The Playoff Odds Think This Season Is Boring
How likely do you think the Reds are to make the playoffs? I’m not asking you to guess what our Playoff Odds say about them. I’ll tell you that in the next paragraph. I’m asking you to put your own number on it, based on what you know and think about both the Reds and the playoff picture. They are 59-54 with 49 games to play. They’re three games back of the Padres for the final Wild Card spot and four behind the Mets for the second spot. Got a number in your head? Then we’re ready for another paragraph.
Thank you for playing. As of this writing, our Playoff Odds give the Reds a 12.4% chance of reaching the postseason. I imagine that feels a little light to at least some people. Baseball Reference gives the Reds a 36.3% chance of making the playoffs. They’re within four games of both the Mets and the Padres. They’re also within five games of the Phillies, the first-place team in the NL East. If the Reds keep playing like they’re playing and any one of those teams has a late-season swoon, they’re in. According to Pythagorean Win-Loss expectancy, they should have the same record as the Mets right now and a better record than the Padres. They just added at the deadline. Hunter Greene looks like he’ll be back soon, and Elly De La Cruz sure looks like the kind of player who can put a team on his back for a couple weeks and carry it over the finish line.
Then again, I’m sure that number feels high to some people. You can understand why the numbers don’t like the Reds. Baseball Reference gives them such a high chance because it ignores roster composition, and, well, the Reds have a weaker roster than the teams ahead of them. They rank 22nd in position player WAR, and they didn’t add as much at the deadline as the Phillies, Mets, or Padres. In fact, according to ZiPS, they actually became 3.2% less likely to make the playoffs when the deadline dust settled, because of doubts about Ke’Bryan Hayes and presumably because the other teams added so much more. They’ve had the fifth-easiest schedule in baseball to this point in the season, and they’ve got the toughest schedule in baseball from here on out. They’ve overperformed their xwOBA by six points, the second-highest such gap in baseball. Not only do our projections have the Reds missing the playoffs, they have them finishing at 82-80, one game above .500 for the season and seven games behind the Padres in the standings.
This article isn’t meant to be a referendum on the Reds. I’ve been focusing on them to this point because they’re the only team in the National League whose Playoff Odds are between 10% and 85%. Let me say that another way. With a 12.4% chance of making the playoffs, they’re somehow the closest team in the National League to 50%. Here’s what that looks like in a table (specifically, the skinniest table you’ll ever see here at FanGraphs). Below is the entire National League, leaving out all teams with odds above 97% or under 3%, since they seem like more or less sure things. This is the entire playoff picture.
| Team | % |
|---|---|
| Mets | 91.9% |
| Padres | 87.8% |
| Reds | 12.4% |
| Giants | 6.6% |
| Cardinals | 5.7% |
That doesn’t leave a lot of teams, and even this group of five splits into two very obvious categories. It’s a battle over two spots, and the second-place team has an edge of about 75 percentage points on the club in third. We’ve got the Mets and Padres in line to get the final two Wild Card spots, and then we’ve got everybody else. The Giants and Cardinals just sold at the deadline. Even they’re not giving themselves a chance. The Reds and Padres are the only teams between 90% and 10%. If the Reds make the playoffs, it will be a big surprise, at least according to the robots who see the future.
Things are more equitable in the American League, but it’s still awfully stratified. The Red Sox are currently 2 1/2 games ahead of the Yankees in the Wild Card standings, but Boston has the third-best Playoff Odds (78.8%) of the teams not in first place, behind New York (85.1%) and Seattle (80.0%). The projections see the Rangers as the team likely to end up just out of the picture. The drop-off between the Red Sox and the Rangers is 40.6 percentage points, from 78.8% to 38.2%. Boston’s odds are more than twice as high!
This isn’t normal. On this date last year, six different teams had Playoff Odds between 40% and 60%. Two teams met that criteria on this date in 2023 and three teams in 2022. This year, the fourth season of this new extended Wild Card format, it’s zero. Our Playoff Odds go back to 2014, and even in the old Wild Card format, we never got to this point in the calendar with no teams between 40% and 60%. In fact, there were at least two teams in that situation in every season except 2019. This is shaping up to be the least competitive playoff race in recent memory. In theory, this new playoff format should make the postseason more accessible for more teams. The bar for entry is not much above .500, and lots of teams usually hang out right around .500. Maybe this year is an outlier, or maybe it’s what we should come to expect going forward, with the league split up so neatly into super teams and super tankers, buyers and sellers. If you sell at the deadline, you can tell your fans you’re building for the future. If you just miss the playoffs, you just failed, and you may not get all the credit you deserve for trying.
Before I leave you, I should give the obvious reminder that these are just projections. They’re good, but they’re not perfect. Lots of unforeseen things will happen. The Rangers look capable of making a run. The Reds have a one-in-8.1 chance of making the playoffs, and more improbable things happen all the time. The Tigers had a 0.2% chance of making the playoffs on this date last year, and you can still buy T-shirts commemorating what happened next. Even if nothing changes, there will still be battles. The Mets and the Phillies could duke it out until the last game of the season in the NL East. The AL East has three teams with a real shot. The Brewers and Cubs could make it close in the NL Central, and the Astros and Mariners could do the same in the AL West. Some of those races will affect who gets a bye and who doesn’t. It will be exciting. But none of that means that the projections don’t provide us with meaningful information. As far as who’s making the playoffs and who isn’t, it’s been at least 11 years since we’ve seen so little suspense at this point in the calendar.
Davy Andrews is a Brooklyn-based musician and a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @davyandrewsdavy.bsky.social.
Perhaps it’s a quibble but this seems like a slightly baseball-writery definition of “boring.” Fans mostly care about their team, not about the general league-wide unpredictability of the playoff picture. E.g. as a Mets fan, I care a lot about the stretch run and the divisional race, because whether the Mets are a wild-card team or not (as you’ve preemptively assigned them) significantly affects their playoff picture. I’m also a general-baseball fan, enough to understand what you mean with the “boring” qualifier, but for me and I think most others, Team Entropy is a secondary loyalty, not a primary one.
Agreed! And of course there are other ways to think about whether the season as a whole is exciting, like “on any given night, are there usually some match ups between teams that are trying?” Even if someone isn’t primarily rooting for either of those teams, a Mets-Phillies game promises to be a fun watch, despite the fact (even because of the fact) that both are likely to make the playoffs in some way or another.
Exactly. And it’s quite important, analytically, for a team in contention to be one of the top two division leaders by record, because those teams get byes.
This article is so needlessly curmudgeonly that I can only assume it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek.
The bye has shown to likely be more detrimental to a team than beneficial. It’s literally an even split of winning the divisional round for bye teams at .500.
I think the bye week can be beneficial, but the problem is the layoff is too long and the pitching advantage doesn’t really get setup because of the playoff schedule. Having a day off after the wildcard round followed by extra days off for travel during a series allows a WC #1 pitcher to start game 2 and game 5 if necessary.
So the pitching advantage isn’t really there and your batters take a week off.
Even if we grant the premise that getting a bye is detrimental, such that it flips you from a 60/40 favorite to a 60/40 underdog (which, I don’t think is anything even remotely close to reality), you’re still better off with a bye than having to play an extra series:
With bye: 100% advancing past wild card round x 40% advancing in LCS = 40% advance rate
Without bye: 60% advancing past wild card round x 60% advancing in LCS = 36% advance rate
And again, there is no way in holy hell a bye knocks 20% off your expected series win%, it was just done to make a point; namely, that even in this wackadoo reality you still fare better than having to play an extra series.
We really need to retire this premise for good. It helps illustrate how people don’t understand probabilities.
“Would you rather jump over 2 cars in a row or just one but you also had a big, but not TOO heavy lunch?”
No clue why I’m being downvoted, best guess is automatonic sheep.
No, it’s because you’re the kind of dude who has to tell everybody that you think the writer is being “needlessly curmudgeonly” like an attention-starved curmudgeon and then throws a fit and hurls insults because people thought you were being weird.
Also, while you’re trying to use big words to seem more rhetorically impressive, “automatonic” is not a word. An automaton is a unit that displays automata, or self-operation, which is to say, it is automatic. A word which I’m assuming you passed over due to its familiarity to you and the resulting impression that it would be unimpressive to use. Based on you calling people “sheep”, I’m confident that you’re one of those guys who is afraid of lots of words, especially ones that imply inclusion.
I do think the Reds of the worst of the bunch with the Padres and Mets but I don’t really trust any of them. Hopefully the Reds can stay close until September 5 when they get three vs. the Mets in GABP followed by three vs. the Padres in Petco
If Greene and Burns are both in the rotation come October, I’d also be less than enthusiastic about facing them in a short series, regardless of how middling the rest of their roster is.
I am not sure which team I would be okay with facing, at least in the NL.
The Cubs and Mets rotations are pretty lousy compared to the others but their lineups are better.
In that case of comparing them to the Reds, a lot better.
“I am not sure which team I would be okay with facing, at least in the NL.”
I’ll go Cubs because Boyd should be on fumes if not hurt by then, Imanaga can be a bit HR prone, Tailon is just solid, Horton is coming along nicely but is only a rookie and will pushing his innings high. Their bullpen isn’t going to bail them out either. Great offense but great pitching can beat great offense.
At least the Mets have a talented bullpen backing up their collection of dudes.
The wild card races are boring, but there are several division races with plenty of intrigue, particularly in the NL, and at least as of right now some tight races for the byes to the divisional round. When it comes to the odds of winning it all, those matter quite a bit.
If the Padres stay hot and the Dodgers are suddenly at real risk of staring down a 3-game wild card series vs the Cubs, that would spice things up for me.
I guess you (or your computer) think the Yankees are in. Anyone watching the Yankees over the past 6 weeks sees a very flawed team with below average pitching and a lineup with Judge and a bunch of guys who homer now and then but do little else. They can’t win close games because they wait for a HR, and can’t string 2-3 hits together. And, the bullpen can’t extend games far enough for home runs to occur.
NY went 13-14 in June, 12-13 in July, and are 0-4 in August… pretty much the definition of floundering. I really don’t think releasing Marcus Stroman will solve the fact that they have 2 decent SP (who have both had recent arm injuries) and a flammable set of relievers (including the recent acquisitions).
If Texas sweeps the Bombers this week, will that allow for a readjustment of the Yankees playoff chances? And, don’t sleep on Cleveland either.
I can’t speak for fangraphs, but the playoff odds are easily found here. Yankees looking to be 79%. That gets updated as the games get played. But yeah you have a point. They’re very vulnerable.
Can’t argue with the pitching part of things; that’s been the problem most of the year. Lineup is definitely struggling recently, it’s been average-ish opposed to good, which makes the pitching issues stand out even more. But you actively misidentify the problem with the offense.
“They can’t win close games because they wait for a HR” — what does that even mean? Seriously. As far as problems with the Yankees go, the offense being unable to string 2-3 hits together is pretty much at the bottom of the list.
The biggest problem is the creeping chase rate; it’s gone from 12.1 to May to 13.6 in Jul (and small sample, 15.5 in Aug). It’s led to fewer walks and worse QoC.
The Reds % of making the playoffs seems high because they are not a great team and they have not played great baseball this year, nor were there any expectations that they would.
They are a good team that has played good baseball overall and recently they were a mediocre team.
Their current playoff % stem largely from the fact that due to sheer desperation—or not having a lot of rentals to trade—they decided to make a couple modest acquisitions at the deadline instead of selling, unlike all of the other NL teams in their position like the Giants and Cardinals.
There are three teams like that in the AL (Rangers, Royals, Guardians), but only one in the NL. The AL has the potential for some drama because the Yankees and Astros are pretty seriously banged up and have been for a while, and there exists a remote possibility that one of them completely falls apart, or that the surging Mariners and Red Sox stop surging, and it lets one of those other teams sneak in.
Yeah it seems like the AL has 4 teams competing for 3 spots, so one very good team could be left with no postseason. Also, that could be 5 teams for 3 spots if the guardians keep winnings
It’s kind of a bit crazy too bc the rangers and mariners look really really strong, the redsox are super deep and have built a nice lead on everyone, the Yankees have the best projections of all them. One of those teams not making the playoffs would hurt (or the jays or astros falling off)
I think that the AL race has a lot of potential. Losing the best player in the league has the potential to really screw up the Yankees’ season.
One more comp for you… Although I agree that the Yankees’ lineup is more potent, here is a comp of starting rotations for you…
NYY GS ERA
Fried 23 2.78
Rodon 23 3.34
Warren 23 4.64
Schlitler 4 4.58
Gil 1 13.50
TEX GS ERA
deGrom 22 2.80
Corbin 21 3.91
Kelly 23 3.22
Eovaldi 18 1.49
Leiter 19 4.10
CLE
Williams 22 3.33
Bibee 22 4.51
Allen 20 4.06
Cecconi 14 3.72
Cantillo 6 4.37
Looking at this, I’d rank them Texas, NY, Cleveland. But the Yankees is easily the most tenuous, and definitely has the least AAA depth. It’s going to be a struggle for them to get in imo.
Reds have a better run differential than both Padres and Mets, so the end of the season might be more interesting than the odds machine is predicting.
Yet by BaseRuns the Reds trail the Padres and Mets by the same 3 & 4 games as they do in real baseball.
The season is boring. But select individual games can be very exciting!
The Reds look to win again tonight against the Cubs, I wouldn’t count them out, the Cubs not trading for a real starting pitcher or a shutdown type reliever may haunt them.
It’s baffling the Cubs didn’t add starting pitching. That rotation is hot garbage right now.
They did–Soroka–but of course he just went on IL.
Who could have guessed that Soroka would get hurt.
Trading for Soroka to be a SP was asinine. He was already at his season total of innings from last year, he was hitting the wall in every start in the 4th or 5th inning, and his stuff and velo were dipping his last two starts but especially in his last start right before the deadline.
I can’t believe they didn’t pay up for Edward Cabrera. I think they have no intention of re-signing Tucker and so didn’t want to part with Cassie or Alcantara.
TBH I wouldn’t have dealt for Ecab given he had an elbow MRI within the last two weeks.
Should have paid up for Ryan. Or Kelly.
They traded for Tucker knowing his was only signed for one year. All in all everything has gone as well as the Cubs could have hoped coming into the season. To not push at this point is silly.
Since the break my NATS have been downright awful. Probably the worst team in the game. But that is the peril of having no MLB arms in the BP. You lose most games and strain your SPs to the point of breaking. Gore looks broke right now.
I’m concerned that Gore might be hurt.
This is the second consecutive year he has nose dived in the second half.
I don’t know what the Cubs or Red Sox were offering but it is possible they are going to regret not taking it.
He had a 111 pitch outing on 7/2. It was his 3rd straight outing going over 100 and set a career high for pitches thrown in a 3 start stretch. Since then (with the exception of the start immediately afterwards) he’s been putrid.
Well after last night the Rangers are back over 40%
Teams currently in the playoffs that look to be in trouble:
Mendoza learned at the feet of Aaron Boone so it isn’t surprising that he’s a bad in game manager and his lineup decisions are bizarre. McNeil has hit lefties well this year but more often than not he sits against them and Mendoza starts Taylor, who has a wRC+ of 30something against lefties over Mullins, who has clobbered lefties this year. Lindor has been good the last two weeks he struggled mightily in June and July playing with a broken toe. I wish Stearns was more hands on when it comes to the lineup decisions and I wish he’d fire Chavez already.
I’m afraid I can’t sleep. While the NL may be settled (Baseball Prospectus is even more pessimistic, at 6.7%, about the Reds), I’m glued to my screen to see whether Cashman/Boone can steer the Yankees — at one point over 97% to make the playoffs — out of the postseason.
Since June 6, the Yankees (22-31) have a worse record than the White Sox (21-28).
Venable is managing his butt off in game. And they actually have okay pitching. Scrappy hitters too (still don’t know why anyone didn’t trade for Tauchman).
The more the Mets and Yankee stink it up the more it is looking like it’ll be a dog fight for the last few playoff spots. I think the Yankees are in more danger but Cincy isn’t going away and the Mets have a tough schedule the rest of the way and their rotation is a mess and we’re four months into the Mets lineup can’t be this maddening phase of the season. Both teams looked so good until early June and the roof has caved in for both teams.
I love playoff odds!