What are the Dodgers’ chances of winning the World Series? Way less than you might think
LA TimesRemember when National League pitchers batted and Clayton Kershaw seemed like an automatic out? Well, experts considered most adept at running the numbers calculate the likelihood of the Dodgers winning the World Series this October roughly equal to that of Kershaw getting a hit when he used to bat. In a respectful nod to the delightfully unforeseen vagaries of October baseball, no team is considered even a 1-in-5 shot at being crowned World Series champion. The chances of the other wild-card teams winning are considered minuscule — although it’s worth noting that the odds of the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks meeting in last year’s World Series were less than 1%. For the purposes of the playoff odds simulation, we are calculating a value of SRS using each team’s previous 100 games, adding in 50 games of.500 ball for regression to the mean.