Fantasy baseball: Impact of 2023’s new balanced schedule

Among the many changes major league baseball is implementing for the 2023 season is to have a more balanced schedule. The primary difference will be fewer divisional games, with each team also playing one series with every club in the opposite league, along with the continuation of an interleague home-and-away set with a designated geographical rival.

Last season’s version of the schedule saw each team playing 19 games against each team in their division, either six or seven games against the other 10 clubs in their league, and either three or four interleague games against six teams (which including a rotating series of matchups against all the teams from one particular division). Starting in 2023, the schedule will include only 13 games against each divisional opponent with the same six or seven games against the other 10 clubs in their league. The interleague portion entails a three-game series with 14 teams and a pair of two-game rivalry series (like Mets-Yankees, Cubs-White Sox, etc.)

The impetus for the change helps to level the field for post-season qualification. Clearly, while the quality of opposition will still vary slightly per team, the top-to-bottom difference should be more clustered.

From a fantasy baseball perspective, the task is deciding whether the schedule change will help, hurt, or be indifferent for expected production. That is, can a player’s projection be generated in the same fashion from before the change, or does the anticipated effect of the new schedule need to be a factor?

On the surface, the answer is a resounding, “Yes!” Even though projection and valuation theory have inherent flaws, it still helps to be as accurate as possible. The problem is that quantifying the effect is easier said than done.

The complication is that comparing divisions is not an apples-to-apples endeavor. Using wRC+ (weighted runs created) as an example, a 100 mark from a player in one division is not necessarily equivalent to the same level in another division. The wRC+ formula accounts for home park, but it can’t neutralize the quality of competition.

This is an extreme example, but a player posting a 100 wRC+ in the Double-A Southern League is not the same level of player with a 100 wRC+ in MLB. The difference between the quality of players in the six major-league divisions is obviously closer, but there still is a disparity between each. In fact, it’s not just the quality of hitters and pitchers in each, but rather the delta between the aggregate hitting and pitching driving the generated statistics.

The upshot of all this is that simply choosing a metric to gauge quality and then ranking the divisions accordingly may not be an accurate reflection of true skill level. Not to mention, the player makeup for each division will be different than in the previous season, adding another layer of guesswork to the quantification.

Mainly to satisfy curiosity, what follows are some metrics calculated for each division. One good way to determine the quality of pitching that hitters faced is to look at opponent K% and wOBA (weighted on base average), which is a good proxy for run-scoring potential.

As we’ve said, trying to assess the quality of opposition using the above tables is not a prudent approach. Instead of seeking a direct ranking, let’s decide if it is even worth attempting to rank the quality of opponent per division. The following isn’t perfect, as it incorporates some of the apples-to-oranges concerns already discussed, but it provides some useful information.

Those two tables above are a composite of what transpired playing last season’s schedule. What if they were recalculated assuming each team played their 2023 schedule last season? Again, there are some flaws, but we’re not looking to quantify the change, only to gauge if it’s significant enough to further pursue a more precise adjustment.

With that, let’s see what the differences could have been, presented by team, if they played this season’s schedule last year. Keep in mind, these numbers are for each team’s opponents.

Using the Guardians as an example, in 2022, their pitchers faced a composite .305 wOBA. Had the 2023 schedule been in place, all else being equal, that wOBA increases to .307 — indicating this new schedule would have been a little bit tougher. This makes sense since they will be playing fewer games against weaker AL Central lineups.

Now let’s do the same analysis on the strength of pitching that each team had to face last season in the less-balanced schedule, compared to 2023’s changes.

The largest delta between the opposing pitchers’ allowed wOBA is .002. The correlation between wOBA and runs scored is a very strong 0.95. Extrapolating that data indicates that each point of wOBA generates about five runs per team. That is, the most runs a team would have scored (or lost) with the new schedule is 10, which is divided among all its batters. In other words, the changes to each hitter’s projections could have been lost simply by way of rounding off. That is, a hitter’s RBI projection could increase from 67.7 to 68.4, both of which would be presented as 68.

Similarly, there aren’t any opposing batters’ wOBA with a difference greater than .002, so most pitching staffs would have allowed (at most) just 10 more (or fewer) runs. Again, these would have been distributed among the entire staff. To get an idea of the extent of the adjustment, every earned run allowed by a pitcher throwing 150 innings accounts for 0.06 points of ERA. For example, a pitcher yielding 60 runs for a 3.60 ERA would be adjusted to 3.66 if he was expected to surrender one more run.

So what have we learned?

It may not be the most exciting result, but it’s still worth doing this analysis to predict that the change in schedule isn’t likely to significantly improve or diminish any individual player’s projection. As such, the projection methodology to generate our projections was not changed on account of the schedule. Sure, it would have been wonderfully helpful if this article ended with a list of teams whose hitters and pitchers are significantly helped or hurt by the new schedule, but the numbers indicate otherwise.

However, this is still valuable information unto itself. After all, some drafters may assume otherwise and overcompensate on Draft Day, either by taking a player too early, or by avoiding someone they shouldn’t — and possibly to your benefit. Plus, there is an advantage to be gleaned from this information, although it entails individual evaluation of the divisions and keeping in mind that some teams (like the Texas Rangers) will have vastly different pitching staffs than last season.

One of the shortcomings of valuation is that the entire season’s worth of stats fuel projected earnings. However, in the standard ESPN format with daily moves, adept team managers can pick and choose the players they wish to deploy, most often based on matchups. While an individual pitcher’s ERA may gain or lose only 0.06 based on the new schedule overall, savvy lineup management can extract a lower-than-projected ERA from a starting pitcher by activating him only for favorable matchups.

In other words, the ERA of a pitcher in the AL Central (for example) may not be projected differently with the new schedule, but he still will have more chances to be active against weaker divisional opponents, albeit not as much as last season. Still, this type of thinking can be utilized to break a tie between two closely ranked players, keeping in mind the difference within divisions is more of a subjective than an objective determination.