I suppose it’s possible still the baseball season will continue and a 2020 World Series champion will be crowned.
Box-Toppers 2020 preseason predictions (60-game scheduled revision)
Box-Toppers picks the Yankees to beat the Nationals in the 2020 World Series. Here is the predicted order of finish of all 30 teams in their divisions and their projected win total. With the season now reduced to a planned 60 games, our projected order of finish remains the same, but the projected win total is changed.Also, on July 23, it was announced the playoffs would be expanded from 10 to 16 teams this year. Here are Box-Toppers’ newly projected seedings and results.
| American League | |||||||
| EAST | Wins | CENTRAL | Wins | WEST | Wins | ||
| Yankees (1) | 41 | Twins (2) | 35 | Astros (3) | 32 | ||
| Rays (4) | 32 | Indians (5) | 32 | Rangers (6) | 31 | ||
| Red Sox (7) | 31 | White Sox | 30 | Angels (8) | 30 | ||
| Blue Jays | 30 | Royals | 24 | Athletics | 30 | ||
| Orioles | 20 | Tigers | 22 | Mariners | 21 | ||
| National League | |||||||
| EAST | Wins | CENTRAL | Wins | WEST | Wins | ||
| Nationals (1) | 36 | Reds (3) | 33 | Dodgers (2) | 33 | ||
| Braves (4) | 34 | Brewers (5) | 32 | Diamondbacks (6) | 32 | ||
| Mets (7) | 33 | Cubs | 32 | Padres | 29 | ||
| Phillies (8) | 32 | Cardinals | 30 | Rockies | 29 | ||
| Marlins | 24 | Pirates | 26 | Giants | 27 | ||
| Number in parenthesis is team’s seeding within their league for postseason tournament. The graphic on this page shows how the seeds match up for the postseason. | |||||||
| ALCS: Yankees over Twins | |||||||
| NLCS: Nationals over Dodgers | |||||||
| World Series: Yankees over Nationals | |||||||
And just in case that happens, let’s make sure our baseball bases are covered by once again revising Box-Toppers postseason predictions.
This will be the third version of Box-Toppers postseason picks. The first were posted in March, prior to COVID-19 shutting down the season when it seemed reasonable to think we might have a full 162-game schedule. The second were posted prior to the start of the new coronavirus-shortened 60-game schedule. And these are now posted in reaction to the changes in the postseason schedule, which were announced on opening day, July 23.
Related: Play ball? Trouble with COVID's curve: Do we even deserve baseball in 2020?
The revised postseason for this 60-game season will expand the number of teams qualifying from 10 to 16. In this new format, the top two teams from each of the six divisions qualify for the postseason. Plus, the next two teams with the best record in each league will also qualify, for a total of eight postseason teams in each league.
Cutting to the chase, this does not change the teams Box-Toppers picks to make the World Series—we still hold to our pick made last March that the New York Yankees will beat the Washington Nationals. In fact, our predictions for both league championship series and all league division series remain the same. The only thing that changes is in the new opening round of the playoff, which Major League Baseball is calling the Wild Card round.
Three more teams in each league will make the postseason under this plan. In our projections, those teams will be the Rangers, Red Sox and Angels in the American League and the Diamondbacks, Mets and Phillies in the National League. But don’t get too excited. Box-Toppers projects all six of those teams will lose in that postseason opening round.
In the opening Wild Card round, the eight teams in each league will be seeded according to their record from first to eight place. They will square off in a best-of-three series to be played entirely at the home of the higher seed.
Here’s how we have those Wild Card rounds shaking out:
In the AL:
Yankees (top seed) over the Angels (eighth seed).
Twins (second seed) over the Red Sox (seventh seed).
Astros (third seed) over the Rangers (sixth seed).
Rays (fourth seed) over the Indians (fifth seed).
In the NL:
Nationals (top seed) over the Phillies (eighth seed).
Dodgers (second seed) over the Mets (seventh seed).
Reds (third seed) over the Diamondbacks (sixth seed).
Braves (fourth seed) over the Brewers (fifth seed).
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Box-Toppers previously projected the Yankees to win 110 games in 2020. But with only 60 games on the entire schedule, Box-Toppers earlier this month re-projected teams’ wins based on the fact they are scheduled to play 37 percent of a 162 game schedule. For example, 37 percent of the Yankees’ originally projected 110 wins is 40.7 and that is rounded to 41.
Minor adjustments to win totals were made to break ties and to ensure all projected 900 games planned for 2020 were accounted for.
We picked the Yankees for 2020 based on a formula that considers players’ Box-Toppers point totals going back to 2015, with added weight given to more recent statistics.
Box-Toppers picks last year’s World Series champions, the Washington Nationals, to repeat as National League champions winning 36 games in the 60-game schedule (revised from 97 in a 162-game schedule), most in the NL.
Box-Toppers’ projected win totals for each team are in the chart Box-Toppers 2020 preseason predictions (60-game scheduled revision) elsewhere on this page. That chart also shows the 16 projected postseason teams—they are the team with the seeding number in parenthesis next to their name (for example, “Yankees (1)”).
Note that in the AL, the eight-seeded Angels are projected to win 30 games. However, three other AL teams are also projected to win 30—the White Sox, Blue Jays and Athletics. No tie-breaker games will be played to determine playoff spots or seedings. Instead, MLB has an elaborate system of tiebreakers in place. I’m projecting that in the case of this tie, the Angels win that tiebreaker.
Likewise, in the NL, the eighth-seeded Phillies are projected to win 32 games. However, the Cubs are also projected to win 32. As in the AL, Box-Toppers projects the Phillies to prevail in a tiebreaker.
Winners of each league Wild Card series will face off in the league division series. The winners of the first-vs.-eighth seed series will face the winners of the fourth-vs.-fifth series. The winners of the second-vs.-seventh seed series will face the winners of the third-vs.-sixth seed series. Those series will be best-of-five series, as in the past, with the opening two games at the higher seed, the next two games at the lower seed and the fifth and final game, if necessary, at the higher seed.
In our projections, that provides the same exact league division series matchups as we’ve previously predicted (as seen in the 2020 preseason playoff picks graphic on this page):
AL Divisional Series—Twins over Astros, Yankees over Rays.
NL Divisional Series—Dodgers over Reds, Nationals over Braves.
Our league championship series projections (best-of-seven series) are also unchanged:
AL Championship Series—Yankees over Twins.
NL Championship Series—Nationals over Dodgers.
World Series—Yankees over Nationals.
See our previous post for more about the information we used to determine win totals and team rankings.
About Box-Toppers—Box-Toppers tracks who most helps their team win the most games. Using standard box score statistics, Box-Toppers uses a simple formula to determine a Player of the Game for each Major League Baseball game played. That player is the person who contributed most to his team’s win. In regular season games, players earn 1.0 Box-Toppers point for being named Player of the Game and can earn bonus points for being Player of the Day or top player or batter in their league for the day.
Box-Toppers strives for accuracy. See a mistake in a post? A wrong name, wrong team, grammar error, spelling goof, etc.? Thanks for pointing it out! Contact Box-Toppers here. Let's fix it and make it right.
Related:
Box-Toppers 2020 preseason team rankings: Yankees top Box-Toppers 2020 preseason team rankings; champion Nationals rank 2nd
Box-Toppers 2020 preseason win total and playoff predictions, take 1. Our initial post from March based on a pre-pandemic 162-game schedule. (Post also includes how our 2019 picks fared and how our preseason picks have historically fared.) Box-Toppers picks Yankees over Nationals in 2020 World Series
Box-Toppers 2020 preseason win total and playoff predictions, take 2. Our post from July 10 based on a pandemic-shortened 60-game schedule with the previous, 10-team postseason format in place: Box-Toppers still picks Yankees over Nationals in 2020 World Series in pandemic-shortened season
Box-Toppers 2019 preseason prediction: Box-Toppers picks Yankees over Cubs in 2019 World Series