ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - To be clear, the headline isn't just for Cardinals fans. I'd say the same thing to the other 29 fan bases out there too. Whether the projections love or hate your team there's no need to put too much stock in them. They're fun conversation starters - and some projections will be dead on - but projection systems are fallible and they don't all see eye-to-eye either.
Earlier this week, Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projections came out and there was some outcry from Cards Nation about PECOTA having the Cardinals as an 81-win team, finishing 3rd in the NL Central. If you stroll on over to Fangraphs.com you can see they also have the Cardinals as an 81 win team ... but have them winning the NL Central by a hair over Milwaukee.
So the projections have the NL Central being won by a .500 team, huh? As bad an offseason as it has been in the division, it hasn't been that bad. The Cardinals played at an 84-win pace in 2020 and that was with arguably the most taxing 2-month schedule an MLB team has ever played following their COVID shutdown ... and now they've added Nolan Arenado to that group, most of which is returning intact for 2021. How could the projections see regression if the same team is coming back plus a Hall of Fame 3B in his prime?
The truth is these projections tend to be very conservative. There usually aren't many teams in the 100 win range and there usually aren't many in the 60 win range. Most teams are pushed toward the middle. For whatever reason the projections are always a little down on the Cardinals. Last February, before COVID hit, PECOTA had the Cardinals as an 80-win team and they outperformed that (albeit in a short season) despite having 11 doubleheaders in the last 5-6 weeks of the season and almost no off days. In 2019 PECOTA had the Cardinals winning 86 games and they went out and won the NL Central with 91 wins. You can go back 8 or 9 years and see the same kind of thing pretty much every single year.
Statistically speaking, being off by 3 to 5 wins isn't really all that big of a miss when you're projecting how 162 games will play out over 6 months but that's often the difference between making the playoffs or not.
One thing I noticed about the Fangraphs ZIPS projections for the Cardinals is that they don't expect the pitching staff to be as good as it typically is. ZIPS has the Cardinals staff allowing 4.71 runs per game this year and that's where I think the projections are most flawed. They have pretty much every Cards pitcher (except Jack Flaherty) underperforming compared to their 2019-2020 numbers and I just don't think that's realistic. Sure, some of them will see their numbers get worse but others will get better and some will just be healthier.
For context...
* The Cardinals have finished .500 or below just ONE TIME since the 2000 season (21 years) and that was in 2007.
* While the ZIPS projections have the Cardinals allowing 4.71 runs per game in 2021 they only allowed 3.95 runs per game in 2020 and 4.09 runs per game in 2019, which means ZIPS is seeing a MASSIVE regression for the staff an that's really odd given the talent and depth of pitching the Cardinals have.
* Over the last 10 seasons (2011-2020) the Cardinals averaged 3.97 runs per game allowed. So at no point in the last decade have they even come close to allowing 4.71 runs per game.
This is why I'd rest easy if I'm a Cards fan. Unless the pitching staff totally implodes there is no argument for the Cardinals being a .500 team. They've been better than that the last couple of years with a lineup that wasn't great and it's pretty easy to argue that adding Arenado makes the lineup better than it was in 2019 or 2020.
The Cardinals might be the best defensive team in the National League in 2021, they'll likely have a Top 5 pitching staff and the lineup will almost certainly be better than it was last year if only because they've dramatically improved the middle of the order with Arenado.
If you want a better estimate for a 2021 win total, check out what Las Vegas thinks. The Action Network has the Cardinals over/under for 2021 at 85 and that's a lot more reasonable. I would take the over on 85, though not a whole heck of a lot unless a couple of hitters have break out years, and if you can find an over/under of 81 anywhere you can place a bet I'd advise putting a whole pile of money on the over!
