rewrite this title The 2025 Start of Spring ZiPS Projected Standings: National League

There’s still more winter to go, but this week gave us a sign of spring that’s way more promising than any silly groundhog in Pennsylvania. Pitchers and catchers have reported to Florida and Arizona for spring training. As usual, this is also the best time to do the first mega-run of ZiPS projected standings, to gauge where every team stands at the prelude to the 2025 season. Naturally, these are not the final projected standings, but they’re accurate through every bit of knowledge ZiPS and Szymborski have as of the morning of Thursday, February 13.

These standings are the result of a million simulations, not results obtained from binomial or even beta-binomial magic. The methodology isn’t identical to the one we use for our playoff odds, which we recently launched to both acclaim and dismay. So how does ZiPS calculate the season? Stored within ZiPS are the first- through 99th-percentile projections for each player. I start by making a generalized depth chart, using our Depth Charts as a jumping off point. Since these are my curated projections, I make changes based on my personal feelings about who will receive playing time as filtered through arbitrary whimsy my logic and reasoning. ZiPS then generates a million versions of each team in Monte Carlo fashion.

After that is done, ZiPS applies another set of algorithms with a generalized distribution of injury risk that changes the baseline plate appearances or innings pitched for each player. ZiPS then automatically and proportionally “fills in” playing time from the next players on the list to get to a full slate of PAs and innings.

The result is a million different rosters for each team and an associated winning percentage for each million of them. After applying the new strength of schedule calculations based on the other 29 teams, I end up with the standings for each of the million seasons. I promise this is much less complex than it sounds.

The goal of ZiPS is to be less awful than any other way of predicting the future. The future is tantalizingly close but beyond our knowledge, and if anyone figures out how to deflect the astrophysicist Arthur Eddington’s arrow of time, it’s probably not going to be in the form of baseball projections. So we project probabilities, not certainties. If this does not satisfy you, just assume that any deviation from the actual results are due to flaws in reality.

Over the last decade, ZiPS has averaged 19.2 correct teams when looking at Vegas preseason over/under lines. I’m always tinkering with methodology, but most of the low-hanging fruit in predicting how teams will perform has already been harvested. ZiPS’ misses for teams from year to year are uncorrelated, with an r-squared of one year’s miss to the next of 0.000541. In other words, none of the year-to-year misses for individual franchises has told us anything about future misses for those franchises.

We published the ZiPS projected American League standings on Wednesday, so unless you’re accidentally here looking for the air flow data of Vornado vs. Honeywell desk fans, you guessed correctly that we’ve got the National League installment for today. Please note that the World Series probabilities across the two pieces will not add up to precisely 100%, thanks to the Nick Pivetta signing, the Alex Bregman signing, and some of the minor Wednesday transactions.

As far as bad seasons go, Atlanta had a darn good one, given the team still managed 89 wins and a brief playoff appearance despite significant injuries to Spencer Strider and Ronald Acuña Jr.. They both are expected to be back for most of the 2025 season, and even though their injuries have curbed their projections a bit, their returns are a major boon to the Braves — as good as any free agent signings made this winter. With guaranteed health on all fronts, the Braves would have a much more impressive projection, even taking into consideration the loss of Max Fried, but ZiPS expects there to be at least some injuries, and Atlanta’s depth these days isn’t terribly robust. The Braves also addressed their most glaring position of weakness, left field, with their signing of Jurickson Profar, who is coming off a career year with the Padres. ZiPS doesn’t expect Profar to repeat that performance, but considering Atlanta left fielders were below replacement level last season (77 wRC+, -0.3 WAR), his projected 110 wRC+ and 1.4 WAR represent a fairly sizable upgrade.

Not a lot of surprises here for the Phillies. Like the Braves, they had a very quiet offseason. As has been the case for the past few seasons, Philadelphia’s offense is quite solid, and incoming outfielder Max Kepler is a reasonable fill-in. The main concern for the Phillies here is simply that so many of their key contributors are now on the wrong side of 30. There is some risk that comes with new starting pitcher Jesús Luzardo, whom they acquired from the Marlins, but he offers quite a lot of high-end outcomes. But the truth is, this rotation probably would project to be a top-five staff in baseball even if Philadelphia had signed Steve Carlton instead, without the use of a time machine.

The Mets, on the other hand, had an action-packed offseason. Just signing Juan Soto and then mic-dropping likely would have made for a successful winter. To my utter shock, they were able to pull off the feat of not having to say goodbye to Pete Alonso or pay him a ludicrous amount of money. Yes, he’s declining, but the team is better with him at first and Vientos at third than with Vientos at first and Brett Baty at third. Now, I think people are underrating Baty based on his early career performance, but a contending team ought to be far more interested in the Polar Bear! ZiPS is not particularly enthused by the rotation, but it’s enough to pull the Mets into just about an even projection with the Braves and Phillies.

The Nationals are improving incrementally, and you can see that offensive core of James Wood, Dylan Crews, CJ Abrams, and Luis García Jr. coming together. First baseman Nathaniel Lowe is a solid trade pickup, and he came cheap enough that I can hardly protest too loudly that he’s a much better fit on a contending team. But ZiPS thinks about half this lineup is awful, and feels this pitching staff might be a little worse that the offense. Washington is better than the Marlins, but ZiPS doesn’t believe this team is ready for a breakthrough in 2025.

The gamble for the Marlins was that if they could get enough of their dynamic young pitching to stay healthy, they could compete for a wild card spot even with their lineup looking like the equivalent of a Chevrolet Citation that’s been sitting in your weird cousin’s barn for 30 years. When that roll of the dice didn’t work out, they were out of ideas. Now, their rotation projects to be a bottom-five staff, and as for the lineup, I think I’d rather put my money on the car.

As has been noted, ZiPS really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really likes Chicago’s lineup, even though Kyle Tucker isn’t as good a fit for Wrigley Field as he was for that park in Houston with the new name I just forgot again. Daikon? Dovahkiin? Dank? (Editor’s note: It’s Daikin Park.) ZiPS is not excited about the rotation, especially if a few injuries work their way into the mix, but it’s not enough to keep the Cubs from projecting at the top of the division.

The Cubs shouldn’t rest too easy, though, with the Brewers projected to finish just a couple games behind them. Milwaukee bleeds an elite bullpen arm every year it seems, but it pumps out new dominant relievers at a faster rate than I churn out Simpsons references from 1995. The offense has stabilized a bit, with Christian Yelich getting his offense back on track, and though the Brewers didn’t go big and bold this offseason, most NL Central teams didn’t either. ZiPS gives Nestor Cortes a nice little bounce-back season, which should ease the pain of the loss of Devin Williams.

I thought the Cardinals would come out a few games better than this, but ZiPS clearly is not buying their offseason of inaction. It was surprising not because I think the Cardinals are good, but because ZiPS rarely projects them to mediocre, let alone bad. This is only the second time ZiPS has clocked them as a sub-.500 team. The first time was 2008, when St. Louis won 86 games. Perhaps this projection is a bit counterintuitive because the Cardinals were worse in 2023 than they were in 2024, and they entered last season with an 83-win projection, but ZiPS simply saw last year’s team as having a lot more opportunity for upside. That makes sense when you consider the Cardinals didn’t sign a major league free agent before camps opened, lost Paul Goldschmidt and Andrew Kittredge to free agency, and declined their options for current free agents Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson. All four of those guys are in the twilight of their careers at this point, but the Cardinals didn’t replace them externally, and their internal options don’t represent much of an improvement. Really, it feels like the Cardinals are just waiting around for John Mozeliak’s tenure to end.

The Reds boast some upside, but they also have some serious depth concerns, and an uninspiring group on the offensive side of the defensive spectrum. ZiPS kind of likes the rotation, but not the Plan B options after the projected starting five, and it’s decidedly lukewarm about the bullpen. There’s a lot of value tied up in comparatively few players: Elly De La Cruz, Hunter Greene, and a hopefully healthy Matt McLain.

Pittsburgh is a far less depressing team then you’d expect from its projected record, but it has far too many positions that are just screaming for more offense. Signing Anthony Santander would have been a much better idea than simply relying on Andrew McCutchen firing up the member berry invocations of a decade ago. Sure, a slugger like Santander wouldn’t come cheap, but now is precisely the time for the Pirates to spend. The top three in the rotation are terrific, and the Pirates are the type of team that if they could sneak into October, they could really surprise some people.

The curve for the Dodgers’ projections is actually pretty funny. You don’t quite see it with the 80/20 splits, but their 10th-percentile projection only drops another a third of a win and their first-percentile projection is 86 wins. Contrary to what people think, the sum of the Dodgers’ adding very expensive depth isn’t really on the high end, because they’re already pushing into diminishing returns territory. With good health, the Dodgers will have a hard time getting maximum value from all their players because they have so many good ones. The biggest benefit of all this is that the team is Marianas Trench deep, down at the depth where you start to see these fish things that look like Eldritch abominations. For the Dodgers to have a truly lousy season, it would probably take someone on their roster doing gain-of-function research on smallpox in the dugout, which is probably against the rules.

The Diamondbacks are absolutely solid everywhere except designated hitter, though ZiPS isn’t as keen on some of their replacement options. Adding Corbin Burnes is huge, and even if Jordan Montgomery ends up getting a lot of innings, he has to be better than he was last year, right? I actually thought Arizona would come out a few games better than this, but ZiPS really doesn’t like what happens in the event of a Gabriel Moreno or Ketel Marte injury, and the lackluster DH projection reflects the team’s lack of spare bats.

The Padres could be very good, but this is also a really delicate team. Bringing in Nick Pivetta is more helpful in the projections than what people might’ve expected because the back end of San Diego’s rotation looked pretty bleak to ZiPS. However, the wins that were giveth could be taketh away if the Padres trade Dylan Cease, something they seem determined to do, but that hasn’t happenedeth yet. The sudden changes in team revenues because of Diamond Sports’ bankruptcy and team ownership turmoil have really hurt the Padres, as they’re likely nearing the end of their current run. ZiPS really likes prospects Ethan Salas and Leodalis De Vries, but they won’t impact the 2025 roster, so you’ll have to wait until the ZiPS Top 100 Prospects next week for more on them!

The Giants successfully retained Matt Chapman, but they were below .500 with him last year. The big addition here is Willy Adames, but Justin Verlander is far less exciting than he was five years ago. There’s just too much meh all around for ZiPS to project San Francisco to be anything more than a third-tier candidate, though far from a hopeless one.

This may come as a shock to you, but the Rockies are acting with far more competence lately. Over the last two offseasons, they haven’t done anything crazy in free agency — like sign Kris Bryant to play the outfield — and they’ve stopped their usual practice of treating prospects as annoyances. It’s nice that Colorado is going to give Nolan Jones every chance to have a bounce-back season rather than plotting to replace him with, say, Andrew Benintendi, as the Jeff Bridich-era Rockies may have done. But just because they are a better-run organization doesn’t mean they are good. The hole is so deep that it will take quite a while to get out of it, and they basically still have to find an entire pitching staff. A healthy Germán Márquez and a miraculous resurgence from Bryant still wouldn’t make this team a contender.

As usual, I’m including the ZiPS playoff chart, which shows what the chances are that a number of wins is achieved by the division and Wild Card winners. For example, ZiPS projects the team that wins the NL East to have, on average, 95.6 wins, but just under 20% of the time, the eventual NL East champ will win at least 101 games.