FanPost

BtB: The Orioles have an 11% chance at the playoffs

Recently, we had quite a discussion here about whether winning matters without contending.  This dovetails nicely with recent discussion around the baseball blogs about the marginal value of a win led by Dave Cameron of Fangraphs.

Now, however, we have the ability to put that discussion into some context.  The PECOTA projections for the 2010 season are out, and over at SBN site Beyond the Boxscore, an analysis of the playoff probabilities of each team has been posted.  Given a nine win standard deviation from PECOTA's projection, the Orioles have a 4% chance of winning the division, and an 11% chance overall of making the playoffs.

This places us squarely in the bottom third of baseball in terms of our shot at the playoffs, and in a position where I clearly think we need to be focused more on the future than on the present.  On the other hand, these probabilities are, to me, a tremendous source for optimism.  Baseball is a wonderful game.  The Yankees have the best playoff odds of any team in baseball, at 66%.  Yet, even with the highest payroll and many of the game's best players, the Yankees will miss the playoffs fully one third of the time.  Meanwhile, the Orioles, even in the toughest division in baseball, have slightly better than a 1-in-10 shot.

I want the O's to go after that 11% chance with all they have this season, and I hope they are doing that.  But I also think that the key is to continually improve those odds.  Baseball is still a game of luck and randomness, and there is no way to build a sure playoff team or World Series winner.

In our division, what kind of playoff odds do you think we can reasonably expect in the future for the Orioles?  Is there an amount of improvement you'd like to see per season?

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