The three-day All-Star break is a convenient time to begin the grieving process, and so yesterday made for a timely opportunity to shovel dirt on three teams whom PECOTA tabbed as potentially playoff-bound back in April. The Diamondbacks, A's and Indians may not be mathematically eliminated from postseason contention yet, but with their odds of joining the dance falling below 0.5 percent, a burial seemed in order.The Yankees wind up in the middle of the pack; their overall preseason odds of 66.6 percent have fallen slightly, to 58.9 percent, but they're still very much alive. The Dodgers wind up second from the top of the final list, those teams whose odds have improved the most; they went from heavy pre-season favorites (57.2 percent) to near-certainties (99.3 percent) despite Manny Ramirez's 50-game suspension.
As the BP staff has taken the past several days to examine how our preseason PECOTA forecasts have fared with regards to teams, hitters, starters and relievers, it's worth remembering that such projections don't equal destiny. They're simply a shorthand for a wider range of probabilities centered around the weighted mean forecasts we publicize, and all kinds of real-world factors — injuries, bad luck, mismanagement, imperfect information, and so on — can affect their accuracy.
Bearing that in mind, today we'll examine which teams have helped or harmed their postseason chances the most relative to our initial forecasts using our plain vanilla version of the Playoff Odds report, thus isolating the effect of our projections from our expectations for these teams going forward. In that report, each team's current record and third-order Pythagorean record — their record after adjusting for scoring environment, run elements, and quality of opposition — are factored into a Monte Carlo simulation of the rest of the season, with their records regressing not to .500 but to their third-order winning percentages. Run differentials play a big part here; a team that's above .500 but being outscored won't see favorable odds.
Surprisingly enough, none of the freshly buried teams rates as the biggest disappointment from this perspective:Team Wpct 3Pct Div WC Tot Proj +/-...From this vantage, it's the Cubs who have disappointed the most, though at least they maintain about a one-in-six shot at October. Expected to pace the circuit with 95 wins and an MLB-high 11-game cushion, they're instead tied for third in the NL Central, 3 1/2 games back. Injuries to Milton Bradley and Aramis Ramirez, disappointment from Alfonso Soriano, and a hole in the lineup where Mark DeRosa used to be (their second basemen have hit a combined .224/.280/.294) have limited the Cubs to just 4.1 runs per game and the league's third-lowest EqA.
Cubs .500 .486 13.0 3.2 16.2 62.6 -46.4
D'backs .427 .475 0.0 0.2 0.2 45.0 -44.8
Athletics .430 .475 0.4 0.0 0.4 41.7 -41.3
Indians .393 .471 0.2 0.0 0.2 38.4 -38.2
Mets .483 .502 11.5 2.2 13.8 48.4 -34.6
Braves .489 .501 12.4 2.6 14.9 33.1 -18.1
Reds .483 .442 2.8 0.7 3.5 19.7 -16.3
Royals .420 .466 0.4 0.0 0.4 13.8 -13.4
Nationals .299 .451 0.0 0.0 0.0 10.9 -10.9
Brewers .511 .477 16.5 3.0 19.5 28.5 -9.1
The Diamondbacks' offense ranks directly above them, a problem compounded by the loss of Brandon Webb, who hasn't pitched since Opening Day, and a wretched bullpen. The A's main problem has been a lack of offense, some of which is attributable to bad luck on balls in play>. The Indians merely have a staff that's been the league's worst in terms of run prevention because they don't miss enough bats; they're 12th in strikeout rate and 13th in Defensive Efficiency. The Mets have been without offensive stalwarts Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran for weeks now, and their pitching depth has been compromised by injuries as well; their playoff hopes aren't dead yet, but please excuse their weak pulse, clammy skin and stiffening limbs.
Labels: All-Star Game, Dodgers, ESPN Insider, Hit and Run, Hit List, Yankees
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