Every year, Nate Silver and the folks at FiveThirtyEight put out their daily predictions on how teams will fare and how the game affects their projected record on the season and percentage chance of making the playoffs and perhaps the World Series. The first daily projection was released Friday, and has the defending World Series champions, the Chicago Cubs, stop the rankings, followed by the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Cleveland Indians.
Jay Boice of the site explains how they come up with the predictions.
Thanks to Retrosheet, we’ve collected game results and box scores back to 1871 and used them to create an Elo-based rating system and predictive model for baseball that incorporates home-field advantage, margin of victory, travel, rest and — most importantly — starting pitchers. The ratings are also adjusted for park and era effects and account for the fact that favorites are more likely to win in the postseason than in the regular season.
The Tampa Bay Rays are ranked 12th in the initial projections, but their record and chance of making the postseason may surprise you.