04 October 2021

Best Blue Jays team since 2015

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 fourteen 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 2021:

nW%pW%W%
Dodgers.658826.671906.654321
Giants.635012.635058.660494
Astros.615526.621593.586420
Blue Jays.597655.609700.561728
White Sox.595228.601244.574074
Rays.588671.623192.617284
Brewers.572128.576885.586420
Braves.565929.584226.546584
Yankees.550275.527828.567901
Red Sox.528498.546295.567901
Cardinals.526901.522565.555556
Athletics.510203.535789.530864
Padres.509499.513369.487654
Reds.504500.515385.512346
Phillies.499604.493195.506173
Mets.498352.477557.475309
Nationals.479903.443281.401235
Indians.471884.493664.493827
Twins.469998.438748.450617
Angels.461637.451570.475309
Rockies.459213.466059.459627
Mariners.450767.467737.555556
Tigers.448364.462894.475309
Marlins.444847.446241.413580
Royals.437805.436919.456790
Cubs.422376.421055.438272
Rangers.391132.380896.370370
Diamondbacks.380847.377222.320988
Pirates.373419.360502.376543
Orioles.371278.336078.320988

So this year the luckiest team was the Mariners, and it wasn't close; they ended up almost sneaking into the playoffs with a 90–72 record even though they deserved a record closer to 73–89.  The unluckiest teams were the Nationals, Diamondbacks and Orioles, but the unluckiest good team was the Blue Jays, who only finished fourth in the AL East even though they were really the fourth-best team in baseball.  If all teams had the win-loss records they deserved, just two of the division champions would change:  The Blue Jays would finish 2 games ahead of the Rays (and 8 games ahead of the Yankees) and the Dodgers would finish 4 games ahead of the Giants.  If the ten actually best teams had made the playoffs, the Blue Jays would be in and the Cardinals would be out.

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

 Rays over YankeesAstros over RaysDodgers over Astros
Yankees over Red Sox
 Astros over White Sox
Brewers over BravesDodgers over Brewers
Dodgers over CardinalsDodgers over Giants
 

But what I'm rooting for is very different:

 Red Sox over RaysRed Sox over AstrosRed Sox over Cardinals
Red Sox over Yankees
 Astros over White Sox
Brewers over BravesCardinals over Brewers
Cardinals over DodgersCardinals over Giants
 

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