What the Braves need to do to make the playoffs

via i.a.cnn.net

After the Braves took 3 out of 4 from the Mets in overall dominant fashion, I began to look at the overall playoff picture.  With every team around the 90 game mark, there's a plenty large enough sample size with which to make predictions.  I'm going to ignore what the predictions say about the Braves for the most part and focus on what they need to do. In the National League, the Nationals are truly out of it and have long been so.  Every prediction metric I can find has them at 0% to make the playoffs.

Let's assume every team below 5% to make the playoffs has been effectively elimited.  PECOTA says that, in additional to the Nationals, the Padres, Pirates, Reds, Mets, and Marlins are effectively eliminated.  The Mets are just getting weaker at this point-we saw the line-up they were fielding against us in the last two games of that series.  Fernando Nieve was just added to the DL, Gary Sheffield is still going to need some rest, and they're still missing three of their 4 best hitter-Delgado should be back by mid-August, there's no timeframe on Beltran, and Reyes may have suffered a setback recently.  The Marlins are more interesting as they are only 1 game below .500, but PECOTA doesn't like that they're outperforming their pythagorean W/L, and it gets even more extreme on their second and third order predictions (that is, equivalent runs/runs allowed, and then adjusted for level of competition)

I took a look at BP's standard Postseason Odds Report, and also their PECOTA-Adjusted version.

I'll spare you my attempts to get a table inserted here properly and just give you the gist.  In the standard report, the Phillies are expected to win 90 games.  In the adjusted version, they're expected to win 91.6.  In both versions, the Rockies are expected to win the wild card at about 88-89 wins (though the average Wild Card winner varies a bit more, around 91 wins)  That has the Braves looking at 90 wins, minimum, with 92 being the safe number.

One thing that's interesting about the Braves on BP is their Current adjusted Standings.  In brief, Pythagorean W/L, which is just based on runs scored versus runs allowed, has the Braves 1 game better and the Phillies 1 game worse, so that the Braves are only 4.5 back instead of 6.5.  When they adjust for EqR/EqRA (the formula used for EqR is pretty complicated, so I'll leave it out) the Braves are leading the division (49-43).  This indicates that the Phillies' pitching has perhaps been a bit lucky this year, which is supported if you look at team FIP on Fangraphs.  They're outperforming their FIP by 0.24, which, combined with the Braves' trailing their FIP by 0.11, predicts a bit of room for the Braves to close the gap.

Now for a look at the Braves' remaining schedule, keeping in mind that they likely need 90-92 wins in order to make the playoffs  They need to go 44-26 to reach 90 wins-that's a winning % of 63 over the rest of the season.  They have a lot of games left against the NL East, which is very good news because of the weakness of the East.  They play 9 games against the Nationals, 9 against the Mets, 13(!) against the Marlins, and 9 against the Phillies.  That's 40 games, constituting well over half of their remaining schedule.

Against the Nationals, the Braves are only 5-4, but they need to be able to take a minimum of 7 wins from the Nationals (this puts them at 53).  Against the Marlins, a losing team expected to get worse, the Braves need 9 wins (62).  Against the Mets, they should at least try to win every series, so they need 6 wins (67).  And they can't afford losing ground to the Phillies in head to head games, so they need a minimum of 5 wins there-6 would be much better. (72).

That leaves 30 games the Braves play against the rest of the rest of the NL, in which they'll have to go 18-12.  This is a tough feat, since 17 games will be played against teams that currently have winning records, and 3 against a team that's currently .500 (the Astros), leaving only 10 games against losing teams to pick up.  What's most daunting is that the Braves have 7 games left against the NL-best Dodgers.  They need to play around .500 (9-8) against the winning teams, and then beat up on the rest of these teams (9-4).

In short, the path to the playoffs is pretty tough.  Braves will definitely need to beat up on the Nats and Marlins when they get the opportunity.