A Side Effect of the Super-Team Era
Again, I don’t know how we define a “super-team era,” but it sure feels like we’re in one. At the moment, seven teams are projected to win at least 90 games in the season ahead. Just about every division appears to have a clear favorite, with the exception of the AL East, and that one’s only unclear because two teams are really good. There’s an argument to be made that having so many strong teams has slowed down the market. After all, what hope could the other teams have?
And yet, there’s an opening. It all comes down to setting a goal. If you’re one of the non-super-teams, you can do only so much to climb into the tier. It’s tremendously difficult to turn a decent team into a great one over the course of one offseason. But what if the goal is to simply make the playoffs? Five teams from each league make it every year. Each league doesn’t have five obvious favorites. From one point of view, the playoffs are nearly random, and once a team makes it in, anything can happen. And, you know, when the best teams are winning so many games, the barrier for playoff entry can actually be lowered.
I can use some numbers to support this. I have that spreadsheet of preseason team projections going back to 2005. Now, since 2005, the lowest actual win total for an American League wild card is 85. That was achieved by last year’s Twins. And, since 2005, the lowest actual win total for a National League wild card is 87. That was equaled by last year’s Rockies. Right now, the projected second AL wild card is the Blue Jays, at 87-75. More importantly, the projected second NL wild card is the Giants, at 82-80. You presumably recognize that 82-80 is not a very strong projection. Here are 14 years of preseason team projections, showing the lowest wild-card win totals for each league.
You can see how getting a wild-card spot got easier in 2012. That’s obvious — in 2012, each league added a second wild card, thereby allowing two worse teams into the playoffs. We’ve come to terms with that. But check out the red line, showing the National League. The current projected wild card would be the worst of all the projected NL wild cards. Through last year, the average projected wild-card win total was 86.4, and since 2012 it was 86.1. The Giants are about four wins below that. The only worse projected wild card in either league since 2005 would be the 2016 Yankees, also at 82-80. In the National League in particular right now, a door appears to be open. It’s only a door to a one-game playoff, but that one-game playoff could provide access to the rest of the tournament.
Projections are imperfect estimates. That much, you know. And projections differ in different places. For example, here are the current PECOTA projected standings. PECOTA identifies the same three NL division favorites, but its second wild card is the Cardinals, at 85-77. Take everything with a grain of salt. I’m making use of our own numbers because they’re the same numbers I’ve used for the past several years.
It should also be noted that the actual wild-card winners win more games than the preseason projections. Since 2005, in the AL, the lowest playoff seed has averaged 89.4 projected wins, and 91.8 actual wins. In the NL, the lowest playoff seed has averaged 86.4 projected wins, and 89.8 actual wins. It requires a certain amount of overachieving to make it into the playoffs. Every year, teams overperform and underperform, and there’s little you can do to know which it’ll be.
Yet let’s go back to looking at this situation specifically. I’ll leave the AL alone. The second projected NL wild card, again, is the Giants, at 82 wins. A playoff hopeful doesn’t necessarily have to think about getting to 90. Just has to think about being a hair better than the Giants. And this can probably explain some current rumored behavior. Here are NL projected win totals, from the Giants on down.
- Giants: 82 wins
- Diamondbacks: 82
- Mets: 81
- Rockies: 79
- Brewers: 78
- Pirates: 76
- Phillies: 74
- Padres: 73
- Braves: 72
- Reds: 72
- Marlins: 65
The Giants can’t easily do anything else. They’re right up against the competitive-balance-tax threshold. The Diamondbacks, too, are basically out of money, and the Mets are presumably finished with all of their free-agent tweaking. The Rockies worked hard to beef up their bullpen. The Brewers are rumored to be interested in free-agent starters like Jake Arrieta and Alex Cobb. The Phillies, too, are rumored to have the same interest, and they have a lot more money to spend than the Brewers do, now and in the future. We could even connect this to the Padres and Eric Hosmer. The Padres still aren’t good, but Hosmer makes them better by a handful of wins. Odds are, those wins won’t be too terribly important in 2018, but there is a real chance, because contention isn’t that far away. It’s not about any of these teams trying to be as good as the Dodgers or the Cubs or the Nationals. The competition is more about the Giants, or the Diamondbacks, and those teams seem to be far more catchable. Give the Phillies another quality starting pitcher and he could make a difference as soon as this very season. The Phillies just aren’t that far away, not if the goal is a 163rd game.
If you don’t agree with the projections, you probably won’t agree with this analysis. Like, the Brewers just won 86 games, and they added Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich, so it’s strange to see them where they are. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were better than this. But in general, in theory, this would all still follow from having a tier of elites. If some number of teams is hoarding a whole bunch of wins, that means there are fewer wins available for everyone else. And that would make it easier to be the best of the worst, so to speak. Every year now, ten teams make the playoffs, but right now, there are fewer than ten super-teams. A few non-super-teams are going to sneak in, and you couldn’t blame, say, the Phillies, if they felt like they had a real opportunity. I don’t believe that they’d be fooling themselves.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
If the Rockies miss out on a return trip to the playoffs, the offense is likely to be the culprit. And they added nothing this offseason despite what appear to be at least a couple of obvious fits (Jay Bruce, in particular, to replace CarGo in RF).
It sure seems like the Rockies are really committed to their prospects, specifically McMahon at 1st and Tapia in the outfield. Maybe they’ve seen enough to know these guys are ready to bring it, or maybe they’re just overly confident from their rookie starting pitchers’ performances last year. That Lucas Duda signed for $3.5M and the Rox never made a nibble (at least not that I heard of) was a sure sign to me that they think McMahon is the answer at 1st. We’ll see.
Edit: Forgot about Dahl, he may be in the mix as well.
If they get 2017 Iannetta (120 wRC+), instead of ’15-’16 Iannetta, he immediately becomes their 3rd best hitter. But yeah, disappointing they haven’t signed another bat.
Ianetta was the most underrated free agent upgrade of the winter in my opinion. The Rockies’ catchers were horrible last season and Ianetta was well above average, with 2.2 WAR in only 316 PAs.
I think that the D-Backs and Brewers’ behavior here is explained because the teams are counting on last year’s underlying performances (as defined by BaseRuns, or whatever proprietary thing they use that is similar/better) rather than projection going forward. The D-Backs were a 96 win team by baseruns last year. The Brewers were an 84 win team. They probably look at their team and don’t see many major fluke performances, and figure they can improve. It isn’t that hard to squint and say “maybe, just maybe, we can improve a little bit and get a little bit lucky and the Dodgers/Cubs will falter”. They didn’t see anything fluky about last year (and in a sense it wasn’t) so why not go for it?
(This might explain the Rockies’ behavior too, although it seems a lot less justified than for the D-Backs or Brewers).
I think the Rockies are counting on David Dahl replicating his late-2016 performance for an entire season and Ryan McMahon living up to his 2017 minor league performance.
Still WAY too many PA’s upcoming for Parra and Desmond this season, though.
I somewhat doubt that is the case.
BaseRuns is a SABR-friendly metric, only data leaning clubs are likely to care too much about it. The traditional crowd would tend to regard baseruns as rejecting context, outcome, clutchness, etc.
But Baseruns are not necessarily predictive. Why would a data friendly club over-rely on a (relatively) non-predictive metric?
The more likely explanation imo is that both clubs have their core ~14 contributors in place and neither see any cost-effective upgrades in the FA or trade market.
On the FA- how would people improve Arizona or Milwaukee?
Arizona really only projects under 2 WAR at 2b, they have plenty of SP depth, and could maybe bump up from a 4 WAR bullpen to 5. So maybe Walker and a reliever- otherwise look to trade market for a 3-4 WAR player?
Milwaukee projects under 2 WAR at 2b, SS and 4th & 5th SP- but they seem likely to roll with Arcia at SS and SP Nelson returns at some point this year. Arrieta is obviously a great fit at the right price, but neither Cobb nor Lynn would be big upgrades. Walker would also be a nice upgrade at the right price. The Brewers seem likely to trade a surplus OF for a SP at some point, so that might be as much as they can do with relatively easy upgrades.
Lucroy could marginally upgrade either club at C, but not quite a full win.
Both teams have already added a decent collection of the best available assets this offseason (Yelich, Cain, Dyson, Souza, Avila) plus some 1 WAR depth (Chacin, Boxberger). What both teams need to compete with the best are more 4 WAR players- if those can’t be had, it seems they are doing what can be done to shore up the rest of the squad.
I agree that Walker would be a great add for either team and he should come cheap now that spring training has started.
Your search must have missed them because they weren’t WC winners, but the 2006 Cardinals won the World Series with 83 regular season wins. They must be the poster boy for supporters of playoff randomness; Billy Beane’s favorite data point.
He does actually say that he is only specifically discussing the Wild Card teams in the article, so the 2006 Cardinals wouldn’t be a data point in this discussion.
That said, I vividly remember that season because the Cards won the WS after finishing the season 4 wins back of the Blue Jays who got to watch the playoffs on TV. By the time 2008 rolled around and fully 5 teams in the NL with better records stayed home (and 4 more in the AL, including 3 in the ALE) while the 84 win Dodgers went to the post-season I was *very* in favor of changing the way the post-season worked. Mostly I was hoping for more balanced schedules and a top 4 or top 6 teams model, but the WC ended up being a descent compromise surprisingly.
Mind you, no one got screwed by the old playoff format more often than the Yankees and Red Sox, which I am generally in favor of, so it was a difficult decision for me. 😉
The NFL and NBA have had teams with .500 or losing records make the playoffs. This is not surprising considering the NFL plays 16 games and half the NBA’s Eastern Conference makes the playoffs. But a MLB teams making the playoffs with a .500 or worse record would be absolutely pathetic. Any WC2 teams that doesn’t have a winning record should be automatically disqualified from the playoffs.
I agree for all sports, including the NCAA’s. Winning records only.
Perhaps the NFL is an exception due to the short season and the wide range of strength of schedule, but that’s it.
I am legitimately surprised to see how much the Blue Jays have moved the needle over the course of this offseason. I figured they had largely cemented themselves as an at least .500 team with all the depth moves they had made, and that they could easily be as good as 90 wins if things broke right for them, but I am surprised to see them *projected* at 87 wins now.
How many teams have added at least 3 projected wins this off-season? And has anyone done it cheaper than Toronto? This is very interesting because you have to figure that marginal wins are worth more to Toronto than they are to a lot of other teams (ie – the elite and the tankers) but the Jays opted to stay very agile for the future.
I have to assume this was largely a case of raising the average by raising the floor.
Not sure if these numbers reflect strength of schedule, but if not, I think they’ll lose a couple of wins because of the division they are in. I applaud them for giving it one last crack before Donaldson’s contact expires.
Agreed that scheduling and divisional games may be impacting team behavior in a way not yet depicted by the projections.
The Mets and Twins seem to have a lot of tail wind from weak divisions- the Twins have the extreme situation with 3 of the worst 4 teams in baseball in their division, the Mets have the Phils/Braves/Marlins projected for an average of 70 wins. Washington and Cleveland are also too of the relatively weaker division leaders.
Between schedule adjustments and rounding out the roster with a minor contributor or two, I’d think the Twins (82) and the Mets (81) will add 4 wins to their current projections by opening day.
Big reason the jays are not given a shot is that the Pecota system is grossly overvaluing the Rays team. So much so I think they are off by 15-20 wins for the Rays. nobody in their right mind would project them above the Jays would they?
FanGraphs had an article some weeks ago about the Jays under the radar moves. As I recall, the article focused on the Jays adding depth since they got burned by injured starters last year. So, this year you have Solarte backing up both Travis and Donaldson, Diaz backing up Tulo and Grichuk and Granderson providing experience in the outfield should the kids (Alford, Hernandez, Pompey) not perform. Granted, back ups are back ups for a reason and they’re not going to replace the value of a starter, but hopefully (for the Jays), if a starter goes down they go from a 3 WAR player to a 1.5 WAR player instead of to a 0.0 WAR player.
I dont see any evidenced we are in a Super Team era. Last year no team in the AL East won 95+ games. Indians look to be worse this year. Astros might be the only Super Team. Maybe the Yankees if they can show last year was no fluke.
Besides, being a Super Team is no guarantee of post season success. Playoffs are a lottery.
Just as many teams will win a post season spot as will get a top 10 pick. Why arent the teams in the middle competing more?
The mlb draft is not like football and basketball. Teams in the middle would love to compete more. Problem is there just isn’t enough top end talent to go around. Spending boatloads of money on overpriced, aging vets is the only way for them to improve. Those players give diminishing returns and will quickly pull the team in the opposite direction.
The only way in today’s mlb to join the top teams is to hit big on a few prospects. That takes years of development and planning plus great coaching and scouting. This is not Geico. Cavemen can not do it despite Showalter trying with all his might.
So after people were saying we were in an era of superteams because of the start of last season when there were four, now you’re saying it doesn’t exist because there are five or six?
The simple fact Pecota projections have the Rays a ‘good’ team is reason enough to dismiss the ratings entirely. They are closer to the Marlins state of affairs than they are a wild card contender.
I’d say they have the D’Backs too high and Atlanta and Colorado too low.
“And that would make it easier to be the best of the worst, so to speak.”
Well, it makes it likely that the best of the worst will have fewer wins than they might otherwise. I’m not at all convinced that actually makes it easier to be that team.
I’ve been really surprised this offseason that more teams haven’t tried what the Brewers did and shoot for those WC2 spots. I wonder if the domination of the superteams in the last 2 postseasons has to do with it; even knowing how random the playoffs can be, the ’16 CLE/CHC and ’17 HOU/LAD teams were so good it’s hard to imagine a non-superteam competing (of course ’15 was the opposite of that, but that was a different time). Or maybe front offices just don’t want to gamble millions for a shot at a one game playoff that more or less comes down to a coin flip.
Exactly because of the first half of the first sentence I’m anti-“Super Team” narrative. Something that can’t be adequately defined seems like an easy catchall phrase rather than a trend.
For the purposes of the narrative, there doesn’t have to be a solid definition of “Super Team,” algorithmic or otherwise. The only opinions that matter are those of the FOs/owners, since they’re the ones spending the money.
There are other dependencies (such as where a team is on its own win curve, looking forwards), but in general I think the observation that you don’t have to run faster than the bear makes sense.