2015 MLB Projected Standings & Preseason Ratings

March 27, 2015 - by David Hess

With MLB Opening Day 2015 approaching, it’s time to release our preseason ratings and projected standings.

The main purpose of these ratings is to provide a data-driven starting point for our MLB projected standings. Just like the past few years, in 2015 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.

An Important Note: In other sports, we use our own data and models to come up with independent estimates of team quality, and then compare those to the market, and to other projections. For MLB, however, we’re simply not at the leading edge of preseason analysis.

So rather than rolling our own preseason ratings, these projections are based on a weighted average of betting market info and projections from other well respected sources.

We’re still publishing these in the interest of full disclosure, so that you know what the initial rating in our projection system was for each team. But we’re most definitely not recommending that you use these ratings and forecasts to go place preseason bets.

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 94 games we’ve forecast for the Dodgers, and the worst will likely lose more than 95.

However, picking which teams will wildly exceed expectations is rather tricky, and on average these conservative predictions should provide a less biased starting point 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 New York Yankees projections as an example. Follow that link and you’ll find a chart showing the projected odds of the Yankees winning any specific number of games, as well as a list of their toughest & easiest games, and a table showing how their chances of winning the World Series change depending on what seed they get in the playoffs.

Quick Predictions For The 2015 MLB Season

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

The most likely World Series result is a crosstown matchup, with the LA Dodgers beating the LA Angels … though the chance of that exact outcome occurring is under 1%.
The most wide open division is the AL East, where each team has between a 16% (Yankees) and 31% (Red Sox) chance of winning the division crown.
Conversely, the Nationals (62%) and Dodgers (58%) are the only teams that are favored against the field to win their divisions.
Will we see a World Series rematch? Unlikely. In fact, there’s almost a 50/50 chance (49%, actually) that both the Giants and Royals will miss the playoffs.

Here is how the playoffs would play out, if these projections ended up being spot on (which, to be clear, is very unlikely):

Wild Card Round: Padres over Pirates; Mariners over Indians
Division Round: Dodgers over Padres; Nationals over Cardinals; Angels over Mariners; Red Sox over Tigers
League Championship Series: Dodgers over Nationals; Angels over Red Sox
World Series: Dodgers over Angels

Full 2015 MLB Preseason Projected Standings

2015 TeamRankings.com MLB Preseason Projected Standings
American League
AL East	W	L	TR Rank	Playoffs	Win Div	Wild Card	Top Seed	WS Champs
Boston	86	76	6	49.1%	31.1%	18.0%	12.9%	5.5%
Toronto	82	80	11	33.6%	18.6%	15.0%	5.7%	3.0%
Tampa Bay	81	81	15	31.6%	16.7%	14.9%	5.4%	2.8%
Baltimore	81	81	16	31.2%	17.6%	13.6%	6.0%	2.9%
NY Yankees	81	81	17	29.8%	16.0%	13.8%	5.4%	2.6%

AL Central	W	L	TR Rank	Playoffs	Win Div	Wild Card	Top Seed	WS Champs
Detroit	84	78	9	41.9%	30.5%	11.4%	8.1%	4.0%
Cleveland	83	79	14	40.2%	28.8%	11.4%	6.7%	3.7%
Chi Sox	80	82	20	29.6%	19.9%	9.7%	4.5%	2.4%
Kansas City	78	84	23	23.0%	15.7%	7.3%	2.7%	1.6%
Minnesota	71	91	29	8.3%	5.1%	3.2%	0.4%	0.4%

AL West	W	L	TR Rank	Playoffs	Win Div	Wild Card	Top Seed	WS Champs
LA Angels	89	73	3	59.3%	37.8%	21.5%	17.9%	8.1%
Seattle	87	75	4	52.9%	31.1%	21.8%	13.1%	6.4%
Oakland	82	80	7	33.6%	16.9%	16.7%	6.3%	3.2%
Texas	77	85	22	16.9%	7.7%	9.2%	2.7%	1.3%
Houston	76	86	24	15.9%	6.4%	9.5%	2.1%	1.0%

National League
NL East	W	L	TR Rank	Playoffs	Win Div	Wild Card	Top Seed	WS Champs
Washington	93	69	2	75.9%	62.0%	13.9%	24.1%	11.3%
NY Mets	82	80	18	32.4%	15.8%	16.6%	4.0%	2.4%
Miami	82	80	19	31.7%	16.6%	15.1%	4.5%	2.4%
Atlanta	73	89	28	10.2%	4.4%	5.8%	0.7%	0.5%
Philadelphia	68	95	30	3.5%	1.3%	2.2%	0.1%	0.1%

NL Central	W	L	TR Rank	Playoffs	Win Div	Wild Card	Top Seed	WS Champs
St. Louis	88	74	5	53.4%	34.5%	18.9%	10.3%	5.9%
Pittsburgh	83	79	12	39.2%	22.7%	16.5%	5.7%	3.5%
Chi Cubs	83	79	13	38.3%	21.7%	16.6%	5.5%	3.5%
Milwaukee	79	83	21	24.5%	12.7%	11.8%	3.1%	1.7%
Cincinnati	77	85	25	17.2%	8.4%	8.8%	1.7%	1.1%

NL West	W	L	TR Rank	Playoffs	Win Div	Wild Card	Top Seed	WS Champs
LA Dodgers	94	68	1	76.9%	58.2%	18.7%	27.3%	13.0%
San Diego	84	78	8	39.9%	18.9%	21.0%	6.3%	3.6%
SF Giants	83	79	10	36.7%	16.6%	20.1%	5.3%	3.3%
Arizona	73	89	26	10.2%	3.6%	6.6%	0.8%	0.5%
Colorado	72	90	27	8.0%	2.8%	5.2%	0.5%	0.4%