Trade Deadline Big Picture Issue #2: How Much is a Wild Card Berth Worth?
The value of a Wild Card spot is pretty low. But based on the Astros place in their success cycle and their choices to sink resources into 2024, they are compelled to put even more into this season.
At the All Star Break, the Astros stand at 50-46. It’s not what we hoped for this season, but it represents significant progress from the team’s disastrous 7-19 start.
The Astros are 1 game behind the Mariners in the AL West race and 3.5 games behind the American League’s final Wild Card spot. In short, the Astros are squarely in the race for the playoffs.
The Fangraphs projection says that the Astros have a 45% chance of winning the division and a 57% chance of making the playoffs, more than the Red Sox and Royals—two teams ahead of them in the Wild Card standings. The Baseball Prospectus projection is more optimistic, giving the Astros a 64% chance of winning the division and a 75% chance of getting to the playoffs. Fangraphs also hosts two other standings projections.
Of course, even if they Astros overtake the Mariners and win the AL West, they are likely to be the #3 seed in the American League playoff tournament. Fangraphs gives the Astros only a 10% chance of overtaking the AL’s best teams—the Guardians, and one of the Orioles and Yankees in the AL East—to be the #2 seed and a bye to the Division Series.
The Astros are essentially competing for a Wild Card spot. And there is a good question of what is a Wild Card spot worth.
At one level, not very much. Postseason series are essentially crapshoots and thus, every team has an essentially equal shot to win the tournament. And that chance is one-in-twelve.
While it’s better to be the better team, that advantage is modest at best. Over the last three seasons, the World Series has been played by two #5 seeds, one #4 seed, one #3 seed who actually had the worst record of any playoff team in its league, one #2 seed, and one #1 seed. Anybody can win. As such, any individual move made the at the trading deadline has only a modest effect on a team’s playoff odds. Adding better players helps a team’s chances, but in a sport defined by the unpredictable, it’s not a big jump.
So that’s the argument against going big at the deadline. The odds of winning it all are long and no move will change those odds much.
But that is a general case, and applies to any move designed to help a team in the playoffs. The specifics of the Astros situation push the team much more in the direction of making a move.
First, the Astros need to actually make the playoffs and to do that they must outplay the teams ahead of them in the standings. Being in the Wild Card series may reduce a team’s chances of winning the World Series, but being out of the playoffs reduces them to 0.
The Astros have a clear need to starting pitching right now, as their 40 man roster has only five healthy starting pitchers at the moment, two of which are rookies and a third has never thrown a full season as a major league starter. The Astros may have help coming if and when Justin Verlander and Luis Garcia return from the IL, but their slow rehabs—along with the paused one of Lance McCullers—makes one question what the Astros will get from any of these pitchers in the second half of the season. Reinforcements are needed. Desperately.
Second, Jim Crane has made a clear decision that the Astros are all-in on winning the World Series in 2024. I noted this last season when the Astros acquired Justin Verlander in exchange for their two prospects:
The trade shows that owner Jim Crane is all in on winning another World Series his season or next season. It also shows the Crane has made a choice to focus on the 2023 and 2024 seasons at the expense of the team’s future in 2025 and beyond.
I said something similar when the team signed Josh Hader in the offseason.
And that is why I think the move for Hader fits in with the Verlander trade from last year….Jim Crane’s response to this crossroads has been to push more chips on to the table for 2024. He has made a decision to focus on 2024 and while it is expensive to sign a free agent like Hader, his ability to shut down offenses for one inning means this is the most bang you can get for your buck.
It is worth noting that the Astros present is more likely to be better than its near future. Fangraphs projects the Astros to win 35 more games over the rest of the season, tied for the best in the American League with the Yankees and Twins (!). With key players like Alex Bregman approaching free agency and a farm system that is likely to be less productive in the near future than it was in the near past,
To use another poker analogy, the Astros are pot committed to the 2024 season. They have already sunk a good deal of resources into winning in the 2024 and the major injuries to their rotation could undermine that work.
This logic compels the Astros to sink even more resources into their 2024 team, even if all it gets them is a one-in-twelve shot of winning the postseason tournament. The alternatives are likely worse.
This is a nice analysis! My one quibble is that I think a wild card team has a one in sixteen chance of winning the World Series, while a 1 or 2 seed has a one in eight chance since they get to skip a round (small sample size recent experience not withstanding!)