Photo: Doug Gray
The folks at Baseball Prospectus have kicked off PECOTA week this morning with the release of the projected standings for the 2026 season. For the Dodgers haters out there, and there’s a lot of you holding onto that old NL West rivalry, the bad news is that the projection system has them as far and away the best team in baseball.
As for the Cincinnati Reds, well things aren’t quite as good. PECOTA has them finishing the season in 4th place in the NL Central with a 79-83 record. On one hand they are within a game or two of 2nd and 3rd place. If we round up, the Brewers are projected to finish at the .500 mark, with Pittsburgh coming in at 80-82. The Cardinals are 30 games under the .500 mark. And the Chicago Cubs are running away with the division with 91 wins.
These projections line up with the various other projection systems. Which makes sense for the most part because projection systems work by regressing past performances of the players, aging curves, and projecting players based on how similar players of the past performed moving forward. No one seems to have some “secret sauce” that makes their projection system just so much better than the others.
The Predictions
A common thing I see in the comments is people talking about projections but calling them predictions. The two things are not the same. Predictions are made by people just guessing based on what they feel. Projections remove the feelings and the people (aside from perhaps playing time being changed a bit) and are simply a whole lot of math being done. Both things can and do have value, but it’s very important to know the difference between the two things.
With that out of the way, the crew at USA Today got together and released their predictions for the 2026 standings today, too. They had five people get together and submit their records for each of the 30 teams around baseball and then had an aggregate record based on each submission to give a win total for each squad.
The USA Today predictions were much better for Cincinnati, but the Reds would still be on the outside looking in for the playoffs. Their predictions have the club at 83-79 and finishing in 3rd place in the division. At the top they have the Cubs and Brewers within a game of each other. The big difference is that they don’t buy into the improvements made by the Pirates and have them well below the .500 mark, but also still well ahead of the Cardinals who they believe are among the worst teams in baseball.