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