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Where are the .300 hitters?
PECOTA projects just one in 2025 ... do we really want to live this way?
Joe Posnanski
February 05, 2025
You have to take the baseball offseason in chunks, or you’ll never get to Opening Day. The Dodgers won the World Series on October 29. Opening Day — if you want to call the Dodgers-Cubs game in Tokyo, “Opening Day” — is March 18.* I prefer March 27, which is the day the Reds have their season opener against the Giants — I’ve been pretty clear that I think the Reds should always own Opening Day.
*I will be there in Tokyo! I can’t wait to tell you all about it.
So, from end to end, that makes 150 days of winter we have to trudge through to get to the baseball season. I do realize that technically, some of those are Fall Days and not Winter Days, but don’t believe it — every day without baseball is winter.
There are markers that help us traverse the lonely baseball-less days. You’ve got the postseason awards. The winter meetings. Some hot-stove movement and rumors. The Baseball of Fame elections. Pitchers and catchers reporting. Spring training games. And so on.
One of the markers I love is when Baseball Prospectus releases its PECOTA projections.
It’s PECOTA Day everybody!
PECOTA stands for “Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm.”
Well, actually, no, PECOTA stands for Bill Pecota, a delightful utility player who played for the Kansas City Royals in the 1980s (and later had brief stays with the Mets and Braves). Bill is one of 11 players in baseball history to play every single position on the diamond, including pinch-hitter and pinch-runner. The most famous of those 11 is Bert Camaneris, who played all nine defensive positions in one day, but you try to come up with a baseball projection system acronym for CAMPANERIS.
Nate Silver invented PECOTA more than 20 years ago — I don’t understand how it works, obviously, because, I mean, let’s not kid anybody, it took me WAY TOO LONG just to count up how many days are between the end of the World Series and Opening Day (and I’m not convinced I got it right, either). But I believe PECOTA is basically a system that compares today’s players to similar players of the past and tries to use those comparisons to determine the player’s arc. It’s obviously a bit deeper than that, but I think that’s the gist.*
*OK, let’s pause here. I just asked Chat GPT to project my numbers for the 2025 season PECOTA style. After first qualifying that because I’m a sportswriter rather than a professional athlete, “we must rely on creative speculation rather than statistical comparisons,” it spit this out:
Batting Average (BA): .042 (occasional contact, but struggles against MLB velocity)
On-Base Percentage (OBP): .111 (walks earned through legendary plate patience and respect from umpires)
Slugging Percentage (SLG): .050 (one bloop single stretching into a double due to fielder miscommunication)
Doubles: 1 (purely accidental, likely misplayed by an outfielder)
Triples: 0 (legs not built for speed, unless a ball gets lost in the ivy at Wrigley)
Home Runs: 0 (unless we count a well-placed wind gust at Coors Field)
RBI: 2 (sacrificing his own stats for the good of the team)
Runs: 1 (pinch-run for late in a blowout)
Stolen Bases: 0 (speed comparable to a vintage typewriter)
That vintage typewriter line seemed totally unnecessary.
If you want full coverage of PECOTA, you obviously want to go to the source — Baseball Prospectus has loads of coverage, obviously, including Teams PECOTA Loves, Teams PECOTA Gloves and Why PECOTA Hates Your Team.
But there was something about PECOTA’s projections this year
that struck me … and it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately:
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