It’s that time of the year when various stat-minded folk release projections for the upcoming MLB season and you, the fan, get extremely mad about them one way or another.
PECOTA (Or Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm, an acronym I totally didn’t just copy and paste from its Wikipedia entry, which you can read here for a more detailed breakdown) has been used by Baseball Prospectus since 2003, when Nate Silver, yes that one, developed it. Like all projection systems, it tries to nail down a team’s W/L record, and individual performances. Should the 2018 projections come true, the Diamondbacks will be in a similar position as 2017, but that’s not the worst thing in the world.