Final 2013 MLB Regular Season Rankings

Final Rankings

Below is a snapshot of the Top 15 MLB teams for the 2013 regular season. The full rankings can be seen on the MLB Rankings tab of this blog. The delta ratings and W/L are calculated from 8 Sep, so you can see the change in performance over the last three weeks of the season. The teams that made the playoffs for the AL and NL are colored in blue and red, respectively. The teams that are underlined won their division. If you are unfamiliar with my MLB rating system, check out this post for an explanation.

St. Louis and Boston tied for the best records in baseball, but the Cardinals edged out the Red Sox for the top spot in the final standings by a half point. The Dodgers finally cooled off during the last three weeks of the season, dropping below a rating of 100 and into third place. Cleveland finished the regular season on a 10-game winning streak, and winning 16 out of their last 20, shoot up to fifth place. The Redlegs did not finish the season well, dropping to 9th place and having the second worst delta rating of the entire league in the last three weeks of the season.

An interesting note is that the top 10 teams in my rankings correspond to the ten teams that made the playoffs. Does that give some credence to my rankings? Perhaps. However, I think it speaks more to the marathon baseball season truly getting the best teams from each league in the playoffs. Also, it just so happened to work out that the top 5 teams in each league were among the top 10 overall. For example, look at spots 10 and 11. Washington (NL) was six-hundredths of a point from cracking the top 10 instead of Detroit (AL). Despite that though, my rankings would have picks the top 5 from each league making the playoffs. Had Washington been ranked above Detroit in the final standings, it would have been irrelevant because Washington (NL) and Detroit (AL) are not competing for the same playoff spot being in different leagues.

Post-Season Predictions

I'm going to strictly use my final predictions pick the results of the post-season. At the time of writing this post, the one-game playoffs have already been played, so I will not predict those games. Instead, I will compare what my ratings would have projected.

My predictions, based entirely on my final rankings, are shown below in blue. Quickly reviewing the 1-game series, my rankings would have correctly picked Pittsburgh, but incorrectly picked Cleveland to advance. I won't lose too much sleep over that, as you will tend to find more anomalies in a smaller sample size (one-game series). I have the Cardinal and Dodgers in the NLCS, and the Red Sox and the A's in the ACLS, with St. Louis over Boston in the World Series.

I'll make things a bit more interesting by taking things a step further... I will also predict the number of games each series will take based on the separation of the teams' rankings. This will be completely arbitrary because I have no basis of history for this, but we'll see if a can't make myself look more like an idiot. Also, the underdog having its ace on the mound in a playoff environment (not to mention playing at least one game at home) can really skew things, but I will not take that into account, just looking at the number only!

Division Series (best of 5):

St. Louis over Pittsburgh in 4, LA over Atlanta in 5, Boston over Tampa Bay in 3, Oakland over Detroit in 3

League Championships (best of 7):

St. Louis over LA in 5, Boston over Oakland in 6

World Series (best of 7):

St. Louis over Boston in 7

Most Likely Upsets

Okay, up to this point, my predictions have been based entire on my final ratings. Ratings aren't prefect. In fact, they are a reflection of previous performance, not predictors of future events. We like to use past performance to predict future outcomes, but upsets do occur. That's why we play the games. So let's take a few moments to look at potential upsets:

AL

• Tampa Bay is hot! They are have 4 straight road elimination games. I would not be surprised to see TB play Boston pretty tough.
• If we see an Oakland vs Boston in the ALCS, Oakland could upset Boston. The teams split the season series this year 3-3, and the A's finished the year on a positive note, winning 7 of their last 10.

NL

• I would strongly consider picking Atlanta over LA, especially given that the Braves will have home field advantage. Also, Atlanta won the season series 5-2 against the Dodgers.
• I believe the NCLS will be close, whoever plays St. Louis between ATL and LA. Both teams hold a 4-3 season series edge over the Cardinals, but I still expect the Cardinals to win... but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't.