With spring training upon us and new faces preparing to adjust to new places across the league, it’s officially the 2026 predicting season for Major League Baseball and those who cover and follow it. Unfortunately, some experts, media outlets, and metrics believe the Philadelphia Phillies’ stretch of NL East dominance is about to come to an end.
One of the most hallowed sites for analytics-driven predictions is FanGraphs, of course, and they’ve pushed out all the expected numbers for individual players using their noted ZiPS projection system that examines growth and decline curves to find trends while doing its best to take all the fun out of baseball. The fine folks at FanGraphs have also crunched the numbers to determine team probabilities for number of wins, capturing their division title, etc. all the way up through their odds to win the World Series.
Naturally, any curious fan would wonder how their favorite team was evaluated.
Upon scrolling to the NL East portion of the page, the top team there is looking pretty good. FanGraphs projects them for 90.4 wins, good enough for a 41.9 percent shot to win the division and a 9.4 percent likelihood of winning the World Series. That’s maybe a little lower than we'd hope to see for the Phillies, but it still offers a strong jumping-off point. Now, looking slightly to the left so we can see which order the rest of the division is projected to finish after the slam-dunk first-place Phils.
Oh. Oh, no.
FanGraphs' ZiPS projections aren't looking too kindly on the 2026 Phillies right now
That 90-win team who’s the closest to 50/50 to win the division and has a close to 10 percent World Series chance is … the Atlanta Braves! Making things even worse, they’re followed by the New York Mets, who have an 89.6-win projection, 35.2 percent odds to win the NL East, and sit at 7.5 percent to win the World Series.
Below that, in third place, are the Miami Marlins! Ok, just kidding on that one, it’s finally the Phillies. But the damage is done by this point, no?
FanGraphs, in its infinite wisdom, has the Phils earmarked for just 87.1 wins this year. That still gives them a good shot (67.7 percent) to make the playoffs, but the numbers plummet from there.
With the Phillies relegated to Wild Card status as a third-place finisher, this model gives them a 43.2 percent chance to make it out of the first round, just 20.6 percent odds to escape the NLDS, and only an 8.9 percent likelihood to win the NL and reach the World Series. To be fair, that’s still the fourth-highest number of any National League club, but it certainly feels like an indictment of the team’s core and its offseason moves (or lack thereof).
Finally, FanGraphs has decreed that the Phillies are 4.9 percent likely to give us a parade this year. While that’s the seventh-highest percentage across all of baseball and is probably an accurate reflection of where the Phillies currently stand in any power rankings, it really hits home when someone puts a number on it. Especially when it’s a low one like that. It’s a 1-in-25 chance, and we try not to get too excited about things that are so unlikely to pay off.
The real sting here comes from seeing both the hated Braves and Mets several notches higher than the Phillies in these latest projections, which are quite an unwelcome update for Phils fans compared to what we saw just a few weeks ago.
If you’re a bit floored about the lack of respect, you should also know that even Braves fans think that this is an overly bullish projection for their team. But hey, it could happen if the Braves maintain any semblance of health in 2026, although that’s easier said than done for them. They must have visited the wrong frogurt shop a couple of years ago, because they’ve been beset with a ridiculous level of injuries ever since.
The Mets are a more curious team to nudge past the Phillies, given that they finished 13 games back of the Phillies last year, then lost Pete Alonso and Edwin Díaz over the offseason. They course-corrected in a big way with moves to bring in Bo Bichette, Freddy Peralta, and Luis Robert Jr., but it still seems like a jump to put them three games above the Phillies.
Still, they join the Braves as teams who are viewed as potential, even likely, risers for 2026. That's bad news all around for the Phillies if it happens.
Nothing ultimately matters until the teams take the field and start populating the W and L columns, but this is some unfamiliar territory for a Phils team that has been presumptive favorites for the last few years. Maybe it leads to some increased motivation for them as they undertake the "all or nothing" season that’s about to play out before them.