White Sox not really worst ever

Predicting the baseball postseason is an annual tradition on this blog, so I'll do the same kind of analysis I've done the last seventeen 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 2024:

	nW%	pW%	W%
Dodgers	.593887	.592660	.604938
Yankees	.581344	.590005	.580247
Braves	.569425	.567411	.549383
Orioles	.566794	.553462	.561728
Padres	.565903	.558084	.574074
Astros	.558712	.559745	.546584
Phillies	.558353	.570728	.586420
Mets	.555892	.544263	.549383
Mariners	.552457	.549098	.524691
Brewers	.548758	.587130	.574074
Red Sox	.539745	.502443	.500000
Tigers	.530170	.527624	.530864
Cubs	.522845	.543556	.512346
Twins	.522576	.504336	.506173
Royals	.521487	.560176	.530864
Diamondbacks	.520452	.553423	.549383
Guardians	.501965	.559698	.571429
Giants	.494374	.496056	.493827
Cardinals	.491107	.469111	.512346
Blue Jays	.474338	.453503	.456790
Rays	.470809	.457464	.493827
Reds	.468769	.503284	.475309
Rangers	.463088	.464626	.481481
Athletics	.454721	.421764	.425926
Pirates	.444007	.451878	.469136
Nationals	.435367	.433452	.438272
Angels	.406086	.397515	.388889
Marlins	.398745	.375565	.382716
Rockies	.363640	.362249	.376543
White Sox	.317990	.296470	.253086

So this year the luckiest teams were the Guardians, Diamondbacks and Phillies, and the unluckiest teams were the White Sox, Red Sox, Athletics and Mariners.  If all teams had the win-loss records they deserved, two of the division champions would change:  The Tigers would finish ahead of the Guardians (who in fact deserved to finish fourth) and the Braves would finish ahead of the Phillies.  If the twelve actually best teams had made the playoffs, the Mariners and Red Sox would be in and the Royals and Guardians would be out.  The Dodgers were a bit lucky but did deserve the best record in baseball; the White Sox deserved the worst record in baseball but not the historically bad record they ended up with.

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

Astros over Tigers	Astros over Guardians	Yankees over Astros	Dodgers over Yankees
Orioles over Royals	Yankees over Orioles
Mets over Brewers	Phillies over Mets	Dodgers over Phillies
Braves over Padres	Dodgers over Braves

But what I'm rooting for would give us a rematch of the 1980 Series:

Astros over Tigers	Guardians over Astros	Royals over Guardians	Phillies over Royals
Royals over Orioles	Royals over Yankees
Brewers over Mets	Phillies over Brewers	Phillies over Padres
Padres over Braves	Padres over Dodgers

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