Diamondbacks Updated Playoff Odds and a Mea Culpa

The Diamondbacks record stood at 14-20 on May 5th. They were just three games out of the Wild Card standings, but there were seven teams in between them and the final playoff seed. I wrote at the time that the D-backs season was on the Brink of Disaster.

Setting aside the debate over the semantics of the meaning of "ON the Brink" versus "OVER the Brink," I clearly overstated the situation in that article. I got it wrong. All it's taken is a 7-3 stretch over their last ten games to pull into a virtual tie with the Padres and the Nationals for the final Wild Card seed.

NL 3rd Wild Card Seed as of 5/16/2024 | Jack Sommers

My colleagues in the Chase Field Press box and even Manager Torey Lovullo have given me some much deserved, but good natured ribbing for jumping the gun with my clearly premature and poor take.

The only self defense I'll make is I did go on to point out what I believed to be the path forward to recovery in that article linked above. Three of those items mentioned have trended in the right direction, one did not. So with that said and without further ado let's get on with the updated playoff odds.

As always, I'm presenting the composite average of playoff odds as calculated by three primary projection websites, Baseball Reference, Fangraphs, and Baseball Prospectus. On May 5th the team's composite projection estimated a mean of 78.6 wins and playoff odds of 18.6%. Here then is the updated table.

Diamondbacks Updated Playoff Odds May 16th, 2023 | Jack Sommers

As can be seen, the playoff odds have nearly doubled to 36.5% as the win projection increased by 3.2. It should be noted that Baseball-Reference odds for the D-backs are likely to improve quickly even if they just go 5-5 over their next 10 games.

That is because they're based on a projection off the last 100 games' run differential plus strength of schedule. The D-backs went 28-28 over their last 56 games of of 2023.

But there is a nine game losing streak from games 2 through 10 of those 56. In other words once the last 100 games no longer include that stretch, the BR playoff odds should jump a bit.

Meanwhile BP's projections are still more bullish than Fangraphs when it comes to the D-backs. Both are derived from running thousands of simulations based off individual player projections.

The above is just a snapshot in time. As we have learned... and as has been hammered home to me specifically over the last few days, things can change very quickly.

So once again, mea culpa.