It's July and the Astros are Closing In

Expected Wins, Projected Standings, Luck Rankings and Power Ratings

Jul 01, 2024

Be sure to check out our new pages that are updated daily:

Astros Expected Wins | MLB Projected Standings | MLB Power Rankings | MLB Luck Rankings

On July 1st - Something Different

July 1 is traditionally the day I begin to look at the projected standings more closely, as the amount of data they are based on begins to “mean something”.

The impact of early season blowouts (in either direction) are generally mitigated by the volume of games and more than 50% of the projected wins are based on a team’s ACTUAL won/loss record.

Every day, from this day forward the results on the field, wins and losses, will account for more and more and the run differential will mean less and less.

With this in mind, I decided to do something a little different today and focus solely on these things:

(1) Astros Expected Win Totals

(2) Projected Standings (All Divisions)

(3) Luck Rankings (All Teams)

(4) Power Rankings (Based on Expected Win Totals)

This week could be challenging as I am a candidate for Jury Duty, so updates could be hit or miss.

Astros Expected Win Total

My number is 85, which is the highest total since April 3, which was one of those early season, small sample size anomalies I spoke of above.

Here’s a comparison with other sources. Pythagorean is higher, FanGraphs currently agrees and if you just use win %, it’s lower.

To get to each of these, the Astros would need to finish:

Pythag: 46-33 .582

AP: 43-36 .544

FanGraphs: 43-36 .544

Win%: 39-40 .494

Projected Standings

As it stands this morning, the playoff teams would be:

American League

Division Winners: Orioles, Guardians, Mariners

Wild Cards: Yankees, Royals, Twins

National League

Division Winners: Phillies, Dodgers, Brewers

Wild Cards: Braves, Padres, Mets

Standings are NOT predictive, but based on how the teams have played to date.

Luck Rankings

The goal here is to estimate what percentage of a team’s record is the result of luck.

A positive number means you’ve generally been lucky, while a negative means you’ve generally been unlucky.

The Astros are 28th in luck, while the Mariners are one of the luckiest teams in baseball to date.

This indicates the Astros are due for some positive regression, while the Mariners are due for negative regression.

Power Rankings

These are much like the + numbers for stats, where 100 = 81 wins (average team), so 110 would be 81+10% or 89.1 wins, etc.

Mainly this is for fun and discussion purposes, but you can see the Astros are currently ranked 13th and it gives you a big picture of where they stand in the league.

Multiply 81 (average team) x the 104.53 rating for Houston and you get 84.6693 which rounds to 85, which is the expected Astros win total above.

Updated Daily

These are updated daily (even on Astros off days) and four of them have their own pages: