Peering Back at the 2019 Season Through a 50-Game Window

It stands as a threat rather than an official proposal — heaven forbid the owners actually engage the players directly instead of attempting to negotiate through the media — but MLB’s latest thought balloon regarding a 2020 season centers around a 50-game schedule. In the wake of the players’ formal proposal that they receive the full prorated share of their salaries for a 114-game season that would begin on June 30 and end on October 31 (with a postseason to follow in November), the owners have let it be known that they’re not enthusiastic about that idea. Per ESPN, The Athletic, and other outlets, they’ve discussed a 50-game slate as a last-resort option.

The wee season would begin in July, and for it, the players would receive the full prorated share of their salaries, though those would amount to just 30.8% of their full-season salaries. Here it’s worth noting that the 50-game schedule is the same distance from the central 82-game proposal as the 114-game one is; if the two sides were to meet exactly in the middle, we’d be back at the number that’s been floating around since the owners voted to propose a 50-50 revenue split on May 11.

As Dan Szymborski illustrated in his latest round of ZiPS projections, a lot of strange stuff can happen in just 50 games, including a 28.1% chance of the Dodgers — projected as the best team in baseball over a full 162 games back in March — missing the playoffs and a 0.6% chance of the Marlins winning the World Series. “At 50 games, the ability to meaningfully differentiate between the great and the good, the mediocre and the bad, starts to fade significantly,” wrote Szymborski. “There’s a one-in-five chance that the winner of the World Series will be a team believed to be .500 or worse.”

The 50-game ZiPS projections make that point in one manner, but as there are multiple ways to skin this particular cat, I thought it would be worth reviewing several 50-game stretches from last season to show off some of the weirdness. Any Nationals fan, for example, can tell you that the team started last season 19-31 before righting the ship and marching to the franchise’s first World Series win. So let’s start by considering what a 2019 season based on games 1-50 would have looked like. Here it’s worth remembering that teams reach the 50-game mark at slightly different dates (as early as May 21 and as late as May 26 last year), so this doesn’t correspond to a single day on the calendar.

The AL playoff picture quickly came into focus last season, with four out of the five qualifiers in position by the 50th game; only the defending champion Red Sox dropped out, replaced by the A’s, who trailed them by just two games at this juncture. The NL slate, on the other hand, saw significantly more turnover, with two of the three division leaders after 50 games ultimately missing the playoffs entirely, and one Wild Card leader rising up to win the division. In all, seven of the 10 teams in playoff positions ultimately made the cut.

If we instead shift the 50-game window to start with the 26th game of the season (a date range from April 23 to April 29), here’s how things look:

In this version, five of the six division leaders wound up winning their respective flags, but only one of the four Wild Card leaders hung on. Had this scenario come to pass, the AL Wild Card game would have featured the Red Sox and the Angels (starring Mike Trout!), while the NL game would have featured a rematch of the 2018 Division Series between the Brewers and Rockies; outside of this particular 50-game window, the latter went 42-70 last year.

Moving along, here’s what the picture looks like based on games 51-100:

This version features seven of the actual 10 teams in playoff position, as did the 1-50 version, but arguably, it’s a bit more of a shakeup. Three of the six division leads changed hands, including two in the AL, with the Indians, who missed the October dance altogether, “winning” the AL Central. Again, the Angels would make the cut, and likewise, retiring manager Bruce Bochy would have reached the playoffs one last time given the Giants’ rebound from a 21-29 showing over their first 50 games.

The version for games 76-125 has four division winners in place, with the other two slipping down to Wild Card spots. The most interesting thing about it is the NL Wild Card pairing: Giants versus Mets, a rematch of the 2016 Wild Card Game:

I’ve spared you the games 101-150 window and instead gone with 113-162, the final stretch of the season. All 10 teams that are in playoff positions in this one actually made it to the postseason dance, albeit with some shuffling; not only was this the rare instance of the Yankees not sitting atop the AL East, that 30-20 record matched their worst such stretch of the season (more on that topic below). Note that both the Mets and Diamondbacks finished just outside the Wild Card picture in the NL in what would have been quite a race for Team Entropy’s purposes.

In case your mind is a bit numb from seeing five alternate realities in a short timespan, here’s a summary of the teams in playoff position via each 50-game slice:

The yellow cells show the segments in which the team matched its actual playoff position. Note that the Dodgers were the only team to do so in all five segments, and they, the Astros, and Yankees were the only playoff teams to run the table as playoff qualifiers via any of these 50-game slices. The number of actual division winners who came out on top in the various segments ranged from three to five, with an average of 3.8, while the number of Wild Card teams in that position ranged from zero to two, with an average of 1.2. Three teams who wound up on the outside looking in claimed a total of five division “titles” (the Cubs and Indians twice), while five outsiders claimed a total of eight Wild Card “berths” (the Red Sox, Angels, and Giants twice). That’s an average of 2.6 party-crashers per segment. Roughly speaking, then, we can say that each of these slices represents only about three-quarters of the final playoff picture.

I’ll close with a table showing each team’s best and worst 50-game stretch:

I’ve made the table sortable so that you can futz around with it, but a few items are worth noting. The Yankees, as mentioned above, hardly dipped in quality across their worst stretches, going 30-20 in two overlapping ones covering all but one day in either June or July, plus the season-ending stretch; at best, they went 36-14 at several turns, and so their spread between best and worst stretches tied (with the dreadful Royals) for the smallest in the majors. The Indians tied for the majors’ second-best 50-game stretch (five overlapping ones, actually, starting with one that ran from June 11 to August 8), yet missed the playoffs. The Cubs, Giants, and Mets all had stretches as good as the Wild Card-qualifying Brewers but all went into similarly deep funks as well. Still, none of the other playoff teams had as awful a 50-game stretch as the Nationals’ season opening one, which in fact stands as the worst for any World Series winner in the Wild Card era, outstinking the 2003 Marlins (21-29).

The simultaneous rebuilding programs of so many teams turned the 2019 season into a low point as far as competitive balance was concerned. As Craig Edwards found, the season produced the largest standard deviation in winning percentage since 1954, even larger than any expansion season. The volume of tanking made the season a rather unremarkable one for playoff races, particularly in the AL, and so I have little doubt that a similar analysis on a different season might yield results even more wild than the above.

Still, what this exercise should underscore is just how shaky the playoff picture might be given a 50-game schedule. Yes, the best teams in terms of true talent will likely qualify, and here we’re not even considering the way that roster management strategies could help ensure that. In a shorter season, young pitchers will be able to throw a full complement of innings without concerns for caps, health permitting, and the decisions to hold or trade pending free agents could change depending upon an altered playoff format and adjusted trade deadline. All told, regardless of those details, it’s quite possible a 50-game slate would admit into the postseason interlopers who might not last the full 162 games. The results could still be entertaining from a #TeamEntropy standpoint, and a 50-game season would certainly better than no season at all, leaving aside the health and safety issues that admittedly, are rather hard to leave aside. Nonetheless, the validity of the wee season’s results would always be in question, particularly if a weaker team goes on a Cinderella run in October. If it’s what it is, we’ll make do, but to these eyes, this is all the more reason for a longer schedule.