It’s PECOTA week, meaning that Baseball Prospectus has released its hitter, pitcher, and team projections for the upcoming 2025 MLB season. PECOTA is the primary projection set for the Baseball Prospectus annual, which the BP team produces every offseason.
PECOTA projects the Royals to win around 81 games this season. That is good for second in the AL Central, behind only the Minnesota Twins.
After winning 86 games last year, some Royals fans may be taken aback by the Royals winning four to five fewer games than a year ago. Conversely, there are a few things to remember with PECOTA (as with any projection model).
First, these projections are purely mathematical, taking into consideration what a player did last year and what similar players did at their points in their respective careers. Since all players are different, some outperform their projections, while others underperform. Thus, projections like PECOTA give baseball fans a baseline of what to expect for the upcoming season.
Second, these projections are always in the 50th percentile, meaning there will always be some positive or negative regression for a team or player from the previous season.
For example, Bobby Witt Jr. has a 4.5 WARP (Baseball Prospectus’ WAR metric) projection for 2025 after producing a 7.9 WARP in 2024. Does that mean Witt will experience a definite 3.4 WARP in 2025? Maybe, but it’s only a 50% projection, which means that even if Witt takes a step back, he will be worth nearly five WARP, putting him in the league’s upper percentile.
Thus, PECOTA projections shouldn’t solely be looked at as a “prediction” but rather as a benchmark that could help mold realistic expectations of a team or player.
When looking at the Royals players and their PECOTA projections for 2025, some players’ projected metrics stick out more than others. Thus, I will analyze Royals and hitting and pitching standouts, based on PECOTA, in two posts over the next few days. I will start with pitchers and utilize the following metrics (as defined by Baseball Prospectus).
- WARP: is Prospectus’ attempt at capturing a player’s total value. This means considering playing time, position, batting, baserunning, and defense for batters, role, innings pitched, and quality of performance for pitchers.
- ERA: Earned Run Average. Earned runs, divided by innings pitched, multiplied by nine.
- DRA uses multilevel models to estimate pitchers’ most likely contributions to the run-scoring around them. Unlike other component metrics, DRA considers (and adjusts) for park, opponent, and, when helpful, framing, temperature, and pitch type. DRA achieves significantly improved reliability over raw pitcher statistics (like ERA) and other pitcher run estimators. DRA estimates include uncertainty estimates, making it easier to compare players to one another and to appreciate the stability of DRA’s estimates, even early on in the season. Generally, a pitcher’s DRA, plus or minus one standard deviation (DRA_SD), encompasses at least 70% of that pitcher’s “true” DRA values.
- DRA-: rates pitchers by how well they compare to their peers rather than by the number of predicted runs allowed in a given season. Common examples include FIP-, ERA-, and wRC+. The formula for DRA-Minus is DRA / DRA_mean * 100
- cFIP: Each underlying event in the FIP equation — be it a home run, strikeout, walk, or hit by a pitch — is modeled to adjust for, as appropriate, the effect of the individual batter, catcher, and umpire; the stadium, home-field advantage; umpire bias; and the handedness relationship between pitcher and batter present during each plate appearance. Because cFIP is on a 100 “minus” scale, 100 is perfectly average, scores below 100 are better, and scores above 100 are worse.
Thus, based on these five projection metrics, let’s examine five Royals pitchers whom Royals fans should pay close attention to for the upcoming 2025 season.
Cole Ragans: 4.1 WARP, 3.15 ERA, 3.59 DRA, 80 DRA-, 74 cFIP
After producing a 1.6 WARP in 12 games with the Royals in 2023 after being traded over from Texas, Cole Ragans had an incredible first entire season in Kansas City last year.
In 32 starts, Ragans accumulated a 3.9 WARP and a 3.14 ERA, 3.77 DRA, 85 DRA-, and 84 cFIP. Those were all impressive marks and put him in the discussion of the best pitchers in the American League last season. Even though he finished fourth in AL Cy Young voting, one could argue that Ragans was the AL’s second-best pitcher behind Detroit’s Tarik Skubal.
Even though Ragans’ 2024 on the mound was phenomenal, PECOTA thinks his 2025 could be even better.
PECOTA projects Ragans to not only post a better WARP (0.2 wins higher) but also improve in DRA (18 points), DRA-(five points), and cFIP (10 points). Skubal likely will be the AL Cy Young favorite again in 2025, but his 4.7 WARP projection isn’t considerably better than Ragans’. Thus, based on what PECOTA is calculating, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Royals’ ace make more noise in the AL Cy Young race this season.
The Royals return Lugo, Michael Wacha, Alec Marsh, and Michael Lorenzen to the rotation in 2025, which gives Kansas City much-needed starting pitching depth. Ragans could significantly help the Royals rotation be a Top-5 group in Major League Baseball if he surpasses his 50th-percentile projection this season.
Seth Lugo: 2.1 WARP, 4.49 DRA, 4.00 ERA, 98 DRA-, 97 cFIP
The Royals signed Lugo last offseason to a two-year deal with a player option for a third year. At the time, Lugo was coming off a season in San Diego where he pitched as a starter, the first time he had held such a role since 2017 with the Mets. While Lugo was solid with the Padres (3.0 WARP and 91 DRA-), it was still unclear how Lugo would fare in his move to the American League.
Safe to say, Lugo lived up to the first year of his contract and then some.
Lugo finished second in the AL Cy Young race and put up gaudy numbers with the Royals in 2024. In addition to posting a 3.00 ERA in over 206 IP, he also produced a 3.3 WARP, 4.21 DRA, 94 DRA-, and a 98 cFIP. While not as impressive as Ragans, Lugo’s performance was a big reason why the Royals experienced a 30-win turnaround from 2023 to 2024.
Unlike Ragans, the 34-year-old righty relies more on initiating weak contact and groundballs to get outs than strikeouts. Ragans produced a 32% whiff rate and 20.5% K-BB% last season, while Lugo only sported a 22.5% whiff rate and 15.9% K-BB rate. Conversely, Lugo generated a 43.6% GB% and only allowed a 9.1% HR/FB rate. That was much better than Ragans’ 39.9% GB% and 10.2% HR/FB rate.
PECOTA projects a big dip from Lugo in 2025. The projections expect his WARP to drop 1.2 points, his DRA to spike up by 28 points, and his DRA- to jump up by four points. However, his cFIP is expected to drop by one point, which isn’t much of an improvement or decline from 2024.
Lugo is still expected to be a productive pitcher in 2025. That said, it seems unlikely that Lugo will have another Top-3 AL Cy Young finish, based on the projections.
Kris Bubic: 1.2 WARP, 4.33 DRA, 3.95 ERA, 96 DRA-, 83 cFIP
After missing most of 2023 and part of 2024 due to recovery from Tommy John surgery, Bubic thrived in the bullpen in the second half of the MLB season. Along with Lucas Erceg, who was acquired at the Trade Deadline from Oakland, Bubic helped to turn the Royals bullpen around, making it one of the league’s best units in September and October.
Bubic’s BP metrics are up there with the league’s best. He posted a 68 DRA-, 3.05 DRA, and 70 cFIP, which ranked in the top 10 for qualified pitchers. The Stanford lefty also produced a 2.67 ERA, 1.87 FIP, a 28.1% K-BB%, and a 30.5% whiff rate. Even though he wasn’t a traditional reliever, there weren’t as many relievers in baseball as productive as Bubic in those high-leverage late-inning situations down the stretch (and in the postseason).
PECOTA is optimistic about Bubic’s 2025 and expects an innings increase for Bubic, which seems to correlate with what JJ Picollo and the Royals have been saying this offseason (i.e., that he will move to the rotation). Even though Bubic’s spot in the rotation isn’t guaranteed, he sports some of the best PECOTA projections for any Royals pitcher despite only being projected to throw 93 innings.
Significant increases are expected for Bubic in his DRA, DRA-, and cFIP in 2025. However, he only pitched in 30.1 IP last year, so jumps in these metrics are to be expected with a nearly 63-inning increase. Still, he’s expected to outproduce fellow starters Marsh (4.77 DRA, 105 DRA-), Lorenzen (4.86 DRA, 111 DRA-), Wacha (4.45 DRA, 100 DRA-), and Kyle Wright (4.98 DRA, 111 DRA-).
Royals fans should expect Bubic to be a mainstay in the Royals rotation in 2025 and beyond, with the potential to be the second or third-best starter in Kansas City this season.
Hunter Harvey: 0.3 WARP, 4.28 DRA, 3.90 ERA, 96 DRA-, 92 cFIP
Harvey’s tenure with the Royals last year was disastrous, to put it bluntly.
After posting a 3.85 DRA, 4.20 ERA, and 86 DRA- in 45 IP with the Nationals, Harvey only posted a 4.00 DRA, 6.35 ERA, and 90 DRA- in six outings and 5.2 IP with the Royals. Thus, it wasn’t surprising that Harvey was being floated in trade talks this offseason, especially since he will be a free agent after the 2025 season.
As of February 7th, Harvey will be pitching for the Royals. Furthermore, according to the Royals front office, he would also be 100 percent for Spring Training, which wasn’t the case when he came to Kansas City from D.C. back in July. Thus, Harvey should be key in the Royals bullpen behind Erceg and the newly-acquired Carlos Estevez.
PECOTA projects that Royals fans shouldn’t sleep on Harvey despite his rough initial campaign in Kansas City in 2024.
Harvey’s 4.28 DRA is projected to be the third-best mark for Royals relievers behind Erceg (4.20) and Estevez (4.22). That also proves true for his DRA- (Erceg’s is 94, and Estevez’s is 95). Harvey is expected to perform better in cFIP than Estevez, as his mark is better than Estevez’s projected 102 cFIP.
Even though the expectations may be low for Harvey from more jaded Royals fans, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Harvey be the second-best reliever in Kansas City in 2025. However, whether that would be second-best to Erceg or Estevez is still to be determined.
Evan Sisk: 0.1 WARP, 4.16 DRA, 3.92 ERA, 93 DRA-, 87 cFIP
This offseason, Sisk was added to the 40-man roster to prevent him from becoming a Minor League free agent. With three Minor League options, it seems unlikely that Sisk will have much of an impact on the Royals bullpen in 2025. Conversely, Sisk’s PECOTA projections were a bit eye-opening, even if it may be a small sample projection (12 IP).
According to PECOTA, Sisk’s projected 4.16 DRA is the best-projected mark of any Royals reliever. His DRA- and cFIP are projected to lead any Royals reliever for the upcoming season. Unfortunately, his projected inning total is so minuscule, mostly because Sisk hasn’t pitched an inning yet at the MLB level.
I don’t think Royals fans should look at Sisk’s PECOTA projections and think, “Hey, he’s going to be the closer in Kansas City by the end of 2025!” Instead, his projections signify that Sisk has the skills to be a sneaky reliever for the Royals bullpen this season and beyond.
He could be a nice option as the Royals’ left-handed reliever if Angel Zerpa or Sam Long should falter after solid 2024 campaigns.
Zerpa has a Minor League option remaining, but Long doesn’t, so the Royals would have to designate him for assignment if they demote him. Losing Long may be a blow to the bullpen, especially after how well he performed in his first season in Kansas City. That said, based on his projections (4.34 DRA, 98 DRA-, 102 cFIP), Sisk could perhaps replace his role in the Royals bullpen if given the opportunity.
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