[IBL] Playoff Odds (and bonus content) -- August 23, 2023

[Chris Hartjes]

Hello friends!

This week I am also going to include my "wins report" where I compare actual wins and losses for teams to their Pythagorean projection (first order wins), component offense/defense using Base Runs (2nd order wins), and component offense/defense using Base Runs adjusted for quality of opposition (third order wins).

One of the things that I had not been able to find a good answer for was how to account for blowouts when doing projections. As we all are aware, we have a higher percentage of blowouts in the IBL than in MLB due to that we make a lot of decisions based on usage -- when your team is winning (or losing) by a lot, we trot out players who have bad cards but need to hit their usage thresholds.

In a chat over at Fangraphs a link to an old article from 2007 on one method of smoothing out Pythag projections by calculating a Pythagorean winning percentage by averaging the projected winning percentage of each game. I decided to use that method for the first order wins (in case you are wondering why it looks different from what Rusty generates for the Almanac).

Anyway, here's the data for this week:

IBL | Real  | First |  2nd  | Third
BAL | 40-73 | 38-75 | 40-73 | 43-70
BFD | 53-60 | 52-61 | 56-57 | 58-55
BOW | 61-55 | 62-54 | 65-51 | 63-53
BUF | 46-70 | 46-70 | 46-70 | 47-69
CAN | 65-44 | 63-46 | 63-46 | 63-46
EVE | 53-60 | 54-59 | 60-53 | 59-54
GTY | 59-54 | 62-51 | 61-52 | 62-51
KAT | 52-61 | 46-67 | 48-65 | 48-65
MAD | 49-67 | 48-68 | 52-64 | 51-65
MCM | 70-43 | 72-41 | 65-48 | 64-49
NJR | 59-57 | 60-56 | 61-55 | 60-56
NYK | 50-66 | 51-65 | 48-68 | 50-66
OXY | 53-60 | 53-60 | 54-59 | 54-59
PHI | 59-57 | 63-53 | 61-55 | 58-58
RRG | 56-60 | 53-63 | 50-66 | 49-67
SCS | 49-61 | 49-61 | 50-60 | 52-58
SDQ | 57-56 | 53-60 | 54-59 | 55-58
SEA | 78-35 | 75-38 | 68-45 | 69-44
SFL | 64-46 | 60-50 | 62-48 | 61-49
SFP | 45-71 | 51-65 | 52-64 | 53-63
SKY | 62-50 | 62-50 | 66-46 | 65-47
SLG | 55-61 | 49-67 | 45-71 | 46-70
SNH | 67-49 | 67-49 | 72-44 | 70-46
WMS | 65-51 | 63-53 | 57-59 | 56-60

Starting to simulate 10000 seasons...

Simulating seasons... |################################| 10000/10000

AC East
SFL 93.9 - 68.1 98.0% Div + 1.8% WC = 99.9%
NJR 83.6 - 78.4 1.9% Div + 62.7% WC = 64.7%
RRG 75.8 - 86.2 0.0% Div + 2.5% WC = 2.5%
KAT 72.9 - 89.1 0.0% Div + 0.4% WC = 0.4%

AC Central
WMS 87.6 - 74.4 49.1% Div + 42.9% WC = 92.0%
BOW 86.6 - 75.4 43.1% Div + 41.7% WC = 84.8%
PHI 82.3 - 79.7 7.6% Div + 33.5% WC = 41.1%
OXY 76.4 - 85.6 0.2% Div + 3.2% WC = 3.4%

AC West
MCM 99.2 - 62.8 100.0% Div + 0.0% WC = 100.0%
EVE 79.3 - 82.7 0.0% Div + 11.2% WC = 11.2%
MAD 69.7 - 92.3 0.0% Div + 0.0% WC = 0.0%
BUF 64.8 - 97.2 0.0% Div + 0.0% WC = 0.0%

NC East
SNH 94.8 - 67.2 75.8% Div + 24.2% WC = 99.9%
SKY 90.7 - 70.3 24.1% Div + 74.6% WC = 98.7%
SDQ 80.0 - 82.0 0.1% Div + 16.0% WC = 16.1%
SLG 72.3 - 89.7 0.0% Div + 0.2% WC = 0.2%

NC Central
CAN 95.7 - 65.3 100.0% Div + 0.0% WC = 100.0%
SCS 74.0 - 88.0 0.0% Div + 0.7% WC = 0.7%
NYK 69.4 - 92.6 0.0% Div + 0.0% WC = 0.0%
SFP 66.0 - 96.0 0.0% Div + 0.0% WC = 0.0%

NC West
SEA 107.6 - 54.4 100.0% Div + 0.0% WC = 100.0%
GTY 85.1 - 76.9 0.0% Div + 80.0% WC = 80.0%
BFD 77.8 - 84.2 0.0% Div + 4.4% WC = 4.4%
BAL 57.7 - 104.3 0.0% Div + 0.0% WC = 0.0%

-- 
  Chris Hartjes
  chartjes at littlehart.net