Easy does it
TAMPA — The on-field rule changes that will begin in 2023 are receiving the most attention as spring training begins, which is fitting. Teams are going to be drilling especially entrenched veteran players to ready for a pitch clock, removal of extreme shifts, bigger bases and fewer pickoff throws.
But over the course of the season, we also will begin to register the impact of a different kind of shift — in scheduling. Rather than having teams play every team in their division for six series and 19 games, as had been in effect with an unbalanced schedule since 2001, MLB has dropped the intradivision matchups to four series and 13 games. Every team will now play every other team in the majors at least one series a year.
The most interesting petri dish for what that means will be the best top-to-bottom division in the majors. What will the impact be with the five AL East teams now playing 52 games against each other rather than 76? That will coincide with what Orioles general manager Mike Elias said “is the first time in at least a few years in which every American League East team is going into a season full charge with playoff hopes and expectations. Obviously, all five of us can’t make it. I think we are going to look back on this as a really historically good division, and I am excited to see what happens.”
In the past four full seasons (not including the 60-game, pandemicshortened 2020 season), the road to the top of the AL East has had a similarity. The division winners — the 2018 Red Sox, 2019 Yankees, 2021 Rays and 2022 Yankees — all won the season series against each of their other AL East foes.
But there was a difference in 2018, 2019 and 2021. Those division champs built up their overall records by mauling the Orioles. Baltimore was a combined 6-51 against the AL East champs in those seasons. Last year, the Orioles were 7-12 against the Yankees. Not great, but a sign of progress in a great season of progress for Baltimore, which finished with a winning record for the first time since Buck Showalter’s 2014 division champs.
The AL East had four of the seven teams in the American League with winning records — every club but the Red Sox, whose 78-84 record would have been good enough to finish third in the other two AL divisions. Boston was actually 52-34 outside of the AL East last year (26-50 within it). So what will fewer games in the division mean for these clubs?
“The bottom line is we’re happy about it,” Elias said. “I imagine the whole division is happy about it, but maybe we might be the most happy about it just given the strength of these other organizations and the strength in so many forms.
“You have financial might. You have smart front offices. You have great farm systems. It’s just a really impressive group of teams. It has been a slog and can get a little monotonous playing the same teams 19 times a season, so I think we’re gonna embrace the variety. … To me, the only downside of this is the extra travel, and for the advanced scouting staff it’s more work because they’re preparing for every team as opposed to one core group of teams over and over.”
Three AL East teams were among the league’s six playoff entrants last year. Pretty much every prognosticating service and casino likes those clubs again. FanGraphs, for example, projects the Yankees, Rays and Blue Jays to have three of the four best records in the AL, along with the defending champ Astros. BetMGM has the same four clubs with the highest win totals for Over/Under wagering (Tampa Bay is tied for fourth with Seattle).
The Yankees’ starting rotation, plus Aaron Judge; the Blue Jays’ offensive might, and now better lefty offensive diversity and outfield defense with Brandon Belt, Kevin Kiermaier and Daulton Varsho; and the Rays’ pitching depth, plus positional flexibility, point those three clubs toward October, without catastrophic injury or unexpected production fall-off.
That makes the top of the division akin to the NL East, with the Braves, Mets and Phillies. But the difference for the divisions is that the Marlins and Nationals likely will be terrible. The Red Sox and Orioles have avenues to be good.
Boston is always difficult to figure out. The Red Sox, in the past 11 years, have finished last five times — and they also won two championships. They undertook a large facelift via free agency, trades and waiver claims this offseason that increased their payroll to about $210 million, but without a marquee move. So it feels underwhelming. Or it feels as it did after the 2002 season, and the Red Sox went to ALCS Game 7 in 2003 and won it all in 2004; or it feels as it did after the 2012 season, before the Red Sox won it all in 2013. Again, the Red Sox are often inexplicable.
There is the potential for a 74-win Boston nightmare, in which older and brittle starters Corey Kluber, James Paxton and Chris Sale fail to carry weight and Japanese outfield import Masataka Yoshida turns into a $90 million bust. But there also is a possible upper-80-wins scenario, with youngsters Brayan Bello and Triston Casas breaking out and the sum of all the parts adding up.
But the most intriguing team is the Orioles, who lost 36 more games than any team from 2018-21 before they went 83-79 last year. Baltimore is stocked with as much farm talent as any organization, with key breakthroughs last year from Gunnar Henderson and especially Adley Rutschman starting a potential flood of high-end youngsters. Elias said he hopes that his top pitching prospect, Grayson Rodriguez, will be in the rotation from the outset of the season and that one-time ace John Means will be back in July after Tommy John surgery. If the Orioles are in it, they will be flush with prospects to trade come July.
“I’m excited about the future of our team,” Elias said. “It’s been a long road and a tough road getting to this point. It’s been kind of a long time coming. And I feel like we are through the woods. We are not talking rebuild any more. We’re now a team that is worried about 2023 and 2024 and 2025, and our focus is on that.”
The Orioles are the great divisional wild card to see whether they can earn a wild card and whether the AL East can possibly have four playoff clubs this year. Yes, every team playing every other team means, for example, that on the schedule now are those three good NL East clubs and the Padres and Dodgers. But that likely will not be as deteriorating to the win-loss record as six series within this version of the AL Beast.