What a 50-Game Season Could Mean for the Twins

[Patrick Wozniak]

MLB owners recently struck back at the Player Association’s call for a 114-game season by countering with a proposal of just 50 games. That’s not many games. What might it mean for the Minnesota Twins?Jay Jaffe of FanGraphs took a look at the 2019 season through 50-game windows. He started with games 1-50 then 26-75 and worked his way up to 113-162. In all there are five windows and here’s the results for each window:

 

Download attachment: What a 50 game season...FanGraphs Chart.png

 

Even though the 2019 Minnesota Twins won 101 games they only make the postseason in three of the five windows (Cleveland took the other two), showing how vulnerable even really good teams would be in a significantly shortened season. According to Jaffe, Minnesota’s best overall 50-game stretch in 2019 gave them a record of 35-15 while their worst stretch left them at 25-25. That’s a difference of 10 wins!

 

And again, this is through the lens of a team that won 101 games. It’s possible that even if the 2020 Twins team is slightly better than the 2019 squad they might not reach such a high winning percentage.

 

Dan Szymborski, also of FanGraphs, ran his ZiPS projections for a 50-game season and the picture doesn’t get any rosier for the Twins. Minnesota is projected to finish 29-21 (.580) and does edge out Cleveland by two games, but their playoff odds are down to 57.2 %, which is only 7.2% better than a coin flip according to my very own probabilistic calculations.

 

Of course, a 50-game season isn’t exactly the end of the world either. As much as I struggle with uncertainty, the uncertainty of a significantly shortened season is better than the certainty of no baseball. Plus, Szymborski’s projections don’t take into account the likely expansion of the postseason to include more teams which would also help a “good” team like the Twins.

 

The middle ground of both side’s propositions would bring us back to the original 80-game range that owners were shooting for and might be the best case scenario at this point. The extra games and expanded playoffs should theoretically aid the Twins to some extent and would make the season feel like a bit less of a crapshoot.

 

Crapshoot or not, it would be nice to see any form of Major League Baseball this year. Hopefully both sides can come together and iron something out. Minnesota has built one of the most impressive clubs in the history of the franchise and not getting to see what they can do would only add to the growing mound of misfortune that is 2020.

 

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[theBOMisthebomb]

Yes, a 50 game season is better than nothing. That being said, 50 games reminds me of a weekend slow pitch beer bash softball tournament. Let's just play ball, at this point I would take a single elimination tournament that could be completed in 5 days.

[Trov]

I expect the 50 game season will be what happens, if anything at this point.  Players will not accept anything less than full prorated pay, and owners are not willing to pay more than 50 games at that amount.  With the extended playoffs it would be interesting to see how teams will set up to hopefully make good run to playoffs.  I also wonder if fans will give same boost for the next year coming off a WS win.  That is one of the main things that teams get to talk about WS champs and sell more tickets, but at this point who would buy tickets for next year? 

[Vanimal46]

If it’s going to be just 50 games then let’s truly make this an experimental season... Robot umps, automated strike zones, pitch clock, etc. Let’s implement all of the ideas that have been tossed around the last couple of years and see what actually works.

[Minny505]

I like the Joe Posnanski idea of running a full College World Series style tournament at the end. All teams in it, best of three, double elimination tourney, until the final four, then we go to seven games and single elimination. Best record to that point gets home field for all three games of matchup. 

 

If we end up with no agreement though, the playoffs will likely be the same as the last couple years with three division winners and a game 163 for the two wild cards.

 

I'm also onboard with Vanimal. Let's make this season an outlier for how the competition is conducted. It would be so much fun.

[jkcarew]

 

If it’s going to be just 50 games then let’s truly make this an experimental season... Robot umps, automated strike zones, pitch clock, etc. Let’s implement all of the ideas that have been tossed around the last couple of years and see what actually works.

I think it's a good idea. It would feel a bit like an exhibition season anyway. Especially, if several big-time players opt out of playing. And I would suspect that several would do just that...in the unlikely event that a 50-game season was somehow accepted by the union.