Each year prior to Spring Training, Baseball Prospectus releases their projections for the upcoming MLB season. PECOTA, which stands for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm, is Baseball Prospectus' algorithm for projecting player and team statistics. So what did the PECOTA projections show for the Washington Nationals in 2025?
Well, PECOTA projects the Nationals to have nearly the exact same record as the last two seasons. In both 2023 and 2024, the Nationals had a record of 71-91 and PECOTA has the team going 74-88 in 2025. According to the projections, that 74-88 record would be good for 4th place in the NL East ahead of just the lowly Marlins, who are projected to go 62-100. In fact, only the Rockies (56-106) and the Marlins have projected records worse than the Nationals in the National League (the Reds are also projected to have a record of 74-88), which is not exactly a good sign of progression in what is now the fifth year of this rebuild. The team is projected to score 667 runs and allow 733, a -66 run differential. In terms of making the playoffs, the chances for the Nationals are, as expected, extremely slim. The Nats have just a 0.6% chance of winning the NL East and a 3.7% chance of making the postseason as a wild card, so a 4.3% chance altogether of playing October baseball in 2025.
PECOTA has the nats finishing with 6th worst record pic.twitter.com/CKIbL4zfYo
— SHACK (@WeAreAllShack) February 3, 2025
Of course, these projections are exactly that - projections, so they are far from perfect. For example, last season PECOTA projections had the Nationals with the second worst record in MLB going 58-104 in 2024. Obviously, the Nationals far outperformed those projections, winning 13 more games than PECOTA had predicted. Much of that was due to how poor the projections for the Nationals pitching were; for the 2024 season, they were predicted to score 662 runs and to allow 885, a -223 run differential. The projection of runs scored was almost exactly correct, but they only allowed 764 runs and had a -104 run differential at the end of the season.
So will the Nationals outperform the PECOTA projections and take a much-needed step forward in the rebuild or will they underperform and remain in mediocrity for the foreseeable future? Considering the quiet off-season and lack of a true upgrade in the lineup, I believe that 75 wins is realistically their ceiling. Nathaniel Lowe and Josh Bell can only do so much for a lineup that is severely lacking after the top 3-4 hitters, and the pitching staff is largely the same outside of Mike Soroka in the rotation and Jorge Lopez in the bullpen. Hopefully the team proves me wrong, but unless Mike Rizzo makes a big move before the season starts, I believe that the projections are going to be correct and that it will be another season of mediocrity.