According to well-known baseball writer Bob Nightengale, “Major League Baseball, assessing myriad proposals, has discussed a radical plan that would eliminate the traditional American and National Leagues for 2020, a high-ranking official told USA TODAY Sports, and realign all six divisions for an abbreviated season.”

There would be two leagues: the Cactus and Grapefruit.

The Cactus League would consist of the fifteen team whose spring training complexes are located in Arizona, while the Grapefruit League would be made up of the fifteen teams whose spring training facilities reside in Florida.

Cactus League

Northeast

Giants

Diamondbacks

Athletics

Cubs

Rockies

West

Dodgers

Reds

White Sox

Indians

Angels

Northwest

Mariners

Padres

Brewers

Rangers

Royals

Grapefruit League

North

Yankees

Phillies

Tigers

Pirates

Blue Jays

South

Red Sox

Orioles

Twins

Braves

Rays

East

Marlins

Nationals

Astros

Mets

Cardinals

What I’m most curious about is which teams stand to benefit/suffer most from this possible realignment.

Before we do any math to determine an approximate strength of schedule for each team, we need to make a few assumptions.

Had the MLB season been a normal one, each team would have played 46.9% (76 out of 162) of its game against teams within its own division. For the purpose of this investigation, we are going to assume that each team will play that same percentage of games against divisional teams (11.7% for each division team).

Obviously inter-league play is not on the table, so we will assign the remaining 53.1% of games to the rest of the teams in the same league (5.3% for each non-division team).

Additionally, we are not going to remove designated hitter projections from AL teams. For instance, if I were to do that for the Tigers, that would practically remove Cabrera’s entire projection. It’s likely the Tigers’ 1B projections would go up if Cabrera would were to play there rather than DH.

The final and most bold assumption that we have to make is that FanGraphs’ WAR Projections are fairly representative of how talented a given team is (in turn, how difficult they are to beat) and that the ordering of the teams will not be heavily affected by a shortened season.

In 2019, the correlation between team wins above replacement and team win percentage was very strong (almost .95). Teams that finish the season with a higher wins above replacement total tend to have won a higher percentage of the games they played.

The way strength of schedule (SOS) will be computed for each team is fairly simple. I will calculate a weighted team fWAR projection for each team’s opponents for the 2020 season.

Most talented divisions in MLB based on team fWAR projections:

CL West (42.8) GL East (40.1) GL South (38.3) CL Northeast (35.1) GL North (34.5) CL Northwest (31.2)

Unsurprisingly, the division with the Dodgers, White Sox, Angels, Indians, and Reds is on the top of this list, and the division with the Mariners, Padres, Brewers, Royals, and Rangers is at the bottom.

The Grapefruit League (37.6) is slightly stronger than the Cactus League (36.4).

Here are the final results…

Team Team Preseason Projected fWAR (FanGraphs) NEW Weighted Opponent Preseason Projected fWAR Rank OLD FanGraphs Strength of Schedule Rank Difference in Rank Angels 42.0 37.7 8 0.502 11 -3 Astros 54.0 36.4 20 0.490 28 -8 Athletics 45.0 34.9 27 0.495 22 5 Blue Jays 31.3 37.3 14 0.502 11 3 Braves 43.1 37.1 15 0.501 13 2 Brewers 38.6 34.4 29 0.501 13 16 Cardinals 36.7 38.5 3 0.500 17 -14 Cubs 40.6 35.4 25 0.498 20 5 Diamondbacks 36.1 35.9 24 0.505 7 17 Dodgers 55.0 36.2 22 0.492 24 -2 Giants 24.6 37.3 13 0.510 4 9 Indians 41.6 37.7 8 0.491 26 -18 Mariners 21.7 36.4 20 0.513 3 17 Marlins 23.7 40.0 2 0.515 1 1 Mets 41.7 37.9 6 0.504 8 -2 Nationals 44.5 37.5 12 0.496 21 -9 Orioles 16.8 40.2 1 0.514 2 -1 Padres 39.8 34.2 30 0.499 18 12 Phillies 38.0 36.5 19 0.504 10 9 Pirates 28.4 37.6 10 0.506 5 5 Rangers 31.2 35.2 26 0.501 13 13 Rays 44.8 36.9 16 0.490 27 -11 Red Sox 39.0 37.6 10 0.494 23 -13 Reds 35.5 38.5 3 0.501 13 -10 Rockies 29.3 36.7 17 0.506 5 12 Royals 24.6 36.0 23 0.499 18 5 Tigers 22.6 38.3 5 0.504 8 -3 Twins 47.7 36.6 18 0.489 29 -11 White Sox 39.9 37.9 6 0.492 24 -18 Yankees 52.0 34.9 27 0.488 30 -3

Source: FanGraphs

Teams that benefit most from this realignment:

Diamondbacks and Mariners Brewers Rangers Padres and Rockies

Teams that suffer most:

Indians and White Sox Cardinals Red Sox Rays and Twins

Teams least affected:

Orioles and Marlins Dodgers, Mets, and Braves

Featured Image: Diamondbacks Twitter

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