MLB’s regular season is officially underway, and clubs are already in the thick of the race to the postseason. One of the biggest storylines of the season so far has surrounded three teams that have gone streaking to open the year. The Dodgers (8-0) and Padres (7-0) have both yet to lose a game, while the Braves (0-7) have yet to win after opening the season against those two clubs. Those streaks have led to all three clubs getting plenty of attention, particularly the Dodgers as they became the first team in MLB history to follow up a World Series championship by starting the next season with eight straight wins.
Perhaps even more focus has been placed on Atlanta, however, as the club was widely expected entering the season to be a top contender for not only the NL East, but also the World Series this year. Though the club finished second to the Phillies in a recent MLBTR poll about who would win the division this year, Atlanta received 32% of the vote, nearly double the third-place Mets’ 18% figure. The playoff odds at Fangraphs told an even rosier story, as the club was given a 93.2% chance to make the playoffs prior to the season beginning, as well as a 63.7% chance at winning the division and a 15.7% chance at a World Series championship that was second only to the Dodgers themselves.
The club’s 0-7 start has caused those odds to plummet, however, as Fangraphs now affords the Braves just a 70.5% chance at making the postseason, with a 32.6% chance at winning the division and a 9.1% chance to win the World Series. It’s a steep drop for just one week of games, and by contrast the Padres have seen their projected fortunes improve just as much, going from a 30.6% chance to make the postseason heading into Opening Day all the way up to a 54.4% chance entering play today. Even the pessimistic playoff odds the Braves are facing don’t hold a candle to the perception of many fans and media members, however. Much has been made of the fact that no team in baseball history has recovered from a 0-7 start to make the postseason, and that the 1980 Braves (81-80) and 1983 Astros (85-77) are the only clubs to even finish with a winning record.
With that being said, however, it must be noted that this only applies to teams that began the season with a 0-7 record. Plenty of teams have made the playoffs with seven-game losing streaks on their resumes, particularly in recent years as the postseason has begun to expand. Just last year, the Royals made the playoffs with two separate seven-game losing streaks to their names. The 2017 Dodgers infamously suffered a 1-16 stretch that included an 11-game losing streak before turning things around and making it to Game Seven of the World Series.
Of course, that’s not to say all of the sentiments surrounding these clubs are built on the biases that could surround a small-sample performance. The Dodgers were viewed around the league as the best team in baseball well before the 2025 season began, not only because they won the World Series last year but also because they aggressively improved the club by adding Blake Snell, Tanner Scott, and Roki Sasaki (among others) this winter. Meanwhile, concerns about Atlanta’s path into the postseason this year could be argued to have just as much to do with a deep group of potential playoff teams in the NL, the PED suspension of Jurickson Profar, and shoulder surgery for Reynaldo Lopez as they do the team’s actual record on the field.
It also can’t be entirely dismissed that some streaks have more impact on a club’s future competitiveness than others. Naturally, large swings in the standings are more likely to have a relative impact in the first half of the year than the second half, as they can factor into the decisions club executives make over the summer regarding whether to buy or sell at the trade deadline. That impacts the overall talent level of a club in a way that streaks such as the aforementioned strings of losses suffered by the 2017 Dodgers and 2024 Royals, all of which occurred after that season’s deadline, simply cannot replicate.
Where do MLBTR readers fall on this topic? Are the strings of wins the Dodgers and Padres are presently enjoying and the string of losses in Atlanta more meaningful than they would be if they occurred later in the season instead? Or does the fact that every game counts the same in the standings at the end of the season mean it’s no different than any other streak? Have your say in the poll below:
The games count the same, but the confidence you get from winning and the lack thereof from losing counts too. You are not always going to play your best, so sometimes the confidence you have or don’t have makes a difference between winning and losing. And in big league baseball, there is not that much difference between winning a game and losing a game in many cases. Sometimes it can just be one play.
Holy cliche
This is true, but I don’t think ending the season on a losing streak bodes particularly well either, and that sort of blow to your morale could be more impactful to one’s postseason performance.
I don’t think all games have the same impact, but I think it averages out in such a way that a streak closer to the beginning/end of the season isn’t definitively more or less “meaningful,” if that makes sense
I would much rather have a winning streak towards the end of the season. It usually carries over into the playoffs. Hardly anyone can tell you who was in first at the end of April from previous seasons.
The two are not mutually exclusive though.
They aren’t. A win streak is great whenever you can get it.
Agree.
This is a dumb poll.
If the purpose of the poll is to determine that 30% of people don’t understand that seven games have very little weight over a 162 game season then it was an excellent poll.
The key isn’t so much when the streak is relative to the point in the season, but when the streak is relative to the point of a concurrent streak by a rival- like, if you go a 15 game win streak, but so does your division rival- did those games even matter- whereas if you go a 15 game win streak while your rival goes on an identically timed 15 game losing streak- that would have a massive impact, whether in the first two weeks or last two weeks of the season- but it would only determine the season if the games ahead or games behind synced up with the streak- but if the range was wide enough- none of it would matter- hence the streak doesn’t really matter as much as overall performance/record throughout a season, whether its win or loss heavy in any given section.
The season is too long to have a weeks worth of games (at any time) impact a teams postseason chances in any meaningful way. There are many months to figure out what these teams really are. However, the Braves might be screwed. The losses of Profar and Lopez will make it that much more of an uphill battle. By the time Strider and Acuna are back, the ground lost might be too much to overcome.
You bring up a great point. Why the losing streak is happening is the key. If a team is losing due to general baseball randomness and/or a couple of key injuries then you can expect that team to rebound.
A season opening losing streak when you are down two stars plus two regulars and you don’t know when you’ll get any of them back does not lead to optimism.
jeez…. slow day in the newsroom…
No. There is 0 statistical proof to back this up.
should be 3rd option in poll:
W streak later in season counts more than W streak start of season
They absolutely matter for your overall record, but being great in April doesn’t help you in the playoffs. It may help you win the division.
But the playoffs is about being hot at the right time.
I think time of year is important depending on the standings.
2017 Rockies were streaking early on, and made the playoffs because no other NL Team was able to pass them.
2019 Nationals were terrible early on, and we all remember how that turned out.
I feel like end of season streaks are always the most important, because you already know how the rest of the season has gone. Gritty Tigs last year looked dead in the water in August, while the T’s looked playoff certain. Late season streaks changed that outlook entirely.
All games count the same, but changes happen throughout the season that can cause a team to falter or surge.
Yes, because they’re “pure.” They’re fun.
Now, does the Cleveland franchise still own the record for win streaks? Of course. And that’s what people will talk about. Doesn’t make the Dodgers of this year or Rays of a couple years ago less fun.
Answering this question any other way than a flat “no” is frankly pretty silly. “Streaks” only matter in that those wins and losses are in the books permanently. Those bells can’t be un-rung, and this is the entire reason why season win projections for these teams go up or down. It’s purely statistical. Nothing metaphysical is going on here.
Yes because it weighs into the decision of selling if you’re off to a bad start, and prospects could be called up earlier out of desperation to shake things up, and struggling ones are more noticeable and could get sent down (Dylan Crews). Still just a part of the season but more clearly visible early on than a stretch in the middle of the year when there’s a larger body of work.
For a site that prides itself on the heavy reliance of analytics, I’m surprised at the lack of analysis here.
These are factors that should be considered when assessing the weight of winning and/or losing streaks:
1) Does the team have key injuries and/or suspensions?
2) Do the opponents have key injuries and/or suspensions?
3) How strong is the competition?
4) How strong are the opposing starting pitchers?
5) Are the games at home? Or on the road?
It always makes me laugh when people buy into the hype after their team puts together a little winning streak against weak or injury-plagued opponents.
Was I impressed with yesterday’s win over the Orioles? No, because it was against a team with a 41-year-old SP that was also missing two of the better players in the game (Cowser & Gunnar) while my team had their top lineup and All-Star starting pitcher.
The 2023 Pirates had the best record in the NL at the end of April (20-9) and would go on to go 56-77 the rest of the way. It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish
While true, I’d rather have 20 wins at the end of April with the goal of say 90 for a season total than have 6 wins. This is a silly article, of course having more wins is impactful because the rest of the season is your only chance to make up for losses.
No, it’s how you play over the course of 162 game season.
I remember there were a few years there where every single season, the O’s would jump out to like an 8-2 or 15-3 record or something, putting a massive gap between them and whomever was in 2nd place in the AL East- and then inevitably, the O’s would fall apart, end the season at like 65-97 or something- but that first month they looked like they were gonna go 125-37 or something insane like that.
Every year. Like clockwork.
So did that beginning of the year win streak matter for the O’s, or the beginning of the year .500 streak matter for the team that eventually won the division? Not really.
It mattered in that those wins counted the same as the others.
I see a lot of pretty bizarre figuring going on here. To start this season the Braves were projected to be around a .575 record team. This translates to 93 wins. If they’d played .575 ball over the first seven games, their record now would be 4-3. So they don’t have to “overcome” seven losses, they are really only adding four games to the deficit. If they play .575 ball over the remaining 155 games, their season win total would be 89. PECOTA still has them at 92 (closer to .590 over the remaining games).
this is a good way of thinking about it. True talent level. It’s all noise, and they all factor into the actual record, but a 7-0 team can still be a bad team, just they have to lose at a higher level to get back to pre season projections.
Never worry about the standings until late August
Extra weight for the winning streaks no. But starting 0-7 is a disaster that will be very hard to overcome. You can count the Braves out of the division because of it
Just about the only thing you can say confidently about those losses is that they are irreversible. Statistically the Braves still have the best chance of winning their division.
No they don’t. 0-7 is a massive hole. No team has ever made the playoffs out of that let alone win a division. All the historic comeback teams you think of didn’t win the division like the 2019 Nats. The bigger problem for the Braves is their team just isn’t that good.
baseballprospectus.com/standings/
Fangraphs has the Phillies at the best odds right now. Besides streak or not their team is not good outside of some pitching. The offense stinks
Baseball Prospectus: Braves (92); Mets (91); Phillies (90)
Fangraphs: Phillies (90); Braves (88); Mets (87)
The method used by Fangraphs seems to be somewhat more conservative but neither of their statistical methods backs up your argument. Despite the bad start for the Braves, the division is still a three-way tossup.
No division is a toss up while you are under 500. They need to focus on winning a game first
I guess I missed the part where they canceled the next 155 games. I will have to pay closer attention.
I feel like it’s a pretty meaningless thing to point to no team having made the playoffs after an 0-7 start because there are the extra wildcards now, and most of that time doesn’t account for that. Braves will be fine.
Baseball seasons are long. Just like with the vastness of space and time, wherein human brains tend to struggle to fully and accurately comprehend the scope of the universe and relativity, we tend to not give full credence to how long a season is.
The way I know a season is *long* is that a player who’s been exceptionally productive or exceptionally worthless for most of a season can go on a hot streak- whether its the beginning, middle or end of the season, doesn’t much matter- and hit like .475 w/ 12 HR’s and 4 WAR over a full month’s worth of games- but if they pace for 6 HR’s, have an average of around .242 and generate around 0.5 WAR per month the rest of the season, their overall is only going to be .281 w/ 18 HR’s and 6.5 WAR- now, were they a .242 hitter with only 6 HR’s and 2.5 WAR for the season, or were they actually a .475 hitter with 72 HR’s and 24 WAR?
The reality is, for the season, they hit .281 w/ 18 HR’s and 6.5 WAR- does it really matter if they did that spread out evenly with around a .281 average, 3 HR’s and 2.1 WAR every single month like clockwork vs. if they vacillate between 0 HR’s and 6 HR’s per month, vacillate between .100 average and .464 average. with virtually nothing in between month to month? Either ice cold or nuclear fission hot- whether its that or slow but steady and the overall results are the same?
Now, that said- if a guy has like 10 games where he has like 6 RBI’s a game and so his end of year numbers are like 95 RBI’s, it’s important to provide context for that…
Keep in mind when Tino Martinez had that one final comeback season on the Yankees and he wound up with 17 HR’s- 10 HR’s were in one aberrant ten game stretch. So basically you had a 1 HR per month hitter who, at the end of the year, looked more like a 3 HR per month hitter- but you wouldn’t know that unless you knew he’d had a 10-game/10-HR streak in the middle there.
So, I don’t think it makes a difference, but I do think it alters our perception of a player’s productivity or value.
Would you rather have a guy who hits 40 HR’s, mostly solo shots in late innings of games their team was already losing, or would you rather a guy only hit 6 HR’s all season, but every single HR was the go ahead/tie breaking/walk off home run that kept the team in contention in the standings or edged them past a division rival with one game difference in the standings?
So that guy with 40 HR’s/100 RBI’s might actually be less valuable than a guy with only 6 HR’s and 30 RBI’s on the season, because the second guy was the deciding offense in pivotal games, but the first guy had no impact on his team’s winning percentage.
I have lost count of the times teams have gotten to the end of the season, and missed the playoffs by one game, looked back and said “man, we should’ve beaten the Rockies.”
Tough question with no wrong or right answer.
There is a concern with starting the season in a big hole, though.
A team behind big early can’t afford to take a breather at any point in the season. The stars can’t be given a rest. The FO can’t afford to give a vet or a youngster much rope to play thru a slump.
Every game becomes ‘crucial’. The mental pressure is there, every game, every inning, every pitch. It takes a ton of physical, mental, and emotional energy to get thru a normal season. Doing it from behind takes even more.
Much like a basketball team that gets buried early, and then spends nearly three qtrs getting back in the game, only to run out of gas with three minutes left.
It’s somewhat opposite for a team that jumps out to a big early lead. More opportunity to rest older players, skip a few starts, rest your back end relievers. More rope for struggling players and rookies. More recovery time for injured players.
IMO the poor Atlanta start is far more impactful than the fast Dodgers and Padres starts.
If LAD had lost its first seven games, it would be about the same as Usain Bolt starting a 100 meter sprint six centimeters behind a group of merely good sprinters.
But the Braves were not even the favs in the NL East…and now they’ve suffered two significant losses for part of the season. 5.5 games behind with 155 to go is insignificant, but…
With how much activity goes on at the trading deadline, maybe the early season wins can determine whether a team will be a seller or buyer.
Otherwise, every win is the same.
AZ missing the playoffs last year is perfect example. Snake fans can look at any ONE or TWO of their blown saves over the course of the season. Whether it’s in April or September, that one converted save would’ve put them in the playoffs.
There’s a lot of literature on this (by statisticians/economists). Not all games are equally important and the faster you distance yourself from the pack, the less important your remaining games are.
For anyone interested, read this paper: Sports injuries and game stakes: Concussions in the National Football League
That article is irrelevant here. An injury in football can cause a player to miss 17 games max. In baseball they can lose 162.
To finish a game back in football is like 6% of the season or about 9.5 in baseball. So you’re talking about the Dodgers at 8-0 and Braves at 0-7 still not having the same disparity that would occur with the Rams at 1-0 and Falcons at 0-1.
Baseball is a marathon…for pitchers. And balancing your pitching across the whole year is how you make the playoffs.
The point I am making is that any team that gets a big early lead in the division/wildcard race faces fewer must-win games later in the season. The same could be said in any sport really, but, like you said, the number of games you need to win to build a convincing lead in the standings depends on total number of games played in a season.
Again, if you’re interested, look at Figure 1 and its description from that article.
I read the article. It’s just not true in baseball. It holds some weight in hockey and basketball with expanded playoffs and multiple off days a week. It would be true in a 20-30 game conference schedule in college baseball. But 17 games in 126 days is so different than 162 games in 187 days.
It truly is a marathon compared to a sprint. In an endurance race, it hurts to start faster than you should. Now the Dodgers will go on to win 100+ games and compete for a WS, but it’s not because of a winning streak in April.
I would like to point out that every game does not count the same.
The most obvious reason are the playoff tie-breaker rules; head-to-head and divisional record matters.
Also, winning guarantees your opponent loses; an NL team beating an NL team has more NL playoff impact than an NL team beating an AL team.
So, it’s not when in the season the streak occurred that matters so much, it’s what teams you beat during that streak.
This is a statistically insignificant advantage. It comes into play only for teams that tie for a playoff berth, and only in the case of a tie for the last wildcard could it possibly decide who makes the playoffs.
I think everyone expected a close race among the Braves, Phillies, and Mets, so starting out 5.5 games behind certainly hurts the Braves’ chances. They also lost major pieces at a point in the season when it’s very hard to make a significant trade to replace them.
You don’t want to get off to a bad streak early, playing catch-up all season takes a toll.
I’m old enough to remember the “you can’t win a division in April but you can lose one” cliche.
Obviously 7 games out of 162 is a statistically insignificant number. But it does put you in a hole and make each game more critical which means you go to your better bullpen guys and that’s hard to do all summer.
I think there’s extra weight. Purely the confidence factor that exists starting a season. Answering the “are we any good ?” question with an emphatic yes is a pretty big positive in my mind. Confidence is good. Works the same on the flip side. A no answer could have you permanently derailed mentally.
Early season hot starts used to mean something but so many teams have gotten off to a hot start 82 Braves, 2023 rays they tailed off towards the end of the season. I think better starts on players’ hitting or pitching means more.
Neither of these options is right. An April streak means nothing. Being within striking distance of a wild card is all that a team really needs through the trade deadline (winning more is better of course). But after the trade deadline, games mean a lot more. I remember the 2019 Mariners starting 13-3….meant so much.
Only for confidence and perception (which can inform projections, right or not).
These can matter, depending on how susceptible the player is to confidence swings and how twitchy the front office is
Getting into a hole early in the season will likely impact the entire season. A team that starts off the season 20-30 after 50 is going to have to play .600 ball the rest of the way to win 87 games- 87 I think is a reasonable target number for postseason entry. It’s a tall order to win 60% of your games over 112 games, and while it certainly can be done, when you compare that with a team that is 25-25, they’ve got to play .554 to get to 87, this is a much easier path to the postseason. So, I think undoubtedly a poor start has huge implications.
Streaks that begin the season are great. You get a jump on the competition. In July a streak helps when your team is 10 games back. Even better when 10 ahead.
A September streak only helps if your team is in the hunt.
I’m a Tiger fan. The ’84 Tigers went 35-5 out of the box. Never looked back. Barely played above .500 the rest of the season. Give me a season opening 10 game streak any time. Make my opponents sweat.