Is This The Year the AL East Has One Playoff Team?

After the emergence of the Orioles as a playoff contender in 2012, every fan in baseball recognized that one division stood out among the rest. The AL East, with its big-money players in New York and Boston, its moneyball pros in Tampa Bay, its all-star (in name only, so far) lineup in Toronto, and its darkhorse Baltimore Orioles was by far the strongest in baseball. Among the savvy, this declaration opened up a new question: is the division too good to send two (or more) teams to the playoffs?

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The way scheduling works, AL East teams play each other more often than a team from another division plays a single AL East team. The Orioles play the Astros 7 times, for instance, but play the world champion Red Sox 19 times. That’s significant considering that the Orioles’ potential competition for a wild card playoff spot, the Texas Rangers, for instance, get to play the basement-dwelling Astros 19 times. But it doesn’t end there: the Orioles play everyone in their division, unarguably the best handful of teams in baseball, 19 times!

Take a look at this chart, showing average opponent WAR in the upcoming season:

It doesn’t even start at 0! The Orioles play what looks to be the most difficult schedule of any team in baseball in 2014, and plenty of that has to do with being a member of the AL East. All 5 AL East teams fall within the top 8 teams in the league for hardest schedule. Also, can we talk about how much better the AL is than the NL?

Everyone in the AL East is good, and they all play each other a lot. This is not meant to decry the unbalanced schedule (although, actually, I decry it very much). This is meant to set up the question, “if all of these teams beat up on each other, how will any of them have a record good enough to earn a wild card?” It’s been a popular question for two years now: is this the year that the AL East is too good to have two playoff teams?

I first used PECOTA and ZiPS to use record expectancy to gauge the likelihood of this happening. Baseball Prospectus was the only one that pointed out its most recently updated date, and was updated just after the O’s signed Jimenez and Cruz, so I’m going to assume that FanGraphs followed suit.

PECOTA

Of the three, PECOTA is the least favorable for the Orioles, projecting just 78 wins in a stacked division:

AL East W L TBR 90 72 BOS 88 74 NYY 83 79 TOR 81 81 BAL 78 84

So according to this, the Orioles are clearly out of the running for the playoffs. I don’t necessarily agree, but this is where we’re at. Tampa would get a playoff bid by virtue of winning the division, as would other projected winners Detroit and Los Angeles. That leaves the two wild card spots to the two best records among non-division winning teams. According to PECOTA, Boston is going for 88 wins and would get the first wild card, and Oakland is going for 87 and would get the second.

The team most likely to unseat the Red Sox for the wild card (assuming Oakland was able to surpass Boston’s record too) would be the Cleveland Indians, who PECOTA has down for 78 wins. The upstart Royals play in the same division but lost one of their better pitchers in Ervin Santana this offseason. Other AL Central teams include the White Sox and the Twins, and that’s just not going to happen. The Indians, then, potentially have the chance to beat up on two hapless teams and one average team (sorry, Guts) and get themselves in position to steal a wild card. At the same time, the Indians lost one of their better pitchers in Ubaldo Jimenez, though he was inconsistent during 2013 and Cleveland is pushing some promising young starters to the mound.

ZiPS

ZiPS is also unfriendly to the Orioles, but seems to think the division will come down from its 2013 perch atop the league.

AL EAST W L BOS 88 74 TBR 85 77 NYY 83 79 TOR 83 79 BAL 79 83

The ZiPS 2014 division winners are the Red Sox, the Tigers, and the Angels. The wild card spots in this scenario would go to Tampa with 85 wins and the Athletics with 84 wins (or the Rangers with 84 wins, depending on which way a tiebreaker goes).

The AL East having just one playoff team in this scenario is much more plausible. The idea of the A’s or the Rangers both stealing a game somewhere in the season isn’t crazy, and both teams play some of the weakest schedules in the American League. If the Orioles aren’t as bad as ZiPS seems to think they are, it might be possible that the AL West sends three teams to the playoffs while the AL East sends only one.

SportsBook

But that’s not enough! Bookies seem to be pretty good at making lines before the season (someone should make an entire city where people can go to bet!), so I decided to use SportsBook.ag‘s over/under for wins to see into the AL playoff future. SportsBook was also used by Jonah Keri in his annual predictions, and that’s enough of a recommendation for me. SportsBook is nicer to the Orioles than any of the math done by PECOTA or ZiPS, so I already like it more. The AL East is projected to look like this:

AL EAST W L TBR 89 73 BOS 88 74 NYY 85.5 76.5 BAL 81 81 TOR 79.5 82.5

So the Orioles are finally .500 with this projection system, but still in a stacked division. The other division winners would be the Tigers (90.5 W) and the winner of a tiebreaker between the A’s and the Rangers (87 W). The wild card teams would be the Red Sox and the loser of the A’s vs. Rangers game. The Los Angeles Angels would be sitting nearby with 86 wins, making them the most likely candidate to unseat the Red Sox from their playoff spot. Of course, like in the PECOTA predictions, Boston’s record would have to be bested by the top three teams from the AL West to miss out on an extended season.

Let’s also keep in mind the fact that the AL East had four teams over .500 last season. Four! While they challenged each other, they consistently won against other divisions. I and many others at BSL believe the Orioles to be better than 78 or 79 wins, and likely challenging for a playoff spot. Taking some wins from other AL East teams and lumping them into the O’s total projects each one to be in the mid-80s in wins at the end of the season. Not a single playoff team in 2013 had fewer than 92 wins.

It is worth noting that these projection systems don’t have any teams down for more than 90 wins, and it’s unlikely that the season plays out that way. Someone will get hurt, some team will underperform, and some team will have a breakout star lead them to victory.

All three systems have the AL East sending two teams to the playoffs, but in my opinion, underestimate the Baltimore Orioles. If the O’s continue to play like the darkhorse playoff candidate that they could be, the AL East might only send one team to the party. In no scenario did it seem likely that the AL East sends three teams, the way it appeared was possible then the second wild card was introduced and the O’s and Blue Jays were both consistently bad.