Five numbers that will define unprecedented 2020 MLB season
This baseball season will be as different as the numbers 60 and 162, the former being the number of games Major League Baseball will try to ram in amid a pandemic and the latter the more comforting, familiar length of season since 1962.
Teams won’t be shooting for 100 wins until at least 2021. Individual feats of strength won’t be measured by .300, 30, 100, or, for you more modern types, 1.000 (OPS), 180 (wRC+) and 5.0 (WAR).
With that in mind, we present to you the oddball numerals you can try to wrap your mind around in a season that we hope gets played to conclusion and also that we may never have to see again:
32
Is your team going to make the playoffs?
Even the most fanatical supporters are loathe to ponder that question in mid-June, which is roughly the point in the year that teams pass the 60-game mark. Alas, in pandemic ball, every game is magnified and every day on the calendar precious.
So, how many wins to get in?
We guarantee you this much: If your team wins 32 games, you’ll see them in October.
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Just take a look at a handful of 2020 season projections: From our battle-tested Human Element projections at Paste BN Sports, to the industry standard yet occasionally aberrational PECOTA system to the ZiPS projections at Fangraphs. Thirty-wins will, at the least, get you in a one- or multi-team playoff for a wild-card spot.
In many simulations, the difference between 31 wins and 32 means getting mired in a multi-team logjam or guaranteeing a wild-card or division title.
So keep 32 front of mind as a magic number. That was, after all, Magic’s number.
6
Sure, these are uncertain times, but it’s comforting to know that even in a season wracked by COVID-19, some traditions will live on.
Like service-time suppression.
Yeah, you may not see many of the game’s greatest young players on Opening Day. In this pro-rated sprint, it’s even easier to keep a player in the “minors” for a handful of days and save a year of service for the franchise on the back end.
In this case, it’s just six lousy days, far fewer than the two-ish weeks needed in a typical season. And in the event the season is shortened, just three days will do the trick.
So you can see the calculation playing out in front offices across the land: Six days or a seventh year of control?
With that, farewell for the moment to the San Francisco Giants’ Joey Bart, the Toronto Blue Jays’ Nate Pearson, Detroit’s Casey Mize, perhaps Baltimore’s Ryan Mountcastle.
We’ll see you in August – or maybe on July 30.
20
Since steroid-fueled sluggers ran roughshod over baseball’s single-season home run record, it’s been a little tougher to define what truly constitutes an epic season of longballs.
But in an era of relatively rigorous drug testing, the 50-homer season has more or less returned to its status as a noble benchmark. In 2019, just one young man – New York Mets rookie Pete Alonso – reached that mark, slugging 53.
With that in mind, let’s lay out a rigorous challenge to sluggers across the land:
Can you hit 20 in 60?
Fifty homers over 162 games translates to 18.5 homers over 60. But since the sample is so small, let’s raise the bar a little higher and see if anyone can reach it.
Reigning NL MVP Cody Bellinger, after all, started his career in 2017 by slugging 20 home runs in his first 52 games, and 23 in his first 60. Alonso hit 19 in a 48-game stretch late last year. Aaron Judge hit 20 in the final 58 games of his 2017 rookie campaign. Christian Yelich hit 22 homers in his first 59 games in 2019.
Given the aberrational years those feats occurred, perhaps a word of advice to the league: Keep those balls juiced.
111
Hey, we have to give the pitchers some love, too, right?
In this era of Openers and Bulk Guys and Piggybacking, the demise of the starting pitcher has been well-documented. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that there’s still some absolute hosses out there.
Sure, a 200-inning pitcher is increasingly harder to find. But the far cooler benchmark – a 300-strikeout season – has been surprisingly common in recent years.
(Or perhaps not so surprising, given the approach of the modern hitter).
Nonetheless, 2019 brought us two fellows from the same team hitting 300 punchouts, with the Astros’ Gerrit Cole striking out 326 yet somehow losing the AL Cy Young to teammate Justin Verlander, who fanned a mere 300. (Weep not for Cole, who turned 326 into $324 million from the Yankees).
Thanks to that duo along with Max Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw and Chris Sale, we’ve seen a 300-strikeout pitcher in four of the past five years. Kershaw’s 300-strikeout season in 2015 broke a 13-year streak without one, dating to Randy Johnson in 2002.
So let’s pro-rate this plateau back to 111 Ks, which may also be challenging given the shorter workloads earlier in the season. Or perhaps these guys will go harder for shorter stints and keep their punchout totals high.
Either way, there will be no fans in the stands, but plenty in the batter’s box.
267
That’s the number of days from Game 7 of the World Series until those same Washington Nationals open the 2020 season on Thursday against Cole’s Yankees.
Best as we can tell, that’s the longest any of you reading this have had to go without Real Baseball.
The 1994 strike and subsequent lockout of ’95 spanned 256 days – from Aug. 12 to April 24, wiping out a World Series and inviting the farce of a replacement-player spring.
This time around, the stakes are far grimmer and touch every corner of the globe. And there is no guarantee this season will end in a World Series, either.
Whether you're thrilled, unsettled, or aghast at the questionable morality of it all, the game returns and the wait ends Thursday. Be it labor issues or pandemics or wars, let’s hope it’s never so long again.