I thought they said the AL East was down?
Based on average single-game opponent projected WAR value, the Baltimore Orioles have the toughest schedule of all 30 MLB teams in 2015. They’re followed by the Tampa Bay Rays, with the New York Yankees two spots behind them.
Here’s how FanGraphs.com’s Jeff Sullivan breaks down the chart above:
[quote_box_center]The method is simple. At FanGraphs, we feature team projections, based on author-maintained depth charts and two different projection systems blended together. Every team has a projected total Wins Above Replacement (WAR) value, so all I did was grab the 30 schedules off MLB.com and calculate, for each team, the average single-game opponent WAR. The higher the average WAR, the tougher the schedule. This is, naturally, only as good as the projections, but then our only alternative is, I don’t know, guessing? This is like very educated guessing.[/quote_box_center]
FanGraphs projects the O’s to finish in last place in the East with 79 victories. That’d be 17 less than they had in 2014.
That might happen — in like a strike shortened season or something.
