BOSTON (WHDH) — And we’re off! The unprecedented, virus-shortened 60-game Major League Baseball sprint is underway. Nothing about this season will be normal, but baseball will do its best to navigate the considerable hurdles of getting through the next few months and crowning a World Series champion.
With news late Thursday that MLB and its player’s union have agreed to expand the playoffs to 16 teams, it’s a certainty that a number of middle-of-the-pack teams who wouldn’t normally sniff the postseason will get in, with a chance of winning it all in this most unusual of seasons.
While the shortened season certainly lends itself to more variance than usual, research shows us that 60 games is at least enough of a sample size to let the very best and very worst teams show themselves.
Last month, the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier analyzed data from Baseball Reference to determine how often during a 162-game season, the teams that ended up making the postseason would have made it in any random 60-game stretch of the season.
Looking at Games 1-60, then 2-61, then 3-62, etc., Speier found that four teams would have qualified for the playoffs in any 60-game stretch. All four of those teams were division winners and three (the Yankees, Dodgers and Astros) won more than 100 games. Only the 101-win Minnesota Twins were anomalous. They would have only qualified for the playoffs 59% of the time.
Eight of the 10 playoff-bound teams in 2019 would have made the playoffs in more than 50% of 60-game stretches and only one non-playoff team (the 93-win Cleveland Indians) would have made it in more than 50% of those stretches.
Last year was historically top and bottom heavy, with four teams winning and losing at least 100 games, and while three out of the four best teams would have qualified for the playoffs in any 60-game stretch, all four of the bottom feeders would have never qualified for baseball’s second season.
Even this year, with an expanded playoff format, it’s unlikely that a team like the Orioles or Tigers will sneak in. At roughly the 60-game mark last season, the eighth best teams in each league were at just about .500, meaning it will likely take 30 wins, give or take a game or so, to get into the playoffs this year. The Orioles went only 24-36 during their best 60-game stretch last year. The Tigers best stretch was even worse at 23-37.
Of course, we’re not playing multiple different 60 game stretches this season, we’re playing one 60-game season. But when we look at recent data just from Games 1-60, we also see that the best teams would still qualify for the playoffs, while the worst never come close to even breaking .500 for the full season.
The 2016 Cubs and 2017 Astros are the two best teams out of the gate over 60 games since 2010, with records of 42-18. Both went on to win more than 100 games, division titles and world championships. Of the top 25 teams by record over their first 60 games since 2010, only two failed to make the playoffs.
The same is true at the opposite end of the spectrum. A bad 60-game start portends a very long season. Forget about the playoffs, none of the teams who posted the worst 25 60-game starts last decade finished with even close to a winning record.
The soft underbelly of mediocre MLB teams are likely to benefit from the variances of a shortened season. Research by CBS Sports shows some sub-.500 teams would have made the playoffs after 60 games in recent years. They all ended up winning between 75-79 games over the course of the season. Certainly not good, but not so bad as to make qualifying for the playoffs a total crapshoot either.
There’s definitely going to be a lot of mediocre teams that get into the playoffs. But in order to make a miracle run at the championship, they’re still going to have to beat the best of the best because history tells us they’ll be in the tournament too.
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