Recent Rankings Project Chicago Cubs to Be Among Best Teams in MLB This Season

The PECOTA projections have released, and the Chicago Cubs are expected to return to the playoffs in 2025.

Dec 9, 2024; Dallas, TX, USA; Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell speaks with the media at the Hilton Anatole during the 2024 MLB Winter Meetings. | Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

The Chicago Cubs had a disappointing season in 2024, but they are expected to turn it around this year.

The annual PECOTA projected standings have been released, and it gave Cubs fans plenty of reason to be excited. The Cubs have been projected to win 90 games, which would give them the most wins in the NL Central. Based off the projections, this would also give the Cubs the third-most victories in the MLB.

The Cubs have not made the playoffs since the shortened 2020 season. However, in the last three years, the Cubs have been able to outperform their PECOTA projections. With PECOTA projecting them to win 90 games, and the Cubs outperforming them, there is a lot of excitement in the air at Wrigley Field.

Chicago has made the moves to generate this hype. The Cubs acquired Kyle Tucker and Ryan Pressly from the Houston Astros. Chicago also traded for Eli Morgan while adding Matthew Boyd in free agency. Chicago, however, did trade away Cody Bellinger.

With those moves, the Cubs kept their main core of players in tact. They still have Justin Steele, Shota Imanaga and Jameson Taillon to head the rotation. Dansby Swanson, Nico Hoerner, Seiya Suzuki, Ian Happ, Michael Busch and Pete Crow-Armstrong have all stayed with the team, as well.

The lineup is what will carry the Cubs to 90 wins this season. Adding in Kyle Tucker makes the Cubs very dangerous up and down the order. In 2024, the Cubs finished with a +67 run differential, and they scored the 12th-most runs in all of baseball. Adding Kyle Tucker to the lineup that remains largely unchanged will give Chicago a massive boost. The Cubs are expecting to have one of the top offenses in baseball.

With all this said, the Cubs might not be done making moves. The biggest free agent on the market right now is Alex Bregman. All signs point towards the Cubs actively pursuing the All-Star third baseman. Adding him to the already explosive linuep in Chicago would only help their win total projections.

Projections are just a prediction into the future. Sometimes they are wrong, sometimes they are right. It is also very hard to account for injuries, future trades and other variables. Still, the Cubs have done enough to give themselves a lot of hype heading into the season. Needless to say, there is a lot of reasons to believe the Cubs will be one of the top teams in the MLB this year.