{"id":1329,"date":"2020-07-20T09:01:45","date_gmt":"2020-07-20T16:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1329"},"modified":"2020-07-21T08:59:13","modified_gmt":"2020-07-21T15:59:13","slug":"2020-season-preview-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1329","title":{"rendered":"2020 Season Preview:  Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a id=\"bdmIsCOHRBF1lpZ4AVOieQ\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1017872820\" target=\"_blank\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\nwindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'bdmIsCOHRBF1lpZ4AVOieQ',sig:'u6kwMLpcORqGVtQt57m0e6Qn_z0PY0CtK5bavZfEfKU=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1017872820',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><script src=\"\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nWe are now just days away from the start of the 2020 baseball season.\u00a0 It has been nearly four long months since the season was originally scheduled to start and a whole lot has changed since.\u00a0 From a DTBL perspective, we are about to start the most unpredictable season in league history.\u00a0 For the first time since 1995, the league&#8217;s third season, the MLB regular season won&#8217;t be a full 162 games.\u00a0 The &#8217;94-&#8217;95 labor stoppage brought the &#8217;94 season to a halt just past the 110 game mark for most teams and the &#8217;95 season started late and featured 144 games per team.\u00a0 2020 is going to be a whole different ballgame though, with just 60 regular season games scheduled per team.\u00a0 I wouldn&#8217;t rule out any team from winning the league over such a short time frame.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, we reached the 60 game mark around June 4.\u00a0 At that time, the Darkhorses were in first place, with the Kings 1 1\/2 points behind.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Expect that to happen this year as well.\u00a0 A majority of the teams will be very much alive in the closing weeks of the season.<\/p>\n<p>Besides the compact schedule, there are a bunch of other reasons why this figures to be the most unpredictable season in league history.\u00a0 First, there is the very real and scary prospect of players continuing to contract COVID-19.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Finally, with such a short ramp up period leading into the season, it wouldn&#8217;t be surprising to see injury rates increase this year as well.<\/p>\n<p>So how do you go about predicting what is going to happen in such an unpredictable season?\u00a0 Well, I&#8217;m going to stick to my usual method of previewing the season using projected stats and standings based on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fangraphs.com\/projections.aspx?pos=all&amp;stats=bat&amp;type=fangraphsdc\">FanGraph&#8217;s Depth Charts<\/a>\u00a0projections, which combine ZiPS and Steamer projections and adjust for expected playing time.\u00a0 I initially grabbed these projections back in early March and computed the standings after the draft was completed.\u00a0 But it didn&#8217;t make sense to base my season projections on 162 game numbers, so I redid everything last week.\u00a0 In the final article of this series, I will display the projected standings from both sets of numbers.\u00a0 They are fairly similar, which makes sense since most players&#8217; projections haven&#8217;t changed other than reducing their counting stat totals to about 37% of the original numbers.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>There are too many grains of salt to count with these projections.\u00a0 So I&#8217;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&#8217;s strengths and weaknesses.\u00a0 I stand by my comment above that I believe any of the ten teams could win the league this year.\u00a0 But somebody has to be last in the projections.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<h2>Ben&#8217;s Beanballers<\/h2>\n<p>Category &#8211; Projected Rank (2019 Rank)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Batting Average &#8211; 5th (4th)<\/li>\n<li>Home Runs &#8211; 8th (7th)<\/li>\n<li>Runs Batted In &#8211; 6th (7th)<\/li>\n<li>Runs Scored &#8211; 8th (6th)<\/li>\n<li>Stolen Bases &#8211;\u00a01st (2nd)<\/li>\n<li>Earned Run Average &#8211; 9th (3rd)<\/li>\n<li>WHIP Ratio &#8211; 10th (4th)<\/li>\n<li>Wins &#8211; 10th (2nd)<\/li>\n<li>Saves &#8211; 9th (2nd-T)<\/li>\n<li>Strike Outs &#8211; 10th (4th)<\/li>\n<li>Total Batting Points &#8211; 5th (4th-T)<\/li>\n<li>Total Pitching Points &#8211; 10th (2nd)<\/li>\n<li>Total Points &#8211; 10th (3rd)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Summary:<\/p>\n<p>The league newcomers are projected to finish last in their inaugural campaign.\u00a0 That would be a disappointing result considering the roster they inherited from the Naturals finished in third place last year.\u00a0 But this is not the same team by any stretch.\u00a0 No team has been hit harder by roster losses since March than the Beanballers.\u00a0 First, staff ace Noah Syndergaard was lost for the season due to Tommy John surgery.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Price is the most fantasy relevant player to opt out so far.\u00a0 That&#8217;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.\u00a0 Without Syndergaard and Price, the Beanballers are going to need huge seasons from their remaining pitchers, most notably Mike Clevinger and Hyun-Jin Ryu.\u00a0 The back of the rotation could be a problem though.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The bullpen does not figure to rack up many saves though.\u00a0 Only Josh Hader enters the season as a likely closer.\u00a0 While the pitching staff will need to significantly overachieve for the Beanballers to compete, the offense is more than capable.\u00a0 Third baseman Nolan Arenado and shortstop Trea Turner have the best projections, but this is a deep group.\u00a0 First round draft pick Bo Bichette adds another exciting option to their infield.\u00a0 The outfield isn&#8217;t quite as impressive, but if one of last year&#8217;s biggest surprises, Jorge Soler, has another big year, the Beanballers figure to be in decent shape there too.\u00a0 The one area where the Naturals are clearly among the league&#8217;s top teams is speed.\u00a0 Turner, Bichette and Victor Robles lead a group that should be near the top of the stolen bases category.\u00a0 For the Beanballers sake, hopefully the early roster casualties won&#8217;t continue to mount.\u00a0 There is more than enough talent on this team to make this an exciting maiden voyage for the Beanballers.<\/p>\n<h2>Charlie&#8217;s Thunder Choppers<\/h2>\n<p>Category &#8211; Projected Rank (2019 Rank)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Batting Average &#8211; 4th (7th)<\/li>\n<li>Home Runs &#8211; 9th (9th)<\/li>\n<li>Runs Batted In &#8211; 10th (9th)<\/li>\n<li>Runs Scored &#8211; 10th (9th)<\/li>\n<li>Stolen Bases &#8211; 8th (9th)<\/li>\n<li>Earned Run Average &#8211; 7th (9th)<\/li>\n<li>WHIP Ratio &#8211; 7th (6th)<\/li>\n<li>Wins &#8211; 9th (7th)<\/li>\n<li>Saves &#8211; 1st (4th)<\/li>\n<li>Strike Outs &#8211; 7th (3rd)<\/li>\n<li>Total Batting Points &#8211; 10th (10th)<\/li>\n<li>Total Pitching Points &#8211; 7th (6th)<\/li>\n<li>Total Points &#8211;\u00a09th (9th)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Summary:<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 In the recently completed DTBL 2020 Sim, the Choppers actually led the league in runs scored.\u00a0 But here we are with a projection for them to finish last in runs, RBI and total batting points.\u00a0 Second overall draft pick Pete Alonso might be their best offensive player from day one.\u00a0 There are a bunch of other guys who remain as question marks due to health entering this season.\u00a0 Will Andrew McCutchen bounce back from his knee injury last year?\u00a0 Will Anthony Rizzo&#8217;s back cause him to miss time?\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Things don&#8217;t look great for this offense entering the season, but hopefully this is just a short term blip.\u00a0 On paper, the pitching staff looks much better.\u00a0 But like the Beanballers, they are going to have to go through this season without their best pitcher.\u00a0 Chris Sale succumbed to Tommy John surgery in March and won&#8217;t be available until sometime in 2021.\u00a0 They do have some interesting alternatives though.\u00a0 First, Shane Bieber and Trevor Bauer return to anchor the staff.\u00a0 Second round draft pick Brandon Woodruff has a chance to be the best of the bunch.\u00a0 And they took a late flier on intriguing rookie Mitch Keller.\u00a0 The strength of the entire roster is the bullpen.\u00a0 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:\u00a0 Ken Giles, Craig Kimbrel, Joe Jimenez and Brandon Kintzler.\u00a0 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&#8217;t linger.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Also, the loss of Chris Sale is less catastrophic in a shortened season than it would have been over six months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images We are now just days away from the start of the 2020 baseball season.\u00a0 It has been nearly four long months since the season was originally scheduled to start and a whole lot has changed since.\u00a0 From a DTBL perspective, we are about to start the most unpredictable season in league [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beanballers","category-choppers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1329"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1336,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329\/revisions\/1336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}