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.
Let’s go over a few of the insights these projections provide, before laying out all the details below:
Here is how the playoffs would play out, if these projections ended up being spot on (which, to be clear, is very unlikely):
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%
Printed from TeamRankings.com - © 2005-2024 Team Rankings, LLC. All Rights Reserved.