The 2024 baseball season is not too long away, and seeing as how this blog is called The Baseball Pessimist, rather than predicting the World Series champion, I will instead predict which team will be the worst next season.
There are a number of teams I can choose from, and these are the A's, the Royals, the White Sox, the Angels, and the Rockies.
The A's were the worst team in 2023, losing 111 games and hitting .223 with a .669 OPS. Their best player, according to WAR (a not very helpful statistic), was Zack Gelof, who played in only 69 games. And I have not heard anything about them making moves this offseason. It seems that they are content being horrible, but in Vegas instead of Oakland.
The Royals were also very bad last season, losing 106 games. They hit .244 (only ninth in the league), and had a .700 OPS. While both of these numbers are monumentally better than the A's, they've really been horrible since 2018, whereas the A's made the playoffs as recently as 2020, when they won their division. The last season the Royals were over .500 was 2015, when they actually won the World Series. However, they have made a number of moves this postseason, including bolstering their bullpen with Will Smith and Chris Stratton, who they pilfered from the Rangers. They also grabbed outfielder Hunter Renfroe and starting pitchers Michael Wacha and Kyle Wright.
The White Sox tell an interesting story. After winning their division in 2021, they fell to .500 in '22 and lost 101 games in 2023. They have had a sharp decline, and after having a rotten season out of Tim Anderson, removed him from their roster completely. They had a 4.87 team ERA to go along with the lowest OBP in the AL. They have not been very loud in the offseason, with probably their best addition being Paul DeJong.
The Angels were definitely not on the level of bad as any of the other teams being listed today. They only lost 89 games last season (only, heh heh), while all of the other teams lost over 100. However, what they lost in the offseason was much worse than 89 games. Shohei Ohtani signed in free agency with the Dodgers. So they don't have the best player in the MLB anymore, and they also traded away their whole farm system to try and make the playoffs and keep him. They also got rid of Lucas Giolito, whom they traded for, after only having him for 6 starts. In addition to this, they gave up many other of their best players so that they could save money. They also have been very quiet this offseason, and so I don't expect much from them.
The Rockies lost 103 games in 2023, 94 in 2022, 87 in 2021, 34 in the 60 game 2020, 91 in 2019, etc. Sorry, but I just really like to list all the seasons straight they've been bad. After losing 103 games last year, they also seem content, with their biggest additions being pitchers Dakota Hudson and Cal Quantrill.
So, while all five of these teams don't seem to be in contention for the playoffs next year, or for a while, I would think that the best of these teams next year would be the Royals. Who will be the worst?
I am confident that the A's will remain the worst team in the majors in 2024. They don't have a good roster, and haven't really done anything to make their team better. It seems that they will be awful for a long time to come.
In order from worst to best, I would predict that next year...
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