What the FanGraphs Playoff Odds Tell Us About the Blue Jays

[Leo Morgenstern]

When I tell people I write about baseball for a living, they tend to ask how I stay busy during the winter. 

"What do you have to write about when there aren't any games?"

My response has become something I say so often it almost feels scripted.  

"The offseason can be just as busy for me," I explain. "There are trades and free agent signings, of course. But there is also endless speculation preceding every move and endless analysis that follows. I write about the season that was, the season that's soon to come, and what we learned from the former that will matter in the latter."

All of that is true, except perhaps for how eloquent I made myself sound. When the offseason begins, there's no shortage of topics to choose from. It's also nice to be able to write without worrying about stats going out of date or a catastrophic injury changing everything.

In early fall, I sometimes even catch myself saying that I prefer writing about baseball during the offseason. 

Then February rolls around. 

Today marks one month since the Blue Jays added a player to their 40-man roster. It's been 31 days of writing about minor league signings, arbitration cases, and spring training invitations. 

The glass-half-empty voice in my head wants to scream. I'm bored! Thankfully, I also have a glass-half-full side to my personality. That part of me is grateful for projections. I may not have real baseball to write about, but at least I have hypothetical data from tens of thousands of simulated seasons. 

Playoff odds went live at FanGraphs this week. These odds are calculated by simulating the upcoming season 20,000 times using the FG Depth Charts player projections. The player projections provide an estimate of how many runs each team will score and allow. The simulations show the many different ways those runs could translate into wins and losses. 

As I write this, the Blue Jays' playoff odds are 61.5%. In other words, the Jays made the playoffs in roughly 12,300 of FanGraphs's simulated seasons. Their 85 projected wins (technically 84.9) are the average of their win total in each simulation. In half of the simulated seasons, they finished somewhere between 81 and 89 wins. FanGraphs gives them a one-in-four shot of finishing with 89 or more wins, but also one-in-four odds to finish at or below .500. Their chances of winning the AL East are also about one-in-four (23.4%). 

If 85 wins and 23.4% division odds feel low to you, I promise you aren't alone. Last year, the Blue Jays entered the season with 83 projected wins and 15.6% division odds. Considering the difference between Toronto's 2024 and 2025 seasons, and taking into account all the front office has done this winter, it really seems like the Blue Jays should have the best odds to win the AL East and a projection closer to 90 wins.

That would have been my guess before any projections came out, and last week's ZiPS projected standings support that prognostication. 

Yet, as I pointed out when I wrote about the ZiPS standings, the most meaningful takeaway from those projections wasn't that the Blue Jays were the best team in their division, but that the AL East is going to be a tight race. The FanGraphs playoff odds indicate the same thing.

The AL East is the only division in which all five teams have a projected strength of schedule above .500. None of the teams in this division will make things easy for any of the others. FanGraphs gives the Yankees the highest odds to win the division, but those odds are worse than one-in-three. That means it's more than twice as likely that someone other than the favourite wins the AL East. And while New York's division odds are about seven percentage points higher than Toronto's and Boston's, the Yankees' projected win total is only 86.2. The projected spread between the Yankees in first and the Orioles in fourth is only 2.4 wins. Heck, even the Rays aren't that far behind. Tampa Bay has the worst projections in the AL East, but the Rays still have about a one-in-five chance to play in October (21.0%). The FanGraphs odds suggest it's basically just as likely that the Rays make the playoffs as it is that the Blue Jays repeat as division champs. 

With that said, I can't deny that the FanGraphs odds are less optimistic about the Blue Jays than ZiPS is. Only one team, the Astros, sees a bigger drop-off between their ZiPS projected win total and their FanGraphs playoff odds projected win total. That said, the FanGraphs odds are less enamoured with the AL East in general, projecting worse records for every team except the Rays. Altogether, the five AL East teams have 12 fewer wins according to the FanGraphs playoff odds than ZiPS. Now, five days have passed since Dan Szymborski put out the ZiPS standings, and the projections will have already changed a tad. But it's not as if the teams in the AL East have been particularly busy over the last few days. So, where did those 12 wins go?

For the most part, they went to the National League. The ZiPS standings have the 15 AL teams collectively winning six more games than the 15 NL teams. On the other hand, the FanGraphs playoff odds have the clubs in the Senior Circuit winning 16 more games than the clubs in the Junior Circuit.

FanGraphs is also higher on last-place teams. According to both systems, the best team in each division has an average of 89 projected wins. However, the worst team in each division has an average median projection three wins higher according to FanGraphs. The basement-dwellers have an average of 68 projected wins according to ZiPS and 71 projected wins according to the FanGraphs playoff odds. 

This is particularly relevant for the Blue Jays, because no division has a stronger weakest link than the AL East. The ZiPS projected standings all but write off the Rays, putting their postseason odds at 11.7% and their division odds at 1.1%. The FanGraphs playoff odds, however, think the Rays are almost twice as likely to make the playoffs and almost four times as likely to win the division. They're still long shots, but the FanGraphs playoff odds suggest they're much more "dark horse" than "punching bag."

Finally, it's worth noting that despite the Blue Jays' differing win total projections and division odds, their World Series odds are almost identical according to ZiPS (4.8%) and FanGraphs (4.7%). Per FanGraphs, the Blue Jays have the seventh-best odds to win it all, although the Yankees and Red Sox are only just above them, and the Phillies and Tigers are only just below.

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[Spanky__99]

Great read, I for one enjoy your articles @Leo Morgenstern