Baseball Season Projections

I'm back again with some results from the baseball ratings, and although I'm not sure how shockingly informative they will be, at least this time they're in a more accessible format: projected season win totals for every team.
As usual, these are current through right now.

AL East
Yankees -- 102
Rays -- 97
Red Sox -- 88
Blue Jays -- 77
Orioles -- 64
The Yankees continue to be the best team by a fair amount, so even though they currently trail Tampa in the standings, they should pull away at some point later in the year.
Boston is a very interesting case. They've played poorly and are already 6.5 back of Tampa and 5 back of NY. The system still thinks Boston is at least an equal to Tampa, but their early deficit plus slightly more difficult remaining schedule puts them well back. Even on May 13, their playoff chances can't be much higher than 25-30% at best.

AL Central
Twins -- 90
Tigers -- 81
White Sox -- 79
Indians -- 73
Royals -- 69
Minnesota is the best team and should cruise through the summer, because their only competition at the moment, Detroit, is playing over its head. In fact, the second-best team in this division is Chicago, and not by just a little. This shows you how important falling behind by five games is, even this early. Those games never come back.

AL West
Rangers -- 85
Angels -- 80
Athletics -- 77
Mariners -- 74
These results don't differ much from popular perception. Seattle has played terribly so far. They have one of the worst records in the AL and have played one of the easiest schedules. They are no great team, but they're better than 13-20, and my numbers don't even include much Cliff Lee. If they didn't lay an egg the first six weeks of the season, they'd have been a great darkhorse.

NL East
Phillies -- 91
Braves -- 87
Mets -- 80
Marlins -- 79
Nationals -- 75
My ratings don't like the Phillies, but love the Braves. A sharp observer would note than Philly is currently 4.5 games up on Atlanta, but my projection shows just a 4 game final edge. Yes, the system thinks Atlanta is better going forward. The same thing I just said about Seattle applies tenfold to Atlanta. They have been disappointing so far, but Vegas has not given up on them. Elsewhere, no, I'm sorry, Washington is not for real. If only they had more pitching.......

NL Central
Cardinals -- 96
Cubs -- 81
Reds -- 81
Brewers -- 81
Astros -- 68
Pirates -- 66
Here is your runaway best team in the NL, a team that is actually behind Philly in the real standings at the moment, largely because they lost three of four to them head-to-head last week. How can this be? Well, the series last week was in Philadelphia. Philly sent each of their best four starters out, while St Louis was without their ace. In spite of this, St Louis was favored in two games and was a toss-up in another. The only game Philly was clearly favored in featured their Cy Young candidate going against the Cardinals' 4th/5th starter. If the playoffs started tomorrow, I would bet large sums of money on St Louis to beat Philly.

AL West
Giants -- 84.7
Padres -- 83.8
Dodgers -- 83.4
Rockies -- 82.4
Dbacks -- 75
Easily the most exciting division, largely because it contains three solid teams, plus the one team that Vegas missed most badly on during the preseason: San Diego. Their lines from their first 18 games suggest a team that would win 76 games in a season. Their lines from the most recent 15 games suggest an 82 game winner. That is a huge difference for the Vegas folks who don't usually miss by much. The key here is not to get carried away by their 21-12 record and focus on the fact that even after Vegas has corrected their Padre lines, they're still just a .500 team. My ratings have LA and Colorado as the top teams here, with SF a notch below, and SD another notch below. The actual standings have exactly reversed that, which is why the full-season projection feature such a logjam. If I had to bet, I'd trust the numbers and go with the Dodgers.