The Cleveland Guardians won 92 games last season, took home the AL Central title, won a postseason series against the Detroit Tigers, and reached the American League Championship Series.
They also retained ace Shane Bieber, added talent to their rotation and bullpen, and are in line to promote top prospects Juan Brito and Chase DeLauter as early as Opening Day.
Yet projection systems and analysts are disrespecting them and what they can achieve in 2025.
PECOTA recently posted its World Championship Chances, via Codify, and the Guardians are nowhere to be found.
Well, they are ranked, just not as high as they probably deserve, placing as the 16th team with a 1.4 percent chance.
2025 World Championship Chances
(in %, from PECOTA):21.6 LAD
9.4 NYY
8.5 ATL
7.5 CHC
7.2 TEX
7.0 BAL
5.8 HOU
5.6 NYM
4.7 SEA
4.3 PHI
3.2 ARI MIN
2.3 TOR
1.8 TB
1.5 KC
1.4 CLE
1.2 DET
0.7 MIL SD
0.5 SF
0.4 BOS LAA STL
0.3 PIT
0.2 WSH
0.1 CIN ATH
0.0 CWS COL MIA— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) February 4, 2025
PECOTA is Baseball Prospectus’ system for projecting player performance.
“PECOTA is used primarily for projecting the performance of individual players, but it can be applied to entire teams as well to project records. It uses predicted depth charts to establish the projected runs for and against each team, before gleaning a projected win total from that,” MLB.com explains.
The Los Angeles Dodgers lead the ranking with a 21.6 percent chance to return to defend their World Series title.
It’s one thing to leave Cleveland out of the top five, but the Guardians aren’t even in the top half of MLB teams.
To be fair, projection systems are statistical models and don’t care about feelings or merits.
However, it looks shocking to see the Guardians, a team that just finished among the final four, so low in these World Series-winning chances.
The Guardians will have to prove everyone wrong where it matters most: on the field.
NEXT: Steven Kwan Has Honest Admission About His Rookie Season
