Baltimore Orioles Predicted to Have Much Worse Season Than Expected
Expectations for the Baltimore Orioles heading into the upcoming season are sky-high after they posted the best record in the American League in 2023.
Loaded with young talent, they improved their rotation by adding Corbin Burnes and are expected to be legit World Series contenders.
However, Peter Keating and Jordan Brenner of The Athletic aren't sold that this will be another great year for the Orioles, putting their baseline wins at 87.3.
"Not to be the skunk at the party for a team that’s easy to love, but last year's best feel-good story was severely lucky in all kinds of ways," they write.
These two analyzed how many runs a team should score and allow based on hits, extra bases, walks and stolen bases they had, and surrendered, the previous season. They then used those figures to project a record.
That spit out the 87.3 wins they assigned Baltimore.
"The O's also scored 807 runs, 44 more than expected from their underlying stats, largely because they batted .287 with runners in scoring position, the best in MLB, and just .241 with the bases empty. And on top of that, Baltimore won seven more games than expected given their actual run differential," they say.
Baseball has been a leader in advanced statistics for a long time.
It's no surprise that projections are coming out prior to the year starting to give fanbases an idea of how their favorite teams will do in 2024.
What is shocking, though, is that they're not giving the Orioles much credit for the type of season they put together.
Yes, the batting average was impressive with runners in scoring position, and that could regress, but maybe it was the best figure in the MLB because of how good the players are.
This young team doesn't have a true baseline to pull from since many of their contributors don't have a lot of Major League seasons under their belts.
Baltimore could just as easily produce the same results at the plate this year as they did in 2023.
What really stood out in Keating and Brenner's assessment of the Orioles is that they don't think the ceiling for this team is that high.
"The Orioles are a fine team ... But they're building from a platform that's more than a dozen games lower than it appeared last season," they say.
Interesting.
It's up for the players to go out and prove this evaluation wrong.
