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OT: The Toronto Blue Jays

zeke said:
as a guy who loves numbers i gotta admit the "playoffs odd" type numbers have never made any sense to me, and seem to change far too often and drastically for them to be worth much.

like should any team be considered 90+% odds to win a division in may? seems off to me.
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Nobody expected this Jays apeshit run to the division title , insane clutch team
 
Dodgers will go hard for Tucker. The Yankees I would guess stick with Judge/Grisham/Bellinger/Dominguez as their core OF. Volpe has apparently been nursing an injury for most of this season, that's probably the core reason why he's sucked both at the plate and on the field the last 3 months. I think they're at the point where if they weren't in a race, they'd shut him down, but they kind of have to hope he can magically heal before the end of the season.

For Bo, I think one big point the Jays might have is the desire to keep him at SS for a few more seasons. I'm sure not which other teams would both want to shell out for him, but also have a hole at SS they need to fill. Maybe the Padres, I could see them consider Bo at SS and then moving Bogaerts off. You might see a team like Detroit consider it, but they seem unlikely to want to spend. I do think Bo's best route though might be to do a Semien, and basically accept the move wherever he signs. Be the 2B for the Dodgers, but know that it's like 50/50 that they decide to randomly move Betts back to the OF for whatever reason.
 
Monthly Records:

APR: TOR .467 - NYY .581
MAY: TOR .571 - NYY .654
JUN: TOR .615 - NYY .481
JUL: TOR .692 - NYY .480
AUG: TOR .556 - NYY .571
SEP: TOR .667 - NYY .583

In retrospect it looks like one terrible month for the Jays in APR and one amazing month for the yanks in May.

Does turning that into a 90+% chance of winning the division 1/3 of the way through the season really make sense?

I dunno. the way playoffs odds work never really feel right to me.
 
The May 28 projection was a lot more relevant at that point than the pre-season projection.

But also I agree the point-in-time playoff odds aren’t very useful for anything other than betting lines.
 
90% was aggressive, but they were the preseason favorites, and got off to a good start.

I mean, the Yankees were probably like 35% favorites pre-season to win the division? And you combine that with a hot start. Maybe 90 is aggressive, you probably need to bake in a little more regression than the models may have adjusted for, but they were 7 games up, and nobody else in the division was doing much at the time.
 
I dunno - nothing crazy has happened since then, neither the jays or yanks have performed significantly out of reasonable projections since, and here we are with the jays well up in september. That tells me they were never near-locks to win the division.
 
So I hear a bunch of commentators always callling the American League "weak" this year, but I've noticed that the AL is +26 vs the NL this year (358-332, .519), and if we just look at the current playoffs teams against each other, the AL playoffs teams are -2 (56-58, .491), 1 game off dead even.

Then if we look at something like fangraphs' projected remaining WAR, we get the all 12 playoffs teams in the top-13 (only non playoffs team to sneak into the #12 spot is ATL), and the rankings alternate NL/AL pretty much all the way down:

1. LAD 13gms, 4.2war, .323/gm
2. NYY 13gms, 4.0war, .308/gm

3. SEA 12gms, 3.6war, .300/gm
3. NYM 12gms, 3.6war, .300/gm

5. TOR 13gms, 3.8war, .292/gm
6. PHI 12gms, 3.4war, .283/gm

7. SDP 12gms, 3.3war, .275/gm
8. HOU 12gms, 3.2war, .267/gm

9. CHC 13gms, 3.4war, .262/gm
10. BOS 12gms, 3.0war, .250/gm

10. MIL 12gms, 3.0war, .250/gm
13. DET 12gms, 2.7war, .225/gm

(12. ATL 13gms, 3.2war, .246/gm)



Anyone have any explanation as to why "weak AL" seems to be a consensus opinion this year?
 
zeke said:
So I hear a bunch of commentators always callling the American League "weak" this year, but I've noticed that the AL is +26 vs the NL this year (358-332, .519), and if we just look at the current playoffs teams against each other, the AL playoffs teams are -2 (56-58, .491), 1 game off dead even.

Then if we look at something like fangraphs' projected remaining WAR, we get the all 12 playoffs teams in the top-13 (only non playoffs team to sneak into the #12 spot is ATL), and the rankings alternate NL/AL pretty much all the way down:

1. LAD 13gms, 4.2war, .323/gm
2. NYY 13gms, 4.0war, .308/gm

3. SEA 12gms, 3.6war, .300/gm
3. NYM 12gms, 3.6war, .300/gm

5. TOR 13gms, 3.8war, .292/gm
6. PHI 12gms, 3.4war, .283/gm

7. SDP 12gms, 3.3war, .275/gm
8. HOU 12gms, 3.2war, .267/gm

9. CHC 13gms, 3.4war, .262/gm
10. BOS 12gms, 3.0war, .250/gm

10. MIL 12gms, 3.0war, .250/gm
13. DET 12gms, 2.7war, .225/gm

(12. ATL 13gms, 3.2war, .246/gm)



Anyone have any explanation as to why "weak AL" seems to be a consensus opinion this year?
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Because people don't think Toronto and Detroit are actually good teams?

I mean, some of the inter-league gap is just going to be the Rockies being one of the worst teams in MLB history. The White Sox are the only truly terrible AL team, with the Twins a little ahead of them, but the NL adds Washington, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta into that same range.

Also I think that the AL is a bit more squished. So in the NL, you have the top 5 teams, and then a 5 game gap to the last spot. So you get a bit of a mental picture thinking that oh, those top NL teams must be so good because they're pulling away from the pack. Whereas in reality, the AL just has better middle of the pack teams. The Padres at 82 wins have a 100% chance of making the playoffs. The Astros at 81 wins only have a 72% chance.
 
UWHabs said:
Because people don't think Toronto and Detroit are actually good teams?

I mean, some of the inter-league gap is just going to be the Rockies being one of the worst teams in MLB history. The White Sox are the only truly terrible AL team, with the Twins a little ahead of them, but the NL adds Washington, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta into that same range.

Also I think that the AL is a bit more squished. So in the NL, you have the top 5 teams, and then a 5 game gap to the last spot. So you get a bit of a mental picture thinking that oh, those top NL teams must be so good because they're pulling away from the pack. Whereas in reality, the AL just has better middle of the pack teams. The Padres at 82 wins have a 100% chance of making the playoffs. The Astros at 81 wins only have a 72% chance.
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even if we take out the record against their worst team for some reason (even though it makes no sense, as the NL teams get the advantage of playing that team more), the AL would still be winning the head to head matchup.

and i don't know about squished - both leagues have 5 teams at .547 or higher - the fact that the NL then drops all the way to .513 after that while the AL has teams at .540 .527 .523 is a reason the AL is better, not worse.

and why would anyone think the Jays, a top-5 payroll team with the stats and projected stats to match, aren't actually good?
 
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