Hello! Welcome to the 2025 Projections! This year I am doing them very late so this is not going to be my most thorough run through. I apologize.

Last year we had MAJOR UPGRADES to the projection system. You can see those detailed in last year's primer - which we will use this year as well as I haven't made any major changes to it. For the team, it worked out very well as we had projected 82.95 wins and the team had 83 on the season. I'd say one-twentieth of a win away from correct is about as good as I could expect, no?

This year, as in the past, I will be looking to give you The Good, The Bad, and The Cerutti projections. The Cerutti is what my system projects for players for this year. While The Good and The Bad aren’t necessarily the 90th and 10th percentile projections, respectively, or anything that mathematical. They are kind of the range my system sees these guys falling into with anything higher than The Good or lower than The Bad basically completely destroying my projection system. So to speak.

This year during my projections, like the last couple of years, I will not be predicting playing time for each individual. Instead, this is what my system spits out for plate appearances or innings pitched, so when you see a guy in the minors (like a Tink Hence) who could likely not even sniff a major league debut in 2025, take it as just what this guy could do given the opportunity in 2025 alone, not that he will get (checks notes) 88 innings in 2025 with the MLB club. Please don't take this as his ceiling either. Literally only what my system spits out for this year prior to him playing any games in the minors in 2025 at all.

Let's start with the hitters.

These are The Cerutti projections for all of the hitters that are on the 40-man or that I believe could make a debut in 2025. I loosely grouped them by position but as we know Contreras and Donovan and Burleson - among others - could be listed multiple places and so this is not binding to them or their statistical output.

These numbers for positional totals and team totals do take into account whether or not the player is a starter, but the values shown for individuals above are their actual projections in the system.

By "utti+" (my version of OPS+ or wRC+ that I'm attempting to scale to league average here, you can see that my projections have the top hitters on the Cardinals for 2025 as Herrera, Contreras, Donovan, Nootbaar, and Baker as the only five who are at least 5% higher than league average - but the team as a whole at 2% above league average hitting.

Here are The Good (left) and The Bad (right) scenarios for the hitters. The Good has the team at 7% above league average while The Bad is 3% below league average as a team hitting. So you could say these projections basically see the hitting as about average.

Moving on to the pitchers.

And here are The Cerutti projections for the pitching staff - at least those whom I believe have a shot at pitching in the majors this year. I feel like I'm missing quite a few that have a shot but I also didn't want to include everyone. The best of the group seem to be Helsley, Gray, Hence, and Loutos - the only four with FIPs under 3.70. Somehow the team still has a team FIP below 3.75.

The unfortunate thing is that my projection system believes the team will sit over a half of a point of ERA higher than their FIP on average and that their runs allowed per 9 innings over another quarter point higher than their ERA...and really how many runs they actually allow is much more important from a win-loss scenario viewpoint.

Here are The Good (left) and The Bad (right) projections for the pitching staff. The Good projections have the Cardinals pitching staff saving an additional 37 runs on the season while The Bad projections have the staff giving up 42 more runs on the season.

The Cerutti has the Cardinals at 84.60 wins on the season - before knowing who they are going to trade at the deadline, because it does not take into account the rebuild, retool, re-whatever in progress.

The Bad has the Cardinals with just 75.70 wins on the season while The Good has the Cardinals with 92.53 wins on the season.

Lastly, I don't know if I'm a little higher on the Cardinals than most...I know I am about the outfield as my numbers that I'm guessing for them (basically guessing do I think they'll have a The Cerutti, The Good, or The Bad season) are more on The Good side than The Bad...but when I put in my guesses for each player I get 85.94 wins on the year for the Cardinals this year.

However, for the purposes of this exercise, the projections rule - so for the 2025 season, at least until the trade deadline and we're without some of Arenado, Gray, Fedde, Helsley, Mikolas, Matz, etc....we'll go with 84-85 wins on the season.

As always, with questions or comments, hit me up on twitter or on Facebook.