Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projects Mets to win division

Baseball Prospectus has released its annual PECOTA projections, and the "deadly accurate" forecasting system sees the Mets repeating as National League East champions. In fact, PECOTA projects the five NL East teams to finish in the same order as last season.

The projections have the Mets winning 90 games this season, identical to their 2015 total. The Nationals are projected for 87 wins, while the Marlins finish a distant third with 76 wins. PECOTA sees the Braves and Phillies as the two worst teams in baseball, projecting them to finish with 68 and 65 wins, respectively. Unsurprisingly, PECOTA has the NL East winning the least games of any division.

PECOTA also projects that the Mets will allow just 597 runs—only the Dodgers and Giants are projected to allow fewer. The offensive projections are not as flattering, as PECOTA projects the Mets to score 677 runs, good for 7th-best in the National League.

Before Mets fans go popping the champagne, it is important to remember that games still need to be played. Last year's PECOTA projections had the Mets finishing with 82 wins, nine games behind the first-place Nationals. Still, it's nice to get some positive reinforcement from a major baseball publication, especially after USA Today recently picked the Mets to miss the playoffs. PECOTA stands for "Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm" and is a backronym for former player Bill Pecota.