Season Predictions Thread

[TrackCoach]

On 9/11/2026 at 9:21 AM, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

I was in the middle of coaching high school track, and was not very active on the board at that time. However, as I'm generally on the more optimistic (and in this case, realistic) side of the spectrum around here, I'll let you make an educated guess on what my prediction would have been. 

My lack of prediction doesn't change my perception of yours being outright hilarious ;)

Hey!  Fellow High School Track and Field coach here!  Good to see another track coach on here!

[wiguy94]

3 hours ago, Yaz said:

Just for fun, I searched out what Fangraphs predicted for the Brewers in 2026.  83 wins 79 losses.    LOL!!!!!!

I don't know why people find this surprising. Fangraphs projections are based off models which are based off your previous three years weighted a bit for the most recent years. The Brewers entered this year with their entire rotation being guys with under 2 years of MLB experience and Brandon Woodruff who had a big injury red flag. The Brewers overperforming Fangraphs has almost entirely come down to our pitching staff being way better than projections but the projections are toughest for players with little MLB experience.

[markedman5]

Brewers also 2nd in the majors in runs scored and 4th in ops.

They are just a very good team…….

[sveumrules]

31 minutes ago, markedman5 said:

Brewers also 2nd in the majors in runs scored and 4th in ops.

They are just a very good team…….

Yeah, FanGraphs has been way under-estimating the Brewers run scoring capability for the last few years as well.

Since Murphy took over the Brewers have scored 4.98 R/G over 475 team games with an upward year over year trend going back to 2022 (4.48 to 4.49 to 4.80 to 4.98 to 5.19 R/G so far this year).

FanGraphs has the Brewers rest of season projection at 4.66 R/G, which is even considerably lower than their 4.98 BaseRuns estimate so far this year.

[hawing]

I can't believe no one picked 99 or more wins. 

 

(I read through the thread for the first time today, September 24)

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

On 9/16/2026 at 4:37 PM, sveumrules said:

Yeah, FanGraphs has been way under-estimating the Brewers run scoring capability for the last few years as well.

Since Murphy took over the Brewers have scored 4.98 R/G over 475 team games with an upward year over year trend going back to 2022 (4.48 to 4.49 to 4.80 to 4.98 to 5.19 R/G so far this year).

FanGraphs has the Brewers rest of season projection at 4.66 R/G, which is even considerably lower than their 4.98 BaseRuns estimate so far this year.

Because Fangraphs is crap. Almost to the point where its getting difficult to not accuse them of some sort of weird negative bias.

[MadScientist]

10 minutes ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

Because Fangraphs is crap. Almost to the point where its getting difficult to not accuse them of some sort of weird negative bias.

To be fair, they admit that their models don't work very well for a team like the Brewers.  This is what the author said about the Brewers' projection of 85 wins:

Quote

...even though I’ve tried to be as aggressive as Milwaukee is at using its talent from the upper minors, I can’t help shake the feeling that this team will still defy the projections and win 92 or so games.

Also, their individual team projections tend to be a lot closer to 500 than what usually happens.  For instance, they had Boston on top of the AL East with 90 wins, but they also said there was just a 10% chance that the AL East winner would have only 90 wins.  

They also predicted the Rays would be last with 74 wins.   ZiPS mostly proves that computers can guess just as bad as people.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

36 minutes ago, MadScientist said:

To be fair, they admit that their models don't work very well for a team like the Brewers.  This is what the author said about the Brewers' projection of 85 wins:

As I've noted before, models can be adjusted. This isn't a one-off. Fangraphs has seriously underestimated the Brewers for years. 

[wiguy94]

4 minutes ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

As I've noted before, models can be adjusted. This isn't a one-off. Fangraphs has seriously underestimated the Brewers for years. 

Genuinely asking how would you want them to adjust their models? The Brewers are particularly tough to model because we consistently roster a bunch of players with limited MLB experience and young players without much MLB track record are difficult to model. Outside of Woodruff (who was tough to model himself coming off shoulder surgery and an injury riddled year) our entire rotation and rotation depth was made up of guys with 1 full big league season of experience or less. 

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

17 minutes ago, wiguy94 said:

Genuinely asking how would you want them to adjust their models? The Brewers are particularly tough to model because we consistently roster a bunch of players with limited MLB experience and young players without much MLB track record are difficult to model. Outside of Woodruff (who was tough to model himself coming off shoulder surgery and an injury riddled year) our entire rotation and rotation depth was made up of guys with 1 full big league season of experience or less. 

The answer to that is above my pay grade. But it isn't above theirs. All I know is when your models concerning one team in particular are pretty drastically wrong year-after-year, and you are a website that prides yourself on accuracy with your predictions, something is pretty demonstrably broken.

They'd probably hate the suggestion, but it likely starts with adding some sort of automatic positive regression to prospective Brewers rotation members. The teams' pitching development mechanism, at this point, has proven that it can regularly out kick its coverage. 

[wiguy94]

2 minutes ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

The answer to that is above my pay grade. But it isn't above theirs. All I know is when your models concerning one team in particular are pretty drastically wrong year-after-year, and you are a website that prides yourself on accuracy with your predictions, something is pretty demonstrably broken.

They'd probably hate the suggestion, but it likely starts with adding some sort of automatic positive regression to prospective Brewers rotation members. The teams' pitching development mechanism, at this point, has proven that it can regularly out kick its coverage. 

These aren't trying to predict exact outcomes though. The projected records are 50th percentile projections. Not every team is going to have a 50th percentile outcome. It's a range of projections. The guy who runs ZiPS said he considers his model successful when each 10th percentile of success has about 3 teams and that has pretty much happened this year.

[markedman5]

So it seems like Sproat was the biggest disappointment based on numerous posters thinking of him as ROY and a few as our Cy Young.

on the plus side not many had faith in Mitchell…….he stayed healthy all year and played well.

credit to those posters who believed in Bauers…….right on folks.

Some pretty detailed off the wall predictions thrown in that made me lol in retrospect.