What Would a 100 Game MLB Season Have Looked Like the Last Five Years?
Major League Baseball has been forced to severely delay their 2020 season. When and if the season will start is still way up in the air as we await more data on the true effect of COVID-19 on America.
There is very little doubt that we will not see anything too close to the 162 game schedule we are accustomed too. The most recent chatter has surrounded a 100 game season starting some time in July.
This got me wondering, what would the MLB standings have looked like over the last five years if the season ended after game 100? I wrote a Python script to scrape baseball-reference.com to find each team’s winning percentage after their 100th game played over the last five years. You can find my script here if you are interested.
I put all these results in Excel and compared them with what actually happened. Here are the column descriptions for the standings you will see:
“Full” — The team’s full season winning percentage
“100 G” — The team’s winning percentage after 100 games
“Post?” — Whether or not the team made or would have made the playoffs with the winning percentage immediately to the left. So the second “Post?” column is the playoff situation for the 100-game records.
“Diff” — the winning percentage difference between their actual winning percentage and 100 game percentage.
2019
Playoff Differences
Cubs take NL Central from Cardinals
Cardinals take wild card spot from Brewers
Indians take wild card spot from Rays
2018
Playoff Differences
Cubs take division from Brewers
Phillies take division from Braves
Mariners take wild card from Athletics
Braves take wild card from Rockies
2017
Playoff Differences
Cubs have to play tiebreaker with Brewers for division
Royals take wild card from Twins
2016
Playoff Differences
Orioles take division from Red Sox
Giants take division from Dodgers
Marlins take wild card from Mets
2015
Playoff Differences
Yankees take division from Blue Jays
Angels take division from Rangers
Nationals take division from Mets
Twins take wild card from Blue Jays
Giants take wild card from Cubs
Comments
Every year but 2017 would have resulted in the playoff picture looking completely different. This should not really be surprising, as taking off 62 games is a massive chunk (38%).
The average change in winning percentage for these five seasons would have been 0.024, which works out to four wins over a full 162-game season.
A season this short also lends itself to extreme winning percentages. The highest winning percentage over a full season that we have seen in the last five years was the 2018 Red Sox at .667. Only two other teams managed above .650 (2019 Astros, 2019 Dodgers). When you look at the 100-game standings, you find six teams coming in at .650 or better, with the ’18 Red Sox and ’17 Dodgers topping the list at .690 after their first 100 games.
The lowest winning percentage over the last five years was the 2018 Orioles at .290 (the 2019 Tigers were the only other team to come in below .300 as they posted a .292 that year). The 100-game standings actually look pretty similar, with those same 2018 Orioles taking the cake with a .280 winning percentage, but no other team coming in below .300 (four teams were below .350 however, the ’16 Braves, ’18 Royals, ’19 Orioles, and ’19 Tigers).
If we see a 100 game season in Major League Baseball this year, there is a really good chance things get weird.