Another Day, Another New Plan Projected

As owners and the players discuss ways to start up the 2020 season, we’ve started to see the outline of a possible plan for play become less foggy. 162 games has, of course, long been impossible; now, the owners are proposing roughly a half-season rather than the expected 100-110 games. 82 games starting in early July gives us less baseball than usual, but it could also result in the “baseball year” following its same basic schedule rather than ending in late November. After all, teams normally play about that many games after early July! This likely represents the desire of the owners to play as many games as possible in the home parks rather than the considerably more exotic Super Spring Training plans that have been floated over the last six weeks.

But a shorter schedule isn’t the only proposed change coming for 2020 baseball. Forecasting how the Players v. Owners fight over revenue-sharing shakes out is beyond my abilities as a projectionista, but there are many other new tidbits that do fall within my scope. For one, while the league standings are still likely to be organized along the usual lines, teams would only play their regional division “partners” and the corresponding geographical division of the other league. This has the rather odd result of the Wild Card standings consisting of a lot of teams that would never play each other. But as ugly as that sounds, the main concern is playing the season rather than maximizing its fairness. For the purposes of these projections, I’ve assumed teams will play 52 games, or 63% of the schedule, in their division with 30 games out of division.

The designated hitter is also expected to become universal this year. I’ve long been of the opinion that as soon as interleague play became a daily activity, pitcher-hitting was on borrowed time. When interleague play consisted of special chunks of the season, NL teams could design their rosters to call up a Wily Mo Pena, a competent DH type without a full-time spot on the team, large pitching staffs having mostly killed off the designated pinch-hitter job. Once DH games became sprinkled throughout the system, it put NL teams at a slight disadvantage when planning to have an extra bat on the roster.

Another major proposed change is expanded rosters. While this has been done in the past — 27 players after the 1990 lockout, 28 after the 1994-1995 strike — modern baseball has never been disrupted to this degree. For the purposes of these projections, I went with 30-man active rosters. I also included the effect of a 20-man taxi squad and gave those players real playing time given the very likely possibility of no minor league season in 2020.

The last major change is seven teams going to the playoffs in each league, something that Rob Manfred talked about before the world fell apart. I hated the idea then due to the continued cheapening of the regular season, but at this point, there are a lot of things I don’t like that I’ll learn to live with for the purposes of getting baseball going! With those changes in mind, here’s how the season projects:

So who gains from all of this? A few different classes of teams.

Great teams tend to be hurt the most by shorter schedules and in an 82-game season, a lot of would-be playoff appearances by teams like the Yankees and Dodgers disappear into the ether. The greater number of Wild Card spots mitigate this somewhat, restoring the playoff odds these teams saw in the “normal” projected standings from a few months ago.

The shorter season also helps teams with injury problems that will be mitigated somewhat by starting the season in July. The Yankees get the biggest boost, but this also aids teams like the Reds, Astros, and Indians.

The biggest winners are perhaps the AL and NL Central teams. Both the Central divisions are projected as weaker-than-average and these teams benefit by swapping out East and West division teams for games against the Central team of the opposing league. Overall, the strength of schedule becomes even more unbalanced, with opposing team strength ranging from .525 for the Orioles (85 wins per 162) to the Twins’ opponents at .479 (78 wins). That doesn’t increase their divisional probabilities since there’s still just one AL Central and one NL Central title, but it’s a huge boost to their Wild Card chances. Teams like the White Sox, Cardinals, and Reds all advance to coin flips.

The designated hitter rule provides a boost for NL teams with extra bats. My colleague Craig Edwards wrote about how the DH changes affect National League teams and while I get slightly different results from making slightly different choices, the same principle applies. A team like the Reds, with too many outfielders for their lineup, is well-equipped to provide a viable DH on a daily basis.

And lastly, the taxi squads provide a small but real boost to teams with better high minors depth and better top prospects. The Rays and Dodgers, among others, see gains here, thanks to having both elite prospects and excellent Triple-A depth.

Do these changes benefit the game? In a normal season, I’m not sure. But in 2020, anything that gets us closer to “Play Ball” has to be seriously considered.