Mar 83 min read

Cardinals 2024 Projections: Recap and Team Projections

This is the first time I've wrapped up my projections with it's own Recap (and Team Projections) post. So I'm kinda making this up as I go along. The first thing that I'm going to share here is my tab showing what I have for our team's offensive output for the 2024 season.

In darker red at the top are the three catchers and what I have for the totals for our catchers in 2024. That is followed by the medium red in the middle from Goldy through Saggese and the infielder totals. Lastly is the lightest red at the bottom with the outfielders from Walker to Siani and then the outfielder totals.

In those sections the presumed starters are given the lion's share of the plate appearances (not the ones listed, but behind the scenes in the Google Sheets formulas. The rest are then averaged between them fairly evenly to give a total for the catchers / infielders / outfielders. The TOTALS row at the top comes directly from the three totals rows below it. In the top right corner is the team's projected runs per game of 4.93 (at the time of this writing). That is not the 816 runs scored divided by 162 that it would seem either, though. It is a formula that incorporates projected runs per game, projected uttiOPS compared to league and projected wOBA compared to league and then applying that to the league's runs scored and how the 2024 Cardinals would be projected to compare - and then all averaged together. With what I just explained on offense for runs per game, I do the same for pitchers. I do those at a more individual level which will be shown in a bit.

The next piece I want to show is the pitchers version of the same type of spread sheet - the depth chart that I have for them. Again it will be split up between starters and relievers.

In the darker red are the starters. The five with bolded type for their name are the ones that I have as the current starting 5 in the rotation. The rest I have splitting up the 14 starts not assigned to those 5 in the rotation.

In the lighter red at the bottom are the relievers, with the bolded ones being the 8 I had projected for the pen at the time of writing. That could very well change as spring training goes on. You can see the columns with ERA, FIP, and RA/9 (runs allowed per 9 innings). Those are averaged out (basically, a slight propriety formula added in) in the "avg" column to the right of RA/9.

The RUNS column on the far right for relievers are the runs allowed my projections expect the pitcher to actually give up in the innings shown in the 5th column from the left. This is based off of the "avg" column to its' left.

In the last four columns for the starters is where I come up with my projected team wins for the season. In the amount of starts assigned to each pitcher, I take the amount of runs the team should allow (so the starter's runs per game plus the relievers runs per remaining innings) compared to the runs the team is projected to score in the games started by this starter) and then apply a Pythagorean Runs formula to the runs scored and runs allowed. That gives the wins and losses to each pitcher. Again, the non bolded starting 5 are then combined to only have 14 starts between them as the starting 5 are projected for 148 out of 162 games.

This gives the St. Louis Cardinals 82.95 wins (or 83 wins) as the team projection for 2024.

I do have different versions of these charts above. I have these for if every player performed at THE BAD or THE GOOD levels. I also have what my guesses are - assigning THE GOOD, THE BAD, or THE CERUTTI to individuals based on my own thoughts. Here are those win totals.

Everyone hits THE BAD: 76.73 wins

Everyone hits THE GOOD: 90.78 wins

Everyone hits my guesses: 84.05 wins

So let's call this team a 77-91 win team, but 83-84 wins seems most right - at least to my projections.

For what it's worth, here are the looks at the screen grabs for the entire team if everyone hits THE BAD or THE GOOD. Dig through if you just love spreadsheets like I do (or are a glutton for punishment).

THE GOOD - HITTERS