Spring training’s arrival often inspires people to embrace renewed hope and an unchecked optimism about the year to come. That’s all good and well, but I have a different perspective: the onset of the exhibition season is a great time to get reacquainted with disappointment, at least so far as this column goes.
In keeping with tradition around these parts, today I’m using spring training as an excuse to put on my prognosticator’s cap and predict which of last year’s playoff teams are most at risk of missing out on this October’s fun.
For those new to the exercise, it stems from my past research revealing that half the field turned over annually during the 10-team playoff era. This is going to be the fourth season with a 12-team tournament, and while it’s a small sample, so far that 50% turnover rate has held steady: six teams in each 2022 and 2023 failed to return to the postseason the following October. Will that trend hold up heading forward? Stay tuned.
For now, anyway, I’m sticking with the five-team format for this exercise. I can only hope to have as much success this year as I did last, when four of my five picks, including the World Series champion Texas Rangers, missed out on the tournament. The one whiff, by the way, was the Milwaukee Brewers. Full credit to them for making me look silly for doubting their chances after what, admittedly, was a winter of loss.
With all that sound and fury out of the way, let’s get to this year’s picks. (Do note that the teams are represented in order from most to least safe.)
The Astros enter the new year having made the playoffs in nine of their last 10 seasons, including each of the past seven. As impressive as that is, at some point the rent from such a run comes due. There are few clubs who can maintain ultra competitiveness for a decade without age, win-now trades, and lower draft picks taking a serious toll.
I wouldn’t be shocked if the Astros find a way to make it to October again — the West looks like a three-team race and who knows how that’ll shake it — but I must admit that the clock is starting to tick louder and louder. It doesn’t help that Houston’s last two offseasons have given off the vibe that the organization doesn’t have a cohesive vision for the short and long term; it’s hard to reconcile the overarching thinking behind some of the big moves the Astros have made.
It’s one thing to spend big money on closer Josh Hader or to give a three-year pact to an aging right-right first baseman like Christian Walker. It’s another to do both while saying farewell to homegrown stars like Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker (though I did think Houston did well in the Tucker trade if they had to move him) and essentially salary-dumping high-leverage reliever Ryan Pressly to save $8 million. All the pieces don’t fit together cleanly; some are aimed at winning now, future costs be damned, and others are about repositioning the team to do better in a year or two than it may have otherwise.
Again, is it possible for the Astros to overcome this seeming identity crisis? Absolutely. Neither the Seattle Mariners nor the Rangers have stepped up enough to enhance Houston’s endangered status. I just worry that the Astros’ attempt to accomplish two goals will cause them to fail in fulfilling either.
The Padres have a few obvious factors working against them. Foremost, they’re coming off an offseason in which they barely participated in any meaningful way, ostensibly because of their messy ownership situation. All the while, the Padres had to watch three of their division rivals beef up their rosters. The Giants added Willy Adames and Justin Verlander; the D-backs Corbin Burnes; and the Dodgers, already the reigning World Series champions, several All-Star-caliber talents.
I think there’s some legitimate internal risk at play here, too.
Bear in mind, the Padres may field a most-days lineup with five players in their age-31 season or older, including Manny Machado, Jake Cronenworth, and Xander Bogaerts. For as good as Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill are, it’s fair to have some questions about the former’s availability and the latter’s sustainability (Merrill had, by far, the lowest walk rate among players who were 30% or better than the league-average). And then there’s the rotation, which is already down Joe Musgrove and has to rely upon the likes of Yu Darvish and Michael King to stay hearty and hale.
General manager A.J. Preller is one of the boldest and most opportunistic executives in the game. For all I know, he’ll uncork another big swing between now and Opening Day to shore up his roster. Will it be enough? I don’t know. I sure hope so, because San Diego’s renaissance under his stewardship has been a great development for the game.
One of the simplest ways to identify a team-level regression candidate is to look for extreme performance in one-run and extra-inning games. While we love to romanticize that dynamic by talking up a team’s fighting spirit, or by portraying their manager as a genius who reliably defies odds their peers cannot, studies indicate that winning a ton of one-run games has more to do with luck than skill.
That brings us to the Guardians.
Last year, Cleveland went 26-19 in one-run games, good for the third-highest winning percentage in the majors. The Guardians were also an improbable 10-3 in extra-inning affairs, tying them with a few other clubs for the second-most overtime victories.
I know what you’re thinking. Yes, second-year manager Stephen Vogt appears to be a quick study. Yes, the Guardians’ front office is very good at this whole business (even if ownership won’t provide the financial resources for them to take the next step). Yes, Emmanuel Clase is the best closer in baseball. Yes, it’s easy to look at Cade Smith, Erik Sabrowski, and Hunter Gaddis and think “these three are legit, too.” Yes, the Guardians should benefit from retaining Shane Bieber … and so on and so forth.
You can hold those opinions. You can take heart in them. But history suggests you cannot — and, really, that you should not — assume the Guardians will claim one-run games at a 94-win pace, or that they’ll win extra-inning games at a 125-win pace. That doesn’t mean the Guardians are necessarily cooked. It does mean they’ll likely fall short of 92 wins — and, in a division with three other playoff hopefuls, that could be enough to leave them sitting at home come the fall.
The Royals were one of the best stories in baseball last season. They didn’t punt on the previous winter after losing 106 games. They didn’t accept another losing season as a fait accompli. They spent money and made trades, currying favor with fortune (if you believe such a thing is possible) all the while. Clearly it worked out OK in the end, as the Royals became just the second team in a full season to ever clinch a playoff berth a year after losing 100 or more games.
Unfortunately, I have to rank Kansas City high on this list because … well, the Royals didn’t attack this offseason with the same fervor as last. I was fine with the Jonathan India trade and the Carlos Estévez signing, and I don’t mind retaining Michael Wacha and Michael Lorenzen. But I would have liked to have seen the Royals show more aggressiveness in improving a lineup that ranked 13th in runs scored, 19th in on-base percentage, and 20th in FanGraphs’ park-adjusted wRC+ metric.
Maybe the Royals’ patience with MJ Melendez, Maikel Garcia, and a few other homegrown position players will be rewarded. I just fear that they’ll be left with a lineup that runs four or five batters deep, and that the pitching staff may experience some slippage from a few of the veteran arms. Should both of those concerns manifest, the Royals stand a real chance of missing out on a return trip to October.
Remember when we talked about how performance in one-run and extra-inning games is one of the simplest ways to identify overachieving teams? Perhaps the easiest way is to look at every team’s run differential. Why? Because run differential is a better gauge of a team’s play than even their record, particularly in small sample sizes.
You can see where I’m going with this, so let’s just cut to the point: no playoff team in either league had a worse run differential than Detroit’s plus-40 mark. (The next lowest run differential belonged to the New York Mets, at plus-71.) Additionally, three teams who didn’t make it to October actually finished with better run differentials. The Tigers, then, finished middle of the pack in the measure.
As with the Guardians, you can talk yourself into the Tigers having a secret sauce, or a puncher’s chance of avoiding a slide. Among the obvious bullet points: the Tigers should field the improved defense that turned around their season all year, instead of just down the stretch; they’ve improved their pitching staff with a few notable additions (Jack Flaherty and Alex Cobb); and their young hitters will have more experience to their credit, perhaps paving the way for them to make leaps.
Those are fair points. Still, it gets back to what I wrote above about Cleveland: the Tigers have a thin margin for error in a tight division. There are no guarantees that the Central sends three teams to the postseason again. Do you feel confident the Tigers will win the division? I don’t. Are you certain they’ll finish second? I’m not. They very well could, making this rank look silly in a few months’ time. But, for now, they look to me like the 2024 playoff team most likely to spend October golfing.
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