From the chair of an American League general manager, this is what the American League looks like this year.
There is, indeed, an odd imbalance as the 2016 season approaches. There isn’t an American League team at this point, two weeks before Opening Day, that doesn’t believe it has a chance at the postseason if things break correctly. There are a slew of National League teams – Atlanta, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and Philadelphia – that are in some stage of a serious and lengthy rebuilding process. (Don’t call it “tanking.” This isn’t a story about “tanking.”)
What this does, though, is present a clear path to the playoffs for teams with such expectations in the National League. The formula: Beat the bejesus out of the bottom-dwellers in your division, specifically, and your league more broadly.
Think, then, about the opportunity for, say, the New York Mets and the Washington Nationals, the teams deemed most likely to win the National League East. Last year, seven teams lost at least 90 games. Six of those are in the NL, three in the NL East, with the Braves and Phillies preparing for a redux. In the past 12 months, those two teams have traded away closers Craig Kimbrel and Ken Giles, infielders Andrelton Simmons and Chase Utley, outfielders Justin Upton and Ben Revere and starting pitchers Cole Hamels and Shelby Miller, among others.
“All these things, we did for the good of the Braves,” Atlanta General Manager John Coppolella said earlier this spring.
That may well be true. But if you’re the Nationals or the Mets, you must see the misfortune of others as your own opportunity.
There is a history here. Go back to 2007-10, when the Nationals averaged nearly 97 losses a year and finished last in the NL East three out of four times. The Phillies won the division each of those seasons. They did so by beating the snot out of Washington. The two teams played 18 times annually, and over those four years, the Phillies went 51-21 – a .708 winning percentage, or nearly a 115-win pace over a whole season.
Therein lies the model, and it’s replicated time and again. From 2002-09, an eight-season span, the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees combined for 13 playoff appearances, with the Red Sox missing twice and the Yankees just once. It was a remarkable run for the American League East rivals, who averaged 96 wins apiece during that time. Their head-to-head meetings were incredibly competitive: Once, the Yankees won the season series 11-8; once, the Red Sox won it by that margin. But in the other six years, the two teams either went 10-9, 9-9 or 10-8 against each other.
Their playoff appearances were built on the backs – the broken-down backs – of others. In this case, the others were the Tampa Bay Rays and Baltimore Orioles, who over that span – save for the Rays’ rise in 2008 and into 2009 – were the dregs of the division. From 2002-09, the Red Sox played .649 baseball, a 105-win pace, against the Rays and the O’s, just .559 ball (a 90-win pace) against the rest of baseball. The Yankees’ disparity wasn’t as great (.647 against Tampa and Baltimore, .592 against everyone else), but it still represents the foundation of four 100-win seasons during that time.
This, of course, isn’t breaking news. Good teams beat bad teams. Duh.
But baseball isn’t like, say, the NFL, where there is a clear favorite and a clear underdog, separated by a point spread. There simply aren’t “upsets” in the same way there are in other sports. Winning six of 10 over the course of a season gets you to 97 wins and guarantees you a spot in the playoffs, particularly in these double wild-card days.
In that context, it’s amazing how frequently the best teams have just poleaxed the lousy ones. There have been 15 100-game winners since the turn of the century. Eleven of those went at least 12-6 or better against not one, but two teams from their own division. The 116-win Mariners from 2001 combined to go 30-9 against the Rangers and Angels. The 100-win Cardinals from 2005 did almost all their work in their own division, going 45-19 against the Pirates, Reds, Brewers and Astros. On and on.
The current playoff format, with three division winners and two wild cards from each league, has existed for four seasons. Over that time, 14 teams have lost at least 96 games in a season, a demarcation between the mediocre and the truly wretched. There is a direct relationship between those lousy also-rans and the teams who have advanced to the playoffs, which have posted a .686 winning percentage against them. That, folks, is a 111-win pace.
Over those four years, there remain teams – a la the old Red Sox and Yankees — who reach the playoffs based almost entirely on their dominance of one or two other outfits. The Indians won 92 games to reach the wild card game in 2013. But where would they have been without the White Sox, against whom they went 17-2? That same year, Oakland played 26 games Houston (111 losses) and Minnesota (96 losses), winning 21 times. Put another way: The Athletics were 16 games above .500 against the Astros and Twins, 14 games above .500 against everyone else. (Oh, and the Astros? Yeah, they were so abhorrent that year that all five AL playoff teams fattened up on them, going – get this – 38-9 head-to-head.)
Okay, enough history, and on to 2016. The only American League team to lose 90 games last summer was Oakland. But the Athletics were outscored by just 35 runs all year, and were disastrous in the late innings. Now, they have closer Sean Doolittle back healthy, plus a slew of new relievers to help out. It’s not likely the A’s will contend in the AL West, but it’s not crazy to think they could, either.
What other American League teams might be easy fodder? The last-place Tigers added Jordan Zimmermann and Justin Upton – not with the goal of finishing last again. The non-factor White Sox traded for third baseman Todd Frazier. The Orioles paid $161 million to bring back Chris Davis. The Twins contended until the season’s final weekend. There are no pushovers.
The pushovers are in the NL. The Cubs and the Cardinals? The Mets and the Nationals? The key to determining the playoff teams might have more to do with the Phillies and Braves, the Reds and Brewers, because the formula for winning a division isn’t as much about beating up your closest rival as it is about destroying the teams that have no chance.
Note: This article has been republished from an earlier version March 18.
