Finally the Indians' turn?
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 ten 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 2017:
nW% | pW% | W% | |
---|---|---|---|
Indians | .644021 | .663830 | .629630 |
Yankees | .623690 | .617778 | .561728 |
Dodgers | .620897 | .626809 | .641975 |
Astros | .609607 | .611056 | .623457 |
Nationals | .593533 | .589530 | .598765 |
Diamondbacks | .577449 | .594370 | .574074 |
Cubs | .572111 | .576184 | .567901 |
Cardinals | .536145 | .534912 | .512346 |
Red Sox | .534914 | .573306 | .574074 |
Rays | .532958 | .493455 | .493827 |
Rockies | .512520 | .538722 | .537037 |
Brewers | .511367 | .522400 | .530864 |
Twins | .501663 | .515408 | .524691 |
Mariners | .493556 | .486776 | .481481 |
Athletics | .492554 | .449257 | .462963 |
Marlins | .479785 | .474852 | .475309 |
Rangers | .472678 | .490369 | .481481 |
Angels | .466345 | .500645 | .493827 |
Blue Jays | .456683 | .443793 | .469136 |
Braves | .453302 | .447697 | .444444 |
Royals | .450858 | .445607 | .493827 |
Reds | .449607 | .434823 | .419753 |
Mets | .446459 | .427075 | .432099 |
Phillies | .439353 | .442987 | .407407 |
Orioles | .438031 | .443559 | .462963 |
Tigers | .430429 | .411352 | .395062 |
Pirates | .430112 | .458861 | .462963 |
White Sox | .426643 | .431942 | .413580 |
Giants | .408797 | .412056 | .395062 |
Padres | .401517 | .365740 | .438272 |
So this year the luckiest teams were the Royals, Red Sox and Padres; the unluckiest were the Yankees, Rays and Tigers. The seven actually best teams made the playoffs; if the ten actually best teams had made the playoffs, the Cardinals and Rays would be in and the Twins and Rockies would be out. If all teams had the win-loss records they deserved, only one division champion would change: The Yankees would finish about 14 games ahead of the Red Sox instead of 2 games behind. The Royals would be 73–89 instead of 80–82, but would still finish in third place in the AL Central; the Athletics would move from last to 3rd and the Angels would move from 2nd to last in the AL West. And the Indians, not the Dodgers, would have the best record in baseball and home-field advantage throughout the postseason.
Based on the above results, it's reasonable to predict:
Indians over Yankees | Indians over Astros | Indians over Dodgers | |
Yankees over Twins | |||
Astros over Red Sox | |||
Nationals over Cubs | Dodgers over Nationals | ||
Diamondbacks over Rockies | Dodgers over Diamondbacks | ||
But here's what I'm rooting for:
Indians over Twins | Red Sox over Indians | Cubs over Red Sox | |
Twins over Yankees | |||
Red Sox over Astros | |||
Cubs over Nationals | Cubs over Rockies | ||
Rockies over Diamondbacks | Rockies over Dodgers | ||
I got all the statistics I needed for this analysis from these three pages: A B C