ESPN’s David Schoenfield provided a great list of surprise Major League Baseball teams over the last decade that went from finishing under .500 to making the playoffs the following season. It’s happened nine times over the past three years, including the last two World Series champions!
There are plenty of options to choose from for the 2015 season when looking at most improved, including the Boston Red Sox, who spent $183 million on two players (among many other deals), but that wouldn’t qualify as a “quiet” way of going about things
To make my list, I tried to find teams that made a majority of under-the-radar moves (signing one big fish or two is optional) and used FanGraphs‘ projected win totals for 2015 as my go-to source to find the biggest projected improvements.
There were a few obvious teams, such as the aforementioned Red Sox (17-win improvement) and the Cubs (11-win improvement), but the teams I grabbed weren’t in the spotlight as much yet are still projected to have a much better team heading into 2015.