Phillies Are No Slouches--Rays Have a Tough Series Even With Home Advantage

Back when the Cubs were the team to beat, I always thought the Phillies would present the toughest challenge. I should have known better that, once October rolls around, even a team made up of Florida Seniors could beat them. One thing I also knew, is that both Boston or Tampa Bay were better than any NL team. So if we look at the numbers alone, sans context, the World Series will be a toss-up, with the slight advantage going to the Phillies, based on their Road record particularly. 

The big caveat in this, though, is that the Phils play in the National League which is not as strong a league as the AL, and particularly not as strong as the survivor of the AL East, which is a beast (and I will stop the rhyme there).

Whoever wins the first game will certainly get the edge, because then, in either case, that winner will hold a 70% chance of taking the Series.

WS	H PWP	A PWP	Win	Sweep
Rays	0.628	0.515	49%	5%
Phillies	0.598	0.561	51%	7%

15: Not Much Action Due to Ike

I will be posting only the new Real World Magic Number stat from here on out, unless there is a compelling change in results or other reason. For now, I will see how this RWM# works as an actual predictor of the course of events over the next few weeks. The only changes from yesterday due to the major storms around the East Coast were the Rays and Red Sox both reducing their numbers, as well as the White Sox and the Dodgers, all by 1.

PS: Kudos to ESPN for incorporating an expanded version of standings that takes into account some of the same things I do, and also utilizes a similar system as BaseballProspectus. They are using Coolstanding to get their playoff odds data. Both Coolstanding and BP use Monte Carlo simulations for their predictions, where I simply use a derivative of Pythagorean Expectation and actual performance for my predictions. As I pointed out before, these numbers are highly correlated and usually the same.

AL	W	PW	RW Magic #
East
Tampa Bay	87	97	10
Boston	86	96	12
Central
Chicago Sox	81	90	9
Minnesota	80	89	11
West
x-LA Angels	90	98	0
Wild Card
Boston	86	96	4
Minnesota	80	89	17
NL
East
NY Mets	82	92	8
Philadelphia	80	89	13
Central
Chicago Cubs	88	98	4
Milwaukee	83	91	16
West
LA Dodgers	76	84	5
Arizona	72	80	13
Wild Card
Milwaukee	83	91	7
Philadelphia	80	89	12