2012 Playoff Odds With New Playoff System

The MLB has recently announced that they will implement the new playoff system for the 2012 system, where there are now two wild card teams, and they will play each other for the right to be in the 4 team playoffs that decides who gets into the World Series, at which point it is like the playoffs before.

The Wall Street Journal today had an outside analyst use player projections to estimate the odds of a team making the playoffs, both in the old system and the new system (simulating 3,000 seasons).   The Giants saw their odds increased slightly from 53% to 57%.  They are the team viewed as most likely to make the playoffs in the NL West (which aligns with what I've been saying for most of this off-season):

NL West - Old - New
Giants - 53% - 57%
D-Backs - 27% - 32%
D-Rox - 12% - 12%
'Dres - 8% - 10%
D-gers - 6% - 7%


Giants Thoughts

I like the new system.  I did not like that the wild card teams had an equal chance of advancing as any of the division winners.  I did not like that they did not have any disadvantage relative to the division winners.  This new system fixes those problems.

Now, the wild card teams have to win a one-game series, do or die, which reduces the chances of the wild card team of advancing.  Plus, they end up most probably burning their top pitcher, which puts them at a disadvantage in the first round of the divisional playoffs (unless they have a great rotation, top to bottom, in which case, they are on equal footing for the most part).  This also gives the division winners an extra day of rest, to account for the wild card playoffs.

This analysis gives numbers to these characteristics.  The article noted that under the old system, the wild card team had a roughly 9% chance of winning the World Series.  Now it is basically chopped in half, 4.6%.  Meanwhile, the division winners still have a roughly 13.6% chance of winning the World Series.  As the WSJ noted, division winners went from 44% better chance of winning the World Series, over the wild card team, to 300% better chance.

Belying all the concern by Giants fans this off-season, the Giants have been the favorites to win the division.  This concurs with my analysis of the Giants that I have done, looking at their projected win/loss record, and my thoughts on how the other NL West teams have changed during the off-season.  The Giants led the division by a lot in terms of the odds of making the playoffs with the old system, at 53% vs. 27% for the D-backs, almost double the chances. 

The D-backs benefited the most with the new system, but only slightly, improving their chances by 5%.  The Giants gained 4%.  The total for the division of making the playoffs was only 106% in the old system, which means there was only 6% chance that an NL West team would win the wild card spot in the old system (I would estimate roughly 3% for the Giants, 2% for the D-backs, 1% for the 'Dres).  The new system only boosted that up to 118%, pushing the NL West chances at a wild card spot from 6% to 12%.  In other words, not very good chances either way.

Eyeballing, it looks like this analysis has the wild card teams coming out of the NL East, which makes sense, the Phillies, Marlins and Braves look very strong, at 66%, 60%, and 51%, respectively.  The Giants are at 57%.  This means that the NL East greatly benefitted from the new system because under the old system, the Giants were higher relative to the NL East, at 53%, where Phillies were at 55%, Marlins at 45% and Braves at 38% (gains of 11%, 15%, and 13%, respectively, whereas the Giants only gained 4%).

The Giants were one of the most likely teams to make the playoffs (and as I noted, most likely via a division title) at 57%.  The Phillies are at 66%, Cards at 60%, Miami at 60%, the only teams higher, making the Giants 4th.  The Reds were next at 52%, then Braves at 51%.  Under the old system, only the Phillies had a higher odds, 55% vs. 53%, with Cards next at 50%, in the NL. 

The NL West in this analysis is pretty much as I have been saying, with the Giants most likely on top, and the D-backs as their toughest competitor for the division title.  The Giants are at roughly 50% odds of winning the NL West, while the D-backs are at roughly 25%.  I thought that the D-Rox had some chances, but was surprised to see the D-gers even below the 'Dres.  But that also makes sense because they did not do that well last season, lost one of their top pitchers in Kuroda without replacing him, need their top two performers in Kemp and Kershaw to basically produce MVP numbers again, and don't really have any top prospects pushing to provide a boost to their team.  Lots to go wrong in that scenario for them.

Not that the Giants don't have their question marks. I will cover that in a post in a few days, but like any team, there are issues facing each and every team that they will need to overcome to succeed in any season.  I think overall, the Giants are covered for a lot of potential downfalls offensively, and thus look good there, and barring injuries that take out starting pitchers or relievers (especially closer), we should be covered regarding poorer performances (though not outright implosions) in our pitching corps.