The Mariners won 90 games last season. 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.
Most projections had them with a win total in the low 70s. FiveThirtyEight, for example, had them finishing with a 73-89 record. The PECOTA projections had them at 70-92. Pretty much everyone who bothered with the fool’s errand of predicting the future had them in the 70- to 75-win range. Go ahead, try to find someone who even had them finishing around .500.
And they won 90 games, which stunned pretty much everyone.
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So which teams could be poised for a similar exceeding-of-expectations in 2022? Let’s take a look. 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. There are lots of predictions out there, of course, and we’ll use FanDuels’ over/under win projections as a guideline.
Royals
FanDuel over/under win total: 74.5
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!). It really feels like they’re going to be better, and not just because they’ve officially added Bobby Witt Jr. — the No. 1 overall prospect in baseball, by most projections — to the Opening Day roster.
Well, Witt’s a big part of that. So is the team’s veteran Whit, All-Star Whit Merrifield. And 48-homer Sal Perez. And Nicky Lopez, with his 4.3 bWAR. And on and on.
And here’s the thing: Yeah, the Royals finished 14 games under .500 last year but a massive part of that was just an extended horrible stretch of baseball that left them 18 under .500 a few days after the All-Star break. But the Royals had an off-day on July 19, and then played really good baseball the rest of the season.
From July 20 to the end of the season, Kansas City was 37-33. In that same stretch, the White Sox were, you guessed it, 37-33. Huh. 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.
“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. “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. Not only this year, but for a long time. It’s going to be fun to watch.
“People lose sight that we had a young team, the youngest staff in baseball last year. They’re going to get more mature and better. And you mix in veteran leadership like Whit and Sal and Dozier, and you’ve got something special. It’s going to be really fun to watch.”
Marlins
FanDuel over/under win total: 77.5
Why they’re here: It starts with the rotation, which is being wildly overlooked, even within the division. Sandy Alcantara is the best unknown ace in baseball. Lefty Trevor Rogers had a fantastic rookie season and Pablo Lopez had a 3.07 ERA in 20 starts. That’s a stellar trio. 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. 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. 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.
And the offense should be much improved. 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. Newcomer Joey Wendle adds a versatile, reliable bat in the lineup. 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.
Angels
FanDuel over/under win total: 83.5
Why they’re here: Yeah, the track record says maybe 83 wins is too high. The Angels haven’t won that many since 2015, after all. 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. 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. Noah
Noah Syndergaard isn’t a Dylan Bundy-type “hope he bounces back” experiment. Reid Detmers could be a legit star as a rookie starter. Bringing in Aaron Loup, Ryan Tapera and Archie Bradley for the bullpen changes everything.
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Manager Joe Maddon was asked last week in spring training whether this group of pitchers is good enough to win.
“Yes,” he said.
I mean, of course he’s going to say that. But there’s reason to believe he’s not just saying things for the sake of saying them. “The young starters have a lot to do with it. They have to carry their weight for us to be that good. I think the bullpen is that much better. You can’t go to the dance and you can’t succeed there without a great bullpen. I think this bullpen has a chance to be that good.”
They need the lineup trio of Ohtani, Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon to stay healthy, of course. They’re giving young outfielders Jo Adell and Brandon Marsh a chance to be stars. The pieces are in place, and the talent is there. A run at the postseason is certainly possible, especially considering that they have a lot of games against the torn-down A’s and still-rebuilding Rangers in the AL West.
Cubs
FanDuel over/under win total: 74.5
Why they’re here: It’s hard to see the Cubs competing for a playoff spot. But sticking around .500 and exceeding that over/under? Yeah, that’s certainly possible.
“Anything can happen. We had a couple key additions, and we weren’t playing that bad of baseball, either,” Frank Schwindel told me in spring training. “I felt like we were in every game last year, minus one big inning or lose late, one-run games where we were a hit away. But I think we’ve got a great group of guys in here and we can make something happen.”
Schwindel was a big part of the Cubs’ salvaging of the final month-plus of the season; he hit .342 with 13 homers in 56 games for Chicago, and while he’s unlikely to repeat that type of production, he should be a solid bat in the lineup. Same with Patrick Wisdom, another piece who exceeded expectations in 2021. Kyle Hendricks and Marcus Stroman is a good start to a rotation, and Seiya Suzuki should hit plenty of home runs in the middle of the lineup.
Mariners
FanDuel over/under win total: 83.5
Why they’re here: Well, we started this piece with the Mariners, so let’s finish with them, too. Everyone seems focused on the AL East’s chances of claiming four of the AL’s six playoff spots, but the Angels (as we already talked about) and Mariners could very well have something to say about that. Seattle has a lot of upside in its lineup, with phenom Julio Rodriguez ready to make his MLB debut, and last year’s phenom Jarred Kelenic coming off an offseason of adjustment after his rough first run through the bigs. And remember, he had seven homers and an .854 OPS in the last month of the 2021 season.
Jesse Winker, an All-Star with the Reds last year, is going to be a huge addition to the lineup. His former and current teammate, Eugenio Suarez, had a very similar season to Kyle Seager last year. Seager, who retired in the offseason, hit 35 homers with a .285 on-base percentage for Seattle in 2021, while Suarez hit 31 homers with a .286 on-base percentage.
And the M’s added 2021 AL Cy Young winner Robbie Ray to the top of the rotation, which is nice. Marco Gonzales is a solid rotation piece, as always, and Chris Flexen was better last year (3.61 ERA in 31 starts) than anyone outside Seattle probably noticed. The M’s have high hopes for Logan Gilbert in his second year in the majors, and there’s a solid stable of arms in the bullpen, too.
This is a good baseball team.
