AL East 2022 forecast
This could be the year for the free-spending Yankees, but watch out for the Rays
The Yankees spent big last year — well, let’s be honest, they spend big every year — but they didn’t get much for their money.
Baseball Reference pegged New York’s 2021 payroll at $208.5 million, which exceeded every other club in the American League. Yet the Yanks bowed out of the playoffs after a wild-card loss to the Boston Red Sox.
That’s been the pattern in recent years. The Yankees keep spending and spending, yet they’re left with little to show for their largesse. They’ve won just a single AL East divisional title since 2013, and they haven’t qualified for the World Series since 2009.
This year could be different.
You might recall that I developed a program last year to analyze each club’s recent record to predict its future performance. I compared the team’s record during the previous three seasons against the corresponding marks for every club that played during the era of free agency, which began in 1976.
My aim was to find parallels from the past that might offer hints about the future — an analysis based purely on history, not on roster composition or offseason acquisitions.
Well, I’m back again with the same system for 2022, powered by data from 2019 through 2021. And it predicts that the Yankees will win the AL East in the season ahead.
How do I come to that conclusion? Let’s start with the record of the club that most closely matches the 2019-2021 Yankees, the Oakland Athletics of 2002-2004. I based my comparison on team score (TS), which is determined by a formula that gives equal weight to four factors: winning percentage, the differential between runs scored and allowed per game, the differential between bases per out (BPO) attained by batters and allowed by pitchers, and postseason success.
Let’s look first at the A’s, showing each season’s wins, losses, winning percentage, and TS (on a 100-point scale):
2002: 103-59, .636, TS 64.725
2003: 96-66, .593, TS 60.716
2004: 91-71, .562, TS 55.762
And now the present-day Yankees:
2019: 103-59, .636, TS 65.290
2020: 33-27, .550, TS 59.553
2021: 92-70, .568, TS 55.083
It’s clear that the two franchises are following a remarkably similar arc, playing well above .500, yet declining in quality over the three-year period.
So here’s the key question: What happened next in Oakland?
The A’s actually slipped further in 2005, which would seem to bode ill for the Yankees. Yet my formula doesn’t consider only the closest match for each current team. It looks at the five closest matches, which improves the outlook.
Three of the Yankees’ five doppelgangers played better than .580 ball in the first season after the three-year study period. Two won divisional titles, with one of them (the Brewers in 1982) going all the way to the World Series. The average TS for the Yankees’ five matches was 58.691 in that first subsequent season.
That’s the highest figure among the five AL East clubs, which is why I’m forecasting a divisional crown for New York. But it won’t come easily. The East’s defending champs, the Tampa Bay Rays, are close behind with a predicted TS of 58.140, based on their five closest matches.
My computer has generated separate estimates of every team’s win-loss record for 2022, which I’m including because I think they’re interesting, even though my forecast is based solely on TS.
The two data sets occasionally clash, as happens here. The computer actually envisions the Rays with one more win than the Yankees, but that’s a blip I choose to ignore. It’s TS that counts, so here are my predictions for the coming season:
1. New York Yankees, TS 58.691 (90-72)
2. Tampa Bay Rays, TS 58.140 (91-71)
3. Toronto Blue Jays, TS 50.144 (82-80)
4. Boston Red Sox, TS 48.276 (81-81)
5. Baltimore Orioles, TS 30.424 (71-91)
My formula compared each club to the three-year records of 1,228 teams since 1976, looking for the five best matches. (A couple of notes: Expansion teams obviously couldn’t be added to this mix until they played three seasons. And I cut off all comparisons after 2019, so that every club would have at least two years of future data.)
I kept my focus on 2022 during this process, but I didn’t stop there. I decided to run the standings out for three seasons in all, based on the records of each club’s five matches in the corresponding years (such as the Athletics in 2006 and 2007 for the Yankees of 2023 and 2024).
Winning percentages tend to migrate toward .500 as we drift farther into the future, and the crystal ball gets murkier by the season, yet I’ve included those second- and third-year forecasts in the summaries below. It’s interesting, if nothing else, to note that the Yankees are ticketed for last place by 2024, based on the subsequent declines of their five matches.
But let’s snap back to 2022, assuming that a full 162-game schedule is played. The five AL East teams are shown in predicted order below. Each is followed by its 2021 record. Then comes a list of the five closest matches, each identified by the final season of its three-year period (the season correlating with 2021 for the current club). It’s followed by a rundown of subsequent performances of the top two matches, then by my formula’s predictions for 2022, 2023, and 2024.
We’ll move on to the AL Central next week.
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1. New York Yankees
2021 record: 92-70
2021 TS: 55.083; TS rank: 9 of 30 MLB clubs
Five closest matches: 1. Athletics 2004 (91-71, TS 55.762); 2. White Sox 1992 (86-76, TS 55.535); 3. Brewers 1981 (62-47, TS 53.914); 4. Reds 1980 (89-73, TS 55.113); 5. Indians 2001 (91-71, TS 55.699)
What happened to top two matches: The Athletics slipped slightly to an 88-74 record in 2005 — still good for second place in the AL West — and then rebounded to the American League Championship Series in 2006. The White Sox moved more quickly, climbing to the ALCS with a 94-68 record in 1993.
2022 prediction: 90-72, TS 58.691 (Division: 1 of 5; MLB: 4 of 30)
2023 prediction: 81-81, TS 45.628 (Division: 3 of 5; MLB: 12 of 30)
2024 prediction: 75-87, TS 36.063 (Division: 5 of 5; MLB: 26 of 30)
2. Tampa Bay Rays
2021 record: 100-62
2021 TS: 68.089; TS rank: 5 of 30 MLB clubs
Five closest matches: 1. Giants 2003 (100-61, TS 66.748); 2. Orioles 1980 (100-62, TS 66.988); 3. Dodgers 1982 (88-74, TS 64.504); 4. Diamondbacks 2002 (98-64, TS 67.533); 5. Phillies 2009 (93-69, TS 72.790)
What happened to top two matches: The Giants declined by nine games in 2004, dropping to a record of 91-71, which was still impressive. But they spent the subsequent four seasons on the wrong side of .500. The Orioles continued to shine after 1980, but they didn’t get back to the playoffs until 1983, when they won the World Series.
2022 prediction: 91-71, TS 58.140 (Division: 2 of 5; MLB: 5 of 30)
2023 prediction: 80-82, TS 44.865 (Division: 4 of 5; MLB: 14 of 30)
2024 prediction: 85-77, TS 53.043 (Division: 1 of 5; MLB: 8 of 30)
3. Toronto Blue Jays
2021 record: 91-71
2021 TS: 62.303; TS rank: 6 of 30 MLB clubs
Five closest matches: 1. Royals 2014 (89-73, TS 62.588); 2. Rangers 1996 (90-72, TS 60.383); 3. Reds 1999 (96-67, TS 62.643); 4. Indians 2005 (93-69, TS 65.096); 5. Padres 1996 (91-71, TS 64.199)
What happened to top two matches: We all know what happened to the Royals in 2015. They won their first World Series title in 30 years, so the Jays can take heart from that. But they should also learn from the Rangers’ post-1996 experience. Texas slipped badly to a 77-85 record in 1997 before bouncing back to take divisional titles the next two years.
2022 prediction: 82-80, TS 50.144 (Division: 3 of 5; MLB: 10 of 30)
2023 prediction: 86-76, TS 50.404 (Division: 1 of 5; MLB: 5 of 30)
2024 prediction: 82-80, TS 45.200 (Division: 2 of 5; MLB: 16 of 30)
4. Boston Red Sox
2021 record: 92-70
2021 TS: 54.899; TS rank: 10 of 30 MLB clubs
Five closest matches: 1. White Sox 2008 (89-74, TS 55.994); 2. Tigers 2016 (86-75, TS 52.170); 3. Brewers 2007 (83-79, TS 54.106); 4. Cardinals 1979 (86-76, TS 52.557); 5. Cubs 2007 (85-77, TS 55.216)
What happened to top two matches: The White Sox outperformed expectations in 2008, improving by 17 wins and qualifying for the playoffs. But the wheels fell off the following year, as they plummeted four games below .500. The Tigers also surprised the experts in 2016, but four straight sub-.400 seasons awaited them.
2022 prediction: 81-81, TS 48.276 (Division: 4 of 5; MLB: 12 of 30)
2023 prediction: 82-80, TS 47.265 (Division: 2 of 5; MLB: 8 of 30)
2024 prediction: 74-88, TS 41.386 (Division: 3 of 5; MLB: 18 of 30)
5. Baltimore Orioles
2021 record: 52-110
2021 TS: 11.059; TS rank: 30 of 30 MLB clubs
Five closest matches: 1. Indians 1991 (57-105, TS 9.976); 2. Astros 2011 (56-106, TS 11.311); 3. Athletics 1979 (54-108, TS 11.385); 4. Mariners 1983 (60-102, TS 17.114); 5. Braves 1977 (61-101, TS 16.259)
What happened to top two matches: Their 1991 disaster proved to be the nadir for the Indians, who improved steadily in subsequent seasons and made the World Series by 1995. The Astros, on the other hand, continued to suffer after 2011, spending two more years in last place. But they climbed up to the playoffs by 2015.
2022 prediction: 71-91, TS 30.424 (Division: 5 of 5; MLB: 29 of 30)
2023 prediction: 73-89, TS 33.845 (Division: 5 of 5; MLB: 29 of 30)
2024 prediction: 76-86, TS 37.124 (Division: 4 of 5; MLB: 24 of 30)