Even when we are fairly confident about who the best teams in Major League Baseball are entering a new season, reality has a way of making itself felt. Nobody thought the Tampa Bay Rays or the Minnesota Twins were weak teams entering 2019, but I doubt many would have taken the over if the over/under for those teams had been 95 wins.
We're now two-thirds of the way from the World Series to pitchers and catchers reporting, and while there are still free agents remaining, most of the big signings have already been made. We don't know everything, but we have a good idea as to what most teams will look like, so it's time for us to guess which also-ran, rebuilding teams, or even fringe contenders can step up in a big way in 2020.
Cincinnati Reds
The Reds have been very busy this winter, but it's still uncommon for people to talk about them on the same level as the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs or Milwaukee Brewers. That would be a mistake. Even before considering their offseason moves, the Reds were five games down on their Pythagorean record in 2019, as they finished 75-87 despite their opponents outscoring them by only 10 runs.
Signing Mike Moustakas addressed one of the team's biggest needs in second base, and Wade Miley gives the Reds rotation depth, a necessity because at least one pitcher will suffer an injury in 2020. The Shogo Akiyama signing hasn't garnered a lot of press, but the ZiPS projections consider him a nearly average MLB center fielder, which gives the Reds considerable flexibility in their lineup, but also in any additional trades -- including being able to offer Jesse Winker or Nick Senzel in a Francisco Lindor package, or moving Senzel to shortstop for 2020.
Depending on playing-time assumptions, ZiPS sees the Reds' rotation -- armed with a full season of Trevor Bauer on top of adding Miley to Luis Castillo, Sonny Gray and Anthony DeSclafani -- as the third- or fourth-best rotation in the National League. That gives Cincinnati the potential to go deep in the playoffs given that you can use your best starting pitchers a lot more in October than in the regular season; that was the reason ZiPS saw the matchup between the 93-win Nationals and the 106-win Dodgers as a coin flip.
This kind of relentless hole-filling and depth-building is what successful contenders do. The Reds might be just a Joey Votto bounce-back away from being a 90-win team.
Chicago White Sox
The White Sox aggressively tried to fill their own holes this winter as they transition to win-now mode, but missed out on some of their top targets, such as Zack Wheeler. Dallas Keuchel and Gio Gonzalez improve the rotation considerably, but the group overall would probably still rank worst or second-worst among 2020's likely contenders, depending on how you feel about the Los Angeles Angels.
What makes the White Sox so interesting is that so many of their uncertainties in the offense are upside players. The expectations for Nick Madrigal and Luis Robert have fairly large error bars, but that's a good thing in a young player because the ceilings are enormously high, especially for the latter. Eloy Jimenez only just turned 23 and the eternally disappointing Nomar Mazara will still be just 24 years old on Opening Day. I'd call the White Sox an 82-to-86 win team right now, but they've set themselves up in a position where a few pleasant surprises can improve the team more than that very quickly.
Also helping the White Sox is that they have a better chance of winning in the AL Central than they would in the AL East or West. The Twins and Indians are better teams on paper, but they're not that much better when you're talking about 2020 outlook, and neither really did much to improve this winter.
San Diego Padres
The Padres may very well miss Luis Urias in the long run, but trading him for Trent Grisham and a solid innings-eater in Zach Davies addresses two team needs for 2020. Jurickson Profar was one of the best buy-low moves made this offseason, a player who was still worth 1.3 WAR (FanGraphs brand) in 2019 despite a .218 BABIP. No major league hitter is "truly" a .218 BABIP hitter; pitchers tend to be between .220 and .230. Even Randy Johnson, who looked like the Tin Man trying to use stilts at the plate, managed a .234 BABIP over his career.
In the pleasant surprise category, the Padres are hoping that either MacKenzie Gore or Luis Patiño blows through the minors quickly, a distinct possibility given how much they dominated their levels in 2019 at very young ages. San Diego signed Garrett Richards to a two-year, $15.5 million contract just so the Padres would be in a position to chase his upside in 2020.
The bullpen remains deep and the team now has only to roll high on a few pitchers to have an above-average rotation. The offense is similarly deep; Tommy Pham is a tremendous short-term upgrade in the outfield and the team ought to now get a full season from Fernando Tatis Jr. at shortstop. Eric Hosmer at first base might actually be the team's least valuable lineup regular, though given the length of his contract, there's likely not much the Padres can do to fix first base right now.
What hurts the Padres from a playoff standpoint is that the Dodgers are still clearly the class of the division, with a farm system with enough resources that L.A. can chase just about any player it needs should it want him badly enough. A near-guaranteed start to their postseason as no more than a wild card makes the Padres a tough pick to go deep into October, but here again, that's where their starting pitching's development will define the high end of their upside.
Colorado Rockies
The Rockies? Hear me out. I have little faith in how the Rockies are run at the major league level, but I still think that people are too quick to write them off as doomed in 2020. Sure, they return essentially the same roster as the 71-91 team from last year, but it's also the same cast that was a single game away from taking the division in 2018.
Perversely, it's the fact that the team has proved so incompetent at filling its holes that gives the Rockies noteworthy upside in 2020. The team already has stars in Nolan Arenado, Trevor Story, German Marquez and Jon Gray, but that's typically the hard part for contending teams. Where the Rockies have failed is in stocking the secondary cast. What this means is that it wouldn't take much to improve their situations at center field, first base and the bullpen, all spots from which they got practically nothing in 2019.
The X factor, of course, is the fact that the team appears to be actively considering an Arenado trade. Without Arenado, I'd think a lot less positively about Colorado's 2020 fate. But the Rockies haven't traded Arenado yet and I expect that they won't when the realization sets in that no team is going to give a monster package when it's also picking up a huge salary. Arenado's opt-out clause, something he didn't ask for but the team supplied him without his camp even requesting it, makes trading him even more unlikely.
A Rockies team that reaches the playoffs could prove quite dangerous. Their depth is paper-thin, but the Rockies do have stars and they could ride Marquez and Gray to postseason success in an October scenario.