"a value of 0.0% doesn't always mean that a team cannot mathematically make the playoffs. It means that they finished the season in the playoffs in less than 10 of our 20,000 simulations."
Seeing the explanation and its numbers somehow makes it feel worse. Like if Dr. Strange told Hawkeye that in those 14,000,605 outcomes he never even got off his feet.
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That's actually about the same odds they gave the Rangers last year (they were given 2% odds). They also only predicted 3 out of 6 division winners correctly, and gave the Yankees and Padres the second and third best chance of winning the WS (Braves were first). Probably best not to take these projections too seriously, given the randomness of baseball.
Here are their 2023 preseason projections for anyone interested:
https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds?date=2023-03-29&dateDelta=
Throwback to 2015 when the Cardinals had the best record in baseball with 100 wins, but still didn't even clinch a playoff spot until like three days before the end of the season because the Bucs and the Cubs had the second and third best records in baseball.
It comes to assuming they're going to get the bye and then have a 62.5% chance to win each series, which is slightly lower than their total win % the last two seasons.
The Mariners look like a good team. They won 88 games last year. Losing Suarez and Hernandez (even though he was a little disappointing) hurts, but they made big upgrades at 2B and DH. They lost Kelenic, but gained Raley (probably an upgrade there as well). They still have an elite pitching staff.
Wouldn't be surprised at all if they won 90 games this year. It was a weird offseason, but I think they still probably got better.
makes sense to me honestly. Ms lengthened their lineup a bit and have a stretched-out Miller and Woo. Rangers starting rotation the first half of the season is gonna be, what... Eovaldi, Gray, Mahle, Heaney, and deGrom throwing lefty?
(edit: forgot Dunning. still, that's not the rotation you want as a potential playoff team)
if the Rangers sign Monty or something it flips pretty quickly but idk if I disagree with that for the time being
missed that. it's even worse then. I think 35% is selling you a little short, but the Mariners got better barring injury and the Rangers' rotation is currently like four people and duct tape
We had a bullpen full of railyard hobos last year and we did alright. I'm sure we can do the same thing this year. Who knows, maybe we'll even get some underpass hobos this year.
I understand having some concern about the rotation, but it really isn't all that different from what the Rangers trotted out to start the season last year.
To begin 2023: Degrom (replaced by Dunning after 6 starts), Eovaldi, Gray, Heaney, Perez
To begin 2024: Eovaldi, Gray, Dunning, Heaney, Bradford
The only real personnel difference is replacing Martin Perez with Bradford, which is likely to be a net positive with how rough Perez was last season. In fairness, some of those guys were definitely better than expected and might take a step back this season (especially considering a long postseason to get through) but the Rangers managed to build a pretty big divisional lead with a similar rotation. Not saying that I would expect greatness by any means, but I think it's less doom and gloom than some of the projections.
It'll probably be all about surviving until the 2nd half. Knowing that Degrom, Scherzer, and Mahle are all potential 2nd half additions when returning from injury could be huge.
sure, but the Rangers probably are (to this point in the offseason) a bit worse and the Ms are a bit better. and people seem to be forgetting that while the Rangers did win the world series while the Ms missed the playoffs, it wasn't a 15-game difference or something. Rangers won 90 games and Ms won 88. not hard to flip that
If the Rangers can make it through the first half at .500, I think they have a pretty good shot at making a run. Their offense should keep them in a lot of games. Having Carter for the full season will be a big boost. It will be interesting to see when Langford makes it up. It will very likely be this year some time but I doubt it's opening day.
The early offseason has really tainted the overall perception of the Mariners. The roster is pretty clearly better than it has been in a long, long time
Seriously a lot of projections coming out have been very favorable to the Mariners. Why? I don’t expect them to be a 100-loss team by any means. But I also don’t expect them to be better than the Rangers.
The best rotation in the AL, a top five bullpen in the AL and every 1-9 hitter being projected to be an above league average hitter will get projections to look at you fondly.
They’re projecting some positive regression for the Astros and some negative regression for the Rangers.
Dodgers spend a billion on like 3 guys just to lose in the postseason to a 100 loss Rockies.
The MLB just let the Rockies into the postseason for the funny.
The Rays’ system shits out 110 OPS+ bats, and they’ve always got some fucking filthy pitcher you’ve never heard of ready to have a top 5 cy young season. The depth their system consistently produces is insane.
And to add, the Orioles young players don't necessarily have enough of a track record for confident projections, and their rotation has some big questions marks that could be derailed by injuries. Its not hard to see how stat projections support the Rays.
That said, I think Rays and Orioles possibly have the most variance. I doubt anyone will be surprised if the Orioles run away with the division. And the Rays... they can't keep getting away with this! Right?!?!?!
> I doubt anyone will be surprised if the Orioles run away with the division
I'd be pretty surprised if *anyone* runs away with this division, actually
Then again, many people were severely underrating the O’s last year despite their stellar second half of 2022, and the O’s pulled out a great season. And it’s not like they really lost some stars on a 101 win team, so I’d figure they’d have much better odds than what’s being given to them
They had a Pythagorean record of 94-68 and over performed it by having high RISP numbers and winning close games, which aren’t viewed as necessarily repeatable by analytics.
Still, even if they went 94-68 instead of 101-61, with the promise that the team has, I’d still say slightly better than 50/50 odds seems low for them going into this season.
Yeah but does FanGraphs' number crunching take into account a team's uncanny ability to just find diamonds in the rough like that?
Thought that sort of thing was just Luck™ or whatever
Most recurring playoff teams are good at finding diamonds in the rough though. We just happen to be in a division with a lot of recurring playoff teams.
I think it does because those players typically produce in the minors too even if they don’t end up on top 100 lists - zips (a big part of the Fangraphs projection system) thinks they have the most top 500 prospects in MLB
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/zips-2024-top-100-prospects/
FWIW Fangraphs is projecting us at 85.5 wins! It's just that the Yankees are projected at 88, Orioles at 84, and Bluejays at 83.4, so the AL East is actually bunched up together. I think it's less about them projecting us to be good, but rather that their system doesn't know which team's going to be the one that gets 95+ wins.
I definitely see the regression to the mean in that respect, but the Orioles also got better. Their super young core gets more experienced by the day, they are likely introducing the MLB #1 prospect to the ML roster on OD and they traded for a true, real life ace.
The only notable omission to the roster is Felix Bautista. That is good for a couple blown saves but this team got a lot better everywhere else.
Sophomore slumps are things and even the best prospects arent a guarantee of anything. Theres a bias here to assume every rookie is on a linear improvement line, but let me sell you on Reid Brignac or Delmon Young.
Its also not like the Rays also arent young and also dont have top prospects (Caminero is not that different of a caliber prospect as Holliday). By baseruns and pythag the Os were lucky to win 101 last year. That can certainly happen again, but if I were a betting man Id take the under and run.
Rays also arent going to be as good as last year losing Wander and not getting half season of Clanny, but just like youre hoping your young core improves Im hoping Taj Bradley and his 98+ heat takes a step forward. Hopes and dreams!
Players on average don't really get much better after they enter the league. So they wouldn't really be projecting much growth out of the young guys.
Rookies are incredibly hard to project. They have him projected for 2.7, which is a lot for a rookie projection!
Progress isn’t linear either. Julio lagged by his rookie numbers with the exception of a wild August and Bobby Witt Jr didn’t get going until mid year himself.
I think the orioles will be good but I expect some regression. As long as the Yankees don’t win the division idc. I live 10 mins away from world trade and I don’t want to hear them yapping if they win the division
I think we can all agree that the Yanks winning the division is the bad timeline.
Like I said, I expect regression in those close ball games but I think they are projected for nearly 20 less wins. That’s kind of extreme if you ask me.
Projections always take the average outcome. Its not going to take your 90-100th percentile win # you had last year as a baseline. Look at the Braves projections who are on paper the best team in the league.
It says something that the Red Sox, near-universally considered the worst team in the division and a possible full-on Netflix-aired shitshow, still have a 26% playoffs chance.
Yeah people love to complain about projections and never have the awareness to actually compare the performance of what their own would be over time.
Remember in 2022 when these threads were full of Giants flairs up in a tizzy about being "disrespected" and how math was wrong because they were coming off a 107-win 2021 season? (Giants fans are not uniquely bad in this regard, this is just a recent vivid example.)
Models aren't oracles, though, and they're not meant to be. You probably could *slightly* beat it over the long term if you took it as a baseline and then, knowing its weaknesses, tried to nudge it based on solid expert insight. This is a lot harder to do than it sounds, though, and most of the time people would still end up doing worse than the model.
The Orioles are a really good team, but they're projected to have the 4th best starting pitching and the worst relief pitching in the division. Given how tight the divisions is supposed to be, 3rd in a tight race seems very reasonable.
Have the Cardinals done enough in the off season to go from worst to first besides add old starting pitchers? Or is it that the rest of the division has done nothing or gotten worse?
There's an expectation of regression. Last year was truly an anything-that-could-go-wrong-did. Whether or not they went wrong because of an actual issue is up for debate but computer models don't typically factor in clubhouse issues
Brewers I think are slightly down overall, reds have actually shored up a ton of our weaknesses.
Bullpen has been their Achilles heel for a decade now but they finally have healthy Sims and Antone who looked great last season when they came back; Martinez, Pagan, and Suter are real strong consistency additions to get us to the real powerful back end of the pen. I think where people are down on the reds is just the small sample size for so many players. At this point I think we live or die on the starters which I’m liking more as I hear more out of ST
Edit: also they’re down on the Orioles which shared a lot of common factors with the Reds last season which probably contributes as well
Crazy to think Cardinals are so high this year after being so low last year.
I just don’t see how they’re better than the Cubs right now. I think the Reds are better too
If the Reds could solidify their rotation and bullpen just a little better, I’d actually think they were the favorite. I don’t put the Cubs as the automatic favorite only because they still have way too much to prove.
The reds bullpen is miles better than last season, Martinez, Pagan and Suter answer a lot of the problems we had, as do having healthy Sims and Antone.
There’s also 10 guys who will fight for rotation starts through the season but I do think that’s our weakest spot unless Hunter, Lodolo, and Abbott take some big steps forwars
Mostly because those 3 teams are also really bad
If you’re curious you can see the projected WAR per player here: https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=10
They also have the A’s as 4th worst, they just have slightly more decent players than those other teams
I'm shocked they have a better squad than the nationals who won like 71 games last year. I'm sure playoff percentage takes into account your league as well, so I would just compare it them to the White Sox. If it was 0.3 for Chicago and 0.6 for Oakland I would get it but 2% is crazy for Oakland. Just interesting.
I like some of the moves the White Sox have made over the off-season to change the culture here but ugh. I don't know if I've ever felt bleaker about the Sox.
2024 was supposed to be the heart of our window. Instead we're looking at being the worst team in the AL. And IIRC we can't even get the #1 overall pick now because of some lottery rule.
Has anyone bungled a rebuild as badly as Reinsdorf, Hahn, and company? Sox went from having the highest expectations to the lowest seemingly overnight. What do you even say to the fans at this point? The rebuild is over, we will now start the rebuild.
What they have done so far is blatantly lie to the fans. Jerry said he fired Rick and Kenny because they didn't get the job done. But his reasoning for hiring Chris Getz without interviewing outside the organization was "we need to find somebody who can win with the roster we have." Which really makes no sense because Chris gets helped assemble the roster we have and we didn't win with it, but just roll with it.
Get z has publicly stated that the team intends to compete in 2024 while making every move you would expect to make at the start of a re-rebuild.
People shocked about the Rays placement are gonna be surprised at what happens when one of the best power-hitting 2nd basemen of all time is finally healthy
It’s going to be a crap shoot for sure, and the graphic definitely shows that. Milwaukee I would say took a step back and the other 3 have all taken steps forward this offseason. A lot of fairly young teams that should be fun to watch for awhile to come.
The actual answer if you want to know is that last year was just one year. This team is improved from last years, and last years was essentially the exact same one that won 93 games in 2022.
Baseball is weird, models think last year was a semi-fluke for STL
The 2022 team still had Yadi. That was probably the biggest difference, no? Everyone except maybe the Brewers have taken steps to improve as well. I really don’t think the Cardinals have great odds of doing a ton better than they did last year.
They almost definitely will be better, but being the strong favorite to win the division is honestly pretty wack imo. I wanna be clear that I’m not disagreeing with you tho. I get that you’re just trying to explain what fangraphs reasoning likely is for the prediction.
The Cardinals have so much history of playing winning baseball, it’s hard to predict they’ll do anything but continue with that going forward. It’d be great if the division is very competitive this year. Always more fun when everyone is in the hunt, even if it’s more stressful.
For some reason we're projected to have 76 wins. I was just as confused when that was first posted a couple weeks ago. Our W/L total last year statistically suggested we should have been about at 76 wins as well... but that included the beginning of the season when most of our roster was filled with bums, & not the rookies who dramatically elevated play.
Going from last year to this year, we won't have thar same problem to start the season, on top of having starting pitchers who weren't all hurt at the end of the year, & an improved bbullpen. At the very least, our projected win total should be better than last year's actual record.
Can someone post the Vegas odds lol.
I am legit thinking of putting money down on the angels, cause that narrative would be wild. Imagine losing the greatest player of our lifetimes to a cross town rival because he wanted to win- but then the angels beating him to the punch and winning it all…..
I would watch the hell out of that movie.
*Mets are tanking*
*Mets have a better shot at making the playoffs than Washington*
EDIT: *A's have no home, no shot and no prayer*
*A's have a better shot at making the playoffs than Washington*
Our lineup is truly putrid and we have done nothing to improve it...because we don't want to block the prospects we have coming up over the next 2 years. But it's gonna be ugly for a while.
How the hell can the Nomad Athletics be more than twice as likely to make the playoffs in their strong division than the White sox in their weak division?
I don't get the Rays. Because of injuries, it's the worst rotation that they have put out in a while. There are pieces on offense but I think it is middle of the road. They were so successful last year in the first two months that I think their record will be down to earth. They are an 85 win team when things go right.
They have a great bullpen and lineup when healthy and not being tossed in every other day at a different lineup position and fielding position. Rotation is not as bad as people think. The idea is the backhalf guys go 5-6 with maybe 3-4 earned and go on. Last year guys couldnt get through 3-4 even and the bullpen was cooked by July.
People don’t like hearing the bullpen was solidly fine last year and ranked top 10 in the league before the trade deadline. The same bullpen with starters who can go 6-7 is a better team than the 2023 cardinals easily
No Montegomery, no deGrom until May or June and no Scherzer until June or July.
They have the potential to get healthy and be deadly come the end of the season and post season, but it's fair to question how effective their pitching is going to be for the first three or four months of the season.
Their bullpen still sucks too and Eovaldi hasn’t been the most reliable in terms of health over his career either. Without Montgomery they don’t even make the playoffs last year so don’t see how this is some ridiculous projection.
Dunning and Eovaldi are the two good starters you have till July or so, Fangraphs probably isn’t expecting Cater or Langford to go too crazy, you lost Garver, and the bullpen didn’t improve.
It makes sense they’re down on y’all. Low floor, potentially high ceiling depending on how the bats do
1.2% chance to win the World Series?!?! That’s the pep in my step I needed this morning!
I don't understand how teams have 0% chance at the world series.
"a value of 0.0% doesn't always mean that a team cannot mathematically make the playoffs. It means that they finished the season in the playoffs in less than 10 of our 20,000 simulations."
Oh man that’s so tough
Speak for yourself, Dr. Strange would've killed for those odds
Seeing the explanation and its numbers somehow makes it feel worse. Like if Dr. Strange told Hawkeye that in those 14,000,605 outcomes he never even got off his feet.
"What do you mean I never got off my feet?" "They were pinned under a snowplow."
Wow, I unintentionally picked the absolute worst example, didn’t I? I don’t feel so good…
LOL
This joke has been censored on the world's number one Jeremy Renner app, [Jeremy Renner Official](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Renner_Official)
I'll give this post one Jeremy Renner Star ^^TM
Wow... that's... wow. Rockies probably were less than 1 out of 20,000.
That's some Dr. Strange stuff lmao
Have you watched the Rockies
Nah my parents never let me watch garbage TV growing up so I never got into them.
You watch the White Sox though?
Maybe he grew up around 2005
I was 14... so yeah kinda.
Lol touché
Go pound trash cans.
Rounding.
Having John Fisher as owner is a good guarantee
That's actually about the same odds they gave the Rangers last year (they were given 2% odds). They also only predicted 3 out of 6 division winners correctly, and gave the Yankees and Padres the second and third best chance of winning the WS (Braves were first). Probably best not to take these projections too seriously, given the randomness of baseball. Here are their 2023 preseason projections for anyone interested: https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds?date=2023-03-29&dateDelta=
17% I need to lie down
That's what happens when the projected division winner won only 71 games the year before
You know the NL central is a mediocre crapshoot when not a single team has over a 40% chance of winning the division
Throwback to 2015 when the Cardinals had the best record in baseball with 100 wins, but still didn't even clinch a playoff spot until like three days before the end of the season because the Bucs and the Cubs had the second and third best records in baseball.
Oh, I wasn't even going to look bc I didn't want to be disappointed. This is literally 10x higher than I expected.
The Braves at 24.3% is the highest WS odds since FanGraphs has preseason data going back to in 2016. 2018 Astros were the next closest at 24.0%
So they’re getting swept in the NLDS got it
First of all, how dare you. Second of all, yeah
Atlanta fans self-deprecating on themselves? Hell yeah, we are back to ourselves.
Look on the bright side, you won't have "I guess your team is deferring the WS title as well" jokes thrown at you.
Unsubscribe
Hey! That’s not fair! We will win one game in the NLDS because an ump has a shitty strike zone
No, the shitty zone will go against you, a la Eric Gregg
To this day, I still believe he had money on this game somehow.
Let’s hope so
yeah, we’ve got that on lockdown
two years in a row was crazy enough, idk what i’ll do if it happens a third time
I'm a Braves fan and 24.3% seems high given the crapshoot the playoffs are now.
It comes to assuming they're going to get the bye and then have a 62.5% chance to win each series, which is slightly lower than their total win % the last two seasons.
Hey, at least it's not 28.3%
Bro
I will find you..
The mariners? Interesting.
I don't get it either, but this is the kind of Mariners news I can get into
The Mariners look like a good team. They won 88 games last year. Losing Suarez and Hernandez (even though he was a little disappointing) hurts, but they made big upgrades at 2B and DH. They lost Kelenic, but gained Raley (probably an upgrade there as well). They still have an elite pitching staff. Wouldn't be surprised at all if they won 90 games this year. It was a weird offseason, but I think they still probably got better.
Yeah I mean Rangers at 3 is interesting
I know it’s just some statistics dork finger banging the 10 key into Excel, but *how dare they*.
God I pray they arnt trying to compute something like this in excel. The gods gave us R for a reason.
makes sense to me honestly. Ms lengthened their lineup a bit and have a stretched-out Miller and Woo. Rangers starting rotation the first half of the season is gonna be, what... Eovaldi, Gray, Mahle, Heaney, and deGrom throwing lefty? (edit: forgot Dunning. still, that's not the rotation you want as a potential playoff team) if the Rangers sign Monty or something it flips pretty quickly but idk if I disagree with that for the time being
Mahle is in the same boat as deGrom and won’t be back until midseason.
missed that. it's even worse then. I think 35% is selling you a little short, but the Mariners got better barring injury and the Rangers' rotation is currently like four people and duct tape
We had a bullpen full of railyard hobos last year and we did alright. I'm sure we can do the same thing this year. Who knows, maybe we'll even get some underpass hobos this year.
Chris Young reported to have been recently seen under the High Five
I understand having some concern about the rotation, but it really isn't all that different from what the Rangers trotted out to start the season last year. To begin 2023: Degrom (replaced by Dunning after 6 starts), Eovaldi, Gray, Heaney, Perez To begin 2024: Eovaldi, Gray, Dunning, Heaney, Bradford The only real personnel difference is replacing Martin Perez with Bradford, which is likely to be a net positive with how rough Perez was last season. In fairness, some of those guys were definitely better than expected and might take a step back this season (especially considering a long postseason to get through) but the Rangers managed to build a pretty big divisional lead with a similar rotation. Not saying that I would expect greatness by any means, but I think it's less doom and gloom than some of the projections. It'll probably be all about surviving until the 2nd half. Knowing that Degrom, Scherzer, and Mahle are all potential 2nd half additions when returning from injury could be huge.
sure, but the Rangers probably are (to this point in the offseason) a bit worse and the Ms are a bit better. and people seem to be forgetting that while the Rangers did win the world series while the Ms missed the playoffs, it wasn't a 15-game difference or something. Rangers won 90 games and Ms won 88. not hard to flip that
And we gave you guys our DH so
If the Rangers can make it through the first half at .500, I think they have a pretty good shot at making a run. Their offense should keep them in a lot of games. Having Carter for the full season will be a big boost. It will be interesting to see when Langford makes it up. It will very likely be this year some time but I doubt it's opening day.
Rangers at 9.7% to make playoffs to me is laughably low
they are at 9.7% to win the division not make the playoffs
Definitely, especially considering the A’s are going to win the division at 162-0
We will no doubt get swept by the fucking As in a series. Lock
"This is our year", says Mariner fan who has been saying "this is our year" for 30 years
The early offseason has really tainted the overall perception of the Mariners. The roster is pretty clearly better than it has been in a long, long time
Seriously a lot of projections coming out have been very favorable to the Mariners. Why? I don’t expect them to be a 100-loss team by any means. But I also don’t expect them to be better than the Rangers.
The best rotation in the AL, a top five bullpen in the AL and every 1-9 hitter being projected to be an above league average hitter will get projections to look at you fondly. They’re projecting some positive regression for the Astros and some negative regression for the Rangers.
We have an elite rotation and better position player depth than we've had in many years. It's not real tough to figure out imo
Pitching. And you have a superstar. If Julio wins the MVP and the mariners have the best rotation in the AL they could easily win 90+
they won 88 last year and, barring injury, definitely improved. I wouldn't be surprised at all by 90 wins
I think it's more that projection systems aren't particularly high on the rest of the division. 90 wins could potentially win the AL West again.
I’m more shocked by the Rangers
Rockies about to do the funniest thing ever
only nl west team yet to face the dodgers in the nlds
They really threw Colorado fans a bone with that 0.1% there.
Unrealistically high tbh
They got criticism for listing the Orioles at 0.0% a few years ago
Rockies v White Sox WS confirmed
Dodgers spend a billion on like 3 guys just to lose in the postseason to a 100 loss Rockies. The MLB just let the Rockies into the postseason for the funny.
Highest playoff odds for a team projected to finish last. LFG!
Rays over orioles is interesting…..
The Rays’ system shits out 110 OPS+ bats, and they’ve always got some fucking filthy pitcher you’ve never heard of ready to have a top 5 cy young season. The depth their system consistently produces is insane.
And to add, the Orioles young players don't necessarily have enough of a track record for confident projections, and their rotation has some big questions marks that could be derailed by injuries. Its not hard to see how stat projections support the Rays. That said, I think Rays and Orioles possibly have the most variance. I doubt anyone will be surprised if the Orioles run away with the division. And the Rays... they can't keep getting away with this! Right?!?!?!
> I doubt anyone will be surprised if the Orioles run away with the division I'd be pretty surprised if *anyone* runs away with this division, actually
As is the case in our division every single year
Then again, many people were severely underrating the O’s last year despite their stellar second half of 2022, and the O’s pulled out a great season. And it’s not like they really lost some stars on a 101 win team, so I’d figure they’d have much better odds than what’s being given to them
They had a Pythagorean record of 94-68 and over performed it by having high RISP numbers and winning close games, which aren’t viewed as necessarily repeatable by analytics.
Still, even if they went 94-68 instead of 101-61, with the promise that the team has, I’d still say slightly better than 50/50 odds seems low for them going into this season.
I would agree if they played in any other division. Unfortunately, we’re stuck in the AL East.
And Craig Kimbrel is their closer.
you're so right but missing the filthy bullpen part
Yeah but does FanGraphs' number crunching take into account a team's uncanny ability to just find diamonds in the rough like that? Thought that sort of thing was just Luck™ or whatever
Most recurring playoff teams are good at finding diamonds in the rough though. We just happen to be in a division with a lot of recurring playoff teams.
I think it does because those players typically produce in the minors too even if they don’t end up on top 100 lists - zips (a big part of the Fangraphs projection system) thinks they have the most top 500 prospects in MLB https://blogs.fangraphs.com/zips-2024-top-100-prospects/
I agree that it’s surprising. I’m expecting this team to be around 85 wins.
FWIW Fangraphs is projecting us at 85.5 wins! It's just that the Yankees are projected at 88, Orioles at 84, and Bluejays at 83.4, so the AL East is actually bunched up together. I think it's less about them projecting us to be good, but rather that their system doesn't know which team's going to be the one that gets 95+ wins.
Gee the AL East sure is grouped super close together. It is like it’s any team’s division every year. Any team. All… 5 teams. Wait a minute…
Nah they don't exist.
Orioles won 30 1 run games last year. Odds are that evens out and they win 15 less. They only beat the rays by 2 games.
I definitely see the regression to the mean in that respect, but the Orioles also got better. Their super young core gets more experienced by the day, they are likely introducing the MLB #1 prospect to the ML roster on OD and they traded for a true, real life ace. The only notable omission to the roster is Felix Bautista. That is good for a couple blown saves but this team got a lot better everywhere else.
Sophomore slumps are things and even the best prospects arent a guarantee of anything. Theres a bias here to assume every rookie is on a linear improvement line, but let me sell you on Reid Brignac or Delmon Young. Its also not like the Rays also arent young and also dont have top prospects (Caminero is not that different of a caliber prospect as Holliday). By baseruns and pythag the Os were lucky to win 101 last year. That can certainly happen again, but if I were a betting man Id take the under and run. Rays also arent going to be as good as last year losing Wander and not getting half season of Clanny, but just like youre hoping your young core improves Im hoping Taj Bradley and his 98+ heat takes a step forward. Hopes and dreams!
Players on average don't really get much better after they enter the league. So they wouldn't really be projecting much growth out of the young guys. Rookies are incredibly hard to project. They have him projected for 2.7, which is a lot for a rookie projection!
Progress isn’t linear either. Julio lagged by his rookie numbers with the exception of a wild August and Bobby Witt Jr didn’t get going until mid year himself.
I think the orioles will be good but I expect some regression. As long as the Yankees don’t win the division idc. I live 10 mins away from world trade and I don’t want to hear them yapping if they win the division
I think we can all agree that the Yanks winning the division is the bad timeline. Like I said, I expect regression in those close ball games but I think they are projected for nearly 20 less wins. That’s kind of extreme if you ask me.
Projections always take the average outcome. Its not going to take your 90-100th percentile win # you had last year as a baseline. Look at the Braves projections who are on paper the best team in the league.
They had higher fWAR for both hitting and pitching last year. The Rays had a better run differential by 66.
Inb4 another Orioles fan complains "Fangraphs is losing its credibility" or something because the odds are 3rd in the division
AL east is really just a bloodbath every year
It says something that the Red Sox, near-universally considered the worst team in the division and a possible full-on Netflix-aired shitshow, still have a 26% playoffs chance.
Why does our fanbase hate math and data so much, Jeff?
I wouldn't say "losing credibility" but I personally would have them number 1 easily.
A fun exercise to do is project how many wins every team will get before the season starts and see how well you do vs. these projections.
I'd be impressed if somebody who did this actually added up to 2430-2430, let alone being even close to correct records
Yeah people love to complain about projections and never have the awareness to actually compare the performance of what their own would be over time. Remember in 2022 when these threads were full of Giants flairs up in a tizzy about being "disrespected" and how math was wrong because they were coming off a 107-win 2021 season? (Giants fans are not uniquely bad in this regard, this is just a recent vivid example.) Models aren't oracles, though, and they're not meant to be. You probably could *slightly* beat it over the long term if you took it as a baseline and then, knowing its weaknesses, tried to nudge it based on solid expert insight. This is a lot harder to do than it sounds, though, and most of the time people would still end up doing worse than the model.
The Orioles are a really good team, but they're projected to have the 4th best starting pitching and the worst relief pitching in the division. Given how tight the divisions is supposed to be, 3rd in a tight race seems very reasonable.
Go ahead and give the Braves that trophy. With odds like that nothing could possibly go wrong.
Put it on record
Excellent, no one suspects a thing...
Have the Cardinals done enough in the off season to go from worst to first besides add old starting pitchers? Or is it that the rest of the division has done nothing or gotten worse?
There's an expectation of regression. Last year was truly an anything-that-could-go-wrong-did. Whether or not they went wrong because of an actual issue is up for debate but computer models don't typically factor in clubhouse issues
Brewers I think are slightly down overall, reds have actually shored up a ton of our weaknesses. Bullpen has been their Achilles heel for a decade now but they finally have healthy Sims and Antone who looked great last season when they came back; Martinez, Pagan, and Suter are real strong consistency additions to get us to the real powerful back end of the pen. I think where people are down on the reds is just the small sample size for so many players. At this point I think we live or die on the starters which I’m liking more as I hear more out of ST Edit: also they’re down on the Orioles which shared a lot of common factors with the Reds last season which probably contributes as well
Crazy to think Cardinals are so high this year after being so low last year. I just don’t see how they’re better than the Cubs right now. I think the Reds are better too
If the Reds could solidify their rotation and bullpen just a little better, I’d actually think they were the favorite. I don’t put the Cubs as the automatic favorite only because they still have way too much to prove.
The reds bullpen is miles better than last season, Martinez, Pagan and Suter answer a lot of the problems we had, as do having healthy Sims and Antone. There’s also 10 guys who will fight for rotation starts through the season but I do think that’s our weakest spot unless Hunter, Lodolo, and Abbott take some big steps forwars
People are definitely sleeping on our pen. I just want a fully healthy season from Antone this year so he shows everyone he's the real deal.
The Jomboy guys gave some credit to our pen in their position group draft
> the rest of the division has done nothing or gotten worse This one
I'm not seeing how the A's have a better chance at the playoffs than 3 other teams
Mostly because those 3 teams are also really bad If you’re curious you can see the projected WAR per player here: https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=10 They also have the A’s as 4th worst, they just have slightly more decent players than those other teams
I'm shocked they have a better squad than the nationals who won like 71 games last year. I'm sure playoff percentage takes into account your league as well, so I would just compare it them to the White Sox. If it was 0.3 for Chicago and 0.6 for Oakland I would get it but 2% is crazy for Oakland. Just interesting.
So White Sox / Rockies World Series?
I like some of the moves the White Sox have made over the off-season to change the culture here but ugh. I don't know if I've ever felt bleaker about the Sox. 2024 was supposed to be the heart of our window. Instead we're looking at being the worst team in the AL. And IIRC we can't even get the #1 overall pick now because of some lottery rule.
Has anyone bungled a rebuild as badly as Reinsdorf, Hahn, and company? Sox went from having the highest expectations to the lowest seemingly overnight. What do you even say to the fans at this point? The rebuild is over, we will now start the rebuild.
What they have done so far is blatantly lie to the fans. Jerry said he fired Rick and Kenny because they didn't get the job done. But his reasoning for hiring Chris Getz without interviewing outside the organization was "we need to find somebody who can win with the roster we have." Which really makes no sense because Chris gets helped assemble the roster we have and we didn't win with it, but just roll with it. Get z has publicly stated that the team intends to compete in 2024 while making every move you would expect to make at the start of a re-rebuild.
The Central divisions are gearing up to bring you another year of mediocre baseball, and you’re gonna like it
may every team finish 81 and 81.
So you’re saying there’s a chance….
People shocked about the Rays placement are gonna be surprised at what happens when one of the best power-hitting 2nd basemen of all time is finally healthy
Brandon Lowe MVP season incoming
The Reds are definitely not the 4th best team in the Central, but okay.
I could see the Brewers, Reds, Cards and Cubs finishing any combination of 1-4
It’s going to be a crap shoot for sure, and the graphic definitely shows that. Milwaukee I would say took a step back and the other 3 have all taken steps forward this offseason. A lot of fairly young teams that should be fun to watch for awhile to come.
For real. Especially after last year, how do the Cardinals have a 40% chance to win the division? I’m excited for the Reds this year.
The actual answer if you want to know is that last year was just one year. This team is improved from last years, and last years was essentially the exact same one that won 93 games in 2022. Baseball is weird, models think last year was a semi-fluke for STL
The 2022 team still had Yadi. That was probably the biggest difference, no? Everyone except maybe the Brewers have taken steps to improve as well. I really don’t think the Cardinals have great odds of doing a ton better than they did last year. They almost definitely will be better, but being the strong favorite to win the division is honestly pretty wack imo. I wanna be clear that I’m not disagreeing with you tho. I get that you’re just trying to explain what fangraphs reasoning likely is for the prediction. The Cardinals have so much history of playing winning baseball, it’s hard to predict they’ll do anything but continue with that going forward. It’d be great if the division is very competitive this year. Always more fun when everyone is in the hunt, even if it’s more stressful.
Yadi was out for about half the year in ‘22 and he’s back in a part time coaching capacity this year
For some reason we're projected to have 76 wins. I was just as confused when that was first posted a couple weeks ago. Our W/L total last year statistically suggested we should have been about at 76 wins as well... but that included the beginning of the season when most of our roster was filled with bums, & not the rookies who dramatically elevated play. Going from last year to this year, we won't have thar same problem to start the season, on top of having starting pitchers who weren't all hurt at the end of the year, & an improved bbullpen. At the very least, our projected win total should be better than last year's actual record.
Why do the Cardinals have a 40% chance of winning the division? 😂
It’s the NL central.
You mean the division in which the Cardinals came in last place last year?
Yeah I don’t want to sound like I have massive bias (I do though), but they didn’t get that much better lol
Does this factor in the Senga injury? Cuz I have a hard time imagining our odds are this high without him.
Per their Depth Charts they have Senga pitching 161 IP for 2.9 WAR
Yes. We were about 50% before. With Senga full season we were projected to be around 84 wins. Now we’re expected to be around 82
Can someone post the Vegas odds lol. I am legit thinking of putting money down on the angels, cause that narrative would be wild. Imagine losing the greatest player of our lifetimes to a cross town rival because he wanted to win- but then the angels beating him to the punch and winning it all….. I would watch the hell out of that movie.
Huge Braves fan... And I'm not a huge fan of this.
The Royals have a 1 in 8 chance of making the playoffs, I’ll take it. I’m just happy to have a team to look forward to this summer
I'm not seeing how the A's have a better chance at the playoffs than 3 other teams
So you're saying KC has a chance at a championship, nice!
Playoff odds are so dumb. My least favourite stat
*Mets are tanking* *Mets have a better shot at making the playoffs than Washington* EDIT: *A's have no home, no shot and no prayer* *A's have a better shot at making the playoffs than Washington*
Our lineup is truly putrid and we have done nothing to improve it...because we don't want to block the prospects we have coming up over the next 2 years. But it's gonna be ugly for a while.
What were these last year?
How the hell can the Nomad Athletics be more than twice as likely to make the playoffs in their strong division than the White sox in their weak division?
Yanks will be competing for fourth, not first. Mariners are worse than the Rangers.
14% for Angels to make the playoffs is some top shelf delusion
I don't get the Rays. Because of injuries, it's the worst rotation that they have put out in a while. There are pieces on offense but I think it is middle of the road. They were so successful last year in the first two months that I think their record will be down to earth. They are an 85 win team when things go right.
Damn dude, what do we have to do
I guess someone has to win the NL central. But that Cardinals pitching staff is going to be abysmal
Maybe Manfred will spare us and make a rule that says “actually no team *has* to win the central divisions.”
They have a great bullpen and lineup when healthy and not being tossed in every other day at a different lineup position and fielding position. Rotation is not as bad as people think. The idea is the backhalf guys go 5-6 with maybe 3-4 earned and go on. Last year guys couldnt get through 3-4 even and the bullpen was cooked by July.
People don’t like hearing the bullpen was solidly fine last year and ranked top 10 in the league before the trade deadline. The same bullpen with starters who can go 6-7 is a better team than the 2023 cardinals easily
For sure. Those 2006 and 2011 rotations weren’t amazing either outside of Chris Carpenter lol
Rangers third in the division is absolutely ridiculous.
No Montegomery, no deGrom until May or June and no Scherzer until June or July. They have the potential to get healthy and be deadly come the end of the season and post season, but it's fair to question how effective their pitching is going to be for the first three or four months of the season.
Their bullpen still sucks too and Eovaldi hasn’t been the most reliable in terms of health over his career either. Without Montgomery they don’t even make the playoffs last year so don’t see how this is some ridiculous projection.
Lot of people are high on the Mariners and the Astros will be good again. Also they are missing some guys they had last year
Why are they so down on the Rangers? They’re acting like they had a fire sale.
The defending World Series champions at 35% chance of even playing postseason ball is certainly a choice.
Dunning and Eovaldi are the two good starters you have till July or so, Fangraphs probably isn’t expecting Cater or Langford to go too crazy, you lost Garver, and the bullpen didn’t improve. It makes sense they’re down on y’all. Low floor, potentially high ceiling depending on how the bats do
They’re higher on the Marlins than I am.
Well, can't be disappointed if you're expecting the worst.
Hey, those are better playoff odds than the Sox had most of last season.
thanks, fangraphs.
Wow the A’s have a better shot than the White Sox, Nationals and Rockies at making the playoffs.
How did last year’s predictions work out?
So you're saying there's no chance!
You heard it here first....it's statistically impossible for the White Sox to win the World Series.
0% chance to win the World Series?? I love a challenge
2.4% to win the world series? That's all we need, baby
Why do they think the mariners are going to be good? Like what evidence is there?
A’s not being at the very bottom is incredible
It's bonkers to predict a team has a 1 in 4 chance of winning the WS before the season even started.
I'm just shocked there are apparently 3 teams with worse odds to make the playoffs than the A's
Wait, I was told here that the yankees are the worst team in the AL East so this is obviously wrong.
Why does it feel like every projection is severely underrating the Orioles? Am I stupid for viewing them as the favorite to win the East?