How Phillies can beat the projections in 2023

This story was excerpted from Todd Zolecki’s Phillies Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

The numbers don’t lie, but they don’t mean everything.

How else to reconcile how most projections have the Phillies finishing a distant third in the NL East this season, despite winning the NL pennant last year and acquiring Trea Turner, Taijuan Walker, Gregory Soto, Craig Kimbrel, Matt Strahm and Josh Harrison in the offseason? For example, FanGraphs projects the Phillies to win 85 games in 2023, behind the Braves (93) and Mets (91).

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

True. Projections are just that … projections. Nobody should get too upset or too concerned about it. But the projections are interesting because they use information similar to what teams use to help them build real-world rosters.

It’s certainly interesting enough that the projections have been a topic of conversation at times this spring -- from people in Phillies uniforms to Dombrowski and team ownership.

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Dombrowski and Phillies managing partner John Middleton recently talked about it.

So, what to make of a projected 85-win team?

“First, there’s the variable of Bryce Harper’s situation,” Dombrowski said. “For example, I saw a lineup projected by somebody who said we could have the eighth-best lineup in Major League Baseball. But they said, well, if Bryce Harper comes back, they could be No. 1.

“Secondly, it surprises me, because they say, well, they won only 87 games last year. And I hear this repeatedly. And I get it. It’s what we won. But if you look at the record when [manager] Rob Thomson took over, we were 22-29. That record [under Thomson] correlates to much better than 87.”

The Phillies went 65-46 (.586) under Thomson, which was the fourth-best record in the National League from June 1 through the end of the regular season. Philadelphia was only 1 1/2 games behind the 101-win Mets in that span.

A .586 clip equates to 95 victories in a 162-game season.

“The other thing that’s always interesting,” Dombrowski said, “is when I see those predictive natures, the one thing that they don’t do is take player improvement into account. I think we have three young players on our club that basically play every day that can make a difference [between] us being an 87-win club and a much better club in Bryson Stott, Alec Bohm and Brandon Marsh.

“I think those three have a chance to continue to improve. In addition to that, [Nick] Castellanos did not have a great year. I think he will bounce back and have a good season. And they also don’t include somebody like Andrew Painter being part of your club.

“We probably have more variables than maybe some other clubs, like the Braves or Mets. I understand, because I deal with the analytics and the projections all the time. And they have a hard time with those youngsters, predicting that they’re going to be better.”

The Phillies think they are going to be much better than an 85-win team. They just have to do it.