What’s the Best Division in Baseball Right Now?
ESPN staff writer Jesse Rogers recently asked, “Do [the] Cubs have enough to keep up in baseball’s toughest division?”
As the title suggests, the Chicago Cubs are the focus of this piece. Compared to St. Louis and Cincinnati, they haven’t been as active regarding free-agent signings and trades. Plus, there’s the matter of Milwaukee being defending division champs and one win away from a World Series berth. Certainly, the Cubs have their work cut out for them in 2019. But this isn’t to say that they aren’t committed to winning this season, as the article goes on to explain.
The point of Rogers’s column is well taken. Relative inactivity prior to the season does not mean giving up, nor does it necessarily herald a poor win-loss record. The issue I have, however, and that others may share is the contention the NL Central is “baseball’s toughest division.”
Rogers’s evidence of this, alongside the list of changes to rosters this offseason, is the division’s seeming parity. The 2018 divisional win-loss leader? None other than the Pittsburgh Pirates, finishing at 43 – 33 (.566). It should be noted the Cardinals, Cubs, and Brewers all finished with winning records in the Central as well. The Reds, at a disappointing 26 – 50 (.342), of course, did not fare as well.
Do roster revamps and parity equate to toughness or quality, though? Or are other metrics a better gauge of a division’s strength? It’s an intriguing debate.
Let’s start with 2018 performance as an alternative measure. It might’ve been helpful if we could point to the number of playoff teams in each division and simply choose from the one with the most participants. In 2018, though, no division produced more than two qualifiers. The Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves made the postseason by winning their divisions but they each possessed worse overall records than the Wild Card qualifiers in their respective leagues.
If playoff team total doesn’t say much, maybe total wins is a superior indicator of divisional strength. On this note, the 2018 NL Central fares well. Its 428 wins were good for second in baseball behind the AL West (436) and its four 80-plus-win teams. (The AL Central, at 353 wins, finished in last by a mile.) Then again, outliers can skew this data somewhat. The AL East, despite having three 90-plus-win teams is depressed by the presence of the 47 – 115 Baltimore Orioles. Plus, those 90+ win totals may be inflated by the opportunities those teams had to beat up on the O’s.
Or perhaps a better course of action is to look forward. Rosters can change a lot in the span of a few years. How different do the Kansas City Royals look after winning the World Series in 2015? Heck, even over the course of an offseason, rosters can change significantly. The team that succeeds one season is not guaranteed to find the same level of fortune the next season.
Based on Fangraphs’ projections for 2019 as of January 6, the AL East will have the most total wins this season. The AL West and NL Central are projected to lose 29 wins and 16 wins, respectively. The AL Central (+32) and NL East (+12) are predicted to be the biggest gainers. They’re still projected to be the worst divisions, mind you, but at least they’ll be the most improved. In the case of the AL Central, they have nowhere to go but up.
Projections aren’t reality, though. How many analysts would have predicted the 2018 Oakland Athletics would qualify for a postseason berth? That the Braves would’ve surpassed the Nationals in the NL East? That either the Brewers or the Rays would’ve finished with a winning record? Fangraphs projects Milwaukee to finish last in the NL Central in 2019 a year after getting to the NLCS. But could a team with players like Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain flourish again? Stranger things have happened.
Fangraphs predicts that the NL Central will have a lot of parity next year, with no team forecast to hit 90 wins, let alone 100.
Conversely, the AL East for what it lacks in parity, could have three playoff teams in Boston, New York, and Tampa Bay. It’s also projected to finish with the most total wins. Besides, it feels strange not to consider a division with the Red Sox and Yankees as the toughest. Maybe it’s just the intensity of the game’s best rivalry’s omnipresence, but the others in the division have to play 38 games against those stacked lineups and payrolls. That the 2018 Rays won 90 games continues to be impressive.
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For my money, a case could be made for a few divisions as being the most competitive. I would side with the AL East, but the NL Central and AL West could produce their share of divisional drama come September and into October. Whatever your take, the central point is that no division is definitively the greatest or toughest. Though if we had to pick one, it probably wouldn’t be the AL Central.
-Joe Mangano
