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The Owlcroft Baseball-Analysis Site

Baseball team and player performance examined realistically and accurately.

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Teams Ranked by Manifested Ability

The significance of the data in these Tables is not necessarily obvious at a glance. There is a complete explanation of all these Tables and the meaning of their entries available, and—although there are a few words farther below on this page—we much recommend that you read that full explanation before examining these Tables.

Seasonal Win Projections

“Manifested ability” means how well the teams have actually played so far this season; it does not mean “how good they really are”, which is quite another matter. The projected wins assume the teams will each play the full season at the same performance level as they have exhibited so far; early on, that may be unlikely, but the farther into the season it gets, the more likely that assumption is to be true. (Each team name is a click-on link to that team’s detailed performance page here; the link will open in a new browser tab or tab.)

(The “Projected Seasonal Wins” number is based on a 162-game season; obviously, for 2020 that is not the case, but we didn’t want to proportion it to 60 games because not all teams will necessarily end up playing a full 60 games in their “season”.)

Divisional Standings

Projected Standings

This Table merely sorts the results above by Division. It is not a “prediction” of how the races will end up: it is an assessment of how things would stand now if not for luck (as opposed to performance). It is a “prediction” only to the extent that if all teams continued to play from now till the end of the season at exactly the same level of performance they have exhibited so far, which is unlikely, this is how things would most probably turn out.

Actual Standings

This Table merely sorts actual results by Division.

Full Team Stat Projections

Explanation of Table Headings

(This is just a summary; a much more detailed discussion of this Table and its significance is available.)

The TOP and TPP columns are the team runs scored and allowed, respectively, calculated by the Owlcroft formulae from the actual team stats. The Games-Won columns are calculated from the respective indicated sources—actual runs scored and allowed, and calculated (“TOP/TPP”) runs scored and allowed. The “error” columns show the differences between calculated games-won values (rounded to whole numbers) and the actual team wins total. A minus error means that the team is that many games below expectation, while a positive error means that the team is above expectation by that many games—“expectation” meaning the record that would most often result from scoring and giving up the runs in question (actual or as-calculated).

The final column—“Seasonal”—is the wins-from-calculations deviation in wins pro-rated out to a full 162 games; it is the current “luck rate” of the team. (Keep in mind that as the season wears on the size of these errors will, in almost all cases, steadily diminish as extremes of luck are averaged out.) Each team name is a click-on link to that team’s detailed performance page here; the link will open in a new browser tab.

(We pro-rated to 162 even though in 2020 the schedule is much shorter; that is because teams will almost surely not end their seasons having all played the same numbers of games. Also note that the “Seasonal Errors” sizes look large right now even though they flow from rather small actual differences; such is usually the case with small games-played sample sizes.)

Team Performance Stats Table

Table Error Data

These are the for results in the Table shown above. All deviations are per team.

Expected deviation (“error”) sizes go down as the season goes on, and can look pretty wild in the early weeks and even months. Errors will be modest by mid-season and small by late season (for a 162-game season). Right now, the expected average error for “All Runs” is 6.48%.

(The “expected error” is calculated as described on our “Formula Proof” page.)

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This page was last modified on Friday, 7 May 2021, at 1:27 pm Pacific Time.