Crude Playoff Odds -- 2019

These are very simple playoff odds, based on my crude rating system for teams using an equal mix of W%, EW% (based on R/RA), PW% (based on RC/RCA), and 69 games of .500. They account for home field advantage by assuming a .500 team wins 54.2% of home games (major league average 2006-2015). They assume that a team's inherent strength is constant from game-to-game. They do not generally account for any number of factors that you would actually want to account for if you were serious about this, including but not limited to injuries, the current construction of the team rather than the aggregate seasonal performance, pitching rotations, estimated true talent of the players, etc.

The CTRs that are fed in are:



Wilcard game odds (the least useful since the pitching matchups aren’t taken into account, and that matters most when there is just one game):



LDS:



LCS:



WS:



It was easier to run this when World Series home field advantage was determined by league rather than team record. The record approach is not as arbitrary as alternating years or as silly as using the All-Star game result, but it does produce its own share of undesirable outcomes. Houston would have home field over Los Angeles, but given that the NL was finally stronger than the AL this year, the Astros' one game edge suggests an inferior record to that of the Dodgers, not a superior one. Even worse are the tiebreakers - after head-to-head, the edge goes to the team with the better intradivisional records favors teams from weak divisions, who likely performed less well than their raw win-loss record would suggest. The same is true of intraleague record which is the next tiebreaker. If some division/league breakout is the criteria of choice, it should be inter-, not intra-.

Putting it all together: