The significance of early standings: revisited
I’ve always firmly believed that you do not need to play 162 games to determine who are the best baseball teams. When I first dug into the numbers last April, it seemed that as few as twenty games into the schedule, the majority of the teams occupying playoff spots would end up making the postseason. I revisited the topic in the middle of May, at which point the D-backs were tied for the final wild-card spot. And, wouldn’t you know it, after a hundred and eighteen further games, the D-backs ended the season... tied for the final wild-card spot. Head-to-head records meant they ended up on the outside, but I wanted to revisit those standings and see how accurately they reflected the final results.
At that point, on May 15th, there were fourteen teams either in or tied for a wild-card position. I didn’t bother going all the way down to tie-breakers, but there were three teams in the National League effectively tied - the Padres, D-backs and Nationals. But it was the top of the standings where things worked most accurately - perfectly, in fact. The top eight teams in the standings at that point, not much more than one-quarter of the way through the season, ALL ended up making the playoffs. Basically, a .575 win percentage was the cut-off point: do better than that through mid-May, and you made the post-season. Below that though, things got considerably murkier.
Indeed, of the remaining six teams, the Padres were the only ones to hold on to a playoff spot. As well as the Diamondbacks, the Twins, Mariners, Cubs and Nationals all ended up falling out of a spot. The three other spots ended up going to the Mets, Tigers and Astros. Still, that means that 75% of this year’s playoff teams were there in the middle of May. Houston had the best record in the American League after that date, going 70-48, and New York were not far behind, at 70-50. But across all teams, nine of fourteen in a post-season spot on May 15, were there at the end of the season, and thirteen of sixteen outside a post-season spot, stayed home in October.
Adding those together, for 22 of the 30 MLB teams, their mid-May position was an accurate predictor of whether or not they would make the playoffs. However, it’s perhaps less impressive, because the majority of teams were seen as very likely or unlikely to make the playoffs, even at that early stage. For example, the best odds you could get on the Dodgers making the playoffs would return just one dollar of profit on a hundred dollar bet. [Though I note the same odds applied to the Atlanta Braves at the time, with their 26-14 record, and they were the very last team to make it in!] Conversely, the Angels, Rockies, White Sox and Marlins all paid $101 on a $100 bet for each to miss the post-season.
So what I did back in mid-May was place a hypothetical $100 wager on each team, to make or miss the playoffs, based on where they were at that point. 22 of those 30 bets ended up paying out. My biggest profit came courtesy of the Kansas City Royals, where my hundred dollars turned into $280, as they held onto a post-season position. The D-backs would have been second, had they squeaked in, at $250. On the other hand, all six of the one-dollar win wagers ended up paying out that buck. But all told, my three thousand dollars ended up paying a small premium, returning $3,082.30, a gain of about 2.75%. Over four and a half months, that’s definitely better than a savings account.
I note, if I’d ended up using strict win percentage, rather than permitting a tie for the third NL wild-card, I’d have done a bit better. That would have excluded the Nationals and D-backs, who were a couple of ticks behind the Padres, flipping both of those bets into winning ones, for Washington and Arizona to miss out. It would have been at least a couple hundred more bucks on the profit side. So next year, I’m making a note to be more rigorous! Add those two in, and a full 80% of teams ended up in or out of the playoffs, matching their position on May 15. The old saying goes, you can’t clinch a pennant in April. But it seems you can go a long way towards making a reservation for the post-season.
Here’s an updated copy of the table from May, showing the standings odds, and with the ‘Profit’ column to show the bets which I won.
