Baseball's trade deadline isn't for another 2½ months, but as we complete the first quarter of the season, enough has happened that teams have to start facing some tough decisions. It's hard to win a division in April, but you can lose it, and many of the teams projected to be solid playoff contenders are in markedly worse positions than they were six weeks ago. Teams facing up to newfound disappointments have to start deciding if they're realistic contenders or if they need to shift thinking to retooling for 2019 (or worse). The sooner the better; you can't get out of a hole until you stop digging.
Los Angeles Dodgers
Preseason playoff odds: 92.2 percent
Playoff odds now: 24.6 percent
We're long past the time the Dodgers could simply dismiss the poor start as "just a poor start." Even playing well, the loss of Corey Seager for the season is enormous, a four-to-five win drop-off even with an adequate replacement. Not playing well, it's the kind of thing that can be the coup de grâce to their 2018 fortunes.
ZiPS still thinks the Dodgers are better than the Diamondbacks and especially the Rockies when it comes to rest-of-season winning percentage. But that's not enough. Even with that assumption, the team's divisional projection has dropped to 14 percent (with Arizona at 65 percent and Colorado at 18 percent), an all-important thing given the sizable penalty a wild-card team has to pay now.
If the Dodgers are going to really go for the division, not just try to recover and sneak in as a wild card, they need to add serious wins now, not wait until the trade deadline. The team hasn't had to play underdog for a while, so it hasn't parted with any of its top-tier prospects for short-term fixes. This time around, if L.A. wants to fight with Arizona, it might have to. Manny Machado is the obvious candidate, and by adding him the playoff projections jump to 61 percent (plus-38 percentage points) and the Dodgers have a fighting chance in the division (39 percent, or plus-25 percentage points). The key question: Is 2018 worth it for them to part with someone they really don't want to let go?
Minnesota Twins
Preseason playoff odds: 49.1 percent
Playoff odds now: 26.4 percent
This would look even more bleak if the Indians were off to a better start. The Twins' divisional probability actually has improved, from 15 to 18 percent, because of Cleveland's weak initial performance. With the wild card less of a fallback, the Twins' question now becomes whether they can, in fact, play better baseball than the Indians for the rest of the season.
That's a tough argument to make. The Twins are still a team very much on the upswing, and with the team unlikely to be able to sign a Manny Machado long term after an acquisition, the argument for them making a gigantic trade, as with the Dodgers, is weaker. I think Minnesota's decisions should be more like the ones the Twins made last July, when after acquiring Jaime Garcia, they flipped him for a better prospect and traded Brandon Kintzler to the Nationals. A wild-card appearance for the Twins is less of a disaster than for the Dodgers, after all, so there's more of an excuse to keep their powder dry.
San Francisco Giants
Preseason playoff odds: 24.7 percent
Playoff odds now: 6.7 percent
San Francisco's rather mediocre start has been better than that of the Dodgers, but the Giants have an even steeper hill to climb with a roster that is, top-to-bottom, realistically inferior to L.A.'s. Getting Madison Bumgarner back will be helpful, as will (eventually) Johnny Cueto, but it's not really enough. The team has received just about nothing from left field, center field and the back of the rotation, and the farm can't fix any of that in the short term. Hoping for Steven Duggar and his .729 OPS in the Pacific Coast League to save the day isn't enough of a plan.
For the Giants, there really isn't a tomorrow. The team was right to go after Shohei Ohtani and all three of the Marlins outfielders. Andrew McCutchen, the player they acquired in the end, has been a bright spot in the offense. But the team isn't young, the farm isn't deep and the Giants still have a lot of incentive to just go all-in at this point. They might not have enough left to entice the Rays to make another trade, this time for Chris Archer, but nobody on the farm should be untouchable. Even Adam Jones, far from his prime, would be an upgrade in the Giants' outfield.
Cleveland Indians
Preseason playoffs odds: 94.1 percent
Playoff odds now: 84.4 percent
The first three teams in the rankings have seen real changes to their playoff hopes. In terms of percentage points, the Indians aren't doing so poorly. Even with a .500 start to their season, nobody in the division has pushed forward to take advantage, something the Dodgers, Nationals and Cubs can't say. Other than possibly picking up a third baseman such as Mike Moustakas, moving Jose Ramirez to second and Jason Kipnis to the bench, Cleveland is still in a commanding position. There's no need to panic in Cleveland.
Baltimore Orioles
Preseason playoff odds: 8.8 percent
Playoff odds now: 0.0 percent
Baltimore's probability hasn't really dropped to zero, it just rounds that way with ZiPS placing the probability at around 5,500-1. So I'm saying there's still a chance!
But realistically? Not really. There was a path for the Orioles to make the playoffs this year -- if enough of the offense bounced back to place in the top five in runs scored, if Alex Cobb improved another year away from Tommy John surgery, and if Andrew Cashner kept using that blood magic that enabled him to have an ERA way better than his peripherals last season.
None of this has happened and the team took until May 10 to get its win total into double digits. Machado is really the only player who will fetch more than a token prospect or two -- assuming the Orioles are not trading Kevin Gausman or Jonathan Schoop -- but if the front office thinks they're going to single-handedly restock the farm system with a Machado trade, they're probably dreaming.
There's no team likely to be in a position this year to need Machado more than the Dodgers. If the Orioles don't get a haul from L.A., they likely won't get it from anyone. Teams simply value their prospects more than they did in the days of yore. I'd argue that the Orioles are in such a hole now that they ought to be talking about Schoop, Gausman and Dylan Bundy, both now and if not this season, this winter. Like the Tigers last year, Baltimore's window has slammed shut whether or not they choose to accept it. But first, trade Manny before you end up holding the bag in the form of a single measly compensation pick.
Toronto Blue Jays
Preseason playoff odds: 17.0 percent
Playoff odds now: 7.9 percent
Toronto got off to a hot start, going 12-5, but is just 9-15 since then, with the Red Sox and Yankees racing ahead in the division. I don't think the Blue Jays are quite at the major decision point, the way the Orioles and Dodgers are, but I think that's coming, probably before the All-Star break. If their playoff odds haven't improved significantly a month from now, then the Jays really do have to start talking about trading Josh Donaldson if he's still healthy. He was a huge part of the team's success in 2015 and 2016, but he's already 32 and the Jays are going to be building around Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, not Donaldson. Don't throw in the towel when there are still realistic playoff hopes but don't go chasing waterfalls.
Chicago Cubs
Preseason playoff odds: 89.7 percent
Playoff odds now: 81.9 percent
The projected expectations (projexpectations?) for the Cubs haven't changed, but those for the rest of the division have, with the Cardinals and Brewers being about as dangerous as expected, and a surprising surge from the Pirates making everybody's race harder. Chicago's farm system is much weaker than it was a couple of years ago, when the Cubs felt able to trade one of the top prospects in baseball for a couple of months of Aroldis Chapman, so it's hard to argue the Cubs should make a move now. I think patience is called for here, because a crucial hole might arise in the coming months. It's not as if the team is going to give up on Anthony Rizzo or Yu Darvish, and Rizzo already is heating up.
Washington Nationals
Preseason playoff odds: 73.9 percent
Playoff odds now: 67.1 percent
Like Cleveland and Chicago among divisional favorites, Washington's overall playoff odds haven't dropped that much. But it's a bit worse in the case of Washington than simply playoff probabilities reflect, with the team only a coin flip to win the division. The Braves and Phillies aren't quite as good as their current records but both have to be taken very seriously, and the Nats have a bleaker long-term outlook than the aforementioned Indians and Cubs.
Matt Adams is not going to continue to hit at this level and Michael Taylor is actively hurting the team in center, so the Nats need to be looking at options there, with Victor Robles' elbow not providing an easy answer that they expected several months ago. If you're pessimistic about re-signing Bryce Harper, there's no excuse to not push all the chips in this year, be it for one of the Orioles or Nicholas Castellanos or even Matt Kemp if the Dodgers feel as if they want to reload (I can't believe I'm saying that). Just waiting around for uncertain returns of Daniel Murphy and Adam Eaton is the best way to watch the Braves or Phillies swipe the NL East. Prospects like Juan Soto and Carter Kieboom ought to bring back significant help.