Most teams have played half their season now so it’s a good time to predict playoff winners.
I’m going to make a few posts over the next few days to show you some of the indicators I use to determine which teams have the best shot of making the playoffs.
The best indicator is, of course, those teams that are leading their divisions right now. They have the best shot of making the playoffs, and odd are that at least half the current division leaders will win their division.
The first thing I like to look at is run-scoring differential.
Let’s start in the the American League. Click that link to see the standings, and go down to the “AL East Detailed Standings” as well as the sections that follow for the other divisions.
Focus in on the following columns:
Tm W L R RA pythWL Luck
BOS 49 32 5.3 4.3 48-33 0
NYY 48 33 5.6 4.8 46-35 1
TBR 44 39 5.4 4.5 48-35 -4
TOR 42 41 5 4.5 45-38 -3
BAL 36 46 4.7 5.5 35-47 0
Sorry about the formatting.
Here I’ve reproduced actual Wins and Losses, average Runs scored per game and average Runs Against per game, as well as the projected W-L record and something called “Luck”.
The projected W-L uses the R and RA values to determine what the team’s record should be. This was developed by (you guessed it) Bill James and is described here. Turns out that it is amazingly accurate in almost all cases. I’ve been using it the last several years and nearly 100% of the time at this point of the season, a team that is ahead or behind in its actual record as compared to the projected record catches up in the second half, in other words has its luck reversed. That Luck column shows the difference in actual wins from projected wins. So the Red Sox are right where they are supposed to be, the Yankees have 1 more win than expected, the Rays and Jays have fewer wins, and the Orioles are spot on. A number as large as 3 or 4 (positive or negative) is quite unusual and is very unlikely to be maintained.
So what does this mean? If you take away one victory from the Yankees and give 4 to the Rays, it is Tampa Bay and not New York that should be in second place. Either way you look at it, Boston deserves its 1-game lead.
Look at the AL Central, Detroit should have 1 fewer win while Minnesota should have 2 more. That would give the Twins a 2-game lead as opposed to the same lead held by the Tigers right now.
All of the teams in the AL West currently above .500 have had some luck and it should be Texas with a 1-game lead.
Over in the National League, here is the story:
The Phillies are the only NL East team outscoring their opponents and deserve to have a whopping 6-game lead right now. The Phillies are a pretty good team while nobody else is a serious playoff contender. This race is actually over already, in my opinion.
In the NL Central, the top 3 teams all have matching records with the projections. The Reds have luck to the tune of +4 and are absolutely done for the year. They deserve to be 11.5 games behind and have 3 teams ahead of them. They have no chance to win the division.
The NL West is the only division that doesn’t need this analysis to be crystal clear. The Dodgers are by far the best team.
So, by this method, here are my playoff predictions for 2009:
AL East: Red Sox
AL Central: Twins
AL West: Rangers
AL Wildcard: Rays
NL East: Phillies
NL Central: Cardinals
NL West: Dodgers
NL Wildcard: Giants
Tomorrow I’ll look at a different indicator and the predictions might be a little different too.