NEWSLETTER
Over at The Athletic, Jon Greenberg had a sit-down with Chicago Cubs President of Baseball Operations Jed Hoyer on the eve of the 2024 regular season.
It’s a wide-ranging conversation for you to read at your leisure today:
Although there weren’t necessarily a number of huge NEWS reveals, there were certainly a number of things I found interesting to contemplate.
The biggest one that jumped out at me was this one from Hoyer when he was asked whether the Cubs’ internal projections for 2024 are higher or lower than the publicly-available projections (which generally have the Cubs in the 81 to 83 win range):
“I think every team is always a touch higher than the externals, probably because they are a little bit higher on their own players and what they did. I’m excited to get going. I think the division is very flat. And I think we need to go play really well. There’s no way around it. There are teams that can have the 30th percentile outcome of their projections and still make the playoffs and we’re not one of those teams. We need to perform probably at or a little bit better than our projections in order to have a really successful season. The Atlanta Braves and the Dodgers, they have built a cushion where things can happen and they can they can undershoot their projections and win. We can’t do that. So we need to eke everything out of this group.”
That the Cubs are internally projecting a median win total higher than 83 wins is not necessarily a surprise to me. I think they are very optimistic on the coming internal developments. And hey, I’d probably peg the median win total at about 84 right now, so that makes me more optimistic than the public numbers, too.
What stood out, though, was the admission that the Cubs MAY have to outperform their median projections (even the Cubs internal ones?) in order to have a “really successful season.” I appreciate the line about the Cubs not being able to make the playoffs if they hit their 30th percentile outcome*, even if the entire goal to build a team that WOULD still make the playoffs if they underperform like that (i.e., the cited Braves and Dodgers).
I wonder if the Cubs have their median projection, internally, at something like … 85 wins? Maybe 86? If they’re higher on themselves than the public numbers, that could be where things fall. And 85-86 wins would leave the Cubs right on the cusp of where you would EXPECT a playoff appearance, and performing “at” that projection would occasionally get you in, but not consistently. Most years, the would-have-been final Wild Card spot (if operating in the current playoff system) is right around 85 to 88 wins. Winning the division, by contrast, typically would require something in the 88 to 90 win range, minimum.
Consider that the public systems also have the Cubs around a 40% chance to make the playoffs, so the Cubs internally being at more like a 50% chance tracks.
So that is all to say, yeah, I think the Cubs’ internal projection is probably in the 85, 86-win range for a median season of this group of players. Not great. Not terrible. It would leave the Cubs just about equally likely to overperform and definitely make the playoffs (aka a successful season), OR underperform and definitely miss the playoffs. It’s not where I would’ve wanted the Cubs to be, on paper at this point, when the offseason began. But at least there’s a decent chance there.
I guess that’s where the hope that Craig Counsell always helps his team overperform kicks in. The Cubs didn’t punt David Ross and commit $40 million to Counsell for no reason, after all.
*(For those unfamiliar, a 30th percentile outcome essentially means something like, if you simulated the season 10,000 times using the actual true talent of a team, 70% of the outcomes would have a higher win total than the 30th percentile outcome for the Cubs. So if the Cubs were to, in fact, merely hit their 30th percentile outcome in 2024, that’d probably mean they won about 75 or 76 games or so. By contrast, the 30th percentile outcome for a team like the Braves or Dodgers is probably something like 90 or 91 wins. They are that stacked.)
