04 October 2010

Red Sox deserved better

Predicting the baseball postseason is a tradition on this still near-defunct blog, so, as busy as I am, I'll take a few minutes to do the same kind of analysis I've done the last three years, essentially factoring out each team's luck to see how good they really were this season.  (Actually, I'm so busy I'm just adapting last year's post with new data but no new detailed analysis.)  The Nostradamian, Pythagorean and actual win percentages for all teams in 2010:

nW%pW%W%
Yankees.585972.596998.586420
Red Sox.571691.543272.549383
Braves.571388.572598.561728
Reds.559742.564878.561728
Rangers.558152.561853.555556
Rockies.550320.532580.512346
Phillies.548805.584957.598765
Giants.547321.580989.567901
Twins.546392.569008.580247
Cardinals.538330.562892.530864
Rays.538080.595649.592593
Tigers.532365.504899.500000
Blue Jays.529362.516654.524691
White Sox.519933.530139.543210
Athletics.516039.526248.500000
Padres.513639.561467.555556
Dodgers.508014.483172.493827
Marlins.493185.501274.493827
Brewers.487449.468235.475309
Cubs.477239.448455.462963
Mets.463235.502798.487654
Nationals.454897.443190.425926
Angels.453522.486109.493827
Diamondbacks.452800.427700.401235
Royals.443835.399307.413580
Indians.433936.430933.425926
Orioles.416793.388744.407407
Astros.404867.419912.469136
Mariners.401393.362730.376543
Pirates.358490.329242.351852

So this year the luckiest teams were the Astros, Rays and Phillies; the unluckiest were the Diamondbacks, Rockies and Tigers.  The Yankees deserved to have the best record in baseball but the Red Sox were actually close behind.  The Red Sox, Rockies and Cardinals didn't make the playoffs even though they were really better than some teams that did.  Every team in the playoffs was lucky to win as many games as they did except for the Braves and Rangers, who were slightly unlucky.  Surprisingly, the Rays are the worst team in the playoffs; they deserved to finish about six games behind the Red Sox, but they finished seven games ahead of them.

Based on the above results, it's reasonable to predict:

Rangers over RaysYankees over RangersYankees over Braves
Yankees over Twins
Reds over PhilliesBraves over Reds
Braves over Giants

But here's what I'm rooting for:

Rangers over RaysRangers over TwinsReds over Rangers
Twins over Yankees
Reds over PhilliesReds over Giants
Giants over Braves

I got all the statistics I needed for this analysis from these three pages: A B C