2020 MLB Projected Standings & Preseason Ratings
July 8, 2020 – by David Hess
All signs point to the Dodgers being the favorite, unless someone steals it from them (Photo by Mark Goldman/Icon Sportswire)
Our 2020 MLB Projections are back again for another run. In early March, we released them initially, right before the pandemic shut down the sports world. The 162-game schedule is gone, and in its place we now have a 60-game schedule for each team. Not only that, but the breakdown of who teams are playing has changed dramatically, with teams not traveling cross-country in 2020 and staying in their own regions.
With all that in mind, here are our updated 2020 MLB preseason ratings and 2020 MLB projected standings.
As always, the main purpose of our preseason MLB ratings is to provide a data-driven starting point for our MLB projected standings.
They also drive our MLB postseason seed projections and our other MLB season projection details. These include fully automated win-loss predictions, playoff chances, and World Series win odds.
Those standings and seed projection pages are updated every day to reflect the latest results and most up-to-date MLB power ratings.
[Update: MLB altered the playoff format on the same day that the regular season began, to increase the number of teams to eight in each league. This post has been updated to reflect our projection for each team’s playoff odds at the start of the season to reflect the new format.]
How We Create The Preseason Ratings
For football and basketball, we use our own data and models to come up with independent estimates of team quality. We then compare those to the market, and to other projections, and make final adjustments.
We treat baseball a bit differently, though. So far at least, our methods for projecting MLB aren’t as cutting edge, relative to other sports. So rather than trying to create our own preseason ratings, and deriving a season projection from those, we base our initial MLB projected standings on a weighted average of betting market info and projected standings from other well respected sources.
Essentially, we combine projected win total info from various sources into a consensus win total projection for every team. Then we p out what preseason team ratings would lead to those exact projections.
We’re still publishing these, so that you know what the initial rating in our projection system was for each team. But at this point we can’t recommend using these MLB projected standings to go place preseason bets, for example, if for no other reason than we haven’t done extensive backtesting of our approach.
Full Preseason 2020 MLB Projected Standings
| American League | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AL East | W | L | TR Rank | Playoffs | Win Div | Top Seed | WS Champs |
| NY Yankees | 36.7 | 23.3 | 2 | 95.5% | 63.9% | 32.2% | 14.4% |
| Tampa Bay | 32.7 | 27.3 | 8 | 79.6% | 22.4% | 8.0% | 4.4% |
| Boston | 30.3 | 29.7 | 18 | 60.6% | 10.4% | 2.8% | 2.1% |
| Toronto | 27.2 | 32.8 | 23 | 30.9% | 3.3% | 0.7% | 0.5% |
| Baltimore | 20.2 | 39.8 | 29 | 2.0% | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| AL Central | W | L | TR Rank | Playoffs | Win Div | Top Seed | WS Champs |
| Minnesota | 34.8 | 25.2 | 7 | 90.8% | 52.0% | 17.3% | 5.5% |
| Cleveland | 32.4 | 27.6 | 19 | 78.3% | 26.6% | 7.1% | 2.4% |
| Chi Sox | 31.4 | 28.6 | 20 | 69.9% | 19.8% | 4.6% | 1.8% |
| Kansas City | 24.1 | 35.9 | 28 | 11.7% | 1.2% | 0.1% | 0.0% |
| Detroit | 21.9 | 38.1 | 30 | 4.9% | 0.4% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| AL West | W | L | TR Rank | Playoffs | Win Div | Top Seed | WS Champs |
| Houston | 34.6 | 25.4 | 3 | 88.9% | 49.2% | 15.8% | 8.9% |
| Oakland | 32.3 | 27.7 | 9 | 76.0% | 27.3% | 7.1% | 4.2% |
| LA Angels | 30.8 | 29.2 | 14 | 63.9% | 16.9% | 3.6% | 2.7% |
| Texas | 27.8 | 32.2 | 21 | 36.3% | 5.7% | 0.7% | 0.7% |
| Seattle | 23.7 | 36.3 | 27 | 10.3% | 0.9% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| National League | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL East | W | L | TR Rank | Playoffs | Win Div | Top Seed | WS Champs |
| Washington | 33.1 | 26.9 | 5 | 73.8% | 31.4% | 8.0% | 5.1% |
| Atlanta | 32.6 | 27.4 | 4 | 69.6% | 26.8% | 7.0% | 4.9% |
| NY Mets | 32.3 | 27.7 | 6 | 67.9% | 25.6% | 6.4% | 4.6% |
| Philadelphia | 30.6 | 29.4 | 13 | 53.2% | 15.0% | 3.0% | 2.4% |
| Miami | 24.4 | 35.6 | 26 | 8.6% | 1.2% | 0.1% | 0.1% |
| NL Central | W | L | TR Rank | Playoffs | Win Div | Top Seed | WS Champs |
| Cincinnati | 32.9 | 27.1 | 10 | 71.4% | 28.1% | 7.6% | 3.5% |
| St. Louis | 32.7 | 27.3 | 11 | 71.4% | 27.0% | 7.4% | 3.4% |
| Chi Cubs | 32.4 | 27.6 | 12 | 68.0% | 24.4% | 6.3% | 3.2% |
| Milwaukee | 31.3 | 28.7 | 16 | 58.2% | 17.7% | 4.0% | 2.2% |
| Pittsburgh | 26.1 | 33.9 | 24 | 16.8% | 2.6% | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| NL West | W | L | TR Rank | Playoffs | Win Div | Top Seed | WS Champs |
| LA Dodgers | 37.9 | 22.1 | 1 | 96.3% | 77.0% | 43.4% | 18.5% |
| San Diego | 30.4 | 29.6 | 17 | 54.8% | 9.8% | 3.0% | 1.9% |
| Arizona | 30.3 | 29.7 | 15 | 53.1% | 9.6% | 2.9% | 2.0% |
| Colorado | 27.1 | 32.9 | 22 | 24.8% | 2.7% | 0.5% | 0.4% |
| SF Giants | 24.9 | 35.1 | 25 | 11.7% | 0.9% | 0.1% | 0.1% |
A Seemingly Narrow Win Distribution
You may look at the projections and think that they aren’t extreme enough. In a way, you’d be right — no team is projected to win fewer than 20 or more than 40 games in the shortened season. Now, it will almost certainly happen that a team or two will get on a hot streak over a stretch of 60 games. Some others will go in the tank.
But if a team jumps out to a 45-15 record, it’s going to be because things have gone better than could have reasonably been expected. And picking which teams will wildly exceed expectations is rather tricky. On average these conservative predictions should provide a less biased starting point than more aggressive ones.
More Team Projection Details
If you’d like to see our more aggressive best case and worst case scenarios for each team, check out their team projections page. Here are the LA Dodgers projections and the Baltimore Orioles projections as examples.
Click through to find a chart showing the projected odds of the Dodgers or Orioles winning any specific number of games. From the details in the Orioles’ chart, you can glean that we project about a 2.6% chance that Baltimore finishes 12-48 or worse this year. Gulp!
The projections detail page also includes a list of each team’s toughest & easiest games, and a table showing how their chances of winning the World Series change depending on what seed they get in the playoffs.
2020 MLB Projected Standings Highlights
Here are some highlights that stand out about the 2020 projections:
The two leagues look pretty evenly balanced overall in 2020, as five of the top ten teams reside in both the AL and NL. The two highest rated teams (New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers) are also in separate leagues.But that equality does not translate to individual divisions. For example, Atlanta (No. 4 in the power ratings) plays in a much tougher division (NL East) than No. 3 Houston (AL West) or No. 7 Minnesota (AL Central). Add in that the schedules have now been altered and Atlanta not only plays the NL East but also only plays other teams from the AL East, and the Braves are projected to win more than two fewer games than either the Astros or Twins.The change in formats swapped a couple of pairs of teams in our projected standings. The Cincinnati Reds are now a slight favorite to win the NL Central over the St. Louis Cardinals. This is a result of the change in schedules. In the original schedule, St. Louis had four extra games against Kansas City while the Reds played Cleveland four more times than St. Louis did. Now, Cincinnati plays Detroit in six games, while St. Louis still plays six against Kansas City. The schedules are much more balanced and that difference was enough to swap the teams. In the NL West, the Padres also moved in front of the Diamondbacks into second place in the NL West in our projections.Teams that have won a World Series in the last decade: 22.8% chance of winning the World Series in 2020. That’s what happens when the Dodgers haven’t been able to win the title despite so many recent contending teams, and the Yankees have not won since 2009. There’s a pretty good chance that this year’s winner will come from a team that has not won a World Series in a while.The shortened schedule already had a slight impact on the championship odds for the leading contenders. Because of the higher risk associated with missing the playoffs in a shortened season. Then, the playoff format change, increasing the risk for division winners of losing early, also lowered the odds for the top team. The Yankees, Dodgers, and Astros all have a lower chance of winning than they did back in March. Don’t weep for them too much, though. According to our projections, those three have a combined 41.8% chance of winning the World Series in 2020. But that was closer to 50% that one of those three would win the World Series back in March.
Playoff Team Shakeup
Lots of teams will be in contention for playoff spots thanks to the shorter season plus eight of the 15 teams in each league making the postseason.
2020 MLB Projected Playoff Results
Here is how the playoffs would play out, if these projections are spot on (numbers below refer to the team’s playoff seed within their league).
First Round
#1 Los Angeles Dodgers over #8 New York Mets#2 Washington Nationals over #7 Chicago Cubs#3 Cincinnati Reds over #6 San Diego Padres#5 Atlanta Braves over #4 St. Louis Cardinals#1 New York Yankees over #8 Los Angeles Angels#2 Minnesota Twins over #7 Chicago White Sox#3 Houston Astros over #6 Oakland Athletics#4 Tampa Bay Rays over #5 Cleveland Indians
Division Round
#1 Los Angeles Dodgers over #5 Atlanta Braves#2 Washington Nationals over #3 Cincinnati Reds#1 New York Yankees over #4 Tampa Bay Rays#3 Houston Astros over #2 Minnesota Twins
League Championship Series
#1 Los Angeles Dodgers over #2 Washington Nationals#1 New York Yankees over #3 Houston Astros
World Series
#1 Los Angeles Dodgers (NL) over #1 New York Yankees (AL)
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