Team Strength — the postseason field
The 1 clubs still playing, ordered by 2026 form:
this season's run differential per game, adjusted for the strength of
schedule, where 0 is an average club. Both ranks count only the clubs
still in it. The model rating beside it blends this season with
recency-weighted prior seasons, and it is what drives the
playoff odds. The full
30-team table from the regular season is
saved here.
CompareRadar comparison
Percentile rank across these 1 teams — higher is better on every axis.
#1
2026 form
Milwaukee Brewers
MIL
#1
model
2026 form
+1.43
Run diff / game
+1.37
Schedule
tougher than average
+0.05
Record
Pythag .640
103-59
Last 30 days
+2.00 run diff/g
11-2
Last 10 games
run differential
+25
Model rating
+0.19
80% range
-0.09 to +0.45
Offense
+0.04
Defense
+0.15
How to read the ratings
The ratings are log-rate adjustments. An offense of +0.10
means the team's expected runs-per-game is e0.10 ≈ 1.10×
the league baseline; a defense of +0.10 cuts opponent
scoring by the same factor. Overall strength is the sum of the two.
The bars show the 80% credible interval of the posterior. Wider bars
mean we have less certainty about that team — usually because few games
have been played, or results have been inconsistent.
Current form is each team's run differential over
their most recent 10 completed games — a snapshot of what they've
actually done lately, separate from the long-run model rating
above. A team can be a strong rated club (high overall) yet be in a
cold patch (negative current form), or vice versa. The model uses
this short-window number as an explicit term in the log-rate
equation so a current slump or streak modulates the per-game
prediction rather than waiting for the slow recency weighting to
catch up.
Model rank vs 2026-form rank. The two ranks on each
card answer different questions. 2026 form ranks teams purely
on this season's results: run differential per game, adjusted for the
strength of each club's schedule — what they've done so far.
The model rank blends 2026 with recency-weighted prior seasons,
so a team that was poor for years carries a sceptical prior even after a
strong half-season (and a recent powerhouse keeps some shine after a
slow start). That can look harsh — a club outplaying its run
differential, or rebounding from a bad multi-year stretch, will sit
lower on the model rank than its 2026 form suggests. It is deliberate:
a walk-forward backtest on the held-out 2025 season shows the blended
rating predicts future games more accurately than a
current-season-only rating at every recency setting tested (lower
log-loss and lower standings-recovery error). Half a season of results
is genuinely noisy, and the prior is the model declining to overreact
to it. The 2026-form rank is here so you can see exactly how much
skepticism the model is applying, team by team.
