What a 50-Game Season Could Mean for the 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:

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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