Third place in the NL East? Phillies not buying computer projections for 2023

Whatever order the predictive models put them in, the Braves, Mets and Phillies make the NL East the most top-heavy division in baseball.

Alec Bohm says the Phillies don't put much stock in projections for their season. “This group, we don’t give a [bleep] what the computer says.”Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer

by Scott Lauber

Published March 14, 2023, 7:21 p.m. ET

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Want to get a rise out of Phillies owner John Middleton?

Try suggesting that last year’s march to the World Series — one of the most unexpected, joyous postseason runs in Philadelphia sports history — occurred because the team peaked in October relative to its play during the rest of the season.

“I don’t think we got hot at the right time,” Middleton said recently. “We were playing .590 ball since basically June 1. We weren’t hot. What we did was we got healthy.”

Fair enough. From June 1 through the end of the regular season, the Phillies went 66-46 for the fourth-best record in the National League. They were nearly even with the Mets (67-44) and more competitive with the Braves (78-34). If they played at that pace all year, the Phillies would’ve won 95 games.

But the Braves and Mets finished with 101 wins apiece, marking the fourth time since 1995 that one division featured two 100-win teams. The Phillies finished with 87, a fact that endures even though they got there because of a 22-29 start that led to the firing of manager Joe Girardi.

And since the Braves are running back their fifth consecutive NL East title with the same core, sans shortstop Dansby Swanson, and the Mets merely replaced a two-time Cy Young Award winner (Jacob deGrom) with a three-timer (Justin Verlander), most prognostication systems are pegging them to finish first and second again, with the Phillies running a distant third in many of the models.

It hasn’t gone unnoticed in the Phillies’ clubhouse.

“We don’t care,” third baseman Alec Bohm said with a chuckle Tuesday before the Braves, with three regulars in the lineup (Ozzie Albies, Marcell Ozuna, and rookie shortstop Vaughn Grissom), visited BayCare Ballpark. “This group, we don’t give a [bleep] what the computer says.”

The computer at FanGraphs has the Braves at 94 wins, the Mets at 91, and the Phillies at 86, one fewer than last season when they didn’t have star shortstop Trea Turner. Baseball Prospectus gives the Mets 95.4 wins, the Braves 93.5, and the Phillies 89.8. And over at Vegas Insider, the over-under win odds is 96.5 for the Braves, 94.5 for the Mets, and 89.5 for the Phillies.

Maybe it’s because Bryce Harper is expected to miss most of the season’s first half while recovering from Tommy John elbow surgery. Maybe the predictive models are focused more on the Phillies’ final 2022 win total than the trajectory of their season. Whatever the case, there must be reasons why folks are down on the Phillies.

“They just put it in their computer model, and whatever that says is law,” Bohm said. “You can do all the analytics and know all these numbers and have all these sabermetric stats of whatever you want. But at the end of the day, it’s about going out there, throwing strikes, playing defense, and getting timely hits. That’s what we do. You’ve got to go play. Whatever their reason is does not affect anybody’s opinion in here.”

But it might provide an unintended source of motivation.

“No doubt,” first baseman Rhys Hoskins said, smiling. “I’m sure we’ll use that, right?”

Hoskins understands, though. Like it or not, last April and May — “We got our butts kicked,” Hoskins said — was part of the 2022 Phillies’ story. And if they don’t get off to a better start this season, nobody will want to hear about big offseason moves for Turner, starter Taijuan Walker, and relievers Craig Kimbrel, Gregory Soto, and Matt Strahm.

The Braves and Mets have issues. Atlanta is counting on Grissom, with all of 41 games of major-league experience, to replace Swanson. New York’s rotation is led by Verlander and Max Scherzer, who are 40 and 38 years old, respectively. The Mets also lost lefty José Quintana this week for half the season to rib surgery, an injury that (for now, at least) dwarfs the Phillies’ four-week shutdown of top prospect Andrew Painter with a sprained elbow ligament.

“I think we’ve seen sustained success from [the Braves] for four, five years now, and I’m sure that’s baked into it,” Hoskins said. “I think our time is coming for those predictive models to catch up to us. But with those teams being as good as they’ve been, I’m sure it’s all factored in. Predictive models are hard, man. They’re hard.”

And they’re often inaccurate.

“I don’t know that anybody predicted us playing in the World Series last year,” Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said.

Dombrowski suggested the uncertainty over how many games Harper will miss may be part of why the Phillies are a trendy third-place pick. He also said predictions don’t account for improvement from young players. The Phillies believe Bohm, second baseman Bryson Stott, and center fielder Brandon Marsh will put up bigger numbers than they did last year.

Want to bet, though, that the Braves are expecting a bounce-back year from star right fielder Ronald Acuña Jr.? And the Mets think they’ll get contributions from top prospects Francisco Álvarez and Brett Baty.

But whatever order you put them in, this is undeniable: the Braves, Mets, and Phillies make the NL East the most top-heavy division in baseball.

“The Braves have looked pretty much the same, give or take a couple of players; the Mets, especially once [Francisco] Lindor got there, give or take a couple players, have looked the same,” Hoskins said. “But that’s what you want as a competitior, right? To be the best, you’ve got to beat the best.”

And if the prognosticators don’t love you?

“We know that it’s out there,” Hoskins said. “But a lot of us also have a good understanding that these things aren’t always right. ... As they weren’t last year.”