THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

With all the talk of parity in baseball this year…

There are only 4 teams in each league that have a better than even money chance at making the post-season, and we are barely halfway through the season.

At least according to my Monte Carlo sim, which relies heavily (of course) on my estimation of each team’s overall strength.

NL

ARI
CHN (Ironically, adding Harden, a great pitcher, barely increases their chances of getting into the post-season, as they were almost a lock before. Of course, he greatly increases their chances of winning IN the post-season - if he lasts that long, which might be 50-50 at best.)
MIL (Increased their chances of making post by 16%, by acquiring CC.)
PHI

Other contenders: Dodgers, Mets, STL.

Everyone else has less than a 10% chance.

AL

ALA
BOS
CHA
TB

Other contenders are: DET, MIN, NYA, OAK (BTW, losing Harden only decreases OAK chances of making the post by 4% and that is not including any possible value from Patterson, Murton, and Gallagher, over and above what they have now.)

No one else in the AL has more than a 1% chance of making the post.

So, as of July 9, the following teams (47% of all teams) have virtually little or no chance of making the post (less than 10%):

ATL
CIN
COL
FLO
PIT
SDN
SFN
WAS

BAL
CLE
KCA
SEA
TEX
TOR

Honestly, I have not ever looked at the same data in past years, so I have no idea whether that is a lot, a little, or about average for teams that are pretty much out of the picture in early July.

Then again, if 14 teams have a 5% chance each of making the post, then there is a 51% chance that at least one of them DOES make the post!