Which team is most likely to surprise us in 2014? Out of the fourteen teams with a losing record last year, which team has the best chances of jumping into contention, and surprising the baseball world?
This has become one my favorite annual columns to write. It’s the ultimate ‘spring’ article: I get to spend a bit of time thinking about teams I didn’t pay attention to for most of 2014, and try to pick some potential winners out of the bunch.
I approach this article impartially: I set up a spreadsheet and check on a few indicators for each team. Then I assign ‘points’ to each indicator, based on an entirely arbitrary system of guesswork and gut instinct that I tinker with and adjust every year, and promptly lose. Certainly, there’s space for a more calculating and rational approach, but I’m no robot. I moved out of my mom’s basement years ago.
This season is interesting because we don’t have anyone like last year’s Blue Jays, or the Marlins of 2012, muddying up the waters: none of the losing teams went on a madcap spending spree, signing free agents hand-over-fist in a desperate attempt to climb into contention. Instead, the Yankees took care of that, which is the universe returning to normal.
So we have fourteen teams to consider, fourteen teams that finished below .500 in 2013:
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NL
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AL
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Phillies
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Blue Jays
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Marlins
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White Sox
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Mets
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Twins
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Brewers
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Astros
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Cubs
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Angels
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Rockies
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Mariners
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Padres
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Giants
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It’s a great list: there’s no obvious team that jumps out as being likely to rebound, no team that wouldn’t be a surprise in 2014. You could pick any of them.
I said that I approach this exercise objectively: that’s not to say that I don’t have teams that I have strong sentiments towards, teams I’d be tempted to swing the numbers towards, if I was a less honest person. Every year this happens: there’s a team that I want to pick, a team I’d like to get behind.
Admitting my biases this year: I was very tempted to pick the New York Mets.
It is, of course, absolutely ridiculous to expect the Mets to win the NL East, or even get into the Wild Card game this year. First, they’re in a division with the Braves and Nationals, two extremely good teams. Second, their best pitcher will spend most of 2014 on the shelf. They lost Marlon Byrd, their second-best hitter in 2013, to the Phillies. They replaced him with a guy who hit .229 over 61 games last year.
But I’m rooting for the Mets. This is mostly (okay, entirely) because my sister-in-law Mary is a big Mets fan, and it’s nice having another baseball obsessive on that side of the family.
I think, too, that the Mets have had a reasonably smart off-season. I like their three big signings: Colon, Granderson, and Chris Young: those players are all likely to contribute positively to the team in 2014, and if they wash out, the money involved isn’t going to significantly hamper the team going forward. They have some good young players who could break out, especially in the rotation. I like the catcher whose name sounds like a character fromThe Three Musketeers. I’ve spent a good bit of time trying to convince Mary that Ike Davis is a superstar in the making….so far she’s not buying it.
So I like the Mets…I’m rooting for them this year. But they’re not the surprise team for 2014.
* * *
The system: I’ve re-jiggered the positive indicators and the points allotted to each of them, in an effort to make this system seem more efficient at picking the best candidates to surprise us in 2014. This year, we have a whopping ten criteria that we’re using to find our surprise teams. Let’s bullet-point them:
· Batters Age. This is the average age of all of a team’s hitters from 2013, with youth being the important consideration. Teams whose hitters are young are likely to see those hitters improve. A team with old hitters should expect to decline. We award four points to the five youngest teams in baseball, two points for the next five, and one point for teams ranked 11th-15th.
· Pitchers Age. Same thing, same logic, same scoring as above.
· Second-Half Success. This considers the team’s W-L record over the second half of the season. A team gets 6 points if they were at .515 or better, 3 points if they were close to .500
· September W-L Record. This considers a team’s September record, only. Four points if the team was over .500. Two points if the team was close to .500
· Pythagorean Record vs. Actual Record. This considers the ‘true’ measure of the team’s performance in 2013, calculated by their runs scored and runs allowed, and checked against their actual record. The Phillies won 73 games last year, but their expected W-L record was seven games worse than that, -7. Teams whose expected W-L record is better than their actual record get the difference minus two. The White Sox underperformed by four victories in 2013 (-4)…they were a 67-win team that happened to win 63 games. So they get two points.
· Were They Good in 2012? That is, does the team have a track-record for recent success? Teams get five points if they were strong contenders, three points if they were above .500.
· Was The Triple-A Team Good? Three points if a team’s AAA team finished in contention for first-place, one point if they were over .500.
· How Does Their Farm-System Rate? I used Keith Law’s ranking of Major League Farm Systems. Four points for the top-five, two points for #6-10, one point for #11-15.
· Playoff Expectancy. I used FanGraph’s excellent Playoff Odds page. If a team has a 10-20% chance of making the playoffs, they get three points. If a team has a 20-40% chance, they get four points. Anything over 40% gets five points. Only two of our eligible teams tallied odds better than 40%. One of those teams was the San Francisco Giants, who have a 44.6% chance of making the playoffs.
· Number of Positive Indicators They Check. This is a positive indicator of positive indicators: in how many of the previous nine catagories did the team receive points? The team getthat count, which could be anywhere from zero to nine points. The team with the fewest indicators was the Toronto Blue Jays, who received points in just two categories. Sorry, Torontonians.
So that’s the system this year. Now onto the results.
* * *
The Toronto Blue Jays scored just nine points, doing the worst by this measure across both leagues. They have exactly two positive indicators: a good Triple-A team and a high tally on the Fangraphs Playoff Odds Page. That said, the Blue Jays certainly could surprise us this year: Bautista, Lawrie, and Reyes missed significant time in 2013, and just getting their stars back and healthy should give them a shot at the .500 mark.
The AL Central teams, Minnesota (13 points) and Chicago (14 points), also scored poorly, as did the Seattle Mariners (11 points). This metric does not take into account a team’s off-season signings, and I think Chicago has had an excellent off-season. The Twins have two of the ten best prospects in baseball, but it’ll be a year before they are full-time players in the AL. Seattle has Robby Cano, whose laziness at running out grounders to first will probably poison their clubhouse.
Houston does really well: 24 points. We’re not picking Houston.
No…the surprise team in the American League is going to be the Los Angeles Angels, who score an impressive 30 points. The Angels actually dominate this contest: their tally is the best among the losing teams, and they tick more indictors (seven) than any of the other teams. They have:
- The 8th youngest lineup in baseball. (2 points)
- A nearly winning record (.493) over the second half of 2013. (3 points)
- A good September (16-12). (4 points)
- Three fewer wins than their run differential suggests. (1 point)
- A good record in 2012. (5 points)
- A good Triple-A team (3 points)
- A 41% chance of making the playoffs, according to FanGraphs. (5 points).
- They tally points across seven of the nine indicators. (7 points)
I think this is the best pick in the lot: there’s no other American team that posted a losing record in 2013, who I’d take over the Angels. They make a lot of sense.
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Team
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Total
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ANGELS
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30
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Astros
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24
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White Sox
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14
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Twins
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13
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Mariners
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11
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Blue Jays
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9
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The Mets (11 points) do the worst by this metric….there was just no way to adjust the numbers and get the Mets on top. The Cubs and Phillies are nearly as bad, with 12 points each. The Rockies have 14 points, which is surprising. I like their pitching staff.
I was very surprised that the Marlins didn’t do better: they are an extremely young team, and they have two players who could vie for the Cy Young and MVP Awards. But it’s a thin team, and their offense was anemic last year. The Marlins tallied just fifteen points.
The Giants, by our metric, are strong contenders to surprise, netting 21 points. FanGraph’s Playoff Odds give the Giants an impressive 46.1% chance of reaching postseason play, the most for any of the losers (the Angels are second, at 41%).
The Giants are an old team, and the farm system isn’t great, but they won the World Series in 2012, and they were solid during the second half, and in September. Their offense is, in my opinion, extremely underrated: Posey, Belt, Sandoval, Pence, and Pagan are a very good core of hitters.
But the surprise team for 2013, in the NL is….
Two teams, actually. The Milwaukee Brewers and the San Diego Padres. They tied netting twenty-six points apiece.
They have a few parallels: both teams have youngish hitters (8th and 11th) but older pitchers (tied for 21st). Both teams had winning second halves (Milwaukee was at .529; the Padres were at .515). Both teams had winning September (15-12, 16-11). They have similar playoff odds: the Brewers are at 17%, the Padres 25%. They each get points in six indicators.
The Padres get their additional points on their minor league system: their Triple-A team was strong, and Keith Law rates their system as the 9th best in the majors. The Brewers net their points because they had a good 2012 season, and they underperformed their Pythagorean record in 2013 by a few games. Their farm system, it seems worth pointing out, ranks dead-last in Law’s list.
I could’ve adjusted the metrics to favor one team or the other, but I decided to let it stand as a tie. This is the third year in a row where the Padres have shown up near the top of the tables in the NL, and I remain optimistic about their chances. The Brewers have lots of talented hitters, but I don’t know that they have the pitching to contend with the Cardinals or Pirates. I think both teams are, at best, vying for a shot in the Wild Card game. There will be steep competition for those two spots in the NL.
But the results are the results, and I ain’t going to quibble with them. Your surprise contenders for the NL are the Brewers and Padres.
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Team
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Total
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PADRES
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26
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BREWERS
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26
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Giants
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21
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Marlins
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15
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Rockies
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14
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Phillies
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12
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Cubs
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12
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Mets
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11
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Dave Fleming is a writer living in Wellington, New Zealand. He welcomes comments, questions, and pointed observations that he managed to write one article that didn’t mention WAR at all here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com.