It may still feel like the 2024 season just got started, but Major League Baseball passed the one-third mark this past week. This is usually a good time for a full, fresh run of the ZiPS projected standings, and I think it’s especially so now after Ronald Acuña Jr.’s season-ending injury, which will have a serious impact on the NL East race.

The ZiPS projected standings use a different methodology than our Depth Chart standings, beyond only using ZiPS rather than a ZiPS/Steamer mix. Stored within ZiPS are the first- through 99th-percentile projections for each player. I start by making a generalized depth chart, using our Depth Charts as a jumping off point. I then make my own changes, and the final results are correlated with, but far from identical, to Jason Martinez’s projected PAs and IPs. It varies from player to player, but the biggest systemic difference is that my “average” projected playing time for individual players reflects a larger chance of significant injury. I feel this methodology helps better express a team’s depth, something crucial as the season goes on and IL attendance grows. It has the disadvantage, though, of being quite workload intensive, meaning it’s not something that can just be auto-run every morning.

The one change in methodology from past standings is that the average playing time for the projected players is month-based. For example, ZiPS sees no innings for Jacob deGrom at all in June or July, with most of the innings (I have the average at 15) coming in September. So each time, rather than having one distribution of expected team strength for the season, ZiPS now has six distributions for each team based on the calendar month. While the resulting changes are quite small, the sad truth is that baseball projections are mature enough after a couple decades that all improvements are tiny. It’s not just the low-hanging fruit that’s gone; you now have to climb a rickety ladder held by an inebriated friend to get the ones way up there.

Let’s get into the projections before we reach a Tolkien-movie level of narrator exposition. It should go without saying, because it rarely seems to end up that way, but take this as a reminder that 0.0% is not literally 0.0%, but until mathematical elimination, a number that rounds to 0.0%.

The Phillies have seen their projections sink a bit after losing four of five games to the Rockies and Giants, but the Acuña injury is a disaster for the Braves. ZiPS sees Philadelphia and Atlanta as basically equals now, but with a five-game lead, attrition benefits Philadelphia, not Atlanta. The Mets remain as mediocre as their preseason projections said, but the Acuña injury let them claw back almost a full percentage point of divisional probability over the last week, despite their dreadful recent stretch. The Nats have played much better than their expected doormat status, but they’re not certainly not inside the house yet, and ZiPS sees their relevance on the edge of the wild card race slipping away. The Marlins’ 6-24 start to the season all but officially eliminated them from the divisional race, but after playing roughly .500 ball this month, it’s at least plausible, though incredibly unlikely, that they could make a run for the third wild card spot.

Jackson Chourio has struggled, but Milwaukee has received solid offense contributions from almost every other position. Who had Joey Ortiz likely finishing 2024 with more WAR than Jackson Holliday? I can’t say ZiPS or I did, either. (Well, unless I lie.) ZiPS doesn’t expect Robert Gasser to maintain that microscopic ERA, but it does think he’ll get a pretty good jump from what is now a surprisingly low strikeout rate. Right now, the Brewers are the slight favorite to win the Central, but every team in the division still maintains more than a scrap of a chance. I personally think the Cubs will be the most aggressive at the deadline, but that’s a little out of ZiPS’s wheelhouse.

There were scenarios in which the Dodgers were topped in the NL West, but it doesn’t look like any of them are coming to pass. Outside of Bobby Miller’s shoulder injury, the rotation has held together quite well, and we’re getting closer to Clayton Kershaw’s possible return. The Padres and Giants have seen their divisional odds get longer since March, but their win projections remain about where they were initially expected, and both teams are serious wild card contenders. The 50th-percentile win projection for the last NL wild card berth is 85.4, a number well within the realm of possibility for both teams. So could the Diamondbacks, but their odds of getting there are a little less likely because, as of now, they’re three games behind San Diego and San Francisco. The Rockies are stubbornly hanging onto that last decimal point, though ZiPS think they’re the worst team in the National League.

Contrary to the preseason, the playoff picture in the AL East has cleared up considerably in two months. What was projected to possibly be a race between all five clubs, with even the Red Sox having a decent shot, has largely become a two-team competition between the Orioles and Yankees. ZiPS likes the Yankees slightly better in an “everybody stays healthy” projection, but with the injury risks all built in, ZiPS gives the Orioles the subtle nod due to their superior depth. ZiPS still believes the Blue Jays could contend for a wild card spot, because the offense can’t be this mediocre moving forward, but after struggling for two months, Toronto has basically been lapped by Baltimore and New York. ZiPS remains skeptical that the Red Sox will keep up their current win pace (at least their Pythagorean one), but the system thinks the rotation’s success is legitimate. It’s weird seeing the Rays with the worst bullpen WAR in baseball; I almost typed the Devil Rays when looking at that chart.

ZiPS was the Cleveland believer of the projection systems coming into the season, but not even it could’ve expected the Guardians to win two-thirds of their games. I’m not going get mad at my computer for not realizing that David Fry would play like the second coming of Ted Williams. But if the Guardians are bound for some regression, the AL Central is not exactly full of teams that could overrun them. ZiPS remains extremely skeptical of the Royals, but they’ve banked enough wins that they’re not going to disappear from the race anytime soon. The computer now thinks the AL Central will have 1.2 wild card spots (on average), a big jump from 0.5. After an abomination of a start to the season, the White Sox have played just well enough that they still have a 20% chance of avoiding 100 losses. That’s something, I guess.

The Astros must play under a fortunate star because this has to be their best-case scenario considering their abysmal start to the season. With the Rangers treading water and playing some lousy baseball of late, the Mariners doing the usual Mariners .540 thing, and the Angels looking like a lost cause, nobody ran away with the division while the Astros sputtered. The Logan Roy of the AL West, Houston’s future may have some serious questions, but the team has weathered what was likely its worst stretch of pitcher injuries. The lack of a frontrunner in the West has kept Oakland theoretically in the mix, but the team lacks depth to remain single-digit games back from first place for much longer, and its owner is probably far too apathetic about his club’s short-term fate to make any big additions at the deadline. At least Mason Miller is a lot of fun.

As usual, I’m including the ZiPS playoff matrix, which shows the percentile results for the win total of each playoff spot’s eventual victor. For example, while the Orioles and Yankees are both projected to win 95 games, ZiPS projects that the average eventual result for the team that wins the AL East will be 99.3 wins.

In order to not have to reference the preseason projections, I’m also including a sortable table of how the playoff/divisional/World Series probabilities have changed since the preseason projections.

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