Noah Syndergaard isn’t a Dylan Bundy-type “hope he bounces back” experiment. And here’s the thing: There are a lot of different pieces on this year’s team, especially when it comes to the pitching staff. But at some point, a franchise’s luck has to change, right? Outside of Shohei Ohtani’s incredible 2021 season, not much has gone right, especially when it comes to injuries and poor free-agent pitching decisions. The Angels haven’t won that many since 2015, after all. Why they’re here: Yeah, the track record says maybe 83 wins is too high. Oh, and you want a low-key MVP candidate? You could do worse than Jazz Chisholm, who had an up-and-down rookie season (his Age 23 season) but still managed 18 homers and 23 stolen bases, and did this to a 100 mph Jacob deGrom fastball on an 0-2 count. Newcomer Joey Wendle adds a versatile, reliable bat in the lineup. The lineup often lacked punch last year, so the club brought in Avisail Garcia - who hit 29 homers for Milwaukee last season - and Jorge Soler, who looked unstoppable in the postseason for the Braves. Elieser Hernandez, who has combined for a 3.84 ERA in 17 starts in 2020-21, could certainly fill one of those spots well, too.Īnd the offense should be much improved. It wasn’t that long ago that Jesus Luzardo was a top prospect, and if he can shake off his mildly disastrous 2021 season - he had a 0.77 ERA in three spring starts, for whatever that’s worth - that would be a huge boost. No doubt, if the team is going to take the step toward legitimate playoff contender, they’ll need 4/5 starters to establish themselves, and they do have options. Lefty Trevor Rogers had a fantastic rookie season and Pablo Lopez had a 3.07 ERA in 20 starts. Sandy Alcantara is the best unknown ace in baseball. Why they’re here: It starts with the rotation, which is being wildly overlooked, even within the division. It’s going to be really fun to watch.” Marlins And you mix in veteran leadership like Whit and Sal and Dozier, and you’ve got something special. They’re going to get more mature and better. “People lose sight that we had a young team, the youngest staff in baseball last year. “We’re starting to formulate this young core where, if we play our cards right, play unselfish baseball, all push for each other, we can do something.
“We’re starting to formulate this young core, this core that we know, when we look around, we’re going to be here for four or five years, me included, Mondi, Bobby Witt, and some young guys coming up as well,” Lopez told me last week at the Royals’ camp in Arizona. And that is how the Royals see themselves heading into the 2022 season, not as the young team that took its lumps early in 2021, but as the team that matched the AL Central champs win-for-win the last 70 games of the season. In that same stretch, the White Sox were, you guessed it, 37-33. But the Royals had an off-day on July 19, and then played really good baseball the rest of the season.įrom July 20 to the end of the season, Kansas City was 37-33. 500 last year but a massive part of that was just an extended horrible stretch of baseball that left them 18 under. And on and on.Īnd here’s the thing: Yeah, the Royals finished 14 games under. So is the team’s veteran Whit, All-Star Whit Merrifield. 1 overall prospect in baseball, by most projections - to the Opening Day roster. It really feels like they’re going to be better, and not just because they’ve officially added Bobby Witt Jr. Why they’re here: The Royals won 74 games last year, and most projections (not just FanDuel) have them in the same neighborhood, right there with Cleveland at the bottom of the AL Central, though still not at the bottom of the AL (hi, Orioles and A’s!). There are lots of predictions out there, of course, and we’ll use FanDuels’ over/under win projections as a guideline. We’re not saying these teams will make the playoffs or finish with 90ish wins, but we are saying that we’re taking the over on season win totals. So which teams could be poised for a similar exceeding-of-expectations in 2022? Let’s take a look. MORE: The Sporting News’ staff predictions, picks for 2022 MLB season 500.Īnd they won 90 games, which stunned pretty much everyone.
Go ahead, try to find someone who even had them finishing around. Pretty much everyone who bothered with the fool’s errand of predicting the future had them in the 70- to 75-win range. The PECOTA projections had them at 70-92. FiveThirtyEight, for example, had them finishing with a 73-89 record. Most projections had them with a win total in the low 70s. But all anyone seemed to talk about was how they missed the playoffs again and how that lengthy postseason drought was extended, but the truth of the matter is 90 wins far exceeded what anyone thought was a realistic expectation for the Pacific Northwest’s favorite team.
0 kommentar(er)
