How The MLB Standings Would Look If Teams Stuck With Whoever They Drafted

As the MLB season heads into its September stretch run, many of the division winners are more or less decided — the Cubs, Nationals and Rangers have all but locked up their races, and the FiveThirtyEight model puts the Indians, Dodgers and Blue Jays north of 60 percent to win theirs. In the absence of any high-pressure, high-leverage series to pick apart, we have time to look into something a little more, let’s say, unconventionally relevant: How might the standings be different if each team had held onto its original players without dealing them away over the years?

Thanks to data from The Baseball Gauge, we can take a stab at that question. The site tracks how many wins above replacement (WAR) have been produced by players who were originally drafted (or otherwise acquired) by each franchise, which can be easily converted into wins and losses. Here’s how each division would look if teams were stocked exclusively with homegrown players:

Some of the division leaders — such as the Indians, Rangers and Cubs — would be the same regardless of the players each team relinquished. But in other divisions, the results would be very different. The AL East-leading Blue Jays would drop to fourth place, for instance, if they relied on their homegrown talent alone. The Colorado Rockies would overtake the Dodgers and Giants in the NL West, and the Washington Nationals would drop to last in the NL East. (The Daniel Murphy Effect is strong in that division.)

Aside from trolling one fanbase or another about bad breaks and missed opportunities, these hypotheticals can tell us something about a team’s acquisition strategy over the years. The Reds and Braves’ records, dismal in reality, could have been much better if they hadn’t dealt away talent as part of long-term rebuilding schemes. The Nationals and Blue Jays, meanwhile, have aggressively upgraded their rosters over the past few seasons and have near-certain playoff berths to show for it.