The Oakland Athletics lost 94 games in 2015, 93 in 2016 and 87 in 2017. Not one national prognosticator had them anywhere near the postseason in 2018.
Yet that’s exactly where they wound up, winning 22 more games than they did in 2017 and making the wild-card game. Unfortunately for them, that’s as far as they got, just like the 2018 Cubs. The A’s did this with a team that scored buckets of runs, 813 of them, fourth in the American League, and they were second in the A.L. with 227 home runs. But it was the pitching staff that made the biggest improvement, going from 827 runs allowed in 2017 to 674 in 2018.