Bank on it, a sleeper will emerge and make playoffs

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Somewhere out there lurks a team or two that won 83 or fewer games last season that will make the playoffs this year. Bank on it. The sleeper team is no longer an anomaly but an October fixture in the wild-card era.

Every postseason since the current playoff format was instituted in 1995 has included at least one team that failed to win more than 83 games the previous season, or, in the case of the strike-shortened 1994 and '95 seasons, posted a losing record. Such sleepers have accounted for one fourth of the playoff entrants in the wild-card era (22 of 88).

The trend is guaranteed to continue this year, because no team in the NL West won more than 83 games last year. Even allowing for that spot, a true sleeper is bound to emerge. If the first week of the season is any indication, there are no shortage of candidates. The Brewers, Tigers and Rockies -- combined playoff appearances in the past decade: zero -- all made impressive opening statements.

Are they playoff caliber? Not so fast.

The first thing I checked was the annual Sleeper Predictor Formula, the strangely accurate system developed by the Elias Sports Bureau to identify teams that should step up in class. Elias identifies sleeper teams as those with a poor record in one-run games the previous season (at least five games worse than .500) and a good spring training winning percentage (at least 100 percentage points better than their previous regular season).

From 1995 through 2005, 14 of the 20 such qualified teams improved their win total, most of them significantly, including the 2003 Royals and Cubs (a 21-win improvement each), 2004 Indians (12) and 2005 Blue Jays (13).

When I ran the formula this year, only one team qualified: the sad-sack Kansas City Royals. It's the third time in the past four years the Royals have qualified. They apparently are the '27 Yankees of the Cactus League but have raised the supposedly random nature of losing one-run games to an art form. Since 1999, here is how the Royals have ranked in the AL in one-run games: 14th, 12th, 14th, 14th, 11th, 11th and 12th. In five of those seven years they were worse in one-run games than they were overall.

Remember, though, the SPF forecasts improvement, not a postseason berth. So forget the playoffs, Kansas City. Enjoy a season with, oh, about 62 wins.

Now let's look at the Week 1 surprise teams and see what kind of staying power they have, ranking them in order of a predicted final win total.