2012 MLB Predictions: Projected Standings, Most Likely World Series, Preseason Ratings Notes from the Sports Nerds

2012 MLB Predictions: Projected Standings, Most Likely World Series, Preseason Ratings

11 comments - MLB - posted by David Hess on April 4, 2012

The Major League Baseball regular season officially started in Tokyo on March 28th, but in most fans’ eyes, the true opening day is Thursday, April 5th. The last spring training games wrap up this evening, and the Cardinals visit the Marlins tonight in a game that counts, then half of the league gets in on the action tomorrow afternoon.

As the season gets underway, it’s time to release our preseason ratings and projections.

The main purpose of these ratings is to provide a data-driven starting point for our MLB projected standings, which we rolled out yesterday afternoon. We’ll have fully automated win-loss predictions, playoff chances, and World Series win odds, and all the info will be updated every single day of the season to reflect the latest results and the most up to date MLB power ratings.

You may look at the projections below and think that they aren’t extreme enough. In a way, you’d be right — the best team in the league will almost certainly win more than the 91 games we’ve forecast for the Yankees, and the worst will likely lose more than 89. However, picking which teams will wildly exceed expectations is rather tricky, and on average these conservative predictions should fare better than more aggressive ones.

However, if you’d like to see our best case and worst case scenarios for each team, check out their team projections page. Here are the Kansas City Royals projections as an example. The table in the middle of the page shows that in about 1 in 10 of our season simulations, the Royals will win 91 or more games. That’s what we see as their reasonably-attainable ceiling. Similarly, if they completely collapse, they’ll fall down to the 65-win range.

Quick Predictions For The 2012 MLB Season

Let’s go over a few of the insights these projections provide, before laying all the details out below.

The most likely World Series result is the New York Yankees beating the Philadelphia Phillies. Of course, that exact outcome only has about a 1 in 50 chance of occurring.
The NL West appears to be anybody’s to win, with all teams having between a 17% and 22% chance to win the division.
There is a roughly 50/50 chance that both AL Wild Cards will come from the AL East. One of the Yankees, Red Sox, Rays, and Blue Jays will be very disappointed at the end of the year.
The Texas Rangers in the AL West are the biggest lock for a division title. It helps that they only have three teams to beat.
The AL Central looks like Detroit and four interchangeable teams. No ordering of #2 through #5 would be a surprise.
The race for the two NL Wild Cards is wide open. Only Pittsburgh and Houston have less than a 10% shot at snagging a Wild Card berth, and favored Atlanta has only a 17% chance.

Here is how the playoffs would play out, if these projections end up being spot on:

Wild Card Round: Red Sox over Rays; Braves over Brewers
Division Round: Yankees over Red Sox, Rangers over Tigers; Phillies over Braves, Cardinals over Giants
League Championship Series: Yankees over Rangers; Phillies over Cardinals
World Series: Yankees over Phillies

Full 2012 MLB Preseason Projections

2012 MLB Preseason Projections
American League
AL East	W	L	TR Rank	Playoffs	Wild Card	Win Div	Top Seed	WS Champs
NY Yankees	91	71	1	67.9%	29.4%	38.5%	21.7%	11.1%
Boston	87	75	4	52.8%	28.2%	24.6%	13.5%	6.9%
Tampa Bay	86	76	5	51.8%	28.0%	23.8%	12.5%	6.4%
Toronto	81	81	10	30.7%	20.6%	10.1%	4.2%	2.8%
Baltimore	73	89	28	9.9%	6.9%	3.0%	1.0%	0.6%

AL Central	W	L	TR Rank	Playoffs	Wild Card	Win Div	Top Seed	WS Champs
Detroit	83	79	8	45.2%	10.1%	35.1%	7.2%	3.7%
Cleveland	78	84	23	26.3%	7.1%	19.2%	3.3%	1.6%
Kansas City	78	84	24	25.2%	7.0%	18.2%	2.4%	1.5%
Minnesota	76	86	25	18.7%	5.7%	13.0%	1.6%	1.0%
Chi Sox	76	86	26	20.8%	6.4%	14.4%	2.0%	1.1%

AL West	W	L	TR Rank	Playoffs	Wild Card	Win Div	Top Seed	WS Champs
Texas	90	73	3	67.2%	14.5%	52.7%	18.9%	8.7%
LA Angels	82	80	9	37.6%	15.1%	22.5%	6.1%	3.3%
Oakland	80	82	17	29.2%	11.8%	17.4%	4.1%	2.4%
Seattle	74	88	27	13.9%	6.5%	7.4%	1.5%	0.8%

National League
NL East	W	L	TR Rank	Playoffs	Wild Card	Win Div	Top Seed	WS Champs
Philadelphia	90	72	2	63.9%	16.8%	47.1%	21.4%	9.8%
Atlanta	83	79	7	37.3%	17.3%	20.0%	7.4%	3.9%
NY Mets	80	82	18	26.5%	13.3%	13.2%	4.5%	2.4%
Washington	78	84	21	20.7%	10.7%	10.0%	2.9%	1.7%
Miami	78	84	22	19.6%	10.0%	9.6%	2.8%	1.7%

NL Central	W	L	TR Rank	Playoffs	Wild Card	Win Div	Top Seed	WS Champs
St. Louis	86	76	6	49.8%	16.4%	33.4%	12.5%	5.4%
Milwaukee	83	79	13	38.3%	15.2%	23.1%	7.4%	3.5%
Cincinnati	83	79	12	36.3%	15.4%	20.9%	6.5%	3.3%
Chi Cubs	80	82	20	26.5%	13.0%	13.5%	4.0%	2.0%
Pittsburgh	73	89	29	10.1%	5.1%	5.0%	1.0%	0.6%
Houston	73	89	30	9.4%	5.1%	4.3%	0.9%	0.5%

NL West	W	L	TR Rank	Playoffs	Wild Card	Win Div	Top Seed	WS Champs
SF Giants	82	80	11	34.8%	12.7%	22.1%	6.7%	3.3%
Arizona	82	80	14	34.0%	11.9%	22.1%	6.3%	3.1%
LA Dodgers	82	80	15	31.8%	12.2%	19.6%	6.0%	3.0%
San Diego	81	81	16	30.7%	11.4%	19.3%	5.3%	2.7%
Colorado	80	82	19	27.6%	10.7%	16.9%	4.3%	2.3%

CcKuestner

Your division round predictions are incorrect as teams from the same division cannot play each other. It’s been that way since they started the division series. In this case, the Yankees cannot play the Red Sox in the division round and the Phillies cannot play the Braves.It would look more like this:
Yankees over Tigers; Rangers over Red SoxPhillies over Giants; Cardinals over Braves

Just thought I would let you guys know
http://www.teamrankings.com/ David Hess

CcKuestner — According to MLB.com, the new playoff format (with the added single-game Wild Card round) has led to a changed in that rule:

“In another interesting wrinkle to the new long-term playoff rule changes, beginning this year a division winner and Wild Card team from the same division will be able to meet in the Division Series, which was not the case in the past.”

This is from the article on MLB.com announcing the new playoff format (http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120229&content_id=26927024)

I couldn’t find any official rules on the MLB site that referred to this, so it’s possible this article is wrong, and they’ve since gone back to the old rule. If you have a source indicating that this isn’t right, we would definitely like to know, as obviously we don’t want to have incorrect predictions up here.

But for now, it appears we are correct.
CcKuestner

David Hess: I didn’t realize that MLB had changed the ENTIRE format of the playoffs. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
http://www.teamrankings.com/ David Hess

Yeah, other than a little bit of discussion right after the change was made, it’s received surprisingly little attention. It would have been easy to miss.
Markc3711

I am a die hard white sox fan. how is your preseason projection looking now? how bout them cubs?
SporadicPulse

favor the yankees much? They are not the best team in baseball.
http://www.teamrankings.com/ David Hess

SporadicPulse — Given that the Yankees have the 3rd-best record in baseball (and the 2nd-best run margin) while facing a schedule that is basically tied for the toughest (http://www.teamrankings.com/mlb/ranking/strength-of-schedule-by-team), I’m not sure I agree that the Yankees aren’t the best team in baseball. They have at least *played* the best so far. And as you can see above, this meshes well with the preseason prediction, which means we should be a bit more confident that their true talent actually matches their performance.

P.S. These are our preseason predictions. If you’re curious about the current projected standings, you can find those here: http://www.teamrankings.com/mlb/projections/standings/
Jacob Gaba4

You’re definately right cckuestner. Whoever made these projections probably doesent follow the MLB that much so they got it all wrong. I think you’re predictions are a lot more accurate.
http://www.teamrankings.com/ David Hess

Jacob — As we pointed out below, the playoff format changed this year with the addition of the extra Wild Cards. Now teams from the same division CAN play each other in the Division round. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_postseason#Three_Round_Playoff_System for more details.
Aquaria

So much wrong, it wasn’t even funny.
http://www.teamrankings.com/ David Hess

If you expected us to do significantly better than this, I think you may have unrealistic expectations. These projections fared fine if you compared them to other expert predictions. For example, ESPN had 49 (!) people project the MLB playoffs in the preseason. Only one person out of those 49 picked more playoff teams correctly than our projections did (Pedro Gomez): http://espn.go.com/mlb/preview12/story/_/page/12expertpicks/espn-expert-team-predictions-2012-baseball-season

Given that the main goal here is to have a reasonable starting point for our season projection system, I think these were a success. They were certainly better than starting every team with an exactly average rating.