Year of the Cub

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 nine years, essentially factoring out each team's luck to see how good they really were this season.  The Nostradamian, Pythagorean and actual win percentages for all teams in 2016:

	nW%	pW%	W%
Cubs	.668397	.664640	.639752
Red Sox	.621439	.605962	.574074
Nationals	.592000	.599543	.586420
Dodgers	.570874	.558219	.561728
Blue Jays	.566575	.559517	.549383
Indians	.555688	.563363	.583851
Giants	.554156	.556929	.537037
Cardinals	.549562	.541052	.530864
Tigers	.535488	.518033	.534161
Mets	.531894	.538309	.537037
Mariners	.521023	.537790	.530864
Orioles	.510273	.518181	.549383
Rockies	.502655	.491951	.462963
Astros	.500817	.514765	.518519
Rangers	.489922	.504809	.586420
Rays	.489653	.472932	.419753
Yankees	.489244	.485437	.518519
Marlins	.487651	.481528	.490683
White Sox	.477393	.481066	.481481
Brewers	.465970	.459656	.450617
Pirates	.459386	.482161	.484472
Braves	.453149	.417239	.422360
Royals	.448659	.475605	.500000
Athletics	.447134	.430431	.425926
Angels	.444426	.493664	.456790
Diamondbacks	.437592	.423523	.425926
Twins	.428857	.405941	.364198
Padres	.413678	.447349	.419753
Reds	.405368	.420057	.419753
Phillies	.396215	.380592	.438272

So this year the luckiest teams were the Rangers, Royals, Phillies and Orioles; the unluckiest were the Rays, Twins and Red Sox.  The seven actually best teams made the playoffs; if the ten actually best teams had made the playoffs, the Cardinals and Tigers would be in and the Orioles and Rangers would be out.  The Cubs won 103 games but deserved to win 108, more than they've won in a season since before they won the World Series.  Five teams better than the Rangers will be watching the playoffs at home; for the second year in a row, they've won the AL West despite deserving a losing record.  If a team's winning more games than their statistics would predict is evidence of superior managing, then Jeff Banister must be one of the best managers in baseball.

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

	Blue Jays over Rangers	Red Sox over Blue Jays	Cubs over Red Sox
Blue Jays over Orioles
	Red Sox over Indians
	Nationals over Dodgers	Cubs over Nationals
Giants over Mets	Cubs over Giants

But what I'm rooting for is a little different:

	Blue Jays over Rangers	Blue Jays over Red Sox	Blue Jays over Cubs
Blue Jays over Orioles
	Red Sox over Indians
	Dodgers over Nationals	Cubs over Dodgers
Mets over Giants	Cubs over Mets

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

All the way, Jays!