2014-10-30

2014 World Series Projections Wrapup

I liked this visualization of my 2013 World Series projections I did last year, so I did the same style this year. Instead of sorting the teams from strongest to weakest, I put the #1 seeds at the edges, then the wildcards, and the other division winners in the middle, AL on top, NL on the bottom.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to choose 10 unique colors to represent the playoff teams. Sure, Oakland's easy as the only green team, but San Francisco and Baltimore both use just orange and black, leaving me yellow for Pittsburgh. The Royals and Dodgers are blue, and the Angels and Cardinals are red, so they just had to share. The Angels and Cardinals could have also been navy I suppose, but that went to the Nationals. Finally, Detroit got a rather nonsensical white, since they're pretty much navy, orange, and white.


Worst position for San Francisco: 3.81% on September 29, before the first Wildcard game

Best position for Kansas City: 66.15% on October 25, up 2-1 in the World Series

Best position for an LCS loser: 38.61% for Baltimore on October 8, when the NLDSs finished and the statistically weaker teams won both, but before the ALCS began.

Best position for an LDS loser: 21.17% for Washington on October 3, before the NLDS began.

Best position for a Wildcard loser: 11.4% for Oakland, before the playoffs began. I had them projected as the strongest team, but Kansas City took them out as their first step toward their World Series appearance. They would have been favored at the start of any series they played, but never got to play beyond the first Wildcard game.

For completeness, here's the final playoff results for 2014:

San Francisco over Kansas City

World Series
SF 4-3 KC

League Championship Series
KC 4-0 BAL
SF 4-1 STL

Division Series
KC 3-0 LAA
DET 0-3 BAL
STL 3-1 LAD
SF 3-1 WAS

Wildcard Round
OAK 0-1 KC
SF 1-0 PIT

As I saw several bloggers point out today, we're all tied for first place now, and pitchers and catchers report in under 4 months.

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