The longest active drought in Major League Baseball is active no more. In their 63rd season as a franchise, the Texas Rangers finally won their first World Series, and in the most savage way possible, going a perfect 11-0 on the road, repeatedly ripping out hearts in Tampa Bay, Baltimore, Houston and Arizona.
Well done, Rangers.
Now, can you become MLB's first back-to-back champion in more than two decades?
An awful lot will change before Opening Day 2024.
Dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of free agents will find new homes, trades will go down, offseason injuries will occur, guys will retire and top prospects will "graduate" to become top Rookie of the Year candidates.
But given what we know about rosters (and what we think teams might try to do this offseason), here are some way, way, way too early projections for next season's standings and postseason bracket.
From last year's way-too-early predictions, we only got five out of 12 postseason teams correct. Not great, though also not that terrible considering how much changed throughout the offseason.
Of the seven misses, we did have Milwaukee (87 wins), Tampa Bay (86 wins), Arizona (86 wins), Texas (83 wins) and Baltimore (81 wins) all at least in the mix for a playoff spot. The only egregious miss was Miami (projected for 65 wins), and, well, I still don't understand how the Marlins (-57 run differential) edged out both San Diego (+104 run differential) and Chicago (+98 run differential).
Also, we had the correct teams losing in the ALCS (Houston) and NLCS (Philadelphia) for what extremely little that's worth.
But now, I humbly submit the following to Freezing Cold Takes.
