29 September 2011

Red Sox deserved better yet again

Predicting the baseball postseason is an annual tradition on this otherwise 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 four 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 2011:

nW%pW%W%
Rangers.619564.605199.592593
Red Sox.615862.577884.555556
Phillies.587510.633263.629630
Yankees.573866.624234.598765
Tigers.568963.546329.586420
Brewers.565024.555720.592593
Cardinals.555746.543971.555556
Rays.547264.564168.561728
Braves.530747.526419.549383
Dodgers.523325.523300.509317
Giants.515273.493624.530864
Diamondbacks.512743.545236.580247
Angels.509286.523918.530864
Reds.497204.509432.487654
Mets.489826.484962.475309
Marlins.486833.447046.444444
Nationals.484523.486281.496894
White Sox.482104.465055.487654
Blue Jays.481998.489050.500000
Royals.480274.480382.438272
Rockies.478011.476364.450617
Athletics.475615476515.456790
Indians.469122.465040.493827
Padres.454000.486323.438272
Cubs.451705.434079.438272
Mariners.432221.412190.413580
Orioles.415420.411949.425926
Pirates.407165.429730.444444
Astros.396697.384120.345679
Twins.371774.382598.388889

So this year the luckiest teams were the Diamondbacks, Phillies and Pirates; the unluckiest were the Red Sox, Astros, Marlins and Royals.  The Rangers deserved to have the best record in baseball but the Red Sox were actually close behind.  The Red Sox, Braves, Dodgers and Giants 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 Rangers and Cardinals, who were slightly unlucky.  The Diamondbacks are the worst team in the playoffs; they deserved to finish behind both the Dodgers and the Giants, but they finished in first place by eight games.  The 2011 Red Sox may be the best team to miss the playoffs in many years.

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

Yankees over TigersRangers over YankeesRangers over Phillies
Rangers over Rays
Brewers over DiamondbacksPhillies over Brewers
Phillies over Cardinals

But here's what I'm rooting for:

Tigers over YankeesRangers over TigersPhillies over Rangers
Rangers over Rays
Diamondbacks over BrewersPhillies over Diamondbacks
Phillies over Cardinals

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