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The 2024 Milwaukee Brewers have proved a lot of doubters wrong by winning the NL Central, but if they’re going to succeed in the postseason they’re going to have to defy the projections once again.
Their comeback win on Sunday was their 89th of the season, and in March FanGraphs had them projected to win just 80. If they hold that pace through the season’s final week they’ll outperform those projections by 12 games. That’s not terribly unusual: In February we noted that the median FanGraphs projection has an error of 6.5 wins. The Brewers and Guardians are both in line to make the postseason while exceeding their projected win total by 12 wins or more, and if they do that they’ll be the 20th and 21st teams to check both of those boxes in a full season since 2016.
The list of teams that have reached the postseason while defying the projection models includes some remarkable outliers. The 2021 Giants were projected for just 76 wins in a season where they actually won 107 games, and the 2023 Orioles (+25 wins) and 2018 Athletics (+19 wins) also greatly outperformed expectations on their way to playoff appearances. Those teams all have another thing in common, however: They all had short October runs and were eliminated prior to the League Championship Series round.
In full seasons since 2016 there have been 74 teams in the MLB postseason (10 per year from 2016-19 and 2021, 12 per season in 2022 and 2023), and 28 of those teams (slightly under 38%) of them have reached the LCS round. Teams that outplayed their projected regular season record by 12 wins or more, however, are just 3-for-19 (16%) reaching the LCS over that same span:
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- The 2022 Astros were projected for 90 wins but actually won 106 on their way to a championship.
- Similarly, the 2018 Red Sox were also expected to be a 92.5-win team but dramatically outperformed that number, winning 108 games and a World Series.
- Finally, the 2018 Brewers were projected for just 80 wins before winning the NL Central and coming within a game of the World Series.
Two of those teams don’t have much in common with the third, however: The Astros and Red Sox were expected to be contenders and grew into juggernauts, while the 2018 Brewers were expected to be an also-ran. Over that same window (2016-19 and 2021-23) 17 teams have reached postseason play in a season where FanGraphs projected them to finish under .500, but just three (17.6%) of those teams have advanced to the LCS round:
- The 2023 Diamondbacks played in the World Series in a season where they were projected to win just 78 games.
- Before them, the last sub-.500 projected team to appear in an LCS was the 2018 Brewers team mentioned above.
- The 2017 Yankees were projected for 79 wins and a last place finish in an ultra-competitive NL East before winning 91 games and going to the ALCS.
On the other end of the spectrum, the 17 teams at the top of that list have made the playoffs in seasons where they opened the season projected to win an average of 96.2 games. Those teams reached the LCS round or beyond 53% of the time. Everyone is fighting for a seat at the same table, but the folks that seemed like likely candidates in March often elbow out the underdogs early.
The Brewers are one of several teams that may get an opportunity to defy those odds this October: It’s possible the Guardians, Royals, Tigers and Mets will all join the Crew in the postseason despite having been projected to collect more losses than wins. If recent history is any indication, however, those overachieving teams are significantly less likely to carry that momentum into a successful run at a championship.
