The Pittsburgh Pirates had a big week this past week, going 5-1 against the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Philadelphia Phillies. The results showed up in the playoff projections, leading to a big increase in the Pirates’ odds going forward. Just last week I wrote about how the Pirates managed to creep back into the playoff picture. Now they’re in the process of moving up the list of playoff contenders.
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: 83.9 wins, 78.1 losses, 32.1% chance to make playoffs
The Baseball Prospectus odds had the Pirates finishing with 81.9 wins at the start of last week. In the span of one week, their projections have gone up two wins. Their chances of making the playoffs have also gone up, from around 20% to 32%. They’re obviously trending in the right direction.
FanGraphs: 85.1 wins, 76.9 losses, 44.3% chance to make playoffs
FanGraphs also has the Pirates trending up, going from 82.7 wins to 85 wins. Their playoff chances soared from 28.6% to 44.3%. In both the BP and FanGraphs rankings, the Pirates moved past the Reds in terms of their chances to make the post-season. They’re just behind the Cardinals (48.4%) in this projection.
Clay Davenport: 85.5 wins, 76.5 losses, 43.8% chance to make playoffs
The projections from Clay Davenport had the Pirates seeing an increase of two wins, just like the other two projections. They didn’t see a big jump in their chances to make the playoffs, although part of that might have been due to the fact that CD had the Pirates with a 32% chance last week, which was higher than the other two systems.
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 |
91 |
71 |
|
2 |
Nationals |
84.1 |
90 |
72 |
|
3 |
Giants |
68.7 |
88 |
74 |
|
4 |
Brewers |
68.2 |
88 |
74 |
|
5 |
Braves |
62.6 |
87 |
75 |
|
6 |
Cardinals |
53.8 |
86 |
76 |
|
7 |
Pirates |
40.1 |
85 |
77 |
|
8 |
Reds |
29.0 |
83 |
79 |
The Pirates jumped ahead of the Reds in the last week, and moved closer to the Cardinals and Brewers, who both saw their chances of winning decline. The chances for the Cardinals only declined slightly, while the Brewers saw a big drop. The Pirates will lead into the All-Star break with four games against the Cardinals, and three games against the Reds. They went 5-1 last week against non-division teams, and saw an increase in two wins to their projections, which probably means they were expected to go 3-2. A big week against their division opponents could see another increase to the projections. Currently they’re projected for an average of 85 wins, while the second Wild Card spot is projected for 87 wins.
