If PECOTA Has Their Way, the Cubs are Playoff Bound

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing how I don’t think the Chicago Cubs are as bad as a lot of people say they’ll be. Not only is this roster filled with players that have won a hell of a lot in this league, but the rest of the NL Central (outside the Cincinnati Reds) have done very little. In fact, I’d suggest every team besides the Reds got worse.

But then PECOTA came out with their projected standings and helped me with some of the bigger points of that piece.

First, Cubs fans have a love/hate relationship with PECOTA, or at least those who have paid some attention to it anyways. Most of the hate came from last year’s projection of the Cubs being an 81-win team. Then the 2019 Cubs proved them wrong by winning 84! Take that Baseball Prospectus!

Before we get into the 2020 standings, here’s a little info on PECOTA.

PECOTA stands for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm, or a fancy way of saying the folks at Baseball Prospectus takes every player and bounces them off a database of 20,000 players dating back to WW2 to create several career paths to create probable projections. They then use this data to run a multitude of scenarios to create their ultimate projection.

PECOTA Standings are ready to go. As always, these are depth chart and coin toss contests. We've run 1000 monte carlo sims of the season and we're ready to share our initial (actually fifth version of) results. Looking forward to your ire.

— Harry Pavlidis and one dog (@harrypav) February 11, 2020

Here are the NL Central standings.

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PECOTA has the Cubs finishing in second place in the NL Central, just one game behind the Reds. Interestingly, they also put the Cubs at a 32.6% chance to win the Central, behind the Reds at 47.3%, and a 51.5% chance of making the playoffs. When they adjust against all NL teams, the Cubs have the fourth-highest odds of making the playoffs in 2020.

This would firmly place the Cubs in as the second Wild Card team in the NL.

Here’s an interesting chart showing how the NL Central faired when running all the simulations.

What is interesting, in the Cubs’ best results they finish several games ahead of the Reds and well into 100 wins (not very likely). While the Cubs will not win 100 games in 2020, their top performance level still plays out better than any other team in the Central. Coincidently, if they perform to the top 1% of the simulations, the only team that is projected to best the Cubs would be the Los Angeles Dodgers, and rightfully so.

While projections should be taken as just that, there is a place for them. In 2019 PECOTA projected the Cubs to finish third in the Central and they did. The projections have been fairly accurate in final standings, and while they might be off by a couple wins here and there, they’ve done enough to earn respect among the community and raise an eyebrow as Spring Training gets underway.

By no means does a projection computer mean pack it all in and don’t play the games (I can already sense your sarcastic comments now) but they are worth noting because there is some real science behind what they say.

The Cubs do still have some real questions when it comes to pitching. There are a lot of unproven guys in the bullpen, guys the Cubs expect to bounce back from down 2019 seasons or guys that haven’t thrown a baseball competitively since 2018. Then, while a lot of people point to the fifth-starter in the rotation, I’m more concerned about what Jon Lester is at this point in his career. He is coming off his worst season since his rookie year and is on the wrong side of 35. If the Cubs are scrambling to find a fifth starter, what happens if they also have to replace Lester for any amount of time?

Offensively, this team will be fine. While they still haven’t solved the leadoff position (no guys and gals, Albert Almora or Nico Hoerner are not the answer), I still think the overall whole of the offense will put up a lot of runs – especially if healthy. I’ve run Kris Bryant’s last two years from when he was healthy, and in the 140 games that I captured, he was an MVP caliber player. But this isn’t just a KB thing… Willson Contreras has not had a full, healthy season. Javier Baez has had injuries derail the last two Septembers, Anthony Rizzo has a month every season where his back forces him out of lineups or completely eliminates his power. The old saying, the best ability is availability rings true and for this club to perform up to their ability they need to be available.