MLB Playoff Predictions: What Our Projections Say

There are several tight races and still much to be decided over the final month of the regular season. So we’re diving into our MLB playoff predictions to get a sense of which teams are projected to separate themselves down the stretch.

The Major League Baseball standings are, let’s be honest, a bit of a jumble.

Unlike recent seasons that deked observers with dominant regular season teams and underdog postseason winners, 2024 seems intent on instilling the toss-up mentality from the get-go.

Entering Labor Day weekend, there are nine teams stationed between 75 and 80 wins, but no one ahead of that pack. Any Los Angeles Dodgers fan will ruefully tell you that logic doesn’t dictate the results in October, but there’s plenty of crucial positioning to determine before short series take over.

Our newly released postseason probabilities and TRACR rankings can help us understand what little separation may exist between baseball’s top contenders, and what’s at stake in the pennant races as we round into the homestretch.

Here are some of the biggest takeaways from the numbers.

The Yankees are in the driver’s seat…

All rise for the World Series favorites. The New York Yankees, powered (often exclusively) by the historic All-Star duo of Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, are in the catbird’s seat by one measure.

Our World Series odds, which factor in the postseason bracket and its latent advantages or disadvantages, give the Bronx Bombers a 14.1% chance at raising a 29th banner behind the top two hitters in the game by raw value+ (RV+).

That stems from a couple factors: One is their slim division lead over the Baltimore Orioles. Being ahead is always better. But perhaps the bigger one is their relative health compared to the young Orioles team that romped to an AL East crown last season.

The Yankees survived an early season Gerrit Cole health scare and now have a starting rotation that looks positively flush compared to the depleted Baltimore staff.

TRACR, which measures a club’s strength compared to a league average team in terms of runs per nine innings, reflect that chasm in contributors. The Yankees and Orioles both boast top five offenses, but the Orioles’ defensive TRACR (rates run prevention, so pitching and defense) has slipped to 14th in the absence of pitchers Grayson Rodriguez, Kyle Bradish and John Means.

It adds up, in the projections, to about a two-game edge for New York, 95 wins to 93. Small, over the course of six months, but huge in the title odds thanks to the nearly guaranteed playoff bye the AL East champ will receive in MLB’s expanded postseason system.

Projected AL East Standings

1. New York Yankees (95-67)
2. Baltimore Orioles (93-69)
3. Boston Red Sox (83-79)
4. Tampa Bay Rays (79-83)
5. Toronto Blue Jays (78-84)

In an AL West that is lagging far behind, the model expects the Houston Astros to hold on to their 4.0-game lead at 87.2 projected wins compared to the Seattle Mariners’ 82.7.

Projected AL West Standings

1. Houston Astros (87-75)
2. Seattle Mariners (83-79)
3. Texas Rangers (76-86)
4. Oakland Athletics (72-90)
5. Los Angeles Angels (66-96)

…because the National League is stacked.

Having the best route to a ring, however, doesn’t necessarily align with having the best team. TRACR makes plain what your eyes might have been telling you all year: The NL is replete with excellent teams, while the AL is awash in relative mediocrity.

Though the records might look similar, TRACR’s deeper look into granular performance shows a divide. Four of the five most dangerous teams reside in the NL… and thus, on one side of the bracket in October. The Dodgers, Arizona Diamondbacks, Philadelphia Phillies and Milwaukee Brewers all appear more muscular than the second-best AL team, but two of them are destined to stare down the inherent entropy of a best-of-three NL wild card series.

With Shohei Ohtani in tow — and rapidly running down a jaw-dropping 50-home run, 50-steal season to go with his 196 RV+ — the Dodgers rank as the sport’s top squad at 1.00 run per nine better than an average team, but sit second in championship odds (12.9%) due largely to stiff competition keeping them from feeling secure of a division crown.

To wit: The same D-backs team refusing to let Los Angeles run away with the NL West rates as the second-best team (0.89) in MLB. Even amid a brief IL stint, second baseman Ketel Marte is crafting a better MVP case than you might realize, batting .298 with 30 homers and a 150 RV+ that ranks ninth among qualified hitters.

Meanwhile, last year’s rookie phenom Corbin Carroll is turning it on after a rough start to his sophomore campaign. Add in the power of Mike Hazen’s offseason acquisitions Eugenio Suarez and Joc Pederson and voila, you’re looking at the best offense in baseball by TRACR – and it’s not really that close (a 1.20 offensive TRACR compared to the Kansas City Royals’ 0.77).

Projected NL West Standings

1. Los Angeles Dodgers (95-67)
2. Arizona Diamondbacks (91-71)
3. San Diego Padres (91-71)
4. San Francisco Giants (80-82)
5. Colorado Rockies (60-102)

Overall, they’re one of five teams between 0.8 and 0.9 runs per nine better than average overall, and one of the teams running nine-wide toward the finish line in the standings.

One part of the standings that isn’t tightly bunched: The bottom. The dreadful Chicago White Sox are 2.3 runs per nine worse than the average team, and almost 0.8 runs per nine worse than the second-worst team.

That minus-2.3 TRACR is on pace to be the 10th-worst of all time, though they are projected to set the all-time record with 121 losses.

The Guardians and Brewers make their own luck.

You know the saying: It’s better to be lucky than good. It can sound derisive, but it definitely isn’t false in baseball.

But there’s more agency involved than the saying might acknowledge. The Cleveland Guardians, in a tight battle to maintain their hold on the AL Central lead over the Royals and Minnesota Twins, have the biggest gap between their context-free level of play (14th in TRACR) and their postseason prospects (fifth in title odds).

That is earned in one specific way, though. Like famous overachievers of the past, this Cleveland team excels in a very particular way. The Guardians’ bullpen, led by closer Emmanuel Clase and breakout setup man Cade Smith, is so utterly dominant that they win more games than the projections expect thanks to their high-leverage edge.

The Guardians will need to fend off the hard-charging Royals — who outrank them in TRACR but don’t carry the same bullpen firepower — to hold on to that prime position, but the projections like their chances, giving Cleveland a 73.6% shot at the AL Central title.

Projected AL Central Standings

1. Cleveland Guardians (92-70)
2. Kansas City Royals (89-73)
3. Minnesota Twins (87-75)
4. Detroit Tigers (84-78)
5. Chicago White Sox (41-121)

Speaking of division races, there’s only one that is truly over. The Brewers’ 99.0% mark in the NL Central has to count as a point of pride in a season of tumult. In manager Pat Murphy’s first season at the helm, the always underestimated Crew is sailing with a big lead over the second-place Chicago Cubs now managed by former skipper Craig Counsell.

These Brewers are not simply beneficiaries of a weak division. They are just well-rounded. The resurgent offense (No. 7 in TRACR) features the seemingly daily progress of 20-year-old outfielder Jackson Chourio, while a pitching staff that appeared earmarked for a big step backward has held its own (also No. 7 in TRACR) thanks to out-of-nowhere ace Tobias Myers, he of the 2.99 ERA across 108.1 innings.

Projected NL Central Standings

1. Milwaukee Brewers (93-69)
2. Chicago Cubs (84-78)
3. St. Louis Cardinals (81-81)
4. Cincinnati Reds (77-85)
5. Pittsburgh Pirates (75-87)

Unlike the Guardians, Milwaukee’s playoff path is perhaps more difficult than it has earned. The Brewers have a small gap to make up on the NL East front-running Phillies to grab one of those precious byes into the NL Division Series, and the projections don’t envision them catching the streaky but star-studded Phillies.

Projected NL East Standings

1. Philadelphia Phillies (94-68)
2. Atlanta Braves (88-74)
3. New York Mets (84-78)
4. Washington Nationals (75-87)
5. Miami Marlins (59-103)

In the wild-card races, expect the Atlanta Braves (87.2) to hold off the New York Mets (83.6) and Chicago Cubs (83.6) in the National League. And the Twins are picked to remain the last wild-card team in the American League, though the Detroit Tigers (83.8) are surprisingly projected to finish ahead of the Boston Red Sox (83.3) and the Mariners (82.7).

There’s a moment when this will all go out the window, but until then, the stakes are clear: The top seeds have an inside track. And a whole host of teams are still in the race.

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