For the 20th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Philadelphia Phillies.

Batters

Unless something significant happens in the next few weeks, the Phillies’ 2024 offense will look a lot like the late-2023 version. In many ways, that’s a good thing: The team ranked sixth in runs scored and seventh in wRC+ in the second half. Problem is, everyone will be a year older and some of the club’s fundamental issues still remain. Most of their best offensive talent is on the wrong side of 30, the outfield’s kind of iffy overall, and you can’t DH both Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos. Bryce Harper playing first “fixes” the loss of Rhys Hoskins, but you have to have a lot of faith in Brandon Marsh and Johan Rojas. Marsh is probably the more likely of the two to maintain offensive relevance, but Rojas is good enough defensively that the floor on his performance is probably pretty high.

I’ve already seen some grumbling about Bryson Stott’s projection, but given the volatility of defensive stats — even the newest-fangled of them — ZiPS isn’t going all-in there until he does it another time or two. Alec Bohm is competently boring.

Issues like the team’s depth and lack of reinforcements on the farm remain. That’s not to say the farm is empty, it’s just that the most fascinating prospects are pitchers and the more compelling offensive prospects are probably a few years off. The Phillies will try to keep their boat afloat until then, but in 2024, the team could be susceptible to a lot of bad news hitting at once.

Pitchers

As long as their pitchers are healthy, the Phillies have one of the best starting rotations in baseball. If you think their lofty ranking in our depth charts is due to some idiosyncrasy of Steamer, ZiPS likes them about just as much when using our depth chart playing time, ranking them fourth among the projected teams so far (Braves, Mariners, Dodgers). Now, I’m personally not quite as bullish about this group, and by the time we have the Real Official ZiPS projections, I’m naturally going to be a little more skeptical about playing time for Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola, simply by virtue of them being pitchers.

Wheeler-Nola is a fine one-two punch, and the emergence of Ranger Suárez and Cristopher Sánchez has given the Phillies a lot more runway to survive if calamity strikes. Taijuan Walker’s semi-cromulent performance looks a lot better when he’s only being counted on to be the fifth-best pitcher in the rotation. Sure, Wheeler is unsigned past 2024, but that’s a problem for Future Dave Dombrowski (or Sam Fuld) to worry about. ZiPS remains lukewarm on Mick Abel and Griff McGarry, however, and the team isn’t overflowing elsewhere with those random fourth starters the A’s used to be able to find before they lost their feel for it.

There’s a real polarization among relievers in the ZiPS projections. The computer really likes José Alvarado, Matt Strahm, and Orion Kerkering, and is at least a friendly acquaintance with Jeff Hoffman and Seranthony Domínguez. But the relievers it’s not keen on, like Dylan Covey and Andrew Bellatti, it hates with the kind of burning passion that should worry people who fear AI uprisings. It’s also surprisingly suspicious of Gregory Soto’s improved walk rates for reasons I haven’t completely deciphered.

So, where do the Phillies stand? They still need an awful lot to go right for them and wrong for Atlanta to be serious contenders for the division. But they’re a top-tier Wild Card team and if the rotation stays healthy, they can power themselves pretty far in October once again. Of course, there’s some risk in keeping the band together for another album without anything new; you eventually produce Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Mardi Gras, or a couple of Weezer albums that I’ve only forgotten the names of after years of focused hatred. This is a good team, but with just the right mix of plausible, unfortunate outcomes, it could be susceptible to one of those depressing implosions like the Mets or Cardinals last year.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time.

Here are how the ZiPS percentiles worked out in 2023 for pitchers and hitters in in 2023.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2024 due to injury, and players who were released in 2023. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Belgian Death Metal Skiffle Band that only plays songs by Franz Schubert, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.33.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.

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