Athletics Get Strong Support from SI's Baseball Projections Panel

In Sports Illustrated's projections for the 2020 season, the Oakland Athletics come out as one of Major League Baseball's powers, making the playoffs in five of six projections. Two of them have the A's winning the American League West. But none have the A's making it to the World Series.

Cover baseball long enough and you come to realize that when it comes to making preseason projections of postseason success, there are no experts.

There are, however, people who spend their lives analyzing baseball, and their guesses – and, yes, they are just guesses – carry some weight with people who don’t have that platform.

That brings us to the 2020 season and Sports Illustrated’s projections and World Series picks are upon us.

As it happens, the A’s do fairly well in this particular sampling. None of the six writers tabbed with making selections had Oakland, which is coming off back-to-back 97-win seasons, going to the World Series. Five of the six, however, had the A’s making the playoffs and two have the A’s beating back an Astros charge to win the American League West.

In some ways picking winners from a 60-game season is more difficult that doing over a 162-game season. A 10-game winning streak in a six-month schedule can be diffused. But in a two-month schedule, that same streak could earn a club a Division title.

In 1981, the A’s got off to a 17-1 start. That was why they made the post season. In the rest of the first 60 games of the season, Oakland was just 20-22. No matter – the streak saw them through.

But a streak isn’t everything. Playing well over the full 60 games is the most important thing. In 1987, the Brewers started the season with an MLB record 13 consecutive wins. At the time, Robin Yount said it wouldn’t mean much if the Brewers didn’t make the playoffs. They didn’t. And by going 19-28 after the streak was over, the Brewers were in fourth place by the time the 60-game mark came around.

This is setting up to be one nutso season.

But it’s baseball, it’s back and that’s not bad.

Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3

Click the "follow" button in the top right corner to join the conversation on Inside the Athletics on SI. Access and comment on featured stories and start your own conversations and post external links on our community page.