2024 World Series contender tiers: When will your team win?

 

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 year 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.

 

A note on methodology: Teams have been slotted into tiers according to their likelihood of being handed the Commissioner’s Trophy after the last out of the World Series seven months from now.

That likelihood is based on my final preseason forecast for each team, a projection for each club’s win total built on a rating of the rosters, depth charts, strengths and weaknesses of the consensus projections for each team. That rating is then used in a run of 10,000 simulations of the 2024 schedule to estimate each team’s chance to win it all.

Teams are ranked by average simulation wins and are then placed into one of five tiers according to their playoff and championship probabilities. For the latter tiers, a rough ETA for their arrival as contenders has been added.

TIER 1: THEIR TIME IS NOW

Teams in this group are the front-runners to land the top seed in their league and should be all-in trying to win the 2024 World Series.

Los Angeles Dodgers

Win average: 100
In the playoffs: 96.4%
Champions: 22.3%

State of the franchise: It really hasn’t changed. The Dodgers are almost always among the best on-paper clubs entering the season. They are postseason fixtures and heavy favorites to win the National League West. This year, the Dodgers have one of their strongest projection-based outlooks yet, not surprising for a team that swamped everyone else in offseason spending. But just as it is every year, so it is in 2024: This season is all about what happens after Game No. 162.

Pivotal issue: The Dodgers don’t just spend at the top of the roster. They address every stratum of the organization with a constant churn of moves and depth-building transactions. In theory, this should make them impermeable to unforeseen misfortune, but in baseball there is no such thing. And so even the Dodgers found themselves short in the rotation once the 2023 playoffs began. They appear to be strong in that department once again, especially as Walker Buehler, Clayton Kershaw and other injury returnees are peppered back in. But finding a healthy, well-functioning rotation group by the time the next NLDS round gets underway is one of the most important objectives for the Dodgers during the new season.

Baltimore Orioles

Win average: 91.4
In the playoffs: 74.8%
Champions: 7.5%

State of the franchise: The arrow is pointing up. During both of the past two years, the Orioles’ results have reflected an organization ahead of schedule. The season the Orioles had in 2022 seems like the one they should have had in 2023. The season they had in 2023 should have been the upside for Baltimore’s multiseason rebuild. But the win column is not always perfectly aligned with the true talent level of a club. For Baltimore, the fact that the team keeps outstripping its baseline talent is a great sign. That’s going to be harder to do now that the Orioles’ surfeit of high-upside talent is reaching the big leagues. We’re already at the point where Baltimore’s success isn’t determined by what happens from late March to the end of September, but by what occurs after that. That’s a good place to be.

Pivotal issue: The Orioles need to add to the rotation. That’s true even if Corbin Burnes keeps being Corbin Burnes, Grayson Rodriguez steps up a level and Kyle Bradish’s injury problems prove to be temporary. This is more of an October issue, but it’s even more true for Baltimore this season than last because of the injury in the bullpen suffered by Felix Bautista. The good news is that in terms of payroll flexibility and a depth of coveted prospects, the Orioles are as well positioned to add during the season as anyone.

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Arizona Diamondbacks

Win average: 89.6
In the playoffs: 73.1%
Champions: 4.4%

State of the franchise: The Diamondbacks emerged from a three-year rebuild last season, climbing over .500 despite being outscored and squeezing into the playoffs. Once the D-backs made the tournament, they just kept winning, ultimately falling two wins shy of the franchise’s second championship. The postseason run might have exaggerated the actual level of improvement in last year’s club, which would have been impressive even without the pennant. In turn, the October spree might heighten expectations entering 2024, but Arizona looks like a contender here to stay, at least for a few years. The Diamondbacks added key veterans all over the roster and have built a potentially powerful core rotation with the acquisitions of veteran lefties Eduardo Rodriguez and Jordan Montgomery. The fun is just getting started.

Pivotal issue: The bullpen came together at just the right time in 2023, but such flashpoint success in this area is often fleeting. With closer Paul Sewald out to begin the season with an oblique issue, the Diamondbacks will be shuffling through late-inning options for a while and it will be interesting to see what pecking order emerges. The additions to the rotation should eventually give Torey Lovullo the flexibility to work some of his younger starters, such as Tommy Henry and Ryne Nelson, into combo-type roles that could come in handy in October. But Arizona has to get back there first.