Is your favorite team a potential 2024 World Series contender ... or is 2025 (or beyond) a more realistic target?
One thing we were reminded of last season is that prognostications are all about expectation, not destiny.
We divide the clubs into five tiers based on projections and probabilities. The higher the tier, the more likely a team is to find itself in the next Fall Classic. Last season, the eventual champion Texas Rangers landed in my preseason Tier 3; their World Series opponents, the Arizona Diamondbacks, were in Tier 4.
This reflects the new reality in Major League Baseball, with its expanded postseason and more room for chaos. To paraphrase managers and executives around the game: "We just want to get into the tournament."
With that in mind, let's see how teams stack up based on my most up-to-date simulations, run just before last Thursday's openers, and what the outcome of those simulations tells us about where each franchise is and where it might be going.