Tigers deserved better

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 nineteen 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 2026:

	nW%	pW%	W%
Dodgers	.636937	.629190	.617284
Brewers	.615788	.632775	.635802
Yankees	.574403	.593455	.577640
Cubs	.566955	.586006	.549383
Rays	.562901	.556604	.604938
Tigers	.556552	.547149	.469136
Pirates	.544559	.517007	.506173
Red Sox	.538317	.554746	.537037
Marlins	.531112	.501924	.493827
Braves	.529912	.577153	.580247
Padres	.507974	.526721	.561728
White Sox	.507127	.534214	.518519
Astros	.503242	.480487	.500000
Guardians	.502325	.507483	.524691
Diamondbacks	.496802	.505606	.530864
Blue Jays	.496796	.468665	.487654
Mets	.494940	.479533	.456790
Phillies	.488647	.509726	.543210
Nationals	.482713	.503356	.475309
Rangers	.480476	.469789	.493827
Orioles	.480391	.486814	.490683
Giants	.477662	.441916	.401235
Twins	.473687	.465488	.475309
Mariners	.468970	.461762	.469136
Cardinals	.452371	.481942	.475309
Angels	.451102	.437153	.382716
Royals	.434411	.427165	.425926
Reds	.414285	.402753	.462963
Rockies	.386335	.397445	.358025
Athletics	.386236	.369060	.395062

So this year the luckiest teams were the Phillies, Padres and Braves, and the unluckiest teams were the Tigers, Giants and Angels.  If all teams had the win-loss records they deserved, half of the division champions would change:  The Yankees would finish ahead of the Rays, the Tigers would finish ahead of the Guardians (just like last year) and the Marlins would finish ahead of the Braves.  If the twelve actually best teams had made the playoffs, the Tigers, Pirates and Marlins would be in and the Astros, Guardians and Phillies would be out.  The Phillies were the luckiest team in baseball and didn't deserve a winning record, much less a spot in the playoffs.  Two teams, the Tigers and Marlins, deserved division titles but finished with losing records and out of the playoffs.  Like last year, the Rockies were quite unlucky, but this time they deserved only the second-worst record in baseball, as the Athletics were just slightly worse.

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

White Sox over Astros	White Sox over Guardians	Yankees over White Sox	Dodgers over Yankees
Yankees over Red Sox	Yankees over Rays
Braves over Phillies	Dodgers over Braves	Dodgers over Brewers
Cubs over Padres	Brewers over Cubs

But what I'm rooting for is very different:

Astros over White Sox	Guardians over Astros	Red Sox over Guardians	Cubs over Red Sox
Red Sox over Yankees	Red Sox over Rays
Phillies over Braves	Phillies over Dodgers	Cubs over Phillies
Cubs over Padres	Cubs over Brewers

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