One of my longest running articles for this site has been an annual effort to try to predict which team will surprise us during the coming baseball season.
The idea for this series was cribbed from one of Bill’s old Abstracts, which identified several positive indicators for teams going into the season. I’ve used a list of indicators to look at all of the losing teams from a season, and see which ones have the best chance to surprise us.
Every year I promise that I’ll do a more comprehensive study of the question at some point. I’m happy to report that I’ve finally started that study this year, but it’s a much bigger challenge than I anticipated, and I’d like to do it some justice. So you’re going to have to wait for that one.
In the meantime, I thought I’d give you a surprise team for 2019.
Our track record for this project has been pretty hit-or-miss. Some of the better predictions:
- In the first year I attempted this, I selected the Cleveland Indians, who were coming off a 69-win season in 2010. They won 80 games in 2011, a net gain of eleven.
- In the second year, I picked Kansas City, who improved from 71 wins to 72, which is not a success. But one of the other picks was Oakland, who jumped from 74 wins to 94, a gain of twenty wins.
- The Angels, coming off a 78-win season in 2013, were the selection in 2014. They won 98 games, a gain of twenty. That same year I selected the 74-win Brewers as a team to watch in the NL. While Milwaukee didn’t reach the playoffs, they contended through the summer, and improved their overall record by eight wins.
- The Mets were our selection in 2015. They improved by just eleven wins (79 to 90), but that was good enough to win the division. They got all the way to the World Series before losing to Kansas City. That’s probably the most impressive prediction we’ve had: the Nationals were heavy favorites going into the season.
- The Phillies were our pick last year: they improved by twelve games. Oakland was the AL team: they improved by twenty-two games. We liked the Braves, too, though we couldn’t pick them because we had selected them a year earlier, and I don’t do repeats. The Braves jumped from 72 wins to 90, netting a division title.
Over the eight years I’ve tried this exercise, I’ve singled out fourteen teams. Three have improved by 20+ games. Four more have improved by 10+, and another improved by 8. Only one team declined: the 2016 Miami Marlins, who dropped from 79 wins to 77. We’re doing a’ight.
The process isn’t rigorous, and I don’t want to get buried too much in the weeds on the process this year. I’m working to create a rigorous process, but it’ll have to wait.
I considered all of the teams who posted losing records last year…all except the Phillies. The Phillies were our selection last year, and I don’t think it’s any fun to repeat selections. Besides, no one in the baseball world would be surprised if the Phillies won the division in 2019. They’re a very good team, and not useful in a discussion about surprise teams.
So let’s take one last jump into the volcano, and predict a surprise team for 2019.
* * *
The Minnesota Twins will surprise baseball in 2019.
I hadn’t thought about the Twins. I had a hope that the Reds would show up as the surprise team, or the Kansas City Royals. The Twins didn’t really blip on my radar as a good surprise team.
But the Twins tick more boxes of positive indicators than any other team. They’re not extremely overwhelming candidates to surprise us, but they’re not bad. We’re taking Minnesota in 2019.
The three indicators favoring the Twins are:
1. They were pretty good in 2017.
2. They were pretty good during the second-half of 2018, and,
3. They have a decently-rated farm system.
Breaking those down:
1. Minnesota won 85 games in 2017, finishing a very distant second to the Cleveland Indians. They dropped to 78 wins last year, so while they were down, they weren’t that far down. The Twins have been a .500-ish club for a couple years, not gaining any ground on Cleveland but not floundering, either.
2. They were 44-50 in the first-half, but after scuffling out of the gate in April (9-15 record), Minnesota played .500 ball through the rest of the season:
May: 13-15
June: 14-15
July: 14-13
Aug: 14-14
Sept: 15-13
That, my friends, is what consistency looks like. It’s not as compelling (or as exciting) an indicator as a team going on a 22-5 run over the last weeks of the season, but at least the Twins know how to split their contests.
3. The Twins don’t have the best farm system in the majors, but they have one of the better systems, rated in the top-ten by most minor league analysts. They have some talent bubbling up, though no one on par with Vlad Guerrero Jr. or Nick Senzel or Garrett Hampson.
The Twins do have talent. They have perennial breakout candidate Bryon Buxton, who’s had a terrific spring this year. If the past is any kind of precursor, that means we can look forward to a sub-.200 average, and some terrific defense.
Minnesota has a legitimate ace in Jose Berrios, as good a candidate as anyone to break out and win a Cy Young Award. They have a quietly excellent bullpen. They have some young hitters who could take a step forward this year. They have no players like Mike Trout or Kris Bryant or Ronald Acuna…no one who seems likely to emerge as an MVP candidate…but they don’t have significant gaps on their roster.
And they have Willians Astudillo, who is perhaps the most interesting player in baseball right now. In case you haven’t heard of tortuga, he is a Venezuelan player with the approximate body shape of Pablo Sandoval, and an incredible penchant for almost never striking out or drawing a walk. He had 97 plate appearances in the majors, and struck out three times. He walked twice.
His batting line was .355/.371/.516.
Astudillo had a robust winter, narrowly losing the Venuzuelan Winter League MVP vote to Delmon Young. He played catcher, third, second, centerfield, leftfield, and pitcher in the majors last year, and was fantastic at everything except the pitching stuff.
I am rooting very hard for Astrudillo to get a chance. Baseball’s biggest problem is too many strikeouts and too many walks, outcomes that are uninteresting to a fan because they a) take too long, and b) end without action. If a player out of nowhere can find success with a contact-reliant approach, it might shift the paradigms of the sport away from its steady lean towards the three true outcomes.
It is a longshot, but Willians Astudillo could change the game. I hope he gets the chance.
Taking a wider view: the AL Central is a good division to try and sneak a pennant. I don’t include that factor in my considerations, but it’s true. Every other division in baseball has a few teams that you could reasonably imagine making a run in 2019. The AL Central doesn't: they have Cleveland, and then they have a bunch of teams that might do something. You could throw a dart at a board with the White Sox, Royals, Tigers, and Twins, and any team you hit would be an interesting candidate to surprise us. Our process says it’s Minnesota this year.
No team shows up as a particularly compelling candidate in the National League. The Mets are the closest among the losing teams, but I’m not picking them because a) I don’t think they’d really count as a ‘surprise’ team, and b) I’m not convinced they have much of a chance in the crowded NL East. So we’ll leave the NL out of it, and go with one selection for 2019.
Go, Twins, Go.
David Fleming is a writer living in western Virginia. He welcomes comments and questions on this site. He very occasionally tweets at DavidFlemingJ1.