The MLB prognosticators are so unanimous in their judgment regarding the eventual 2022 division winners that one might wonder what the point is of playing out the season.
Those prognostications are all over the baseball media these days as Thursday’s start of the regular season approaches. I’m personally following MLB Network’s Eric Young, Ruben Amaro Jr., Carlos Peña, and Bill Ripken plus FanGraphs, Pecota, Athlon, Newsbreak, Sporting News, USA Today, CBS, and CallToThePen.com’s own Dave Hill.
What is missing among these experts is virtually any sense of disagreement. All 10 agree on the eventual division winners in the AL East, the AL Central, and the NL East. Nine of the 10 agree on the eventual division winners of both the AL and NL West.
The only division where there is more disagreement — and it isn’t much — is in the NL Central …and even there eight of the 10 pick the Milwaukee Brewers to repeat.
In every division save for the AL East — where the Toronto Blue Jays are a unanimous selection to emerge with the title — the reigning 2021 champion is expected to repeat. That includes the Chicago White Sox in the AL Central, the Houston Astros in the AL West, the Atlanta Braves in the NL East, the Brewers in the NL Central, and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West.
There is almost no variance in those six selections. Only MLB Network’s Carlos Peña predicted any team other than the Astros (Peña likes Seattle) in the AL West. Only Athlon and Sporting News forecast St. Louis to outlast Milwaukee in the NL Central. Only CalltothePen.com’s Dave Hill likes San Diego, rather than Los Angeles, in the NL West.
The notion that five of the six 2021 division winners will repeat is, given the historic unpredictability of MLB outcomes, possible but very unlikely.
Since the six division format came into existence in 1995, only twice — in 1999 and 2017 — have five of the previous year’s division winners repeated.
Across that more than quarter-century span, the average number of repeat division champions is less than three.
Recent experience underscores the unlikelihood of champions repeating. In 2019 and again in 2020, only three did so. Last year, only the Tampa Bay Rays and Atlanta Braves repeated their 2020 division championships.
This consensus expression of faith in the performance of certain select teams also tends to ignore the substantial strides made by others this past winter.
Consider just a few:
The Texas Rangers were terrible in 2021, losing 102 games. But look who the Rangers added over the winter. They signed Corey Seager to play shortstop, Marcus Semien to play second, and Jon Gray to pitch. Star rookie Adolis Garcia is a year older.
How about the Detroit Tigers in the AL Central? Javier Báez is on board to play shortstop, Austin Meadows was obtained in a trade to beef up the offense, and Tucker Barnhart is a veteran catcher. All those young pitchers — Tarik Skubal, Casey Mize, and Spencer Turnbull — are on the verge of maturation.
Why couldn’t the Mariners overtake the Astros, who after all have lost Carlos Correa and who are leaning heavily on an aging pitcher, Justin Verlander, who could not perform in 2021? Seattle has added Eugenio Suárez, Mitch Haniger, and Jesse Winker to a fast-developing cast that already includes Jared Kelenic, Ty France, Luis Torrens, and potentially 2022’s most notable rookie, Julio Rodriguez.
The Minnesota Twins finished last in 2021, but they signed Carols Correa over the winter. Via trades, they added Gary Sanchez, Sonny Gray, and Gio Urshela. And perhaps most importantly, Byron Buxton is healthy.
One also wonders whether the expert consensus sufficiently factors in the anomalies that are inherent in almost every team’s pitching staff. Consider only the injuries that have already occurred among leaders of the staffs of many of the contending teams: Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer in New York, Lance Lynn in Chicago, Mike Soroka in Atlanta, Dustin May and Danny Duffy in Los Angeles, and Nate Pearson in Toronto.
It’s possible, of course, that October will find exactly these six consensus teams riding atop their divisions. There are reasons why those six are the strong favorites.
Statistically, however, the more likely outcome is that there are surprises. There generally are. Who one year ago predicted that the San Francisco Giants would win the NL West? The Brewers were considered a plausible NL Central champion, but hardly a favorite ahead of the Cardinals or Cubs. Many thought the Twins were good enough to hold off the White Sox in the AL Central.