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We are now just days away from the start of the 2020 baseball season. It has been nearly four long months since the season was originally scheduled to start and a whole lot has changed since. From a DTBL perspective, we are about to start the most unpredictable season in league history. For the first time since 1995, the league’s third season, the MLB regular season won’t be a full 162 games. The ’94-’95 labor stoppage brought the ’94 season to a halt just past the 110 game mark for most teams and the ’95 season started late and featured 144 games per team. 2020 is going to be a whole different ballgame though, with just 60 regular season games scheduled per team. I wouldn’t rule out any team from winning the league over such a short time frame. And the margins within the statistical categories will be so small that teams will still be shifting several points on a nearly daily basis as the season draws to a close.
Last year, we reached the 60 game mark around June 4. At that time, the Darkhorses were in first place, with the Kings 1 1/2 points behind. While those two teams did go on to finish in the top two spots, what is most interesting about the standings from that date is that six teams were within 10 points of first place and still would have been very much alive for the championship if the season had ended at that time. Expect that to happen this year as well. A majority of the teams will be very much alive in the closing weeks of the season.
Besides the compact schedule, there are a bunch of other reasons why this figures to be the most unpredictable season in league history. First, there is the very real and scary prospect of players continuing to contract COVID-19. Hopefully the threat of that will be somewhat mitigated by the rigorous testing regime they are going through, but it would not be surprising to see many key players lose a significant chunk of their season if they test positive. And then there are the players who have already opted out of playing this season and others could continue to do so as the season progresses. Finally, with such a short ramp up period leading into the season, it wouldn’t be surprising to see injury rates increase this year as well.
So how do you go about predicting what is going to happen in such an unpredictable season? Well, I’m going to stick to my usual method of previewing the season using projected stats and standings based on FanGraph’s Depth Charts projections, which combine ZiPS and Steamer projections and adjust for expected playing time. I initially grabbed these projections back in early March and computed the standings after the draft was completed. But it didn’t make sense to base my season projections on 162 game numbers, so I redid everything last week. In the final article of this series, I will display the projected standings from both sets of numbers. They are fairly similar, which makes sense since most players’ projections haven’t changed other than reducing their counting stat totals to about 37% of the original numbers. But there are some players who now no longer have projections, including those who have suffered season ending injuries or opted out of the season in the past several months.
There are too many grains of salt to count with these projections. So I’m really just using this as a basis to go over each team and remind you who is on each roster, and perhaps using the projections to form a general impression of each team’s strengths and weaknesses. I stand by my comment above that I believe any of the ten teams could win the league this year. But somebody has to be last in the projections. Here are the two teams slated to finish in the bottom spots in the standings, who are both attempting to overcome huge blows to their pitching staffs.
Ben’s Beanballers
Category – Projected Rank (2019 Rank)
- Batting Average – 5th (4th)
- Home Runs – 8th (7th)
- Runs Batted In – 6th (7th)
- Runs Scored – 8th (6th)
- Stolen Bases - 1st (2nd)
- Earned Run Average – 9th (3rd)
- WHIP Ratio – 10th (4th)
- Wins – 10th (2nd)
- Saves – 9th (2nd-T)
- Strike Outs – 10th (4th)
- Total Batting Points – 5th (4th-T)
- Total Pitching Points – 10th (2nd)
- Total Points – 10th (3rd)
Summary:
The league newcomers are projected to finish last in their inaugural campaign. That would be a disappointing result considering the roster they inherited from the Naturals finished in third place last year. But this is not the same team by any stretch. No team has been hit harder by roster losses since March than the Beanballers. First, staff ace Noah Syndergaard was lost for the season due to Tommy John surgery. And then one of the players who would have been counted on to pick up the slack, David Price, opted out of playing this season. Price is the most fantasy relevant player to opt out so far. That’s two huge losses to a pitching staff that had the second most points in the league in 2019, but is projected to have the fewest this year. Without Syndergaard and Price, the Beanballers are going to need huge seasons from their remaining pitchers, most notably Mike Clevinger and Hyun-Jin Ryu. The back of the rotation could be a problem though. One wild card could be Carlos Martinez, who is expected to move into the Cardinals rotation and could provide a nice spark from a RP slot. The bullpen does not figure to rack up many saves though. Only Josh Hader enters the season as a likely closer. While the pitching staff will need to significantly overachieve for the Beanballers to compete, the offense is more than capable. Third baseman Nolan Arenado and shortstop Trea Turner have the best projections, but this is a deep group. First round draft pick Bo Bichette adds another exciting option to their infield. The outfield isn’t quite as impressive, but if one of last year’s biggest surprises, Jorge Soler, has another big year, the Beanballers figure to be in decent shape there too. The one area where the Naturals are clearly among the league’s top teams is speed. Turner, Bichette and Victor Robles lead a group that should be near the top of the stolen bases category. For the Beanballers sake, hopefully the early roster casualties won’t continue to mount. There is more than enough talent on this team to make this an exciting maiden voyage for the Beanballers.
Charlie’s Thunder Choppers
Category – Projected Rank (2019 Rank)
- Batting Average – 4th (7th)
- Home Runs – 9th (9th)
- Runs Batted In – 10th (9th)
- Runs Scored – 10th (9th)
- Stolen Bases – 8th (9th)
- Earned Run Average – 7th (9th)
- WHIP Ratio – 7th (6th)
- Wins – 9th (7th)
- Saves – 1st (4th)
- Strike Outs – 7th (3rd)
- Total Batting Points – 10th (10th)
- Total Pitching Points – 7th (6th)
- Total Points - 9th (9th)
Summary:
The Choppers offense struggled mightily a year ago, which was largely why they fell all the way to ninth place, their worst finish in over a decade. In the recently completed DTBL 2020 Sim, the Choppers actually led the league in runs scored. But here we are with a projection for them to finish last in runs, RBI and total batting points. Second overall draft pick Pete Alonso might be their best offensive player from day one. There are a bunch of other guys who remain as question marks due to health entering this season. Will Andrew McCutchen bounce back from his knee injury last year? Will Anthony Rizzo’s back cause him to miss time? Willie Calhoun and Lourdes Gurriel are also dealing with injuries at the moment and D.J. LeMahieu just returned from a positive COVID-19 test. Things don’t look great for this offense entering the season, but hopefully this is just a short term blip. On paper, the pitching staff looks much better. But like the Beanballers, they are going to have to go through this season without their best pitcher. Chris Sale succumbed to Tommy John surgery in March and won’t be available until sometime in 2021. They do have some interesting alternatives though. First, Shane Bieber and Trevor Bauer return to anchor the staff. Second round draft pick Brandon Woodruff has a chance to be the best of the bunch. And they took a late flier on intriguing rookie Mitch Keller. The strength of the entire roster is the bullpen. They are projected to lead the league in saves, with four guys slated to pick up a bulk of the opportunities for their MLB clubs: Ken Giles, Craig Kimbrel, Joe Jimenez and Brandon Kintzler. Despite these fairly bleak projections, I think the Choppers could be one of the teams that benefits the most from the shortened season, assuming the early health issues to their hitters don’t linger. This is largely a veteran squad that could be uniquely qualified to handle whatever is thrown at them this year, more so than a team full of youngsters. Also, the loss of Chris Sale is less catastrophic in a shortened season than it would have been over six months.