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On baseball robots, probabilities, and getting fooled again

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What is this nonsense? Last week, Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA declared it a one-hundred-percent certainty that the Detroit Tigers would appear in the 2025 MLB playoffs. Today, though, the ostensible gold standard in baseball-projection machines has engaged in a very unfortunate bit of retrenchment:

To be sure, I would not blame anybody for downgrading Detroit after Tarik Skubal surrendered a grand slam during a five-run seventh inning that ignominiously crowned a Tigers loss last night to a vagrant team playing in a minor-league park. Far from the August heater the team generated to fuel their run to the 2024 postseason, however, these Tigers have struggled in the second half with the likes of the Twins, Pirates, and A’s in a manner belying a true talent level perhaps somewhere below their overall winning percentage. And Javy Baez doing that bad thing again feels like a microcosm of team-wide regression trends in action:

But BP’s PECOTA conceded none of that reasonable skepticism. It said this final outcome was a guaranteed certainty; no hedge, error margin, or other reservation of any kind. Presumably, it knew that Skubal could have a bad night, Baez could turn back into a pumpkin, and Jack Flaherty could continue to melt down, but it said it was not concerned. Having crossed that triple-digit threshold of certitude, it probably did not love what it saw in Sacramento last night, but one envisioned PECOTA taking that on the chin with an unwavering forward stare into a known and unavoidable future.

In short, once you go to 100%, you simply cannot go back. Again a concession from me: I will grant force majeure: If the season suddenly and prematurely ended due to a public-health catastrophe, war, or series of natural or Manfred-made disasters, then PECOTA probably gets a pass. Short of that, though? If 100% means Fool me once, shame on you. But fool me twice, baseball robot? My promise to the ALDLAND readers is that I will not be fooled again.

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Previously
Death, Taxes, and the Detroit Tigers in the 2025 MLB playoffs?
More Likely Than Not: The 2025 Detroit Tigers are winning, and winning matters
Maximum Tork: How Spencer Torkelson is cranking up his hot start in 2025
Before you accuse me, take a look at Jake Rogers
Is it Tiger Time? Tarik Skubal says so

More Likely Than Not: The 2025 Detroit Tigers are winning, and winning matters

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Before the start of the 2025 MLB season, I noted the relatively dim projections of the Detroit Tigers’ chances to earn a postseason berth for the second consecutive season. And while I also noted a reason to be skeptical of those dour forecasts, I cannot say I thought things would turn so rosy so quickly.

Entering Opening Day, Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA announced the Tigers’ playoff odds at below twenty-percent. FanGraphs’ ZiPS, while less hateful, still came in worse than a coin flip at under forty-four-percent. Then Detroit started playing the games. And then they started winning the games. In fact, they won nineteen games before May 1 for the first time in their 124-year history, and, the next day, they became the first AL team to reach twenty wins on the season.

Some bitter Cleveland fans pointed out that Detroit has notched all of those wins while playing a lot of teams with sub-.500 records. That may be true. I don’t know. I do know that, according to ESPN, the Tigers overall have faced the tenth-toughest opponent schedule to date, while the rest of the AL Central has been coasting on cupcakes:

Regardless, postseason eligibility depends on standings, and standings depend only on wins, and wins are wins, and the Tigers now have twenty wins in a month’s worth of games that even PECOTA and ZiPS can’t ignore. As a result, those playoff odds have skyrocketed. BP is up from 19.9% to 61.1%, and FanGraphs is up from 43.6% to 81.1%!

There inevitably will be fluctuations, but banked wins cannot be unwon, and if relative breakouts from the on-the-ropes gang of Javy Baez, Spencer Torkelson, and Casey Mize can last, so too can this team. At least for right now, this is the fun baseball place.

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Previously
Maximum Tork: How Spencer Torkelson is cranking up his hot start in 2025
Before you accuse me, take a look at Jake Rogers
Is it Tiger Time? Tarik Skubal says so

Is it Tiger Time? Tarik Skubal says so

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On the eve of his Opening Day start, the second of his career and just the fourth time a reigning Cy Young winner will make his season debut against the defending World Series champions, Tarik Skubal published an open letter in which he declared the beginning of “a new era of Tigers baseball.” After last year’s surprise sprint to the playoffs and win over the Houston Astros, this is exciting stuff. Skubal’s declaration addresses the current moment and looks forward, his letter also predicting this team’s “eventual greatness.”

What does the future hold for the Detroit Tigers? Skubal has more influence on that than most, so his pronouncement carries great weight. Other observers are a bit more cautious than him, though. FanGraphs (ZiPS) projects an 81-81 record and a 43.6% chance of making the playoffs. Baseball Prospectus (PECOTA) is much less optimistic, chiming in at 78.5-83.5, with just a 19.9% chance of making the playoffs.

There’s quite a bit of variance between those two systems’ projections, particularly with respect to the likelihood Detroit makes it back to the postseason again this year. Considering the path the Tigers took to get there last year, catching fire in mid-August and never looking back, it’s reasonable to wonder whether that was a fluke. With due respect to Alex Cobb, Gleyber Torres, Tommy Kahnle, Jack Flaherty (welcome back!), Bailey Horn (welcome back, sort of!), Andrew Chafin (welcome back again again!), Jose Urquidy, and Manuel Margot, you can be excused for thinking the Tigers underwhelmed in the building-on-success department. There’s also a ripe case of subtraction by addition in the outfield, which is where you’ll see Javier Baez, just coincidentally absent for Detroit’s amazing August-October run last year, returning and making his debut as a real live outfielder. (In case you were wondering, yes, Baez remains under contract through 2027.)

Last year’s team went 86-76. They were 78-84 in 2023. The combination of late overachievement; middling offseason moves plus absence of history of strong in-season moves from current ownership and management; Meadows-family injuries; emerging whispers of Riley Greene fragility; and the return of Baez have me projecting an 80-82 record.

No affiliate links here, but multiple sports books currently have Detroit’s win-total line at 83.5.

The Tigers’ season opens tonight on the road against the Los Angeles Dodgers on ESPN. After three games in LA, they head north for three games in Seattle before opening at home against the Chicago White Sox on the afternoon of Friday, April 4. If nothing else, keep an eye on Skubal: he’s increased his production value each season. Repeating that feat this season would mark a very special performance.

Everyone’s Going to be Worse: 2024 Detroit Tigers Season Preview Notes

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Many have published their previews of the 2024 Detroit Tigers season. What follows are my notes from those previews, primarily the corresponding Baseball Prospectus annual chapter and its PECOTA projections, along with my own annotations and recent news updates.

Everyone’s Going to be Worse

Only the really hopeless Athletics and White Sox scored fewer runs than the Tigers in 2023. The reason the Tigers’ offensive outlook today isn’t hopeless (as any good Detroit fan will tell you too many times) is because Spencer Torkelson had a really good second half last season, and that’s going to be his new baseline for his major-league career, which really will begin this year. His 121 wRC+ and a homer every 16.2 plate appearances– his second half– sounds a lot more like a good first baseman than a 95 wRC+ and a homer every 31.3 plate appearances– his first half. Torkelson is the case study that proves Tigers fans’ optimism for 2024 is grounded in reality: all good trends will be banked as established new normals, while any bad trends have reasonable explanations and therefore safely may and should be ignored.

The cold baseball computer isn’t buying the Midwestern thaw. PECOTA projects every Tigers hitter listed in the team’s BP annual chapter to be worse in 2024 than he was in 2023. Can that sentence really be true? I don’t know whether it can but it is. Sure, some of these guys are Not Ready For Primetime Players, minors types whose prospect statuses merit their mention but, at least for this year, understandably don’t project as majors talent. But it really is bad news for all of the alleged major-league talent.

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