2008 MLB playoff probabilities and such

Following on my post yesterday, here is a link to some 2008 predictions as well as probabilities of all teams to win the division and to make the playoffs.

http://www.stanford.edu/~null/bradnullblogfiles/divwinprob.xls

In the attached spreadsheet, the teams are sorted by division in order of most likely finish based upon 250,000 simulations. In short, the model predicts Cleveland, New York, and Seattle to win their divisions with Boston as the Wild Card in the AL. Milwaukee, New York, and LA are predicted to win their divisions in the ML with Atlanta as the Wild Card. The Yankees are the most likely team to win their division with a 58% chance. KC is the least likely with a .01% chance.

Pred Wins represents the team's most likely number of wins assuming they finish in this position in the standings.

E Wins is the expected value for team wins.

%division, %wild card, % out are the probabilities that the team wins division, wins wild card, and doesn’t make the playoffs respectively.

WDiv, WWC, and Wout are the expected number of wins for the team conditioned on the team winning the division, winning the wild card, and not making the playoffs respectively.

Realize also that the Expected wins are closer together than the actual distribution will be since they are averaging together a bunch of observations.