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Thanks to the Cardinals new non-mustachioed left fielder, they now have a commanding lead in the NL Central.

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Now that Justin's power rankings have come back from vacation, I can update my playoff odds for each team in the majors.  If your missed last week's introductory post, these combine PECOTA preseason projections and Justin's current power rankings to get a picture of the strength of each team going forward.  Then by creating a distribution of each teams chances of winning a certain amount of games, we can figure out their odds of making the playoffs based on the odds that they win more games than their opponents.

However, given the multitude of trades this year, the true strength of each team won't necessarily be captured by their current performance or their preseason projections.  Therefore, I will be subjectively updating the projections for each team going forward based off of my best guess of their net gain in WAR from trades.  Of course, I am probably not the most knowledgeable person about every team, so if any of my projections seem off, you can complain in the comments section or e-mail me and I'll probably change the projection.  

See the full odds for each team, and other goodies after the jump...

First off, here are the modifications I made to each teams projected win totals.  These are measured in wins per 150 games (about 600 plate appearances) for calculation purposes, so the numbers may seem inflated to you:

Red Sox: -.5 WAR (+ Duncan + LaRoche - Lugo)

Indians: -3 WAR (+ Perez - DeRosa - Betancourt)

Royals: 1 WAR (+ Betancourt)

Athletics: -4 WAR (+ Hairston - Holliday)

Mariners: +3 WAR (+ Hannahan + Langerhans)

Braves: +3 WAR (+ McClouth + Church - Francouer)

Mets: -1 WAR (+ Francouer - Church)

Nationals: +2 WAR (+ Morgan + Burnett - Milledge - Hanrahan)

Phillies: +1 WAR (+ Martinez)

Brewers: +2 WAR (+ Lopez)

Cardinals: +8 WAR (+ Holliday + DeRosa + Lugo - Duncan - Perez)

Pirates: -4 WAR (+ Milledge + Hanrahan - McClouth - Morgan)

D-Backs: -2 WAR (- Lopez)

Padres: -4 WAR (+ Salazar + Gwynn - Meredith - Hairston - Gerut)

Rockies: +1 WAR (+ Betancourt)

Flame away...

Again, I encourage you to tell me if I am overlooking any trades or mis-evaluating them so I get the best possible projections.  Using the modifications shown above, here are the updated playoff odds:

As alluded to by the caption of the photo, the Cardinals are now the heavy favorites to win the division.  Acquiring Holliday alone vaulted them up about 15%, and when you combine that with the DeRosa trade and the Lugo trade, John Mozeliak has done a lot to try and get his team into the playoffs.  The Cubs continue to flounder, as they now sit at just 3 games over .500 and have a 29% chance of winning the division.  Despite the Astros recent hot streak, based off their expected performance via Justin's rankings and their preseason expectations, we don't give them much of a chance going forward.  

In the NL East, the Phillies look like the strong favorite.  However, the Braves are playing good baseball and had acquired some peices along the road.  They are still well behind in the division and in the wild card hunt; however, their aggerate playoff odds look pretty good.  

In another shocker, the three big teams from the AL East have a virtual monopoly on the Wild Card, with no other teams having greater than  a .5% chance of making it.  The Yankees have won a lot of games recently, and it reflects in their odds, as they are the overwhelming favoirtes to the win the division.  The Rays, despite continuing to play like the best team in the league, are seeing their odds drop severely with each loss. 

Now let's see how the odds for each team changed since last time:

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There is some interesting things to notice here.  One is the free fall of the Mets.  Being a contender at the start of the season to being a longhost last week.  Now their season looks just about over, although if this chart shows anything, is that a lot can change in a week.