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Pirates Still Playoff Contenders, But Need to Beat Their Own Division

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The second half of the MLB season begins tomorrow, and the latest playoff projections have the Pittsburgh Pirates still listed as contenders. Last week they were moving up the list, but this week they were bumped back down after struggling against the Reds and Cardinals. Winning against their own division has been an issue, which I’ll go into below.

Each week we will break down the playoff odds and projections from the top three projection sites: Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs and ClayDavenport.com. Here are the latest projections.

Baseball Prospectus: 82.7 wins, 79.3 losses, 25.3% chance to make playoffs

The Baseball Prospectus odds dropped by about one win after the Pirates struggled against the Reds and the Cardinals. Their chances of making the playoffs went down from 32.1% last week.

FanGraphs: 83.5 wins, 78.5 losses, 34.5% chance to make playoffs

FanGraphs had the Pirates dropping lower than the BP projections, losing about a win and a half. They also lost ten percentage points in their case to make the playoffs. However, FanGraphs still is more optimistic about the Pirates’ chances than the BP projections. The Pirates are closer to the Reds in these projections than any of the other two.

Clay Davenport: 84.2 wins, 77.8 losses, 36.3% chance to make playoffs

The projections from Clay Davenport were the most optimistic on the Pirates last week, and continued to give them the best chance this week. They dropped one win after the rough week, and a little less than ten percentage points.

The Competition

Here are the rankings of the NL contenders. To get “contender” status, a team must have a 15% or better to make the playoffs in all three projection systems.

  Team Odds W L

1

Dodgers

87.1

90

72

2

Nationals

84.5

90

72

3

Giants

67.8

87

75

4

Cardinals

66.2

87

75

5

Braves

60.5

86

76

6

Brewers

49.2

85

77

7

Reds

46.8

85

77

8

Pirates

32.0

83

79

The Pirates looked good last week in these projections, although that was coming off a month where they played a lot of losing teams, and not many teams from the NL Central. They continued their struggles against NL Central teams this week, and dropped in the projections as a result. That’s unfortunate, as the other NL Central teams are also dropping. The Brewers have fallen past the Cardinals, despite Milwaukee still sitting in first place.

The current average projections have the Pirates with 83 wins. 86 wins will get the second Wild Card spot, and 87 wins either gets the NL Central or the first Wild Card spot. They need to pick up a few more wins over where they’re projected to finish right now. In order to do that, they’re going to need to do a better job of beating teams in their own division. They have six games remaining each against the Reds, Cardinals, and Brewers. That includes six of the last ten games of the season against Milwaukee and Cincinnati, and a stretch of 12 games against all three teams at the end of August and beginning of September. Those two stretches could determine whether the Pirates make the playoffs or not.

Tim Williams
Tim Williams
Tim is the owner, producer, editor, and lead writer of PiratesProspects.com. He has been running Pirates Prospects since 2009, becoming the first new media reporter and outlet covering the Pirates at the MLB level in 2011 and 2012. His work can also be found in Baseball America, where he has been a contributor since 2014 and the Pirates' correspondent since 2019.

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