The ZiPS Midseason Standings Update

We’re now three months past the last ZiPS projected standings, which ran before the season, and as one should expect, reality has caused a whole lot of changes to the prognostications. Most of the times when I run ZiPS standings, I use data from the in-season player projection model, which is simpler based on the fact that a full batch run of the 3,500 or so players projected, even if I split it up among my two most powerful computers, would take a total of about 30 hours to finish. But I always do the whole shebang in the middle of every month, and baseball’s pause for All-Star Week provides me an opportunity to run projected standings with the best possible model I can come up with, and not have it be a couple days out of date.

So that’s what we’re going to do. With one exception, the methodology remains identical to the one described in the final preseason projections.

I’ve spent the last week working on and testing an addition to the ZiPS standings model to factor in the problem that preseason projections have with temporality. Basically, you can project teams based on who they have in the organization at the time of the projection, but you can’t easily do it for players not in the organization who will eventually be. If I knew at the start of 2022 that the Padres would have Juan Soto for most of the summer, it would have had an effect on the preseason projections! Like any model that people continually work on, ZiPS doesn’t have substantial bias in almost all categories: there’s no systematic tendency to overrate or underrate any specific type of team (bias in exercises like this is easier to iron out than inaccuracy). But there’s an exception: ZiPS in the preseason slightly underrates teams that will eventually add value to the major league roster in the form of trade and overrates those do the opposite.

This is something I’ve long wanted to try to deal with in as effective a way as I could. So what I’ve done is gone back and re-projected every team at June 15, July 1, and July 15 since I started ZiPS, then, with the data of players each team added at the major league level, used the playoff projections at that date, the team’s payroll (it does have a factor), the weakness of the team’s worst positions, the time since last playoff appearance, and the team’s farm system ranking (where possible) to make a probabilistic model of increases and decreases in roster strength due to the trade deadline. Overfitting is a concern, so I’ve cross-validated to do my best to ensure that isn’t an issue, and while it’s less than a half-win in final accuracy, any shaving off of error is a helpful thing. So these standings represent some increased chances that teams like the Orioles and Rangers have a slightly stronger roster than what is currently available from August 1 on, and that teams like the A’s and Tigers have weaker ones. The changes in projections are small because this is a noisy, inaccurate thing, but I’ll be tracking in future years both standings with and without this model to see how they fare.

The Orioles are the largest beneficiaries of the added model, with divisional and playoff probabilities at 25% and 86%, respectively, without it. ZiPS has tended to like the Orioles this year significantly more than the FanGraphs model, but I’m sure people will still be disappointed by the projected rest-of-season record, which is above .500 but well off their win percentage to date. In the end, it comes down to the fact that ZiPS has a lot of skepticism about the team’s starting rotation, even with its love of Dean Kremer (which has faded considerably, as you’ll see in one of my update pieces for next week).

There’s probably additional error here with the Yankees projection simply because when Aaron Judge returns is still kind of a wild guess, and that has a great deal of impact on the pennant race given the percentage of New York’s value he’s responsible for and the relative closeness of all five teams. I would note that historically, preseason ZiPS team standings have still been more accurate at predicting the rest of the season than actual team standings at this point of the season, but I don’t want to get more O’s fans mad at me for trying to excuse my gross bias against the hometown team which I root for.

The poor White Sox actually get a bit worse here, as ZiPS now thinks there’s a very good chance that they’ll be sellers over the next two weeks. Remember when the 77-win preseason projection seemed unecessarily cruel? The edge ZiPS gives to the Twins over the Guardians, meanwhile, comes down to it thinking that of the two disappointing offenses, Minnesota has the more interesting short-term upside.

The Rangers, like the Orioles, get a bit of a boost, but ZiPS still sees the Astros, even after all the injuries, having a slightly stronger team. Mike Trout’s injury knocked out a significant chunk of the Angels’ playoff scenarios, and the three additional losses since I ran those projections have de-existed more of them. Simply put, they are at a crucial point where their playoff chances could evaporate in a week or two. They’re not lucky often, but if it does happen, it’s best if it happens when they can still make trades.

The Braves have an extremely high World Series probability for this point of the season, and ZiPS sees them as easily the strongest team in baseball come playoff time and with a larger lead in the division than the five other current division leaders combined, giving them a relatively easy path to reaching that postseason. ZiPS also sees the Mets as a fairly strong team, but a fairly strong team that “starts off” at 42–48. There’s a point where an Olympic athlete can be given enough of a disadvantage that I can beat them in a footrace!

The Cardinals are in the same boat, projections-wise, as the Mets are, in that ZiPS sees them as having a fairly strong roster but with too many losses already to have a good shot at October baseball. If anything, they might be better off with worse projections; a team that stinks and is projected to stink might force some clarity in the front office’s decision-making, which feels a bit muddled right now. As for first place, ZiPS expects the Brewers to handle the Reds and might even be slightly overrating Cincy; I think there’s a good chance that it’s too optimistic about the Reds adding talent this deadline.

The Padres are looking about dead in the water when it comes to the division, but we’re far enough into the season that the Dodgers can’t count on the Giants and Diamondbacks collapsing. I won’t deny that I’m happy that both of the latter two teams have done well given that ZiPS was optimistic on both of them coming into the season. After the White Sox being projected at 77 wins, the Giants getting an 88-win projection and a 24% divisional probability was probably the forecast that earned me the most negative feedback back in April.

Not a lot of change here. There’s still about a 22% chance that a team with a losing record will win one of the Central divisions, but the general win targets that are likely to make the playoffs haven’t shifted significantly in recent months. The AL East is probably the closest to an exception, as the continued success of the Orioles has pushed the threshold for actually winning the division higher, and the 50th-percentile eventual divisional winner now stands at nearly 97 wins, compared to nearly 95 in the preseason.