29 September 2014

Missouri teams sneak in

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 seven 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 2014:

nW%pW%W%
Angels.590428.592508.604938
Nationals.590284.595752.592593
Athletics.585115.609173.543210
Dodgers.577539.568916.580247
Pirates.561452.535499.543210
Orioles.548153.578495.592593
Giants.537648.536440.543210
Tigers.536835.532512.555556
Rays.526315.490385.475309
Mariners.524282.561398.537037
Blue Jays.517765.524015.512346
Indians.514968.511073.524691
Cardinals.512238.511979.555556
Royals.496797.519370.549383
Brewers.496051.495100.506173
Yankees.485451.478140.518519
Cubs.482200.435832.450617
Rockies.480081.463399.407407
Marlins.479829.479890.475309
Braves.478881.481237.487654
Mets.467106.508071.487654
Astros.466099.436623.432099
Reds.456053.487115.469136
Twins.455437.462029.432099
White Sox.455236.436999.450617
Padres.454984.465479.475309
Phillies.448682.452459.450617
Red Sox.446516.445214.438272
Diamondbacks.424982.414950.395062
Rangers.402902.412383.413580

So this year the luckiest teams were the Royals, Orioles and Cardinals; the unluckiest were the Rockies, Rays and Athletics.  The Yankees weren't as lucky as last year, but they deserved to have a losing record and finish in fourth place, not second.  The Rangers were really the worse Texas team by a much greater margin than the standings showed.  The eight actually best teams made the playoffs, but the other two teams to make it, the Cardinals and Royals, were very lucky and deserved it less than the Rays, Mariners, Blue Jays and Indians.

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

 Angels over AthleticsAngels over OriolesAngels over Nationals
Athletics over Royals
 Orioles over Tigers
Dodgers over CardinalsNationals over Dodgers
Pirates over GiantsNationals over Pirates
 

But what I'm rooting for is very different:

 Athletics over AngelsAthletics over OriolesAthletics over Pirates
Athletics over Royals
 Orioles over Tigers
Cardinals over DodgersPirates over Cardinals
Pirates over GiantsPirates over Nationals
 

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