It’s that time of year again, Major League Baseball Spring Training. Time to watch your favourite team in action in games that, while enjoyable because baseball is finally back, are ultimately meaningless with respect to the regular season standings.
But, are the games really meaningless? Or does spring training success translate to success in the regular season? Let’s have a look at the top 5 teams from last year’s spring training, and how it worked out for each team during the regular season:
Grapefruit League Top 5:
NY Yankees (24-9)
St Louis Cardinals (20-8)
Pittsburgh Pirates (19-12)
Boston Red Sox (18-14)
Minnesota Twins (16-13)
Cactus League Top 5:
LA Angels (21-14)
Seattle Mariners (19-14)
San Francisco Giants (19-16)
Kansas City Royals (17-15)
Colorado Rockies (16-15)
Note: Full 2017 spring training standings can be found here. All stats and standings information in this article is from MLB.com.
The teams that led the Grapefruit League and the Cactus League are the Yankees and the Angels, respectively. One team made the ALCS, while another didn’t make the playoffs. The 2017 World Series Champion Houston Astros finished with an unimpressive 15-15 record, while their World Series opponent, the LA Dodgers, finished 18-17. Some of the teams that finished with a better record than both of those teams include the non-contending San Francisco Giants (who went 64-98, tied for worst in MLB) and Pittsburgh Pirates (75-87), among others. The Chicago Cubs, who won the NL Central crown for a second straight year before losing in the NLCS to the Dodgers, finished with the second worst record in the Cactus League last year. So, spring training may not accurately reflect regular season results.
One may ask, why does this happen? Small sample size could be a reason, as the unpredictable nature of baseball provides plenty of parity. Another possibility could be a lower motivation for established stars to perform, while younger up and coming players might be more motivated as they are trying to earn a spot on their respective teams. Lets take a look at the individual player Spring Training leaderboards for 2017:
Batting Avg:
1) Jesus Aguilar – .452
2) Greg Bird – .451
3) Ben Revere – .411
Home Runs:
1) (tie) Greg Bird and Bryce Harper – 8
3) (tie) Jesus Aguilar, Jabari Blash, Chris Marrero, Peter O,Brien – 7
Runs Batted In:
1) Ian Happ – 21
2) Pablo Sandoval – 20
3) (tie) Jesus Aguilar and Jabari Blash – 19
ERA:
1) Masahiro Tanaka – 0.38
2) Kyle Gibson – 1.59
3) Kyle Hendricks – 1.66
Wins:
1) Eddie Butler – 5
2) (tie) Michael Wacha and Kyle Kendrick – 4
One cannot reasonably expect that Jose Aguilar, a platoon first baseman for the Milwaukee Brewers, would be among the league leaders in AVG during the regular season (he ended up hitting .265 with 16 HR in 279 AB’s for the Brew Crew in 2017). Nor can anyone expect Ian Happ to lead the league in RBI’s. However, what a lot of these guys have in common (obviously Bryce Harper is an exception, Tanaka and Hendricks are as well to a lesser extent) is that they are players who hadn’t previously had an established role on their team. Even Ben Revere and Pablo Sandoval, who are veteran players, you could say had a lot to prove in 2017. Revere was playing for his fourth team in 3 seasons, and Sandoval had been struggling over the previous two seasons with both injury and poor performance. Some of the players listed above had solid contributions to contending teams (Happ, Aguilar, Wacha, Gibson, Bird after he got healthy), while some didn’t play much or fell off the map entirely in the regular season (Sandoval, Blash, O’Brien, Marrero). The point being that these guys were not yet established big leaguers with their teams yet, and had the motivation in spring training to play hard for a spot on the big club.
In conclusion, it appears that spring training team performance didn’t have much relation to regular season success in 2017. As for individual players, young up-and-comers or veteran players with something to prove performed best in spring training, with mixed results in 2017 regular season play. All in all, spring training results may truly be meaningless when it comes to success in the regular season and postseason.
We’ll see if 2018 provides more of the same.
BaseballNerd 