Ranking Each MLB Division Winner's Chance of Repeating In 2024
It's technically possible for all six MLB division champions from one season to repeat in the following season. But the next time it happens will be the first.
In other words, some turnover should be expected at the top of each division in 2024. The question, of course, is a two-parter: how much, and where?
To answer this question, let's rank the six division winners from last season based on their likelihood to repeat as champs this season. Odds from Baseball Prospectus and FanGraphs were helpful in this respect, but it was more about gut feeling.
Namely, it's about whether each team stands to be better, worse or about the same as it was last year based on offseason activity, injuries and any potential performance fluctuations. We also considered whether there's another team within each division that looms as a threat to take the crown.
Let's get to it.
6. NL Central: Milwaukee Brewers
2023 Record: 92-70
Baseball Prospectus 2024 Division Odds: 15.7 percent
FanGraphs 2024 Division Odds: 19.0 percent
What Needs to Go Right
The Brewers without Craig Counsell or Corbin Burnes, much less Brandon Woodruff while he recovers from shoulder surgery? That doesn't sound so good.
The question of how much those losses will hurt could hinge as much on new manager Pat Murphy as on newcomer hurlers Jakob Junis and DL Hall. Murphy will need to replicate Counsell's deft touch with pitching changes, which will be no easy task.
In other words, the Brewers probably shouldn't count on being able to lean on their pitching in 2024. Instead, they'd do well to put their weight on one preexisting strength while simultaneously shoring up a weakness.
The addition of Joey Ortiz at third base should make the Brewers an even stronger defensive team after they led MLB with 40 Outs Above Average in 2023, yet an offense that posted the lowest OPS of any playoff team last season needs to shape up. And there's hope there.
Willy Adames is better than the low-.700s OPS guy he was last year, and Rhys Hoskins should provide 30-odd home runs in his return from a torn ACL. Sal Frelick and Garrett Mitchell are both talented young hitters, and newly extended soon-to-be 20-year-old center fielder Jackson Chourio has the power and speed to mount a Rookie of the Year pursuit.
Best Candidate to Steal the NL Central: Chicago Cubs
This is perhaps a controversial pick, given that the St. Louis Cardinals have the better division odds at both Baseball Prospectus and FanGraphs. But the Cubs were the superior team last year even though they dramatically underperformed, and they also had a better offseason.
Hiring Counsell away from Milwaukee might have been the Cubs' best move even if they hadn't also re-signed Cody Bellinger and added Shōta Imanaga and Hector Neris. The result is a team that isn't without holes, but one that doesn't have major flaws, either.
5. AL East: Baltimore Orioles
2023 Record: 101-61
Baseball Prospectus 2024 Division Odds: 12.2 percent
FanGraphs 2024 Division Odds: 16.3 percent
What Needs to Go Right
Those odds seem borderline disrespectful of an Orioles team that was last seen winning 101 games in MLB's toughest division, but let's be real for a second.
Some overachieving likely did take place in Baltimore last year, and the O's are now set to begin 2024 with a deficit on the mound. Kyle Bradish and John Means will both start on the injured list, while Félix Bautista will be out all year to recover from Tommy John surgery.
Still, Baltimore could ask for worse guys to hold down the fort than Corbin Burnes and Grayson Rodriguez. At 2.85, Burnes has the lowest ERA of any qualified starter since moving back to a starting role in 2020. And after a rocky debut, Rodriguez electrified with a 2.58 ERA over his last 13 appearances of 2023.
Otherwise, an Orioles lineup that was already littered with quality hitters may be about to get its best yet. That's No. 1 prospect Jackson Holliday, who's slated to start at shortstop after torching the minors with a 323/.442/.499 split last year.
As young as they are, the Orioles showed last year that they can handle themselves in a fair fight. They went 51-39 against winning teams and 32-20 against AL East foes.
Best Candidate to Steal the AL East: New York Yankees
Whereas the Toronto Blue Jays, Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox stepped either laterally or backwards during the offseason, the Yankees dared to take a leap forward.
Even if they don't also land Blake Snell, it's huge enough that they scored Juan Soto and Marcus Stroman amid a generally noisy winter. There could also be more to be gained from Anthony Rizzo, Giancarlo Stanton and especially Carlos Rodón, who looked pretty good in his spring debut after a disastrous 2023 season.
4. AL Central: Minnesota Twins
2023 Record: 87-75
Baseball Prospectus 2024 Division Odds: 48.9 percent
FanGraphs 2024 Division Odds: 53.7 percent
What Needs to Go Right
Sonny Gray was the Twins' best pitcher last season, but he's now in St. Louis and he's been replaced in Minnesota by...[checks notes]...Anthony DeSclafani, I guess?
That's hardly ideal, even before one also factors in that Kenta Maeda also departed Minneapolis over the winter. Maybe that isn't enough to totally condemn this year's pitching staff, which is at least returning Pablo López, Jhoan Duran and other luminaries after leading the American League in rWAR last season. But it is enough to have doubts.
But even without Jorge Polanco, could the Twins simply rake their way back to the top of the AL Central? That seems possible, if for no other reason than it would be hard to get less than they did from Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton last season. Their combined OPS fell 115 points from 2022 to 2023, making it that much more impressive that the Twins ranked fourth in the AL in OPS while also co-leading in home runs.
Health permitting with the former, full years from Royce Lewis and Edouard Julien should also help. They were terrific in the 167 total games they played in as rookies last year, tallying 31 home runs with a composite .871 OPS.
Best Candidate to Steal the AL Central: Cleveland Guardians
The Twins essentially ran unopposed in the AL Central last season, holding first place for 176 days. And since neither the Guardians nor the Detroit Tigers spent the winter pushing strongly for things to be different in 2024, "nobody" may be the better pick here.
However, it doesn't take much imagination to envision the Guardians reverting to what they were when they won the division in 2022: a run-prevention powerhouse with just enough offense to skate by.
3. AL West: Houston Astros
2023 Record: 90-72
Baseball Prospectus 2024 Division Odds: 73.9 percent
FanGraphs 2024 Division Odds: 63.9 percent
What Needs to Go Right
Don't worry about the Astros' offense. They're going to hit.
They certainly did last year while scoring 5.1 runs per game, which largely had to do with Jose Altuve, Yordan Álvarez, Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman being the best offensive foursome in the American League. It wasn't until later that José Abreu also came alive, and he'll be coming into 2024 off an especially strong showing (.845 OPS, 4 HR) in the playoffs.
The Astros also aren't likely to lose many leads once they get them. Between newcomer Josh Hader and incumbents Ryan Pressly and Bryan Abreu, they have the best late-inning relief trio in MLB today.
However, the state of the Astros' starting pitching should make it easier to imagine them falling from their perch atop the AL West. It wasn't good in 2023, and Justin Verlander's 41-year-old shoulder is now on the fritz.
It's suspect whether they have the depth to survive any absences on his part, much less any further inconsistency on the parts of Framber Valdez and Cristian Javier after both had up-and-down seasons last year.
Best Candidate to Steal the AL West: Seattle Mariners
Part of the reason why it's hard to imagine the Astros falling from said perch concerns where the Texas Rangers' focus is. That's squarely on the second half of 2024, when they figure to get Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer and Tyler Mahle back on the mound.
Mind you, this is not to discredit the Mariners. They held first place in the AL West as late as Sept. 4 last year, and they're very much within the margin of error on their stated goal to win 87 games per year. It was rocky for a second there, but they ended up having a solid winter.
2. NL East: Atlanta
2023 Record: 104-58
Baseball Prospectus 2024 Division Odds: 93.6 percent
FanGraphs 2024 Division Odds: 88.6 percent
What Needs to Go Right
And now for a statement that should terrify the other 29 teams in MLB: Atlanta is set to bring back the same offense it had last year, only now it also has Jarred Kelenic.
If it wasn't simply the best ever, Atlanta's 2023 offense might at least be the most well-rounded that baseball has ever seen. The 2019 Twins are the only other team to ever hit as many as 307 home runs, and they didn't tack on 132 stolen bases and a .276 average.
The hope now is that Kelenic will give more from left field than Eddie Rosario did. He could do that and more if he lives up to the ample hype he had as a prospect, in which case Ronald Acuña Jr., Matt Olson, Austin Riley and Ozzie Albies stand to partner with yet another dynamic hitter.
Meanwhile, here's what Atlanta's No. 4 starter has been up to this spring:
How many innings Chris Sale can give is a fair question, but he's overqualified for a role that has him pitching behind Spencer Strider, Max Fried and Charlie Morton. That's emblematic of a pitching staff which is plenty deep enough to support such a dangerous lineup.
Best Candidate to Steal the NL East: Philadelphia Phillies
With all that being said, Atlanta isn't as much of a shoo-in to repeat as NL East champs as those odds suggest. The Phillies still exist, after all, and they stand to be more of a threat after finishing 14 games out of first place last season.
Whereas they went 18-18 without him, they were 72-54 with Bryce Harper after he returned from Tommy John surgery. He'll be at full strength all year this time around, and the same will hopefully be true for Trea Turner after it took him four months to finally warm up in 2023.
1. NL West: Los Angeles Dodgers
2023 Record: 100-62
Baseball Prospectus 2024 Division Odds: 95.0 percent
FanGraphs 2024 Division Odds: 77.6 percent
What Needs to Go Right
It wasn't necessarily imperative that Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto made strong first impressions after getting over $1 billion from the Dodgers this offseason, but they did so anyway.
In his first appearance as a Dodger, Ohtani homered (naturally):
And in his debut as a Dodger, Yamamoto shoved:
Of course, there are things that could go wrong for the Dodgers. Thing No. 1 on that front concerns pitching durability. Assuming they take it easy on the 5'10", 176-pound Yamamoto in his MLB debut, it'll be a surprise if they have even one starter crack so many as 160 innings.
Yet between Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, Bobby Miller, James Paxton and eventually Walker Buehler, Clayton Kershaw, Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May, the Dodgers have loads of options to soak up innings throughout the year. What ultimately matters is that the outs get recorded, and the stuff to make that happen is definitely present in that group.
Otherwise, the Dodgers' batting trio of Ohtani and fellow MVPs Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman borders on unfair. Even if the rest of their lineup doesn't go as deep as Atlanta's, there's no way this team is falling outside of even the top five in MLB for runs scored.
Best Candidate to Steal the NL West: Arizona Diamondbacks
I don't mean to underrate the Diamondbacks here. They were elite on either side of a 7-25 stretch last season. Although they didn't make as much noise as the Dodgers this offseason, they still gained a lot more than they lost.
As sheer threats go, however, it seems fair to rate them a step below the Phillies. The D-backs could push the Dodgers around a little this year, but it's hard to conceive of any scenario in which they end up taking over the NL West throne.
Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.