitimately say they start the offseason in the same galaxy as the rest of the division.

This may look depressing, but it also reflects the fact that everyone in the division is getting a tougher schedule in 2023. Cleveland is fairly unscathed, with the drop-off in wins reflecting a drop-off in the overall projections for the roster. Many of Chicago’s projections are notably south of where they were in 2022, and there are still at least two fairly serious holes in the starting lineup that the team better be more serious about filling this year.

ZiPS sees the Twins rotation as increasingly deep, but without any huge upside, and Carlos Correa will almost certainly be in another team’s uniform come Opening Day. The Royals and Tigers have a lot of fairly serious problems, so I doubt anyone is shocked to see them at the bottom here, though ZiPS does think KC can cobble together a halfway decent offense if they can resist doing the odd things they seemingly like to do (Ryan O’Hearn has the 38th-best projected WAR for a position player in their organization).

IT’S ANGELS TIME! OK, not really. The Angels have the benefit here of having most of the team’s performance tied up in just a few players, with nobody crucial headed to free agency. Renfroe is actually helpful for an organization that has proven bad at surrounding its stars with secondary talent, but there’s a lot to do if the Angels are going to even maintain this place in the standings. Similar to the Yankees with Judge, the Astros aren’t likely to just shrug and stand pat if Justin Verlander doesn’t return.

I expect a busy offseason for the Mariners, with a definite focus on second base and corner outfield, and the Rangers have already been able to retain their best free agent-to-be, Martin Perez, for the 2023 season. And the A’s, well, they didn’t have anyone good enough to lose, which is something! Things may get worse before they get better, however, as there’s no guarantee that either Sean Murphy or Ramón Laureano starts the season with Oakland.

Here we see the results of Alex Anthopoulos ruthlessly ensuring that Atlanta’s entire core stays put for a very long time. Dansby Swanson is a big loss, but when you see the projection for Vaughn Grissom, you’ll understand why the Braves dominate this very preliminary run of the NL East standings. The Mets appear certain to drop a lot of cash this winter, but again, they need to, with Jacob deGrom, Chris Bassitt, Taijuan Walker, Brandon Nimmo, and, well, much of the bullpen all heading to the open market. It isn’t difficult to understand why the Mets locked up Edwin Díaz so quickly.

The Phillies certainly need a starting pitcher, and ZiPS is less than enthralled with the situation at second base and definitely isn’t on Team Brandon Marsh. Still, a bounce back from Nick Castellanos remains likely. Bryce Harper’s return from elbow surgery is, of course, one of the real X factors that’s hard to fully consider here. The Marlins are in a similar position as they were last year, with a highly interesting young pitching staff and an absolutely atrocious offense that they can’t even commit “weekend dad” levels of attention to fixing. As for Washington, let’s just say that their second-best projected offensive player was someone who I wasn’t completely sure I had heard of before.

ZiPS tends to be the most positive projection system when it comes to the St. Louis Cardinals, and 2023 looks like no exception. The Cards (catcher, a starting pitcher) and Brewers (two outfielders) have similar levels of neediness, and this preliminary projection basically preserves their relative 2022 standing. The Cubs are making noise about spending this winter, but they need a couple of starting pitchers, a first baseman, most of a bullpen, and a DH to really threaten the top two teams in the Central. There are a lot of Reds who ZiPS sees as having significant upside (Elly De La Cruz, Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Noelvi Marte), but the system doesn’t see 2023 being their breakout campaigns. The projections actually see the Pirates having a halfway decent offense — and Endy Rodriguez has a terrific projection — but the rotation still projects rather poorly, as ZiPS remains frightened of Mitch Keller’s plate discipline data.

The Dodgers have a lot of work to do this offseason, but they started off as an absurdly good team, leaving them at the top of the projected division. I doubt they’ll enter the season with Ryan Pepiot in the rotation. San Diego retained Nick Martinez and Robert Suarez, and having a full season of Juan Soto and (hopefully) most of a year of Fernando Tatis Jr. is quite the boost. I do think they ought to be in the market for a first base upgrade, keeping Jake Cronenworth at second and allowing Ha-Seong Kim’s eventual role be determined by what the Friars do with Tatis.

When it comes to the Giants, ZiPS is increasingly a fan of Kyle Harrison, which helps to mute some of the loss of Carlos Rodón. Probably the most surprising team in these standings is the Arizona Diamondbacks, who have a cornucopia of players that ZiPS just really likes (Corbin Carroll, Brandon Pfaadt, Drey Jameson, and Ryne Nelson in particular). In truth, the projections for Arizona were so positive on the whole that I actually went back and double-checked every park factor and calculation specific to the Diamondbacks and their minor league affiliates.

The Colorado Rockies are a baseball team. They will play a number of baseball games in 2023 and win at least a handful of them. ZiPS projects the Rockies to be better than only the Nationals, but I expect the Nats have a better idea of exactly where their team is than the Rockies do. If I were a Rockies fan, I’d have voted to legalize psychedelic mushrooms, too.

Next up: The start of the team-by-team projections, beginning with the Boston Red Sox.