Thursday, August 9, 2007
AL Playoff Odds: Aug 9
As promised, here's your updated playoff report playing out the rest of the season 500 times in Diamond Mind Baseball with projections updated with YTD performance.| AL East | W | L | RF | RA | DIV | WC | DIV% | WC% | PO% | High W | Low W |
| Bos07 | 98.0 | 63.9 | 865 | 686 | 454.0 | 37.0 | 90.8% | 7.4% | 98.2% | 107 | 76 |
| NYA07 | 91.8 | 70.1 | 930 | 733 | 46.0 | 337.4 | 9.2% | 67.5% | 76.7% | 102 | 71 |
| Tor07 | 81.7 | 80.3 | 788 | 742 | 0.0 | 5.1 | 0.0% | 1.0% | 1.0% | 92 | 63 |
| Bal07 | 73.5 | 88.5 | 749 | 792 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 84 | 58 |
| Tam07 | 62.5 | 99.5 | 769 | 984 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 73 | 46 |
| Central | |||||||||||
| Cle07 | 90.3 | 71.6 | 831 | 741 | 284.3 | 38.6 | 56.9% | 7.7% | 64.6% | 99 | 69 |
| Det07 | 88.8 | 73.2 | 889 | 800 | 184.8 | 35.1 | 37.0% | 7.0% | 44.0% | 101 | 66 |
| Min07 | 84.3 | 77.7 | 763 | 728 | 30.8 | 9.6 | 6.2% | 1.9% | 8.1% | 94 | 65 |
| ChA07 | 75.9 | 86.0 | 738 | 851 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 86 | 56 |
| KC07 | 68.7 | 93.3 | 764 | 860 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 81 | 59 |
| West | |||||||||||
| LAA07 | 93.0 | 69.0 | 818 | 728 | 461.5 | 4.0 | 92.3% | 0.8% | 93.1% | 102 | 71 |
| Sea07 | 86.3 | 75.6 | 786 | 790 | 37.5 | 32.8 | 7.5% | 6.6% | 14.1% | 98 | 68 |
| Oak07 | 79.0 | 82.9 | 726 | 711 | 1.0 | 0.0 | 0.2% | 0.0% | 0.2% | 90 | 62 |
| Tex07 | 70.9 | 91.1 | 791 | 881 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 80 | 52 |
The Yankees' playoff odds are inching up, even after losing to Toronto on Wednesday. My simulations say they have a 76.7% chance of making the postseason, which is a fair amount higher than Baseball Prospectus's various methods of calculating them are. Why the disparity? I have no idea.
Last time I ran these on July 22, the Yankees had only a 43% chance of making the playoffs, so things are definitely moving in the right direction.
On a completely unrelated note, I noticed that Steve Lombardi over at Was Watching had a post about how the Yankees do when facing good starters. I made the point over there that of course we'd expect them to do worse against good starters, because they're good starters. However, Steve's post got me thinking about a different way to look at the question. Do the Yankees suffer more than most teams against good starters?
What follows is not meant to be a rigorous study by any means, so make of it what you will.
First off, I just took the list of pitchers from Steve's post:
Roy Halladay
Scott Kazmir
Mark Buehrle
Kelvim Escobar
Josh Beckett
John Lackey
Johan Santana
Erik Bedard
Danny Haren
Daisuke Matsuzaka
There are a lot of different ways to look at the question here, but this is what I chose. I've grown fond of looking at what hitters do against a pitcher in terms of AVG/OBP/SLG just because it kind of puts them on the same scale.
| Yanks | Overall | Vs Good |
| AVG | .291 | .238 |
| OBP | .366 | .306 |
| SLG | .465 | .343 |
| RC/27 | 6.31 | 3.55 |
| League | Overall | Vs Good |
| AVG | .270 | .270 |
| OBP | .338 | .301 |
| SLG | .422 | .374 |
| RC/27 | 5.06 | 3.79 |
The first column is the overall batting line, first for the Yankees and then for the league. The second column is the batting line vs. the specific pitchers listed above. RC/27 is runs created per 27 outs. The formula I use for that is .87 times OBP times SLG times 27 divided by 1 - OBP (is that geeky enough?). Dividing 27 by 1-OBP gives us an approximation of how many plate appearances a team would have given their OBP over 27 outs, and .87 times OBP times SLG times plate appearances gives us a rough runs created formula.
So what does this tell us? That Steve's point was correct, and that the Yankees have suffered a bigger falloff against this specific group of good pitchers than the league does on average.
How meaningful is this? Probably not too meaningful, since we're talking about a grand total of 497 Yankee plate appearances against this group. However, it's probably something to keep in the back of your mind about the offensive quality of this team. They may not be as good as they've looked while feasting on Tampa and KC.
And go check out our sponsorship of Joba Chamberlain on Baseball Reference. We're always soliciting new Star Wars lines
.
Page 1 of 1 pages: