BALTIMORE, MD – SEPTEMBER 17: Cavan Biggio #8 of the Toronto Blue Jays celebrates with Bo Bichette … [+]
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If Blue Jays fans were being honest with themselves this winter, their expectations for the 2020 team would be some sort of modest improvement.
Toronto finished 67-95 last year — 26th in the majors — leaving plenty of room to get better. In a February interview with the Toronto Star, president Mark Shapiro said he hoped the team would “win more,” but he didn’t attach any playoff aspiration.
That’s a reasonable mindset for a group led mostly by players in their mid-20s and younger. In a tough division, with a fairly inexperienced core, the playoffs seemed at least one more season away.
Of course, that was back in the winter. Everything has changed since then.
As MLB prepares to begin a pandemic-shortened season, teams are set to face the wild and wonderful randomness that can play out in 60 games. For the Blue Jays, that could be a very good thing.
Here’s the TLDR version of how the truncated season helps Toronto: Fewer games = greater variance.
Despite adding a front-of-the-rotation starter in Hyun-Jin Ryu, the Blue Jays were very clearly on the outside looking in entering 2020. They still are, but now teams have fewer games to separate themselves — and an unexpected hot or cold streak can change everything.
DUNEDIN, FLORIDA – FEBRUARY 27: Hyun-Jin Ryu #99 of the Toronto Blue Jays heads to the locker room … [+]
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Let’s break this down using Fangraphs’ season probabilities (for which we are eternally grateful):
- On March 17, Fangraphs’ Dan Szymborski published a 162-game ZiPS projection for all MLB teams. The Blue Jays were given a 0.9 percent chance to make the playoffs and a 0 percent chance to win the World Series.
- In the same article, he ran projections for season lengths of 140, 110 and 81 games. The Blue Jays’ playoff chances were 1.3 percent, 8.9 percent and 16.7 percent, respectively.
- Last week, Szymborski crunched the numbers on a 60-game season and gave the Blue Jays a 15.1 percent chance to make the playoffs.
If a mix of words and numbers isn’t your thing, perhaps I can interest you in this table:
via Fangraphs
You might be wondering why the Blue Jays’ playoff chances went down from the 81-game season to the 60-game season. Here’s my hypothesis:
- The altered schedule. Literally half of Toronto’s season will come against the Yankees, Rays and Red Sox, which helps give them the third-hardest schedule in the American League, according to ZiPS.
- Injuries/recoveries since the pandemic began. The Yankees, for example, will have players like Giancarlo Stanton and James Paxton back from injury.
Still, when comparing a full season projection with the 60-game season, the Blue Jays’ playoff chances shot up 14.2 percent. Any Toronto fan should happily take that.
Because again, if we’re being honest, a trip to the playoffs in 2020 would be a bonus for the Blue Jays.
It’ll likely take 33-plus wins (based on Fangraphs’ projections) to get into the playoffs. Toronto’s best 60-game stretch last year was 28-32.
So the odds remain against them. But we’ve never had a season like this, and once the games begin, who knows what will happen?