One mistake often made in predictions is expecting teams to do the same thing year after year -- and that rings true when it comes to October baseball.
We've had two seasons of the new 12-team MLB playoff format, and six of the 2022 playoff teams failed to make it back last year. Will half of the 2023 postseason teams meet a similar fate in 2024?
That 50% ratio follows the historical trends from when we had the 10-team system, so we can probably expect a similar turnover, but what's interesting about last year is how severe the drop-offs were from 2022 to 2023, an average of 15 fewer wins per team. So it wasn't just that they barely missed out, with the New York Mets, New York Yankees, St. Louis Cardinals and San Diego Padres all having major debacles.
Now, that level of extremity shouldn't typically be the case -- but it does mean that teams that have frequented the playoffs, like a number of the ones above have, are going to be vying for a playoff berth alongside the 12 teams that did make it to October last season.
That begs the question: Which six of the 2023 playoff teams are most likely to get bumped and why? Let's turn to my colleague Bradford Doolittle and use his playoff odds from his latest Stock Watch projections to rank the six teams most likely to miss the postseason this year -- and why, or why not, that might be the case.