Okay, However Critically, What if the Rockies Made the Playoffs?

The Colorado Rockies are a little bit of a laughingstock in the meanwhile. I say this intending no undue disrespect; from a participant analysis and roster-building standpoint, they’re one of many handful of organizations in baseball that doesn’t meet the naked normal of competence. They’ve missed the playoffs 5 years working and misplaced 197 video games over the previous two seasons.

Sadly, this fallow interval is the historic norm in Colorado. The Rockies strung collectively a pair of unusual playoff appearances in 2017 and 2018; aside from these two campaigns, which netted a complete of 1 playoff win, the Rockies haven’t completed over .500 since 2010. In 31 seasons, they’ve by no means received the NL West.

And there isn’t actually an finish in sight. No Orioles-style bumper crop of prospects that may flip 100 losses to 100 wins in 18 months. Our playoff odds didn’t give the Rockies the dreaded goose egg, however it got here all the way down to the wire. The Rockies are projected to go 63-99, with a 0.1% likelihood of creating the postseason. Each numbers are the worst in baseball. The projected 31-game hole to first place isn’t the most important within the league, if solely as a result of the Nationals are simply as unhealthy and the computer systems see the Braves as higher than the Dodgers. (So do I, Ohtani and all, for what it’s value.)

Despite all this gloominess, I’ve nice affection for the Rockies as a franchise. Their roster isn’t superb, however it’s heavy on gamers I like: Justin Lawrence, Kris Bryant, Brenton Doyle, and so forth. The Rockies have nice uniforms and a fairly ballpark, making them — in my estimation — a top-three aesthetic franchise within the sport. And I’m faintly obsessive about one of many franchise’s foundational millstones: How do you construct a successful pitching employees in Denver’s skinny air?

I don’t like that the Rockies are most likely going to complete in final place, however on paper, they’re clearly the worst workforce in a extremely aggressive division.

We reside in a golden age of individuals ignoring the legal guidelines of chance as a result of the percentages don’t line up with their worldview. That is largely to our detriment. However on this slender case, that outlook could possibly be helpful.

If you don’t like what the numbers say, go get completely different numbers.

So I went to Dan Szymborski, the man who makes numbers. Out of the whole FanGraphs household, Dan is the one who spends essentially the most time getting yelled at on social media. And to be trustworthy, he solely deserves a number of the abuse he takes.

See, the ZiPS projections that you simply see on our standings and participant pages and so forth characterize a fiftieth percentile projection. In actuality, Dan boots up his Mike-from-The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress-style supercomputer and simulates hundreds of thousands of seasons. What you see is barely the median end result. By definition, some — even most — gamers and groups will both noticeably over- or underperform their median projection. However different projections can be found.

Absolutely that ugly quantity didn’t characterize the whole vary of outcomes. So I requested Dan for one thing a bit extra optimistic. He simulated the 2024 season 5 million instances. (“Watching the 2024 Rockies play baseball for 5 million years feels like one of many scarier depictions of punishment within the afterlife,” he stated.) The Ninetieth-percentile end result for the Rockies was 79 wins. The Ninety fifth-percentile end result was 82 wins.

I’ll be utterly trustworthy with you, that’s worse than I had feared. Not even as soon as out of 20 simulations did the Rockies get to a document that might’ve made the playoffs final yr. In 2023, 84 wins was the minimal buy-in for a playoff spot. Since 2017, just one workforce has received its division by successful fewer than 90 video games in a 162-game season. Each the 84-win Diamondbacks final yr and the 88-win Braves in 2021 received the pennant, so we’ll assume that simply getting in is sufficient.

So let’s zoom out and see the entire distribution, which ranges from a minimal of 31 wins (be trustworthy, you’d be fascinated by seeing this occur) to a most of 107:

So the Rockies have a 3.53% likelihood of successful not less than 84 video games, a 1.29% likelihood of successful 88, a 0.72% likelihood of successful 90, and a 0.01% likelihood of successful 100. Now we’re getting someplace.

What wouldn’t it seem like if it truly occurred?

Eight years in the past — eight years in the past this week, truly — I used to be confronted with a scenario just like this whereas working at Baseball Prospectus. We had been selling that season’s PECOTA projections, and feeling arch and cheeky as ever, I made a decision to conjure a state of affairs during which the Phillies — whom PECOTA projected to win 65 video games that yr, lowest in baseball — may win 104 video games and the division title.

To be able to try this, I took the Ninetieth-percentile projection for each participant on the probably Opening Day roster, plus a pair huge prospects, and totaled up the brand new stats. The chance of any a type of gamers having such success was one in 10. The chance of all 27 gamers on my checklist doing so was one in a quantity so incomprehensibly massive I couldn’t provide you with an acceptable illustration on the time.

I’ve discovered one since. Ten meters is roughly the peak of a three-story constructing; 10²⁷ meters is greater than 100 billion mild years, which is larger than the diameter of the observable universe.

However one likelihood in 10²⁷ will not be zero. So let’s roll with it and do the identical factor with the Rockies’ Ninetieth-percentile ZiPS projections, which Dan was as soon as once more gracious sufficient to supply me with. Really 10³⁸ this time, as a result of I roped in an even bigger base roster:

Don’t fear an excessive amount of concerning the WAR totals, since they’re depending on enjoying time. For that, I used the projected plate appearances from the RosterResource depth charts.

What does this once-in-a-cosmology season seem like? Effectively, a few of it appears fairly attainable. Bryant and Charlie Blackmon flip again the clock. Brendan Rodgers will get wholesome. Nolan Jones, who’s going to be actually good even on this universe, turns right into a monster. The Mecha-Rockies don’t even want Doyle to be a league-average hitter!

Let’s flip the web page to the pitchers:

Even within the Ninetieth-percentile world, not a single starter with an ERA below 4.00, nor a single reliever with an ERA below 3.30. I’m bereft on the smallness of our desires.

If actually every little thing goes proper for the Rockies, and we find yourself within the far proper tail of that win complete graph, that is what it’ll seem like. And except they really make it to that one-in-five million 107-win season, they’d most likely want the Giants and Diamondbacks to underperform, and the 5 – 6 finest gamers on the Dodgers to surrender baseball and begin a jam band.

However once more, it may occur. Let’s ship Mookie Betts a pair of Birkenstocks and a guitar. Something is feasible.