Woe To The Sox: AL Playoff Odds Roundup
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by user Davis21wylie
First things first: Similar to Ufgators, I too must announce my semi-retirement from the 'Chair because of college. Don't worry, I'll still be around, but much less so than during the magical summer that was 2006...
But before my time is up, I wanted to take a quick look at the American League playoff races. Baseball Prospectus has a nice feature called the Playoff Odds Report, in which they run a Monte Carlo simulation of the rest of the season one million times, using each team's winning percentage as the input. The results, as you can see, are pretty cool; for instance, given the rest of their schedule, the Dodgers have an 82.95% probability of making the playoffs this season -- 71.96% odds of winning the NL West plus 11% odds of winning the wild card, should they not capture the division. Meanwhile, the lowly Rockies have just a 1.61% probability of making the playoffs. Sad. Worse yet, the Pirates have a .0000% chance to make the postseason, and the Cubs (who I foolishly picked to win the Central) are only marginally better at .00003%. Yeah, I know.
Even cooler than the straight-up Postseason Odds Report, though, is what BP calls the PECOTA-adjusted Playoff Odds Report. PECOTA is Baseball Prospectus' statistical projection system, and before each season it spits out predicted standings for the coming year. While the regular Odds Report regresses each team toward a .500 season, the PECOTA version regresses each team toward their projected winning percentage before the year. For instance, since PECOTA expected the Yankees to go 94-68, the Monte Carlo sim regresses the rest of their season toward .580.
I like the PECOTA version better because it can cut through the randomness of players having career years (cough, Gary Matthews) or unexpectedly bad years (cough, Coco Crisp) and expose teams' true skill levels. Anyway, I decided to track the PECOTA odds of a few of the AL's more relevant teams throughout the season, and present them to you in handy graphical form...
I'll start with my beloved Red Sox. As I was getting my wisdom teeth removed a week and a half ago, my pain was amplified that much more by the Yankees' weekend-long Boston Massacre. Now that I'm fully lucid again, I'll admit that it's over, and the dream has died. On July 3rd, the Red Sox sat at 50-29, and PECOTA said that they had a 78.22% probability of making the playoffs, including a 62.45% shot at winning the AL East... In fact, the Sox maintained a 70% mark as late as July 29th, after a nice comeback win against the Angels. As you can see by the graph, though, August was not kind. Not only was the Yankees series brutal, but road losses to Kansas City and Tampa Bay before the Massacre dipped the Sox's Odds below 50% for the first time since May.
For comparison's sake, here's the Yankees' graph:
And the two teams side-by-side:
That pretty much says it all.
Meanwhile, the battle going on in the AL Central has been one of the most compelling wild card races in years. Here's how the graph looks:
The Twins were staring at basically 0% from May 2 until mid-June, but have put on quite an amazing show since then, winning 51 of their last 72 games since June 8. I like how the Twins and White Sox graphs are practically mirror images of each other; since Detroit locked up the division so early in the season, the only hope either team had of making the playoffs was through the wild card, and the PECOTA graph reflects this.
Finally, I wanted to show Oakland's odds, because it seems like they always do this kind of thing. Maintaining a meager-at-best playoff probabilty through mid-July, they've surged big-time in the intervening month-plus. On July 14th, PECOTA said they stood only an 18.56% chance of making the postseason; today, it's 92.06%. Since 1999, the A's are 359-204 after the All-Star break, better than any other team in baseball by a massive margin. Why? Because Billy Beane is a freaking genius, to put it mildly. And he did it again this year.
Looking at the current Odds Report, the Mets, Yankees, Tigers, and A's are all practically mortal locks to win their respective divisions. PECOTA thinks the Cardinals and Dodgers are pretty good bets to win their divisions as well, although each team has a semi-looming threat (the Reds' division odds are at 17%, and the Padres' are at 20%). The wild card races are wide open, especially in the NL:
NL Odds (%) Div. WildCard Playoffs ---------------------------------------------- Mets 99.996 0.004 100.000 Dodgers 72.673 11.261 83.934 Cardinals 74.549 5.263 79.813 Padres 20.369 21.033 41.402 Reds 16.969 11.186 28.155 Phillies 0.001 22.460 22.461 Giants 4.696 7.342 12.037 Marlins 0.002 10.678 10.680 Astros 7.086 2.977 10.063 Diamondbacks 1.668 2.741 4.408 Braves 0.000 3.814 3.814 Brewers 1.397 0.483 1.880 Rockies 0.594 0.759 1.354 Cubs 0.000 0.000 0.000 Nationals 0.000 0.000 0.000 Pirates 0.000 0.000 0.000
AL Odds (%) Div. WildCard Playoffs ---------------------------------------------- Yankees 99.052 0.108 99.160 Tigers 88.047 9.945 97.991 Athletics 92.040 0.019 92.059 Twins 6.198 44.079 50.277 White Sox 5.755 44.270 50.025 Angels 5.723 0.044 5.767 Red Sox 0.811 1.446 2.257 Rangers 2.225 0.012 2.238 Blue Jays 0.137 0.078 0.214 Mariners 0.011 0.000 0.011 Indians 0.000 0.000 0.000 Orioles 0.000 0.000 0.000 Devil Rays 0.000 0.000 0.000 Royals 0.000 0.000 0.000
Only 0.2% separates the Twins from the White Sox. Now that's what I call a close race! Jermaine Dye for MVP, anyone, if the ChiSox win? A case could definitely be made, although Jeter has been a better player.
Well, that's it, playoff odds. Cool, huh? Until next time...
Update: You asked for them, so NL Playoff Odds graphs can be found here.
Date
Wed 08/30/06, 9:11 am EST
