Twelve days ago, I posted our postseason odds as calculated by four different measures (3 from BPro and one from CoolStandings.com), they all had one thing in common, they were much less than 1%. As I result, I suggested we should shift our focus to what we can do over the off-season to put together a contender, in order to avoid depression. 12 days later, we're on fire -- like old school, SNES NBA Jam. I hadn't looked at the playoff odds during this streak, mainly because I didn't want to quash my buzz. Last night and then this morning (while in class, sorry Dad -- I swear it was useless) I looked at the odds and was somewhat shocked, in a good way.
The last time I reported the odds (12 days ago) they looked like this:
| Report | NL Central Champs | NL Wild Card | Playoffs |
|
BPro Playoff Odds |
.0015% | .0884% | .0899% |
|
BPro PECOTA Adjusted Odds |
.00062% | .06954% | .07016% |
|
BPro Schedule Adjusted Odds |
.00751% | .2439% | .25141% |
|
Cool Standings Odds |
>1% | 1% | 1% |
Such small percentages are universally known as "hopeless." It was with that mindset that I looked at the standings this morning. This is what I was greeted with:
| Report | NL Central Champs | NL Wild Card | Playoffs |
|
BPro Playoff Odds |
.01065% |
1.19726% | 1.20791% |
|
BPro PECOTA Adjusted Odds |
.00893% | 1.0474% | 1.05633% |
|
BPro Schedule Adjusted Odds |
.06689.% | 3.02758% | 3.09448% |
|
Cool Standings Odds |
>1% | 1.7% | 1.7% |
The strength of schedule considerations swing in our favor considerable. For each BPro report you can click and see the gains from the previous day and over the previous week, in all cases the rate of change is ridiculous. The strength of schedule adjustment, pegs the Astros for a 86.5 wins, so flip the coin to determine 86 or 87, which blows me away. As HLP and I have stated recently, I thought we'd be praying for a 84 wins -- however, I also thought that would have us contending in the NL Central.
The bottom line is, we have as good of shot at the post season as the Cardinals are reported too and I think we're a lot better of a team than St. Louis is. We all know that the Brewers are unraveling a bit, so perhaps our play-offs hopes are [it took me about a minute to decide if I wanted to type this] legitimate.
For those of you who both do and don't read the comments section of our post regularly, Stros Bros put up a similar post well before I did and in the comments, there was a big discussion, started by me, about the validity of the BPro's strength of schedule adjustments. This was because Mitchell Litchman had created an entire blog post about how bad BPro's were. I since have read that Clay Davenport fixed the glitch in all the reports that cause MGL's criticism, or at least that's what Clay Davenport is saying. For those of you who are curious about how the ELO (BPro's schedule adjuster) looks underneath the hood, this article should keep you entertained for about 20 minutes (I know it got me through the rest of Theatre Historiography -- I have to have a fine arts lecture credit, don't judge).
Thing to hang our hats on as we got to the high offensive environment and home of the equally en fuego Rookies, is that we have a pretty legitimate reasons to be thinking October. In that light, I may try and employ my Game 4 of the 2005 NLDS strategy for the rest of season. I just hope my roommates don't mind.