How Good Is Your Favorite Team Going to Be?
Here’s a table! It includes every team in baseball, and it shows how many regular-season games each team has won over the past five years. The Dodgers have been very good. The Phillies have not. Come to FanGraphs.com for all of your groundbreaking baseball analysis.
| Team | Wins | Team | Wins | Team | Wins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dodgers | 473 | Rangers | 419 | Diamondbacks | 386 |
| Nationals | 457 | Blue Jays | 415 | Brewers | 383 |
| Cardinals | 456 | Angels | 415 | Braves | 382 |
| Indians | 454 | Tigers | 407 | Rockies | 370 |
| Pirates | 433 | Mets | 400 | Marlins | 366 |
| Red Sox | 432 | Giants | 399 | Padres | 366 |
| Yankees | 431 | Mariners | 398 | Reds | 366 |
| Cubs | 431 | Rays | 397 | Twins | 363 |
| Royals | 431 | Athletics | 396 | White Sox | 357 |
| Orioles | 426 | Astros | 392 | Phillies | 346 |
Lately I’ve been thinking about a few different questions. The main thrust of one: Which team is best positioned to be good for a while? The main thrust of the other: Which team seems to be the most screwed? We all, I think, have our suspicions, and the first one has maybe been talked to death. I’m not sure. Situations are always changing. But I couldn’t quite think of the right way to approach the subjects. I’ve also known I’ve wanted to gauge community opinions. And so we come to this, which is just another FanGraphs community polling project. I think I’ve settled on an appropriate question.
Above, for every team, you see five-year win totals, through 2017. Below, there are 30 polls — one for each team — and I’m looking for your rough combined win projections for 2018 through 2022. It’s relatively easy to project one season ahead, but for these purposes, I don’t think that accomplishes enough. It asks a different question. By focusing on five years, instead of one, I’m not just asking about the strength of the current roster. It forces you to consider the front office, and the farm system, and the player development, and the overall resources. In theory, we could go beyond five years, but then it’s all effectively unknowable. I mean, even the fifth year is probably unknowable, but just give it your best shot, based on what you understand about your team. As always, I’ll do a follow-up analysis post, so that we can evaluate the whole spread of the landscape.
I recognize that these polling projects are usually easier. This one requires some basic math. For reference, an average of 81 wins over the next five years would yield a combined total of 405. An average of 90 wins over the next five years would yield a combined total of 450. An average of 75 wins over the next five years would yield a combined total of 375. Those might give you some useful targets. You can also refer to the table at the start. It’s not fun to have to do math just in order to respond to an internet poll, but I think the results of this could be really interesting. It’s a question we’re frequently thinking about, yet I’ve never polled in this way. Given sufficient participation, we can assess every team’s short- and medium-term strength in league context.
Thank you in advance for your help. I can’t wait to see what the numbers reveal.
To proceed directly to a specific team poll, click on the team’s name below.
Angels, Astros, Athletics, Blue Jays, Braves, Brewers, Cardinals, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Giants, Indians, Mariners, Marlins, Mets, Nationals, Orioles, Padres, Phillies, Pirates, Rangers, Rays, Red Sox, Reds, Rockies, Royals, Tigers, Twins, White Sox, Yankees
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Angels
Astros
Athletics
Blue Jays
Braves
Brewers
Cardinals
Cubs
Diamondbacks
Dodgers
Giants
Indians
Mariners
Marlins
Mets
Nationals
Orioles
Padres
Phillies
Pirates
Rangers
Rays
Red Sox
Reds
Rockies
Royals
Tigers
Twins
White Sox
Yankees
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.
When I consider the Giants’ five-year outlook, I think Mr. Kurtz said it best: “The horror, the horror!”
While they might actually be okay, they are certainly going to be the least efficient team in terms of payroll dollars per win. Not sure it is even going to be close.
I am now convinced this is incorrect. When the Yankees or Dodgers or whoever run a $350 million payroll they are going to get this category.
It would have been better to just say that the Giants are not going to get a lot for the money.
Dunno why you’re getting down votes.
Something like 79, 70, 63, 60, 68 ? That’s 340.
But those horrors aren’t starting right away. They could easily bankroll 170 wins over the next 2 years. Which means they would have to put up 60 wins seasons in the back three in order to fall into the lowest bucket. I think 85 + 85 + 70 + 70 + 70 is a reasonable projection.
You are probably being optimistic and I’m probably being pessimistic. I was just looking at their farm system (bad) and their long-term contracts (bad) and not really factoring in that they will probably continue to spend aggressively.
I don’t believe that spending aggressively on free agents is a way to build a winning team, but it is an effective way to build a 70 win team when you probably have 60 win talent between the farm system and old guys under contract.
I’ll predict 79, 72, 68, 70, 72…for a total of 361.
Keep in mind that this was a 64 win team last year (probably could have won 74) and they only won 399 in the last 5 years, so the people thinking they are going to have a BETTER record in the next 5 vs. the last 5, when their core was young and good, are just defying logic.
I think you should expand each team’s poll to reflect # of wins in each year to get a sense of people seeing an uptrend or down trend.
Too many people voting for 460+
Only one team has managed to win more than 460 in the previous 5 years
Of course. We all thing the good times will never end, and that the bad times will only get better!
I agree. It’s very tough to average 92 or more wins per season over an extended period of time, as we see in numbers for the prior five years.
People seem to underestimate the various factors that drag a really good team back down toward .500: players age, players reach free agency and either leave or take up much more payroll room, prospects are traded away in later for now moves, key players get hurt during a season.
Look at the Astros, for example. Undoubtedly a great team with a bright outlook, but they also have all of three established major league players (Correa, Bregman, and McCullers) under team control for 2021. Maybe add Devenski if you want to count on a reliever with a heavy workload that far out.
Well, over the last 3 years there have been 4 clubs that have averaged 92 runs a season, so to some extent it depends on the endpoints you choose.
I think it’s safe to say that the Cubs will have averaged 92+ wins/y over a five year period, but that period started three years ago.
That said I actually like the chances for the Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, and Astros to all accomplish it over the next 5 years.
And part of my point is that sustaining that level of success on average over 5 years is quite a bit tougher than 3, though I’d agree that the Cubs stand a very good chance because they’ve banked enough wins that they only need to average 84 over the next two years. The Dodgers only need to average 86.5 wins, so they also look well-positioned.
Two of those teams round to 92 wins over the last three years (Indians with 277 total and the Nationals with 275) so they very easily could both be good over the next two years and still miss the cutoff.
The Astros also have a shot as they’d need to average 94.5 wins over the next two years.
The 5 teams with the most win from 2013-2017 (Dodgers, Nats, Cards, Indians, Pirates) have combined for 0 World Series in that timeframe.
Yep. Baseball is a lovely, random, unpredictable beast wherein 5 and 7 game series are not particularly definitive. We entertainment starved fans seem to enjoy this.
Jeff, I’m most likely going to ask you this in your chat tomorrow, I guess unless I get an answer now, but would you consider running a similar poll to the how good is the Front Office/Owner polls except for with each team’s manager?
Cubs will likely be the worst team in baseball very, very soon. No farm system, no pitching.
Agree, Iowa Cubs could struggle
Wont be much of a difference between the I Cubs and Chicago Cubs in a few years lol
Cubslollol
Could you clarify whether you’re looking for us each to vote on only one team?
I voted the Orioles would win between 420-439 games the next five years and meant it, although I have my doubts about them winning the division in that timeframe.
I would feel more comfortable in projecting if the ranges were in an overlapping split. Personally I believe that the Orioles will be somewhere between 390-410, rather than either choice of 380-400 or 400-420. But then, it’s your poll, so a participant has to put their ‘money’ down and take their chances with the options you give them.
Right?
Can we present these polls in the same order each time, instead of always putting the most popular category at the top? It would be much easier to read that way. So if fans think a team will be really bad it will look like:
>
>>
>>>
>>>>>>>>>
And a fan base that is more evenly distributed would look like:
>>>>>
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It would be much easier to scan through the results without having to carefully read each category.
Let me just… update my Brewers guess real quick
Yeah, Jeff posted this a few hours too soon. Whoops.
I think it would be easier if you asked “How many wins will this team *average* for the next *five* years?” Then the answers would be win totals on a scale that’s more natural.
I’m curious to see how big the innate positive bias of fans is by comparing the expected win total across all 30 teams to the actual wins available in a zero-sum game 30 x 162 x 5 * 0.500 environment.
Am I the only one who voted on Miami just to see how many people picked under 360?
You can just click “view results,” you know