Batter's Box Interactive Magazine: Snakes and Ladders 2024

- As you can probably guess, this type of thing doesn't happen very often (even if Baltimore did something very similar just two years ago.) There have been 2,684 team seasons in the two leagues since 1901, and this is one of the top 15 single season improvements from one year to the next. It's a remarkable achievement and there was nothing flukey about it - in fact, I think it was even more impressive than it looks (and it looks impressive enough.) But the 2024 Royals were probably a little better than their 86-76 record indicates and the 2023 team was a little worse than their ghastly 56-106 record (the 2023 team actually had a winning record in the one-run games, while this year's team lost more of them than they won.) The offence was about 60 runs better, thanks mostly to a bounce back year from Salvador Perez and, especially, the continued development of Bobby Witt Jr . Witt may have just had the best season anyone has had in this franchise's history. Is there a single player in the game you would rather have to build your franchise around? Not to my mind. But most of the Royals' 2024 improvement actually came on the pitcher's mound, and most of it was from the starting rotation. They got a full season from Cole Ragans (stolen from Texas in exchange for two months of Aroldis Chapman) and a solid bounce-back year from Kyle Singer. They signed two free agent starters, Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha, All four pitched well, and all four stayed healthy. They even added Michael Lorenzen at the deadline as an upgrade on fifth starter Alec Marsh. Despite some issues in the bullpen, the Royals allowed 215 fewer runs than they had the year before.

- Well, when you start where the A's were, there's usually nowhere to go but up (although the 2024 White Sox put that notion to the test.) The 2023 A's gave up 924 runs, in one of the best pitcher's parks in all of baseball. This year's team had a below average rotation, but that was still an enormous upgrade on the abominable 2023 crew. And they actually had a pretty good bullpen this season. They cut their runs allowed by a whopping 160. They were also much better an offense, In a year when the average AL team scored about 40 runs less than the year before, the A's scored 58 more than the year before. Mainly, they got some help for Brent Rooker - the young outfielders JJ Bleday and Lawrence Butler had fine seasons, as did catcher Shea Langeliers.

- Cleveland seemed to make modest improvements everywhere that in the end added up to something quite impressive. They fared better in the close games. They scored 46 more runs than they had in 2023, and allowed 76 less - with offense down somewhat in 2024, it means the offensive improvement was probably more significant. They already had good pitching in 2023 - it was their offense that was below average. Steven Kwan and David Fry gave Jose Ramirez and Josh Naylor some help, and Ramirez was magnificent. They had all sorts of issues in the rotation, but their bullpen was sensational - they got 623 IP of 2.57 pitching from their relief corps.

- The Mets did make some modest improvements, although by far the most significant factor in their better season was their outstanding performance in the close games (28-16.) But they were legitimately better as well. What had been a three man offense (Lindor, Nimmo, Alonso) got some help and Lindor and Mark Vientos were especially good. The attack went from below average to fifth best in the league.

- No mystery here. The Yankees pitching wasn't quite as good as it had been in 2023; this time around it was just a little better than league average. After all, their ace starter, the reigning Cy Young winner, missed half the season. But the bats, two of them in particular, made up for it. The Yankees scored 142 more runs than they scored in 2023. Juan Soto was basically just as good as Aaron Judge had been in 2023 - except Soto didn't miss two months of the season. And Judge himself was out of this world, and ascending some higher plane of existence. Aaron Judge's performance in 2024 was the greatest season any AL hitter has had in at least half a century - and Judge was clearly a more valuable player than Ted Williams was in 1957 anyway. And by the time the season was over, this dynamic duo was actually getting some help from Jazz Chisholm, Giancarlo Stanton, and Austin Wells.

- Two things happened to the Cardinals, of roughly equal impact. One was actual, legitimate improvement; the other was simply their luck changing from not great to pretty good. The Cardinals were significantly better at run prevention - they allowed a gruesome 829 runs in 2023, and shaved that by 110, which brought them to the level of league average. Simply replacing Adam Wainwright with Sonny Gray accounted for much of that. And they caught some breaks - they'd gone 17-25 in the close games in 2023, a little worse than one would expect. This year, they posted a nice 29-22 record.

- Nobody knows anything. As you will recall, the Padres traded their best hitter in 2023 - Juan Soto, a mighty offensive force - for a package that included Michael King. who would turn out to be their best pitcher in 2024. How did this affect the team? Well, the offense got a little better, and the run prevention got a little worse because nobody knows anything! Go figure! Okay, here's what really happened. The 2023 Padres were unbelievably awful in close games. They played 32 of them, and won only 9. They were always a 90 win team in disguise, and this year they performed exactly as expected in the close games. That's all it took.

- On the one hand, it's not too surprising to see the Orioles here. I think everyone noticed that they were scuffling over the last three months (38-40). And yet, the two seasons are not all that different. The 2023 team won 101 games, but they were extremely fortunate in the close games (30-16) and that's not something that holds up from year to year. And sure enough, this year's team went 14-18 in the close games. In terms of how well they played in the two seasons, it's more like they went from 97 wins to 94, and it's something of a fluke that they're here at all. Their pitching did slip a little - it was still league average- but an improved offense made up for most of that.

- The Angels pitching was both better (they gave up 32 fewer runs than in 2023) and worse than it had been (only the White Sox actually allowed more runs in 2024.) That should never happen to a team that plays 81 games in that ball park but even so, they had bigger problems on the other side of the ball. They lost 104 runs of offense, most of it disappearing up the freeway to Dodger Stadium.

- The 2023 Rangers rode league average pitching and the AL's highest scoring offense all the way to a championship. The 2024 team brought back the league average pitching, but the offense slipped to league average as well. They lost 198 runs, from 881 to 683. With the exception of first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, all of their hitters were down significantly from the year before. Corey Seager went from MVP candidate to merely Very Good; Marcus Semien went from Very Good to Average; Adolis Garcia went from Very Good to Below Average.

- The Jays scored 75 fewer runs and allowed 72 more than they had in 2023. It's easy enough to see what happened to the offense. The team got about 30 fewer runs out of both the shortstop and right field positions, and about 20 fewer from both catcher and centre field. That's 100 missing runs right there, and Guerrero's big year could only make up for a fraction of that. But this still wasn't the biggest problem - after all, league offense was down by 40 runs. The Jays effectively lost only about 30 runs, which shouldn't have been the end of the world. Alas, giving up 72 more runs in a year when offense was down - that's a problem. I don't think I need to tell you how that happened. It really was the bullpen! Jays relief pitchers had allowed 253 Runs in 2023. In basically the same number of innings, they allowed 331 Runs in 2024. There's your 72 additional runs allowed right there, with half a dozen left over. Just for fun, the bullpen also allowed quite a few more Inherited Runners (77, compared to 54 the year before) to score as well

- No mystery here. The 2023 Braves scored 947 runs, the most by any team since the 2007 Yankees. It was the most by any Braves team since... well, they weren't even the Braves back in 1897 when the mighty Boston Beaneaters scored 1025 runs in just 135 games. But Ronald Acuna Jr played just 49 games, Sean Murphy missed half the season and didn't do much when he did play, Matt Olson and Ozzie Albies both fell off sharply from the year before. The Braves scored 243 fewer runs in 2024, and they survived largely because they also allowed 109 fewer than they had the year before. Chris Sale stepped in for the missing Spencer Strider and actually pitched much better than their injured 20 game winner, they got a full season from Max Fried and outstanding work from Reynaldo Lopez, of all people. They were actually a little unlucky to only win 89 games - they didn't do well at all (18-25) in the close games.

- History seems to have anointed the Baltimore Orioles of the 1890s as the greatest team of the 19th century, despite the fact that the Boston Beaneaters of the same period were pretty clearly better than those old Orioles. I have always attributed this to the fact that for much of the game's history (certainly until the westward expansion of the late 1950s, and even for decades after that) New York City was very much the centre of the baseball universe in general, and the baseball media universe in particular. And two old Orioles (John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson) spent decades managing in New York and they never stopped embroidering the legend of those old Orioles. I'm sure that's the main factor, but sometimes I wonder if it's all because of the team nickname. We just can't accept the reality that one of the greatest teams in history was actually called the "Beaneaters." Accordingly, that inconvenient truth has been banished to some deep memory hole.

- The Rays lost 256 Runs from 2023 to 2024, which is a) pretty much the whole story, and b) mind-boggling. They went from second best in the league at scoring runs to second worst. A lot of people needed to come up short for such a disaster to occur, and that's what a lot of people did. Jose Siri, Josh Lowe, Harold Ramirez were all basically useless. Jose Caballero couldn't replace Wander Franco's bat. Yandy Diaz had been one of the AL's best hitters in 2023; this time around he was merely okay, and much the same could be said of Randy Arozarena before he was traded to Seattle. Brandon Lowe and Isaac Paredes were the only hitters who kept up their production, but Lowe missed his usual 50 games and Paredes now plays for the Cubs.

- Take the second worst offense in the major leagues, that of the 2023 White Sox, who scored a measly 641 runs. Only the pathetic 2023 Oakland A's scored less often. Then take away 134 of those runs, leaving them with a pitiful 507 scored. Tommy Pham - .266/.330/.380 with 5 HRs in 70 games - yes, Tommy Pham was easily their best hitter (and they traded him to a real baseball team at the deadline, lest he infect the others with his competence.) They didn't allow quite as many runs as they had in 2023, but still gave up more than any other team in the AL because the two teams that had been even worse than them the year before (Oakland and Kansas City) both improved significantly in that department. Take a bow, Jerry Reinsdorf.

- They complain about the pitching injuries in south Florida, and yeah, sure, it had something to do with their problems. Of course they missed Sandy Alcantara, Eury Perez, and Braxton Garrett. Only the Colorado Rockies allowed more runs than the Marlins this year, and those two teams should never be within sight of one another considering the very different home fields they play in. But it's important to realize that the 2023 Marlins were something of a fraud. They simply weren't all that good, despite the nice W-L record and the trip to the post-season. So how did it happen? How did a team which scored 666 runs and allowed 723 manage to go 84-78 anyway? Simple - by posting the best record in the majors in the close games. The 2023 Marlins were a ridiculous 33-14 in the one-run games. That's always a fluke, and there's always a reckoning, and it's never pretty. They were still better than they had any right to be in those games this year (23-20) but reality bites and it bit them good.

Snakes and Ladders 2024

Thursday, October 03 2024 @ 10:15 AM EDT